Page 37 of Breakout Year
“I’m done with the chicken,” Rachel called. She cleared out, towing Chava, Noah, Anna, and the remaining bottle of wine.
Mark didn’t ask Akiva anything, not at first. Instead, he pulled a crockpot from the cupboard, squatted before the fridge and handed Akiva ingredients to put on the counter: onions, potatoes, garlic, butcher’s packages of stew beef and marrow bones. More from the pantry: beans, barley, various spices.
“Here, you do it,” Mark said, possibly because Akiva was hovering.
So Akiva cut onions in chunks, freed garlic from its paper sheath, quartered potatoes large enough that they wouldn’t dissolve to mush as the stew cooked overnight, before he piled them into the slow cooker. There was too much to fit easily, and Akiva rearranged the potatoes a few times before he gave up.
“You’ve gotten better at this,” Mark said.
Which meant Akiva still wasn’t good at it. He didn’t remember much about that first horrible week he’d spent living there—not horrible because Mark and Rachel were horrible, but horrible because they emphatically weren’t. How useless he’d felt drifting around their house while they told him that his only job was rest. How he’d tried that first Shabbat to do something, even if that something was just making stew, and he hadn’t been able to accomplish even that.
Mark slid over, nudging Akiva out of the way, breaking his contemplation. Akiva ceded the counter and watched as Mark did something with the potatoes that got them all in, plus room, then added the remaining ingredients. “Are you coming for Havdalah tomorrow?” he asked.
Akiva shook his head. Once three stars appeared in the Saturday night sky—once they lit Havdalah candles and declared Shabbat over—it was phone on, back to work.
Mark motioned to the various packages of meat and potatoes. “I think we’ll have extras if you want to take some home.”
“Things are better, money-wise,” Akiva said.
Mark shrugged as if that wasn’t what this was about. “If you’re going out to the club”—which he said with the pronounced skepticism of someone who Akiva had seen fall asleep on the couch before eight p.m. more than once—“I hope Rivkin’s paying.”
The wine in Akiva’s stomach chose that moment to ferment. “He is.”
Something in his tone made Mark nod slowly. “You like him?”
Years ago, Akiva had found out that could lie to himself, but lying to Mark was a much harder prospect. “Yes,” he said truthfully.
“And he treats you well?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Though Mark dragged the word out like he knew Akiva was deliberately omitting something.
“You really won’t take the money?” Akiva asked.
Mark waved a hand. “I told you it’s not a big deal.”
Though it was. Three thousand dollars might as well have been infinite years ago when Akiva’s choices had been to come up with it or to start sleeping in his car. “I want to pay you back,” Akiva said. “I’d rather you have it than my student loan processing company.” It was always funny how the entities that needed money the least were the first to claw it back.
“You can repay me”—Mark considered—“once you’re in the clear for everything else.”
That might never happen. Still, Akiva didn’t take out his phone, didn’t withdraw the payment. Sometimes it was easier just to wait people out. Mark might change his mind. “Okay.”
“And with Rivkin…be careful, all right?”
“What does that mean?”
Mark gave him a knowing look. “People don’t really respect privacy anymore.”
And I signed up to lose mine. Even if people on the Internet were easier to draw a boundary around than Eitan, whose money was knocking at Akiva’s account.
From the other room, Noah started to whine. “When’s dinner?”
Mark sighed paternally. “We gave him a snack thirty minutes ago.” He switched on the crockpot while Akiva put away the ingredients. “All right, let’s do kiddush.”
They did, gathering around the dining room table, warmed by the flicker of candles, drinking sips of wine, and eating passed-around handfuls of bread. Akiva took out his phone to put it on airplane mode as the sun set. A notification came in, the sender’s name flashing and dissipating too fast for anything but the hopeful beat of his heart. He’d attend to it tomorrow after Shabbat was over and work in the form of using electronics once again permitted. Rules weren’t rules in the sense of punishments, really—he didn’t live his life in fear of getting his hand supernaturally slapped—but rather promises he made to himself. Promises he’d given up a lot to keep. That he’d keep now, no matter how much he might be tempted not to.
So he tapped the airplane mode button. Pocketed his phone. Joined his friends as they awaited Shabbat like a bridegroom awaiting his beloved.
