Imaginary Lines

by Allison Parr

  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.

  Sharon tilted her head back and forth in thought. “Maybe he should pick you up from the airport.”

  I waved a hand in negation. “That’s really not necessary. But thank you. My cousin Shoshi will be around to help out.”

  “Well. He’ll have to take you out for dinner, then.”

  Because there wasn’t much else I could say to that, I smiled and agreed.

  Taking my tea, I slipped deeper into the house. The walls and photos were familiar from a decade of Fridays spent here. I paused in front of a shot of me and Abe playing on the beach on one of our family vacations to Tahoe. I was gangly and smiling up at Abe as though he contained the world. He was tall and golden, the sun sliding over him as he kicked water at me.

  Shaking my head at my foolishness, I slipped into Mrs. Krasner’s study, hoping to get a few moments alone before heading once more into the fray. To my surprise, the room wasn’t empty—Abe’s grandmother sat in the easy chair, eyes lidded, a romance novel lying open on her lap. Charlie, the Krasners’ old golden lab, lifted his white muzzle and blinked his rheumy, dreamy eyes at me.

  I slowly tiptoed backward, not wanting to wake her, but she shook herself and proved me too late. “Tamar, dear.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “You could never disturb me. But what are you doing back here?”

  “It got a little noisy.”

  She smiled as though unconvinced, but let it pass. “And so you’re leaving us. All the way to New York.”

  I smiled and crouched down so I could ruffle Charlie’s soft, floppy ears. He was old now, almost fourteen. He slept almost as often as Mrs. Krasner did. “It’s not so far. You could come visit.”

  She waved a hand. “You know me. I don’t fly. And what do I want with that cold, wet city?”

  I laughed. “Your grandson, of course!”

  She eyed me slyly; in that way only grandmas do, with all the sleuthing of the heroine of a cozy mystery apparent in her eyes. “Are you going to see Abraham?”

  I shrugged and fell down into a cross-legged position. I’d walked into that question. “Oh, I’m sure. We’ll probably grab lunch sometime.”

  My false nonchalance failed to fob her off, and her expression softened in a manner that made my stomach tighten. She reached down and patted my arm. “He just needed to grow up, you know.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, but preferred not to admit it. Still, playing the fool under her watchful gaze would’ve been worse. I looked down for a moment as Charlie rested his warm snout on my thigh. “How about you? Any exciting plans this winter?”

  She shook her head at my blatant evasion but went along with it. “I’m going to visit my sister in Arizona for two weeks.”

  I smiled and nodded, and we rested in comfortable silence. I stroked Charlie’s head again and again, especially those long silky hairs behind his ears, and felt some of my tension finally leave me, even if the memories wouldn’t.

  The last time I’d been in this room, some four years ago, I’d caught a glimpse of a green and white friendship bracelet tucked under a pile of Sharon Krasner’s pa
pers. It had been a punch to the gut. I’d made that bracelet for Abe the Hanukkah I’d been fifteen. Put my whole heart into it, but he didn’t care. At least she was too sentimental to throw away. I’d thought about filching it back, but that seemed too pathetic.

  It was probably long gone by now. Eight years was a long time to keep hold of a sentimental trinket.

  When I’d graduated two years ago, I’d sailed out of college with bright eyes and bushy hair, and the absolute certainty that I was going to make it. I’d earned good grades and I’d been marginally active in two clubs—culinary and band. I’d been editor of my school newspaper.

  I’d grown up watching Gilmore Girls. The world was supposed to be my oyster.

  Then I graduated in a recession and moved back home with my parents. That was not an oyster. All my friends seemed to be doing productive things with their lives, by which I meant going to grad school or getting unpaid internships. Gabi had swung a production assistant position in L.A., while our other best friend, Cindy, was getting her education master’s.

  I didn’t get any of the jobs I applied for. And I didn’t get into J-school. And I started to realize that I wasn’t such a special snowflake, after all.

