Imaginary Lines

Page 2

  Abraham licked his lips, and my gaze switched to his mouth. I’d imagined kissing him so many times. The force of those daydreams felt as real as memories, except they were tinged with pain from wishing too hard.

  “Tamar. ” He looked like he didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want him to keep saying my name with that strange note, either. “I don’t want you to feel bad. ”

  My gut twisted. My head felt light and my throat dry. I might just float off any second. Or maybe fold up into a neat little package, tiny and flat and easily packed away and hidden.

  My heartbeat accelerated.

  His steady eyes never left mine. “But you know—you know we’re not—”

  “I know you think of me as a sister,” I said rapidly. “You just said that. ”

  Unhappiness crossed his beautiful face. “That’s not what I meant. ”

  No. No, he didn’t think of me as a sister, because why would he ever bother thinking of me?

  My feet tingled, like they did whenever I stood at a height. I associated that tingle with danger. My body’s sign to get out of a dangerous situation.

  I had two choices. I could say something.

  Or I could smile and walk away.

  It would be so much easier to do the latter, but I was afraid it would cause a cancerous sore inside me, a knot of regret and disappointment in myself that would linger and fester until I could think of nothing else.

  So I took a deep breath and kept my own gaze as steady as his. “Abraham. I like you. ”

  He closed his eyes. His dusky lashes lay still against dusky skin and the high cheekbones that would have looked foolish if the rest of him wasn’t so relentlessly masculine, like a statue at the Getty Villa. “Tamar, don’t. ”

  I took a tiny step closer. “I really like you. I have always liked you. ” Now that I’d started, the words tumbled out over each other, gathering force. They battled with oxygen for room in my throat and came out garbled and breathless. “And I guess I thought that you would realize it if I just waited long enough, if I was there, and I listened and I did all the right things. And you make me laugh and you are so smart and brilliant and gorgeous and every time I look at you I can feel it in my chest and I love you. ”

  He opened his eyes. They were the same deep brown of my own, the color of polished oak, and pain filled them. “Tammy. . . ”

  Disappointment settled in the pit of my stomach. “You don’t feel the same way. ”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, causing a sinfully attractive disarray. “I didn’t expect you to say anything. ”

  What? “What does that mean?”

  “Just—you’ve never brought it up before. ”

  I stared at him, dread slowly building in my chest, infringing on my lungs. “What, but you knew?”

  His dead silence was a dead giveaway.

  “You knew. ” Each word came out with more certainty. “You knew I was in love with you. ”

  “Come on, Tammy. It was impossible not to know. ”

  I took a slow step back and blinked away tears. I repeated my words with heavy finality. “But you don’t feel the same way. ”

  He caught my arm. His expression was almost pleading, like he wanted me to understand the impossibility of us. “My whole family loves you. ”

  The tears were winning against my lashes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It means—I don’t know, they’d be planning our wedding in twenty-four hours! We’d be under a chupah in a year. ”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “So you don’t want to date me because it would make your mom too happy?” I shook my head. Why was I still talking? Why had I even started? “Just forget it, okay? I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s pretend it never happened. ”

  I tried to wrench my arm away, but he wouldn’t let me. He reined me in closer. “I’m not going to forget.

  “Why not?”

  “Because. . . ” He wouldn’t take his eyes off me, and they seared straight through my heart and the cat and my lungs. “Because this matters. Because you put yourself out there to tell me. ”

  Dammit, I couldn’t keep the tears back anymore, and I could feel two slipping through my lower lashes. “You don’t have to be so nice to me right now. ”

  Regret filled his face and he moved his arms as though to pull me into a hug. “Tammy—”

  But that was all I needed, to be comforted by Abraham Krasner for being idiot enough to fall in love with him at first sight, and stay that way for close to a decade. He was too perfect, and I clearly was not, and I was in no shape to handle that.

  So instead of collapsing against him, I stumbled back, unable to take his soulful, tragic eyes, and I ran.

  Chapter Two

  Now

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away from Abraham Krasner.

  I clutched my mug and smiled as the two women across from me prattled on about Abe’s record pass deflections. As though each and every person in Sharon Krasner’s living room didn’t know Abe’s score, stats, records and marital possibilities. (Single. Not looking).

  After a few more minutes, I gave a polite excuse about seeing my mother beckoning. Abe and I had used that for years as kids—everyone understood a mother’s prior claim on her child’s time. I escaped to the kitchen, where I fiddled around with the tea bags, as though choosing the correct blend of leaves was the very best way to spend Rosh Hashanah.

  At least he hadn’t bothered to come home for the holiday. While I’d found it easier to accept that Abraham and I would never work out after that painfully brutal day four years ago, it still left me with a twist of wistfulness that I preferred not to subject myself to. After all, no matter how accustomed you get to unrequited love, it never becomes one hundred percent comfortable.

  Sharon waylaid me on my way out of the kitchen. “Oh, Tamar, there you are! What a pretty dress. You look so grown-up. ”

  I smiled at her. “Thanks. Mom always says all my friends look like adults, but she’s still surprised that I don’t always look like a little kid. ”

  She laughed. “It’s true enough. When I meet Abraham’s friends in New York I’m always so shocked by how they look like men. Oh, but you must be so excited to be going there! You’re flying out on Friday?”

  “Eight in the morning. ”

  “Do you have a place to stay? Abe has plenty of room at his apartment—I was just there over the summer, and he has a guest room, and he’s right in the middle of everything—I’m sure you could stay there. ”

  One would think that mothers would desist in matchmaking after their children reached the reasonably advanced age of twenty-three and twenty-four. One would be incorrect. “Oh, no, thank you, but I have a place all lined up. ”

  Her small, heart-shaped face appeared unconvinced. “Hmm. Well. You at least have to let him show you around. Does he know when you’re coming? I talked to him last week and he didn’t seem to know you’d gotten the job. ”

  I busied myself preparing my tea. “Oh, yeah. . . I hadn’t actually gotten around to telling him yet. ” Mostly because I hadn’t actually spoken with Abraham Krasner in years. We were in a conspiracy of silence, and I intended to keep it that way.