CHAPTER 7
WINDY City Wine and Cheese is a converted warehouse space just beyond the Fulton Market District neon sign (designed with a combination of horizontal and vertical text that has launched Siobhan into a rant about legibility in typography on more than one occasion). The décor is apropos to the area, with exposed brick, high ceilings, wood beams, and brass finishes. But Peter, the owner, looks more like he’s been plucked straight from the Pacific Northwest: a plush (mostly silver) mustache, curls escaping the back of his beanie (suggesting a mullet of the tattooed lefty rather than the hair metal variety), and a Pendleton crewneck (despite this early September evening being altogether too warm for wool). His skin is smooth save for delicately defined wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Liyah can’t decide whether he’s in his late thirties and spent his twenties on the kinds of adventures that earn you smile lines and gray hairs, or in his late forties with a diligent diet of wheatgrass and green smoothies, fine wine as his only indulgence.
Peter twirls the end of his mustache as he reads over the list of the five select exhibitions and their accompanying synopses. He frowns, which very well could be a facial tic that means he’s concentrating, but has Liyah nervously shifting on her stool nonetheless. “I know that some of these aren’t actual wine-tasting notes. Like, I’m pretty sure ‘earthy’ is? But we’d probably have to get creative for the one about mummification salt. Which is okay, of course,” tumbles out before she can stop herself. Daniel rubs his hand over his mouth, as if trying not to laugh. Liyah clasps her hands together, trying not to smack him.
“Salinity is a very important characteristic of wine, tasted along the outer edge of the tongue,” Peter says.
“Wine is salty?” Liyah laughs. She can feel Daniel’s glare. Mentally, she returns it twofold.
Peter chuckles. “Not all wine, no.”
“As you can see, we’re not wine experts,” Daniel says. “That’s where you come in. Per our proposal, we have the budget to do five exhibition pairings, with one of your bartenders—”
“Connoisseurs,” Peter corrects, straight-faced.
Both Liyah and Daniel stare at him blankly for a moment, and Liyah feels the gentle press of Daniel’s sneaker over the toe of her mule before he continues. “Right, one of your connoisseurs at each exhibition.”
“Aw, I’m just yanking your chain!” Peter slaps his thigh, and Liyah decides that despite initial appearances, he’s in his early forties and very Minnesotan. “Shoulda seen the look on your faces! This all sounds like a good deal to me. I’m not much of a museum guy myself—they’re too boring for words—but that’s nothing a little wine can’t fix.”
“Then you’re exactly our target audience,” Liyah says, plastering a smile over her irritation. The pressure of Daniel’s foot increases sharply.
Peter is back to mustache twirling. “I’ve got some ideas for you. Okay if I grab a couple bottles from ’round back and do a tasting? I can talk you through the notes and we can pick the ones you guys like.”
“Perfect,” Daniel replies, and doesn’t release Liyah’s foot until Peter disappears through the door behind the bar.
“Ow,” she hisses. “I would have behaved.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” he says with a shake of his head.
“He knows where I work! That was such an unnecessary comment.”
“Right. Because you’re so good at keeping your opinions to yourself.”
Liyah folds her arms across her chest. “In a professional context, I can be.”
Daniel scans her face, the left corner of his lips tugging upward. “I have three solid weeks of evidence to the contrary.”
“You are a special exception, Rosenberg.”
“He’s not wrong, you know,” he says. Liyah’s eyes widen. “No! Not about museums being boring. About people’s boredom being fixed with wine.”
“If you have to drink to enjoy something, then you shouldn’t be doing it,” Liyah argues.
“Says the woman who takes a shot every time Jordan tries to get her to talk about dating.”
“You’re exactly right,” she retorts. “I have no business talking about my feelings.”
When Peter returns, he’s pushing a cart that clarifies that the some part of some ideas loosely translates to a fuck ton. There are at least twenty bottles of various red, white, and pink wines. Single-ounce pours add up much faster than Liyah would have guessed, and she soon finds herself tipsy and giggling all too easily at whatever Peter says.
