“That poor couple,” Dad says. “I forgot about that.”
“Or what about that time the bride tossed her bouquet on the roof, and we had to get a ladder to get it down?” Mom says, her voice less wobbly.
“And everyone cheered when we finally rescued it,” I say.
Mom laughs, and I remember how much I love that sound. “That was a good one, wasn’t it?”
It was. It really was.
I’ve been scared of losing this, and it’s true that I won’t get to keep all of it. But hopefully I’ll gain a lot more.
I can’t wait to find out what that is.
29
Later that night, after a dinner with my parents during which we manage not to talk about B+B at all, I head up to the tower with Edith, who seems to have forgiven me for all the moping.
I open my laptop and flex some muscles that have been dormant since May, when I was still regularly turning in homework. I’ve barely glanced at anything besides Wikipedia all summer. Inspired by my conversation with Tarek that now feels eons old, I search a few things: music majors, harp construction, jobs for harpists. I learn about the harp conferences Maxine mentioned.
I have two weeks left of summer. Twenty days until Tarek goes back to UC Davis, until Julia goes to New York. Our schools have late-September starts, and I’m grateful for that, though on social media, I see that plenty of my classmates have already left. It’s an odd feeling, one I’m not sure I can name. If it’s nostalgia, I’m uncertain what I’m actually nostalgic for.
I even double-tap a photo on Jonathan Gellner’s Instagram. He’s wearing aviators and leaning against a suitcase, staring moodily out the window of an airport as the sun rises. And it makes me feel worse for having ignored him all summer.
With a jolt, I realize it’s not entirely unlike what Tarek did to me. Even if I didn’t want to have a capital-R Relationship with Jonathan, we had something. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but it was something. And I just brushed it off, because if I didn’t think about it, I wouldn’t have to feel any emotions about it.
I have not been an excellent person.
I pull up his name in my contacts, wincing at his earlier messages asking me to talk. Then I take a deep breath and write some difficult sentences I should have written a long time ago.
I realize this is late. Too late, probably. I wouldn’t blame you if you despised me at this point. I don’t expect any kind of response. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for ignoring you. So incredibly sorry about how this ended.
Good luck in college—I mean that. I hope you have the best freshman year.
I wish I could make it more personal. I wish I knew more about him than the superficial, but I made sure I didn’t. I steeled myself, shut out the opportunity to feel something that came so naturally with Tarek.
Something I was so scared to acknowledge the meaning of that I pushed him away.
Last summer I sat in bed just like this, reading and rereading that email before sending it to him. I remember thinking it was the scariest thing I’d done in my life.
This, I’m pretty sure, is scarier.
The summer can’t end without another wedding crisis, and this time it’s Asher’s.
We’re all in the kitchen for August work brunch, which I don’t plan to stop even if I’m no longer part of Borrowed + Blue. Pancakes, pajamas, 00 DAYS WITHOUT A DAD JOKE—all of these things are so very Berkowitz without being attached to weddings.
I don’t instantly have the kind of post–B+B relationship with my family that I want, but we’re working on it. I’ve made an appointment with my old therapist for next week, and my parents asked if I wanted to join them at one of their counseling sessions, which I might do.
Progress. This is progress.
Halfway through the meal, Asher’s phone buzzes on the table, and she snatches it up. “Bakery,” she explains before she says hello.
Asher and I are evolving too. She asked if I’d be interested in monthly sister dates once she gets back from her Italy honeymoon, and I was so struck by her suggestion that I immediately opened my phone calendar to October so we could plan the first one: a Seattle Rock Orchestra concert.
Asher’s eyes widen as she listens to whoever’s on the other end. “Oh. Oh no… The whole shop…? I’m so sorry.”
My parents go silent, watching her carefully. By the time she hangs up, her face has gone pale.
“There was a fire at the bakery,” she says, and Mom’s hand flies to her mouth. “Everyone’s okay, fortunately, and they have insurance. So that’s a relief.”
“But your cake…?” Mom says, and Asher shakes her head, a strand slipping out of her topknot.
“They can’t do it.” Her voice wavers. “My wedding is in three days, and we don’t have a cake.”
“We’ll reach out to all our contacts.” Dad swipes through his phone, leaping into wedding-planner action mode. “Shayna, you start with the As, I’ll start with the Zs.”
“It has to be gluten free,” Asher says. “That was why we went with this place, because they had a gluten-free kitchen. For Gabe.”
I forgot that Gabe is gluten intolerant. And really, I shouldn’t have, because the gluten-free challah we had at his place for Shabbat once was the stuff of nightmares.
“That does narrow things down a bit,” Dad says. “And Mansour’s, they’re booked?”
“We didn’t go with them because they didn’t have a dedicated gluten-free facility,” Asher says. “So, yes. I assume they booked something else.”
“Shit,” Mom mutters.
The three of them scroll through their phones, and I just sit there, trying to figure out how to help.
“It’ll be okay,” Dad is saying to Asher, trying to reassure her.
“Tarek could do it,” I say quietly.
They all pause what they’re doing, three heads swiveling
