A sixteen-year-old girl is on a mission to find the perfect boyfriend this Hanukkah, but love might not go according to plan, in this charming winter romcom from the author of The Summer of Lost Letters.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds, which is out now!
Shira Barbanel has a plan: this Hanukkah, she’s going to get a boyfriend. And she has the perfect candidate in mind—her great-uncle’s assistant, Isaac. He’s reliable, brilliant, and of course, super hot. The only problem? Shira’s an absolute disaster when it comes to flirting.
Enter Tyler Nelson, Shira’s nemesis-slash-former-crush. As much as she hates to admit it, Tyler is the most charming and popular guy she knows. Which means he’s the perfect person to teach her how to win Isaac over.
When Shira and Tyler get snowed in together at Golden Doors, they strike a deal—flirting lessons for Shira in exchange for career connections for Tyler. But as Shira starts to see the sweet, funny boy beneath Tyler’s playboy exterior, she realizes she actually likes hanging out with him. And that wasn’t part of the plan.
Amidst a whirl of snowy adventures, hot chocolate, and candlelight, Shira must learn to trust her heart to discover if the romance she planned is really the one that will make her happiest.
And now Tyler Nelson and I would be spending the night in my house, alone.
We faced each other, me in the doorway, him a step down on the porch. Snow swirled in glittering eddies around his feet. Wisps of hair flew out from under his hat, and the cold pinkened his cheeks. Had his eyes always been so bright? So uncomfortable to meet? “Come in.”
“Thanks.” He heaved his bag over the step, bringing a shower of snow into the foyer. He took in the cream-colored walls, the polished wooden floor, the curved staircase leading up to the second floor. A painting of the sea by my grandfather hung across from the door. A vase filled with dried lavender rested on the table below it.
I ignored him and sat on the entry bench to unlace my boots. When was the last time I’d been alone with someone besides family or Olivia? I didn’t have close friends; I’d spent most of my childhood either playing piano or ice-skating, and I had the fuzzy impression everyone else had formed their tight-knit friendships while I’d been at practice. Sure, people invited me to parties and wanted me at their lunch table, but mostly because my family was well known. Or because they read my demeanor as aloof and cool—at least according to one girl I’d overheard in the school bathroom—when really I was just awkward and silent.
And here I was with Tyler, who had a million friends, who was the life of the party. He was warm and friendly and popular, and I was cold and prickly and closed off. I had no idea how to behave alone with him.
Boots off, I jumped up, keeping my coat on since the heating hadn’t yet beat back the chill. Tyler did the same, though he tossed his beanie atop his suitcase. His hair flew about, staticky and fine. “Do you have a towel I can dry my shoes with?”
I glanced at his shoes, which, in their defense, looked very expensive. “Maybe you shouldn’t have worn four-hundred-dollar shoes in a blizzard.”
“Six hundred.”
I rolled my eyes, throwing a tea towel from the coat closet at him. “Here.”
Carefully—almost lovingly—he polished the damp from his shoes, then looked up at me with a smile I had to brace myself against. Too much charm, this boy. “So what’s the plan?”
“No plan.” I brushed away the crusts of snow clinging to my jeans. Wet dark spots stained the fabric. “We can make tea to warm up, I guess.”
“Cool.”
He followed me deeper into the house, silence pressing in on us. The mansion sprawled, having expanded through the centuries. It felt weird to be in Golden Doors without cousins rushing around, without parents and aunts and uncles and Grandpa and Grandma at the steady center of it all. I was used to being alone in New York, but I’d never been alone here. Tyler’s presence relieved me the smallest bit. Well, not Tyler’s, specifically. But I was glad not to be alone.
Still, even empty, Golden Doors had an air of magic. I loved this house and felt at home here more than I ever had in Manhattan. It felt like Golden Doors belonged to me. Silly, maybe. But it’d always been a house for Barbanel women: the gardens designed and maintained by women, the blueprints drawn up by a woman. And I was the eldest granddaughter in the current generation of Barbanels. Golden Doors and I fit each other, a key and a lock.
I led him to the great room, where my family spent most of our time, a space that was equally living room and dining room and kitchen. Large windows and French doors took up one wall, beyond which the lawn spread toward gardens before falling in dramatic cliffs toward the sea. Usually, we could see a line of blue from here, but today the storm blurred out everything. Though only four in the afternoon, the sun had disappeared, plunging the world into a bluish haze. The snow continued to fall, the mounds outside shaped by tempestuous wind.
I switched on the light, outshining the outside world. Now instead of snow and darkness, we saw my grandmother’s impeccable decorating: clusters of soft seating, small coffee tables, a large table for informal dining, a marble island counter separating the kitchen from the rest. I padded across the room, my thick winter socks slipping once on the smooth floor, and entered the pantry at the far end. Tyler kept at my back, his footsteps silent, his presence palpable.
