Page 44 of The Dating Contract

Leah.

He gulped.

Leah Nachman had always been pretty; then and now. But right now, at this moment…she…

“Abba,” a voice said, breaking through his concentration, “you took my tape measure and the last time you did that I told you I’d have to do my next fitting where your extra tape measure is. Sohineni.”

And hineni meant that whoever this was, was going to have Leah stand up on a stool right across from him to do her fitting.

“Hi,” she whispered, her voice carrying across to where he stood. “Awkward though.”

He tried not to full-on laugh; he managed just to snort. “Could be worse,” he said.

“I don’t know how.”

And then as he watched the woman start to pin and pull and push and sigh, he decided he didn’t want to know.

“Like this?”

He laughed. There was something about having dual fittings, standing side by side, co-conspirators in weird embarrassment, that brought them closer. “Don’t want to think about it,” he finally said.

“Why are you here?”

“My brother-in-law,” he said, resisting the urge to run his hands through his hair. “He knows clothing and he knows this place. You?”

“My sister-in-law,” she replied. “I realized I didn’t have the right outfit for the gala. My niece is up in the kids section getting fitted with my sister and my sister-in-law. And Naomi.”

“Your niece is going? To the gala?”

Leah nodded. “She’s a member of the team being honored, even though it was her first session, they take them in immediately. So she’s going.”

In the space between what she said and what he wanted to say, he heard a screech and then some familiar voices that made him cringe.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

He shrugged, then heard a commotion of voices. Including one very familiar one.

Aaron.

*

As if standingand getting fitted across from Samuel wasn’t enough, hearing her cousin Naomi’s screech amidst the commotion put the cherry on her shit sundae. “Hi, Naomi,” she managed.

As if it couldn’t get worse, Naomi didn’t turn toward her but toward someone else. “Aaron Levine-Goldfarb, how are you?”

“I,” Samuel’s brother said, “am good. What brings you here?”

Leah tried not to scream as Chava, the tailor, stabbed her with a pin.

“Stop moving! If you stopped moving, then I wouldn’t stab you.”

“Sorry,” she managed. But her cousin’s arrival couldn’t be at a worse time, and she needed to say something about it. “Naomi…what the heck?”

Naomi seemed smug. “Ramona’s adorable but there are only a few people who can watch a four-year-old pick a dress before things get chaotic. And then I remembered you were here. So here I am.”

And without warning, her cousin came closer. Leah felt like she’d been placed under a microscope, as Naomi inspected every inch of her body. “You need a magnifying glass?”

Naomi shook her head, in no way chagrined. “I like the dress,” her cousin finally pronounced. “And your boyfriend there?”

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