Peter starts on an explanation of the taste map (which Liyah is almost certain is pseudoscientific) and instructs them to hold out their tongues and stroke the different regions he describes. Liyah turns to Daniel, expecting to laugh. The image of him slowly running his index finger along the outline of his tongue is ridiculous, yes, but Liyah is also completely unprepared for how her breath hitches, her own taste buds feeling the phantom roughness of his calluses as he adds his middle finger, too. Intensely erotic, undeservedly so.
She swallows her entire pour of a grenache and feels its acidity not on the inner sides of her tongue but in her whole mouth, coating her esophagus. Liyah coughs, and Peter jokes that if she didn’t like that one, she could have said so. She mumbles a response about how it’s fine, good, even. Something like that. Her mind is too cloudy, and her cheeks are too warm to know exactly. All she knows is that she’s hurtling toward dangerous territory, and she desperately needs to change course.
THANKS TO THEIR newly sacred Friday nights, Daniel has seen Liyah tipsy a few times. It’s different here, somehow, without Siobhan’s deeply macabre sense of humor or Jordan’s—what’s the opposite of self-effacement?—to buffer. When she laughs, bright-eyed, it’s all for him. Or at him, but still.
There’s an extra intensity to Liyah’s attention when she has had a bit to drink. When it’s pointed at Daniel, he feels not like he is the only man in the room, but like he is the only thing that exists in the universe. That if he were to look around, he’d find himself transported to a blank void with naught but the two of them.
He was in that void with her most of the night, but a switch flipped, and now it’s like she’ll pay attention to anything but him. He feels a touch of relief as they agree on their top five wines and exchange handshakes and goodbyes with Peter. They spill out onto the street, making their way toward the Grand L station, and Daniel is thankful for the night breeze cooling his neck and forearms.
“You know,” he says, looking down at Liyah as she strides beside him. She’s a fast walker, easily keeping pace with his long stride. “There’s nothing wrong with meeting people where they are with these events.”
Liyah looks up at him, that laser focus of hers warming his face. “I know you think that. You’re most comfortable when you’re loudly wrong.”
She doesn’t seem like she’s joking. Daniel’s shoulders sag. “Right, yeah. I’m an idiot, untrustworthy, yada yada. Whatever, Liyah.”
Liyah laughs through her nose. “Glad you’re self-aware.”
Daniel’s chest tightens. “Sometimes I can’t—I mean, are you really that much of an ideological purist about this? People should either care about natural history as much as you or they shouldn’t bother at all?” he asks.
“No, of course not! This just feels so pointless.”
“It’s not pointless, Liyah. It’s a good way to get people to the museum.”
“For the events!” Her gaze cuts up to him. “It’s a good way to get people to the museum for the events, not for the museum. So, what will that leave us? Some extra patrons for the night? That’s not what my boss is looking for. And it’s not what my boss’s bosses are looking for. They want sustained membership. Despite my many misgivings about Jeff, he does actually care about the Field. The board—or at least some people on it—only care about the numbers. And they think we have to be trendy to do that. Like, sorry, not everything looks perfect on your social media feed! But sometimes it’s interesting anyway.”
“Why not do the eye-catching exhibits and fun events to get people in the door? Won’t they stay for the rest of it?”
“Sure, why not?” She gives a sarcastic shrug.
Daniel ignores the bait. “Well, regardless, the wine night is gonna be good. Trust me,” he says, to which Liyah scoffs. He stops in his tracks. It takes her a half second to realize, so she pauses just ahead of him.
“What?” she demands.
“You’re seriously still mad about Maccabiah?” Her lips press into a harsh line. “You are, aren’t you? Come on, Liyah, we already went over this—it wasn’t me who took your idea! And honestly, even if it was, that was a decade and a half ago. Isn’t that a little long to hold a grudge about color wars?”
He watches Liyah press her hands into her thighs, as if restraining herself. “It wasn’t only about color wars,” she says. “You told people.”
Daniel shakes his head. “I told people what, exactly?”
“I asked you not to tell anybody that we were hooking up! You gave me your word, and yet somehow your whole cabin knew enough to steal my bras off the clothesline and sharpie Property of Rosenberg on every single one. And that’s probably the nicest thing anybody said to me about it.”
Daniel furrows his brow. “Liyah—” he starts.
“No!” she interrupts. “You don’t get it. It was different for girls in middle school. I mean, honestly it still is, in subtler ways, but that’s beside the point! We weren’t officially together, and we made out, which made you hot shit and me a slut in training.”
