CHAPTER 27
LIYAH arrives at Prohibition at the uncommonly early time of 9:13, ten minutes after the rest of the group has settled in.
She hangs her snow coat on the back of the chair next to Daniel’s. “God, no matter how early I arrive, I always feel like I’m late.”
Daniel exaggeratedly checks his watch. “That’s because you are.”
“I had hoped for a warmer welcome.” She pouts her wind-chapped lips, the bottom one pinker than usual, and Daniel wonders if they’ll feel rough against his later tonight. “Thought you all might have learned to appreciate me in my absence, but alas.”
Daniel coughs into his fist to cover his laugh. He’s seen her—a lot of her—every night since Tuesday. As she unwinds her scarf and slides into her seat, she eyes him like she’s thinking something similar. The lingering gaze flicks away before it can be caught by their comrades, but it’s enough to unleash that bubbling feeling in his chest.
“How was Momma Cohen-Jackson’s visit?” Jordan asks.
“Just Momma Cohen. She always says that Jackie Jackson would have sounded bad, but Jackie Cohen-Jackson would be even worse.”
“That’s a good reason to keep your name, I suppose,” Siobhan says around her straw.
“She would have found another excuse, I’m sure of it. It was good, even if I had to dodge a few ‘When will you give me a grandchild’ questions. I’d have two IUDs in if I could.”
Jordan holds up his hand. “Spare me the details, please.”
“I said three letters. I didn’t even mention where I’d place them. They’d go in my uterus, Jordan. The strings go through the cervical opening and into the vaginal canal, so that the device can be removed. Would you like to know how it works?”
“I’d like to not have to retake tenth-grade health.” Jordan’s grimace deepens.
“If you feel comfortable inserting your genitals into something you can’t hear the name of without cringing, you probably should. Though I’m not sure it would help; sex ed in this country is abysmal.”
“Liyah,” Siobhan objects.
“Yeah, yeah, I will limit my doom spiraling in the interest of morale. Surprised you haven’t made it a rule yet.”
“House Rule number twelve: Liyah must limit her doom spiraling in the interest of morale. All in favor, say aye.”
Daniel and Jordan chorus their agreement, and Liyah pretends to frown as she writes it down at the bottom of today’s notes. Under the table, Daniel feels the gentle pressure of the side of Liyah’s boot against his. It’s like speaking in code; her mouth says, “Jordan, no matter what the house rules say, I’m getting you a book on human reproduction,” but that bump of her knee says it’s good to see you.
He knocks his elbow against hers like good to see you, too.
A couple drinks in, the toe of her boot trails up his calf: excited to see you later.
His hand subtly—and very briefly—falls to her thigh and squeezes: can’t wait.
Their pinkies brush: I’m thinking about your fingers.
Knees: you look so, so good tonight.
When she leans away completely and squares her shoulders for a fight, it’s because Jordan has brought up romance once again. Motherfucking idiot, worst friend of all time, torturer of souls, Jordan. Daniel could strangle him.
“Listen,” Liyah says. “I am more than happy to talk about the rest of your guys’ dating misadventures. Delighted, even. But love is not, and has never been, my thing.”
Siobhan rolls her eyes. “I bet you tell Daniel.”
“That’s not true,” Daniel interjects. “I promise she’s just as guarded with me.” Maybe not just as guarded. But her emotions are still so often such a black box, he wonders if she’s hiding them from herself, too.
“Why would I tell Daniel and not you two?”
“You spend the most time with him.” Jordan shrugs.
Liyah’s eyes widen; she feels cornered. Not good. “How can you say that? I work with Siobhan! Nine hours every single day!”
“You also work with Daniel, love. And I think Jordan means outside of work, anyway,” Siobhan points out. Her voice has softened, and she’s looking to Daniel, equally aware of Liyah’s agitation.
Jordan has no such social grace. “We’re just saying that y’all have become really close friends.”
“No, we haven’t!” Liyah spits.
Daniel is unable to shield his wince, and all three pairs of eyes catch it.
“I, um. I didn’t mean it like that,” Liyah adds weakly. “The four of us are all close friends, not just me and Daniel. I really value the group we have.” She inhales deeply. “Do you want to know why I really don’t want to be talking about this? It’s because I don’t think that romantic love is real.”
