Page 56 of The Dating Contract

Leah nodded, understanding. “Right. Okay.”

Now she understood why she hadn’t actually seen a car since she’d parked in the lot.

“Good. Now we get down to business. How’s it going with Samuel?”

Leah sighed. Somehow ‘getting down to business’ always meant talking about Samuel.

Well.

Not always, but enough…at least in this context, where it did.

But all she said to her cousin as she headed down the block before stopping to get a tumbler of iced coffee was: “Yes. Samuel.”

“How’s it going?”

Telling Naomi the man was still on her mind and had been for at least three days was not happening. Instead she shrugged. “Still going.”

Naomi nodded. “Interesting,” her cousin said as she walked up to the window.

Leah braced herself as she watched Naomi buy an identical tumbler of iced coffee. “How so?”

“It’s been a bit since you played his girlfriend at the expo and he played your boyfriend at the photo exhibit. You’ve gone with him to at least a gala and maybe the cocktail party your boss had. That’s like a bunch of things.”

“So?”

“Shayna’s been running interference with everybody since before the gala, but everybody’s starting to talk about the fact you’re being around him willingly.”

Which in Naomi’s skeptical tone sounded like a mistake. Which it was not. And so she explained it as clearly as she could. “Things are going,” she said. “It’s nice. We’re chatting. We’ve been in situations where we needed help or to bring a significant other. And we just, went with it.”

She didn’t need to know that there was a contract involved.

“I see,” Naomi said. “And are there any otherobligationsyou have on your calendar that will require you tobring a significant other?”

“I mean he’s got a birthday party that’s going to be thrown by his mentor,” she replied. “And it’s going well. I’ve gotten to know some of these people and…you know. They’re nice.”

“So why don’t I feel like you’re as all in on this as you seem to be?”

Leah shrugged, following her cousin down the street toward some of the benches they’d set up in front of what normally was a big bank of parking meters. “I mean,” she said. “He’s doing Judith’s ketubah, and we’ve been hanging out. How more into this do you think I should be?”

Naomi took a long drink of her coffee. “I’m the last person in the world who should be judging this or you,” she said. “But you need to figure out what you want from this relationship, and what you’re willing to give.”

Which was smart advice, but as they headed toward Liv and brunch, Leah tried to figure out what else she needed. Aside from a few more hours in the day to answer the questions she didn’t have answers to, as well as deal with the fact that Samuel’s voice sang in her head, there wasn’t really anything.

*

Aaron called himon Sunday morning, and Samuel arrived at Aaron and Tommy’s apartment for brunch before heading into Manhattan on a rare Sunday at the office.

“So what’s up?” Samuel said as he sat down in front of Aaron’s desk.

“Just taking stock,” Aaron said. “Liam sent you the payment for the logo, so that’s good. And you’ve got payments from a bunch of the commissions. Things are going well.”

But from Aaron’s tone, Samuel could tell there was a ‘but’ coming. “And?”

“There’s a congregation in Virginia who want you to write a Sefer Torah.”

That was it, wasn’t it? The final frontier toward being a full-fledged sofer. He’d spent the last few years perfecting his craft, working on ketubahs, and then mezuzahs and finally a small congregation in Massachusetts had asked him to write them a megillah.

Right before the ‘hot sofer’ thing had started. Which ground all possibility for a Sefer Torah to a halt.

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