The first thought he has is I would have made us official in a heartbeat, but even as his heart slams against his rib cage, he can tell how unhelpful that would be. Instead, he fires back with his second: “I never told anybody! Gross slept on the bunk below me, and he knew I was sneaking out. I denied it every single time he asked, but he had the biggest mouth in the boys’ shetach, you know that.”
“Even if that were true, Rosenberg, you didn’t warn me,” she spits out. “I had to bear the brunt of it completely on my own.”
“You ran away after closing ceremonies and refused to talk to me for the rest of the summer. How was I supposed to warn you? Carrier pigeon? What do you want from me?” He waves his arms. Liyah’s eyes follow the movement and her frown deepens. “Sorry I didn’t understand the intricacies of misogyny when I was in middle school.”
“Yeah, well. It’s not like that was even the last time who I was or wasn’t with became a topic of controversy. People spin whatever narratives they want, and if you do the slightest thing to confirm it, then that’s who you are forever. If there’s a boy and a girl involved—or a man and a woman, for that matter—the boy always comes out smelling like roses. When you’re the unlucky girl, you’re on your fucking own. Whether it’s assholes at summer camp, or assholes in high school, or assholes in college. It’s all the same. Whether what happened was your fault or his or neither or both, it’s all the fucking same! Over and over again. You got congratulated. I lost whatever few friends I had. So yeah, maybe you weren’t the one pointing fingers and calling names, but you were supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to be my friend, and you didn’t stick up for me. Nobody stuck up for me back then. I might as well do it now.” Her chin tilts up as she says this, jaw clenching. Always the picture of tough, but his heart breaks a little. He runs the string of words through his head again, and it feels even sadder.
“Oh,” he whispers.
She holds up her hands. “Please, I don’t want your pity.”
“That’s not pity, Liyah! It’s sympathy, and a healthy dose of guilt.” Daniel rubs the back of his neck. “I know I said this already, but I really meant it. I was an insecure idiot. You were—” He struggles to find the words. “I knew some of that was happening—the, um, bra thing, at least—but you always just blazed onward like it wasn’t affecting you. I thought you were the coolest person I had ever met, and I felt rejected and caught up in my own shit when you ignored me, so I didn’t see what was right there. Of course it was affecting you. I should have known. I’m so sorry.”
Liyah’s features soften, and Daniel is reminded of that night in the observatory. That look of trust. It’s much rougher around the edges than it had been, less consuming. But the echo of it is there. “Thank you,” she says.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, too. The thing about not understanding misogyny in middle school. It was a really fucked-up thing to say, since you had to actually experience it.” Liyah’s eyes go glassy. Daniel steps toward her, hesitant. She doesn’t move away. “Can I hug you?”
“Sure.” She moves forward. “But only to make you feel better.”
“Okay, Liyah,” he says into the hair that pushes against his face. He inhales as he wraps his arms around her, breathing her in. Wine and lavender, a hint of cocoa, he thinks. This is the third time they’ve hugged—not that he’s counting—and he can’t deny that his body loves the feel of her against him, how she tucks so neatly under his chin. His skin tingles, blood thrums in his veins.
“You really didn’t tell anybody?” she murmurs into his chest.
“I didn’t, I promise,” he replies softly. Another second passes, and then they separate, Daniel clearing his throat. “Are we good, Cohen-Jackson?”
“Yes, Daniel,” she says. “We’re good.”
SSC #4 MEETING NOTES
Secretary: Daniel
• Work/life balance
• Liyah made a “what’s that” joke. Everyone is concerned
• She insists it is just a joke. Still concerned
• Jordan & Daniel suggest rock climbing
• Siobhan suggests spin class
• Liyah suggests yoga
• Jordan has violated rule #3 by complaining that yoga is too girly
• Dating
• Jordan needs to spend some time single holy shit
• Jordan insists he is not a serial monogamist. Nobody buys it
• General adult life
• Jordan is a grown man with disposable income and therefore he needs a bed frame
• Dumbass
• Jordan feels that he has spent most of the night under attack. Everyone disagrees
• Rule addition: 6. Jordan may reference his charm no more than once per meeting
• Jordan claims this is proof of previous note. Everyone disagrees