Jordan shakes his head. “You’ve said that before. I call bullshit.”
Sometimes, Jordan’s lack of tact comes in handy. Daniel and Siobhan exchange another look. They’ve all been thinking it. “Your parents are still together. And had maybe the best meet-cute of all time.”
“I know, Daniel. But that’s … I don’t know. Attraction, at first. Lust, and friendship, and then they built a life together and it works. They’re not outwardly lovey-dovey. It seems like they just pleasantly coexist, not that the light of a thousand suns can’t burn brighter than one another’s beauty.”
“I don’t think love has to be like that for it to be love,” Siobhan says.
Jordan nods. “Also, even as their kid, you don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors. My parents were the most loving couple, but it turned out that they both had a nigga on the side.” He takes a swig of his scotch, avoiding eye contact. Daniel’s heard this story, but he knows it’s the first time Jordan’s told the rest of the group. “When they divorced, everybody was shocked, but they’d hated each other the whole time.”
“Damn, that’s…” Liyah gulps down the rest of her drink. “Okay, fine. Maybe my parents are blissfully in love, or at least more in love than I can see.”
Jordan, ever insistent: “So, we have established that romantic love is, in fact, real.”
“Could be,” Liyah corrects.
“Would you like to share about your dating life now? You don’t even have to give us names. Just one bit of information.”
“No, I would not like to share.”
“Why not, then?”
“Jordan—” Daniel warns, but gets waved off.
“No, because clearly there’s some issue here. This is late-twenties group therapy, right? So, we’re therapizing. Why not, Liyah?”
“Seriously, Jordan—” Siobhan starts, but Liyah cuts her off.
“Because I don’t think it’s real for me! For you all, maybe. Probably, actually. Not for me.”
A sailor’s knot forms in Daniel’s chest. “You don’t think you’re capable of falling in love?”
The table is silent.
Liyah sighs. “No, it’s—I’m kind of a mess, emotionally.”
Siobhan touches Liyah’s forearm. “We all are, sometimes.”
“No, like, I’ve never met anyone as truly confident as Jordan. And Siobhan is so funny and caring and conscientious and artistic. And then Daniel…” She trails off, looking down at her napkin. Why can’t she finish this sentence? What’s wrong with him? After a breath, Liyah continues, voice small. “I’m not like that. I’m grouchy and have a big chip on my shoulder and a lot of issues that make me an incredibly difficult person to be around. I don’t think anybody could ever fall in love with me.”
Daniel is taken aback. “That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.” She says it firmly, like she’s returning a tricky serve.
“Yes, it is!” he volleys, his heart hammering.
“It’s really not,” she pings back.
“Yes, it is!” he repeats dumbly.
“No! Why are you arguing this? How would you know?”
“Because I’m in love with you! Liyah, I promise you, it’s so goddamn easy to be.”
A collective gasp alerts Daniel to the fact that he’s just said those words aloud. His head falls to his hands.
“No, you aren’t. We work together. We’re friends.”
He lifts his head to make eye contact, dragging his hands down his face in the process. “Oh, don’t give me that, Liyah. I think we’ve—I think I’ve had enough time to figure out how I feel about you.”
Liyah’s eyes flicker around the circle. “Why would you say this here, in front of everyone?” Her voice could cut a diamond.
Daniel lets out a hiss of a breath. “I didn’t mean to, but I’m sure they could tell. I’m not very good at hiding it; I kinda thought you knew.”
“Well, I didn’t know! And how would they know? They didn’t even know we’re fucking!” Siobhan snorts, and Liyah practically breaks her neck snapping her attention that way. “What?”
“Liyah, love, come on. Do you think we’re that thick? We’re not.”
Jordan winks. “Speak for yourself.”
Siobhan gives him a withering look. “Not the time.”
Daniel would very much like to crawl under their table. At this point, his height is all that’s stopping him. He racks his brain, but short of one of them being immediately hit by a blue-line train, he cannot imagine this going any worse.
“You both knew? So, what was this, a setup? Get me wound up until I confirm your latest gossip? Some friends you are,” Liyah accuses.