  The moment you realized that you weren’t going to be the best of the best was one of the strangest in the world. I mean, I knew there wasn’t room at the top for everyone.

  But I thought there would be room for me.

  Mostly, I stayed at home and taught SAT classes at the local high school and worked part-time at the local newspaper. I freelanced a bit and applied to other things, but searching for jobs was exhausting when you already had one. I applied for the dream jobs, the one I’d give my right arm to have, but never expected to hear back from.

  Like the one I’d just landed in New York.

  Conglomerates like the Today Media network didn’t usually hire journalists with small-town clippings, no matter how many college awards they’d won. I used to think being the managing editor at the Berkley newspaper meant something, but that was before I realized most writers had journalism school credentials or had unpaid interned their way in.

  But I lucked out; I freelanced a piece on withdrawing the salaries of coaches that got picked up by one of the major online news sites, and within two weeks garnered hundreds of comments. Okay, most of them were angry with me, but it still looked impressive in my résumé.

  In a second serendipitous stroke, Tanya Jones, editor of Sports Today, received my application, read my piece and lost one of her writers to New Today, the media group’s mainstream news source, all on the same day. She had her assistant call me up and asked where I lived. I lied and said New York, giving my aunt’s address. They asked me to come in for an interview; after some wrangling, I got it scheduled for a week later, when I’d be in town for my aunt’s birthday. Twenty-four hours after the interview, they offered me the position with a low salary and few benefits. I jumped at it.

  I’d pushed off starting the job until Rosh Hashanah, but it seemed silly to ask them to let me have an additional week for Yom Kippur, especially when we really just went to some Temple friends’ house and chilled. I’d start on the twenty-fifth, and arrive on the twenty-second, giving me several days to get used to the city and unpack before jumping straight into a new job.

  Mrs. Krasner leaned forward and caught my hand, her own warm and papery. “Give him another chance, Tamar.”

  “He’s not even interested.”

  She shook her head and didn’t let go. “When he realizes he is. Promise to give him another chance.”

  And how could I refuse, despite knowing full well how uninterested her grandson was in me? “Of course.”

  New York

  My plane circled JFK five times before landing due to storm winds. When we finally plowed through the clouds, the turbulence caused the three children behind me to burst into a high-pitched rendition of Mozart’s “Haffner Serenade.” The eight-month-old did a particularly impressive tribute to the violin solo. Beside me, the fifty-something man cursed quietly as he continued to play solitaire on his iPhone.

  I gazed at the gray-black clouds with uneasy contemplation. I’d been nervous when the plane climbed to altitude but fine after it leveled out. Now, though, I was uneasy again, ready for the plane to fall out of the sky any second. I didn’t like when the plane dipped dramatically in one direction, one wing to the ground and one slicing into the sky. It made my stomach swoop and my feet tingle, and my hands clung to the armrests with a slippery grasp.

  The entire descent, I breathed shakily and held my body tense, but we finally landed in one piece. Yet then we had to sit on the runway for an extra hour, and then it turned out my luggage had gone to Amsterdam—I swear, my luggage was better traveled than I was—so all in all, it wasn’t the most auspicious arrival to the city where I’d centered all my dreams.

  The minute I stepped into the New York air, I could feel moisture percolating through my face to lie in a fine sheen of perspiration upon my skin. My hair lifted away from my head as each follicle seemed to expand and become more susceptible to tangling, forming a massive cloud that hovered on either side of my head.

  Ah, humidity.

  I’d never actually been to the apartment I was moving into, which I’d acquired through word of mouth. I’d never even been to Astoria, though I’d heard of the neighborhood plenty of times. When I arrived at the three-story building, conveniently located across from a bodega and above a delicious-smelling Greek taverna, I texted the number I’d been given. Jasmine Rivas buzzed me up within seconds. She was small and athletic, her dark hair thrown up in a ponytail. “Hey. How was your trip?”

