“Closeness isn’t a matter of geography,” he asserted, then added that if she really wanted to understand, she’d join him.

“Where?”

“Germany,” he said. “If you have the guts, that is.”

A clipped laugh escaped her. He stopped in his tracks, and she gently brushed her hand over his beard.

“I’m listening. Explain to me how it’s supposed to work,” she said.

“There’s no instruction manual, you just come,” he replied.

She looked up, mumbled something about how it was going to rain, and he stroked the back of her neck and said he couldn’t understand how she could give up a chance for true freedom. She grimaced. Got upset. There was something condescending in what he had said.

“You’re right,” she announced. Then she confessed that maybe she had chosen accounting only because her parents had convinced her to study something practical. And that most of her conversations with her friends were indeed shallow and meaningless, and that yes, she had gotten a nose job when she was eighteen. “But you don’t get it, that’s what holds me together.” She explained that all those restrictions and tiny rules she had adhered to almost religiously were what kept her sane. Made her feel safe. And if watching MasterChef once a week was the price of a normal life, she was willing to pay it.

She wanted to win the argument, but he wouldn’t reply. He withdrew into one of those silences of his.

They made their way back to the car in oppressive silence. A moment before parting, her car door already open, he took a yellow envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A plane ticket to Berlin,” he said and caressed her cheek. “Two weeks.”

“Hadera or Germany?” she wondered in confusion, and he quickly replied, “Your choice.” He told her she was welcome to use the plane ticket and spend two weeks alone in Berlin. “Or you can come here,” he said, and promised he’d wait for her at the entrance to the train station, that she wouldn’t even have to give him a heads-up. That he’d be there, waiting, in case she decided to show up.

She looked at him and asked if he was trying to make her fall for him.

“That’s up to you,” he replied.

She adjusted the rearview mirror, closed the door, and started the car. She stopped at Apollonia Beach to look at the waves. She had planned on staying there all night to mull over his offer, but the cold got to her after ten minutes. Once again she thought back to the time she ran away from home; today, no one would have a panic attack if she disappeared.