Siobhan and Jordan shake their heads. “Liyah, that’s obviously not—”
Liyah looks to Daniel, eyes piercing right through him. “Did you tell them?” On the surface, she sounds angry, but Daniel knows better. She’s hurt.
“No, I didn’t. I swear. I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t break your trust like that,” he says, trying to keep his voice gentle.
“Really? You wouldn’t? Because breaking my trust is exactly why I stopped talking to you at summer camp.”
His eyes go wide, volume dials up. “Are you kidding me, Liyah? You’re bringing up Maccabiah? I thought we put that to rest months ago!”
Liyah’s hands ball into fists. “I thought I told you it wasn’t just about color wars months ago! Need I remind you that while you were praised for making out with someone who wasn’t your girlfriend, I was ridiculed for it.”
“Wait, was the archery field—” Jordan starts.
Siobhan frowns, face going red. “What? You said you hardly talked to him at summer camp. I asked you, and you looked me in the eyes and said that.”
“I didn’t want to relive it, okay? His buddies found out, he got a few high fives and fist bumps, and I got humiliated.”
“We’ve been over this. I didn’t tell them. And yes, you’re right, I should have warned you, but also, I was a thirteen-year-old boy. Are you going to hate me forever for acting like a child when I was one?”
“Here’s the thing, Rosenberg,” she hisses, cold as ice. “You can argue with me about the minutiae of that summer all you want, but none of that matters. Maybe I was dead wrong about you back then. But I can tell you right now that springing how you’re supposedly ‘in love’”—she uses air quotes—“with me in front of our friends who are not involved in our private relationship seems like a pretty fucking big breach of trust to me.”
“Don’t do those fucking air quotes at me, Liyah. I told you I’m in love with you and you’re being patronizing? How unfeeling can you be? You’re above that.”
“Apparently, I’m not.” Liyah rips her coat from the back of her chair and storms away, yanking out Daniel’s heart and half his other vital organs in the process.
THE COLD AIR of the alleyway hits Liyah like a ton of bricks; in her rush to leave Prohibition, she barely got one arm through her parka. She hurriedly wraps her scarf around her neck, doing her best to stuff her hair into the faux fur–lined hood before she zips up. Her fingertips are purpling by the time they’re tucked into her mittens.
To say she’s unable to think about what just happened would be wholly untrue. No, she’s a whirlpool of every possible thought and emotion and her poor brain can’t seem to get them organized, confusion the only buoy in sight.
When Liyah reaches the train station, she doesn’t board. Instead, she turns onto Milwaukee, walking alongside the barreling whirr of the train below. The wind whips at her cheeks, dries out her eyes. She pulls the scarf up over the bottom half of her face, wishing the pricks of water doing their damnedest to keep her eyes from shriveling wouldn’t also blur her vision. Or feel so conspicuously close to crying.
The walk takes the better part of an hour, and when she strips off her outerwear inside her apartment, she can’t tell whether she’s shivering or trembling with frustration. In her bathroom, she seals the drain of her tub and runs the water as hot as she can stand. She uncaps a bottle of bubble bath and pours it under the stream, watching the foaming blooms. Liyah is a Victorian handmaid scorned, angrily drawing a bath. It’s so ridiculous, she should laugh. Instead, lips pressed in a harsh line, she knots her hair atop her head and secures it with a scrunchie.
The water is bordering on scalding as she submerges herself, but the stinging skin soothes her. She swipes around her Spotify in search of a suitably calming playlist, only to give up and FaceTime Neen instead.
“Calling me from the bath, are you? Naughty girl.”
Liyah rolls her eyes half-heartedly. “All the spicy bits are covered in bubbles.”
Two different voices call which girl is calling you from the bath? and can I see? from off-screen. “It’s my best friend. And no, Dan, you cannot. Hold on C-J, I’m gonna step outside.” A minor commotion follows, and then the screen is filled with Neen’s face and what appears to be a considerably less frosty night than what Liyah trudged through. “What’s up, babe?”
Liyah wipes bubbles from her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about the middle or the end, if the beginning isn’t doing it for ya?”
“Daniel told me he loved me.”
“Ah, okay.” Neen nods. “We knew that already, didn’t we?”
