“I chose this city after careful consideration,” he said, explaining that he went over his friend list on Facebook and made sure not one of them lived there. Then reasoned that it was far enough from his family and friends in Jerusalem, and not interesting enough for them to choose it for a spontaneous weekend vacation.

“And yet, here I am,” she replied.

“A glitch, for sure,” he replied, and placed his hand on her shoulder in an awkward gesture, pulling her closer to him.

She was moved.

“You know, it sounds a bit cowardly, running away like this,” she said, and when noticing his expression felt that yet again she had ruined a good thing before it had even begun. She leaned into him and kissed his lips gently, as if to compensate. They drew their faces apart and smiled. He took her hands in his and warmed them up.

They met once every few days. At first his refusal to step outside the borders of Hadera upset her, but with time she came to love the city in which things happened and didn’t happen simultaneously. She’d leave work early at least twice a week, reassuring herself that she’d make up the hours the following month. She enjoyed the whispers of her colleagues as they tried to guess where she was slipping off to. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t say,” she’d reply and consider their intrigued expressions, feeling as if she was holding in her hands something real they could only wish for.

They mostly met at the café, but every so often scheduled a date somewhere foreign to romance: the HMO cafeteria, a bench outside the Social Security offices. During these meetings—limited in time and space—she always divulged more than she intended. She told him about the scar on the back of her neck, about the first and only time she smoked weed, about that day she ran away from home at fourteen, took a bus to the beach and stayed there all night, only to come home in the morning and learn that her mother had been taken to the hospital for a panic attack. He always nodded understandingly, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with his persistent refusal to be cynical toward anything she said.

7.

SHE WAS FIRED a month later. Her boss claimed they were forced to make painful cutbacks. She didn’t believe him, but refrained from arguing. Being laid off helped her make up her mind. Michael’s offer had come a week earlier. They were strolling through the Hadera Forest and he told her that until she was there with him, she wouldn’t possibly be able to understand.

“But there is no getting closer than this,” she said, sticking her hand out to measure the tiny distance between them.