A Jewish Love, Actually: Chanukah, #4

By Alex Turner

Love Actually meets Chanukah in this queer Jewish found family.

Office rivals become something else, a barista saves their crush the last jelly donuts, neighborly kindness turns into neighborly romance, and a trans boy gets his first kippah just in time for lighting the menorah.

The miracles of the season meet the miracles of romance, family, and new beginnings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Turner
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393502715

Alex Turner

Alex Turner writes queer romance novels whenever they’re not playing basketball, reading, or pretending to be good at video games. They can also frequently be found holding hands with their wife and babbling about astrophysics while stargazing.

Book preview

What A Holiday Can Feel Like

The last thing Becca wanted to do this year was celebrate. Her mother’s funeral had only been ten months earlier, and her ex had left only a month after that. Being there for a woman in grief might have been okay, her ex had said, but being there for two grieving twenty-somethings, as well?

Those grieving twenty-somethings are my children, and they’ve barely had time to breathe since their grandmother died, let alone mourn. And neither have I, Becca had said. She’d restrained herself from begging, though. Begging her ex to stay, even as she wanted to kick her out for taking a shot at her kids. She wanted to kick her out, but who would she be, if she were gone? But her mother had taught her better than that.

If they’re too cowardly to be with you, her mother used to say, but with a far-off, gentle look in her eyes, you’ve got to let them go, even if you still love them. Even if they still love you, somehow.

So she was alone for Chanukah. Again. She was supposed to light the lights that her mother used to, and she was supposed to give thanks for miracles and guidance and a respite from the darkness.

But Becca didn’t have a respite, not anymore. Other than her kids, and her job at the school her mom used to teach at — where everyone missed her, where everyone still treated Becca like she might break at any moment (they weren’t wrong) — she didn’t have much of anything anymore.

Which was when the doorbell rang.

She didn’t want to get off the couch to answer. She didn’t want to do anything. At all. But it might be Shira or Jessie, outside in the cold, keys forgotten again. She wouldn’t know if they’d called her — her phone was on silent, across the room on the floor, where she’d thrown it when she needed something to hurt and refused to take it out on herself. At least there was that. 

Still, though. What an example she was.

So Becca tugged her robe closer around her naked body — it was normal, to be just in a robe, right? Surely it wasn’t just depression? It was Sunday morning, wasn’t it, and wasn’t lounging supposed to be part of that? She made her way through the foyer that used to belong to her mother, that still vaguely smelled of her.

She opened the door, expecting the blast of chill and expecting one of the kids. She wasn’t expecting her neighbor — her neighbor that was far too attractive for Becca to do more, ever, than squeak polite hellos at — to be standing there, perfect round face nearly covered in the hood of an adorable winter coat, shifting from foot to foot in the freezing.

Leah, Becca greeted, hoping against hope that her voice hadn’t hitched like her heart had.

She shook off the realization that this was the first time she’d felt excited, or even curious, in a long, long time.

Hey Becca, Leah smiled, and was her voice lower than Becca had heard it in the past? Maybe it was the cold. Speaking of which...

You must be freezing, come in, come in. Becca stepped aside and Leah stepped in, shaking her head like a wet puppy until her hood fell off her head. Long locks of brown hair cascaded down over her shoulders, her face, and Becca hoped she wasn’t done for.

Thanks, Leah shivered, and yes, her voice was definitely lower than it was when she called casual greetings to Becca, when she’d come to the house while the family was sitting shiva. Becca hadn’t taken much notice of Leah, then. How could she have, in the midst of such intense mourning?

But now, all she was capable of noticing was the way Leah’s light brown eyes jumped out against her dark skin. The curve of her cheek, like it was waiting to be touched. The exposed skin of her neck... Becca wanted to chide her for not wearing a scarf in this weather, but controlled her instincts. But she could think of much better ways to warm Leah up right then, and that... no, that definitely wasn’t a line of thought she should be going down. She’d been quite happy being depressed for the holidays, thank you very much.

But Leah’s eyes — those eyes — were looking at her, now, wide and unsure.

Shoes off, or...?

Oh! Oh, yes. The kids always track snow in here, and... sometimes I think it’s only to irritate me. Ugh. There she was, talking about her kids. Definitely something attractive to one of the only single women in their community. Not that everyone considered the singular Sephardi in their neighborhood part of the community. But everyone else, in Becca’s eyes, were— as her mother used to say — spewing nothing but hate-filled shmegegge.

They’re good kids, it seems like, Leah said as she kicked her boots off, one after the other. Combat boots, not snow boots. Becca gulped. This was definitely not what she’d expected from this night — the night before her first Chanukah without her mother.

IT WAS CRUDE, WASN’T it, to kick off her shoes instead of bending down to unlace them like a civilized person? But Becca hadn’t seemed to notice that Leah