“No—like in love with me. Like romantically.”
Neen furrows their brow. “I’m gathering that I should be shocked,” they say before clearing their throat. “Wow! He’s in love with you? That’s crazy!”
“It is shocking,” Liyah insists.
“Right, it’s shocking. Is that why you’re so upset? Because you didn’t expect it?”
“He did it in the worst possible way, Neen. We were arguing about romantic love—no, don’t groan at me, please. I’m hanging on by a thread here.”
“Sorry.”
She unloads everything until, at long last, Neen satisfies Liyah with an appropriately stunned expression. “Oof, okay. C-J, I just want to say, you are an extremely lovable person. And so deserving of love. I get frustrated when I hear you say things like that, so I imagine it was rough for Daniel to listen to you.”
Liyah balks. “Are you seriously taking his side?”
“No, I don’t think he handled the situation well at all. I am taking Jordan’s and Siobhan’s side, though. You owe them apologies.”
“I know.” Liyah sinks deeper into the bath until the foam tickles her chin. “I didn’t really mean what I said. I was just…”
“Overwhelmed?” Liyah nods. “Yeah, I’ve seen you when you get that way; it’s not pretty.”
Liyah blows on a palmful of bubbles, watching them slowly drift back down to the tub instead of looking at Neen’s face on her phone screen. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome.” Their tone turns from sarcastic to concerned. “Have you given any thought to what he said?”
She shakes her head, frown deepening. “You’re hearing all of my thoughts as they’re coming to me.”
“I mean whether you feel similarly.”
“You mean like whether I’m in love with him?” Liyah’s stomach knots. The last time she thought she was in love, she was sixteen. This feels nothing like that. “No, I haven’t considered that! I don’t even think he’s in love with me! He’s probably doing that mid-to-late-twenties thing where you assume that each new person you sleep with is the love of your life because you want to settle down so badly.”
“Is Daniel really that desperate for a partner?”
“No, but…” Liyah trails off, her heart hammering.
“Can you give me a real reason why he can’t possibly be in love with you? And don’t say because nobody could.”
But that’s a perfectly good reason. She is not the love interest! She’s the person you meet on the way to the love interest. The one you joke about having had great sex with in your twenties, the one who bummed you out for a month or so when she ended it. Who made you realize that you could move on to someone a little more sane and a lot less broken. And she would say this to Neen, but she doesn’t want a lecture. She wants help. So instead, she says, “Well, we work together.”
“Oh my God, only kind of! And isn’t that almost over? Try again.”
“This really sucks. I feel like someone’s taken an ice cream scooper to my insides.”
“I wonder why that is,” Neen quips. “C-J, I love you. I also think that you’re not in the right headspace to receive any feedback I can give. Why don’t you finish your bath, go to bed, and we’ll talk in the morning?”
Her breathing shallows. She shouldn’t be alone right now. “Neen, no! I need you to help me sort through this.”
“I am happy to be your sounding board after you’re a bit more settled. I can’t feel your feelings for you, though. No matter what, that job can never be outsourced.”
She knows the resolution in Neen’s voice. There isn’t anything she can do to make them stay on the line. Liyah takes a deep breath, then forces a smile. “Can’t you write a program for that?”
“I wish. Are you gonna survive if I let you go now?”
Liyah sighs, swirling her fingers through the warm water. “Barely.”
“Okay. See ya, C-J.”
“Bye, Neen.”
They click off, and Liyah balances her phone on the wide lip of the tub.
The silence stretches.
In love with me. What a cruel joke. How dare he? In public! After everything I’ve told him, to call me unfeeling. That’s not love. We had an agreement. We’re friends! We were friends. He’s the unfeeling one. No consideration for me at all.
Incensed. That’s how she feels.
She inhales, then sinks even lower in, letting the water cover her head completely. How long can she stay this way? It’s safe under here, all sense reduced to nothing but the heat of the water against her skin.
She cloaks herself until her lungs physically burn for air. And then some. She only comes up for a breath when she’s sure she can’t stand it a moment longer. Her ribs ache with her heaving. The screen of her phone flashes.
Call from Daniel Woo-jin Rosenberg.
Liyah holds down the side button until the screen goes black.