  “Good, thanks.” I tried to shove my frizzing curls off my forehead. How was it possible for my hair to be sticky and frizzy at the same time? “I’m Tamar.” Which she knew, of course, since we’d been emailing and texting, but it still felt weird to act like we’d met when we never had.

  “Jasmine. Come on in.” She led me into the narrow hallways beyond the door. “So you’re Kari’s friend’s cousin?”

  “Uh, Kari’s cousin’s friend.”

  She shrugged, unconcerned by the particulars. “Well, we’re glad you’re here. You wouldn’t believe some of the crazies we’ve had from subletting through Craigslist. One girl did PX-90 like every night. We were like, just join a gym like a normal person.”

  I had no idea what PX-90 was. Also, I had no plans to join a gym. Especially after climbing to the fifth floor.

  “Okay, so here’s the grand tour.” She walked down the long hall, banging and gesturing on rooms to the left. “Sabeen’s room. She’s from Iraq, just moved in two months ago. Kitchen. Bathroom.”

  The kitchen wasn’t bad; maybe five by five, with a tiny window facing into the apartment across the air draft. It fit a full fridge and stove. As we reached the bathroom, the door swung inward and a cloud of steam poured out, along with a tall girl wrapped in a towel. Jasmine gestured at her. “This is Lucy.” The girl waved before ducking into the next room down. “She’s an actress.”

  As if on cue, Lucy started belting something from The Last Five Years behind her closed door.

  The hallway opened up into the dining room/living room setup, where a table for six was pushed against a wall. A red couch and two chairs took up the rest of the room, and a bookcase filled with novels and textbooks fit in one corner. Light poured in from long windows and streamed across the wooden floorboards. While three of the walls were white, the one with windows had been painted a pale, summery green.

  “It looks great.”

  Jasmine nodded in acknowledgment. “Thanks. We just repainted the walls last month. Makes it look surprisingly less shitty.” She gestured across the living room at two doors. “I’m on the left, you’re on the right.”

  And that concluded the tour. “Great. Thanks. Anything else I should know?”

  She shrugged. “There’s some guys on the third floor who smokes a ton so the stairwell always smell like po
t, but it’s not that big a deal. I mean, obviously, there’s all the normal stuff—like take the trash out, and we sort of have a twenty-four-hours dirty dishes rule. Um...there might occasionally be strange guys in the morning from Luce, but she’s pretty good about texting us if she’s bringing anyone home. And like only on weekends, because we all work or study. Oh, and technically we’re not allowed on the roof, but you can get up there via fire escape.”

  I nodded, trying to take that all in. Drugs, dishes, dudes. Got it. “Okay, great.”

  She leaned casually against my door frame. “So what do you do?”

  I smiled. “I just got a job at Sports Today.”

  She tilted her head. “That’s a Today Media blog?”

  “It’s also a magazine. It’s, uh, both.”

  “Cool. You play anything?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. Mostly I just report.”

  She nodded and left me, and I collapsed in my new room, staring around. I’d bought the furniture from the last roommate, who had been subletting her furnished room for the last six months. She’d sold me a queen-sized bed, an IKEA dresser and nightstand and a desk with a wheelie-chair. The space itself was pretty decent.

  Crazy monkeys. I was in New York.

  I let out a mostly silent squeal and flailed my arms and legs about in an impromptu jig. So what if it was cold and wet and I only knew one person in the city? I had a job! I was a continent away from my parents! I was in a thriving, exciting city, where no one knew me and I didn’t have to be good, quiet Tamar Rosenfeld. I could be crazy party girl if I wanted to be!

  And, okay, I didn’t particularly want to be, but that wasn’t the point. The point was I could be anything here.

  And, sure, I probably had to make friends first.

  I stared out the sizeable window at the busy street below. I could feel it in my bones, like the solid trunks of trees and the mist rolling off the hills and the tingle in my feet. Magic. I could find magic here.

  Almost absently, I scrolled the word on a piece of paper from my purse in light and sketchy lines.