“You can have whatever.” I opened the cabinet where the tea lived: herbal Celestial for Grandma, Lipton boxes for Grandpa, Mom’s Bigelow, and tins of loose-leaf tea. I pulled out orange spice and cinnamon, my comfort pick. Tyler studied the choices like I’d asked him to do open-heart surgery, running his fingers along the fine-grained wooden cabinets, then sniffing several options. After that, he picked up an embossed box and turned it in his hands. Finally he filled a metal ball with a scoop of Earl Grey.
If only I’d been trapped alone for a night with Isaac. I could imagine exactly how it’d go: He’d be polite and charming and kind. We would cook dinner together (never mind that I rarely cooked). We’d light the menorah, our hands over each other’s, our voices mingling. We’d sit on the couch and talk all night. He’d put his arm around me and, then, somehow, we would be kissing . . .
I peeked at Tyler, flushing. I couldn’t be daydreaming about making out with someone else next to him. Stomping back into the great room, I set the kettle on to boil and brought two mugs over to the kitchen island. We dropped into barstools across from each other. “This doesn’t mean we’re friends or anything.”
He placed his tea infuser in his cup. “God forbid. No.”
“I just don’t want you to freeze to death.”
“We have that in common.” He grinned at me. “I, too, don’t want to freeze to death.”
How could he be so easygoing while active discomfort pulled at every corner of my body? But then, he’d always been relaxed and confident, where I felt stiff with most people outside my family. How could I survive the night trapped alone with him? “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
“Nah. Movies are boring.”
Tyler had a way of making almost everything he said sound reasonable, and I almost wanted to nod in agreement. I shook it off. “The entire point of movies is to not be boring.”
He shrugged off his woolen coat and draped it over the back of his chair. The heat had finally kicked in. “Okay, not boring, but a last resort. There’s more interesting things to do.”
“Like what?”
“You know. Trade our hopes and dreams and plans and secrets.”
I scoffed. “And why would I tell you any of those?”
“Because talking is fun, Shira.”
Was it, though? “Not with strangers.”
“We’re not strangers.”
“Well, we don’t exactly know each other, either. Not really.”
He studied me with the smallest upturned smile, utterly unlike the wide, open smile I was used to seeing on his face. “You used to think you knew me enough to say you loved me.”
I couldn’t believe he’d so casually bring up the most excruciating moment of my life. Even after two and a half years, the reference felt like he’d dumped a saltshaker’s contents onto my innards.
“I was fourteen. I was in love with a different person each week.”
He snorted. “You were in love with me for years.”
He was right, and neither of us had ever acknowledged it to the other before. I could feel my cheeks, hot and heavy, but I refused to flinch. “You wish.”
He leaned forward. “Admit it. You thought I was the sun and moon.”
“For thirty seconds.” The kettle began to whistle, and I busied myself with pouring hot water into our mugs. “Don’t get too full of yourself.” I shed my coat as I dropped back into my seat, suddenly too warm. “And I didn’t like you because I knew you. It was because you’re so—” I waved a hand.
He wrapped his hands around his mug, the steam rising to his face. “So what?”
“So pretty,” I said. “Your genetics do the heavy lifting. It wasn’t because you have a thrilling personality or whatever.”
“Shira Barbanel.” His eyes widened, and he looked unwillingly impressed. “What a burn.”
I shrugged, feeling a little bad but unwilling to back down. “You’re the one who went hard, making fun of a crush from when I was a kid.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I guess I got whiplash, going from years of adoration to years of disdain.”
I rolled my eyes. “Must be hard, no longer being the center of the world.”
“Then you admit I was the center of your world.”
“Because I was a shallow child, no other reason.”
His eyes narrowed fleetingly, but then he flashed me the grin I’d spent years adoring. “If I actually tried, you’d melt at my feet.”
“You wish.” I took a large swallow of tea, which burned down my throat and spread tendrils of warmth through my chest. I couldn’t imagine having so much confidence, and it made me want to take him down a notch.
He stared at me for a long, measured moment. Then his gaze flicked down. “You have tiny hands.”
“What?” I said, thrown off completely.
“Your hands. They’re tiny.”
“They are not,” I said, weirdly defensive of the size of my hands. “I played piano.”
He smiled, softer. “Really? I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?” I muttered, and when he kept looking at me, as though intrigued, I cleared my throat. “Um. Yeah. My dad taught me.”
“What do you play?”
Why were we talking about this? I breathed in the orange-and-spice steam from my tea. “I don’t know. Never mind. I don’t play anymore.”
“What were your favorites when you did?”
My favorites. God. Had I had favorites before piano became too much work, one more activity in a long line of things grinding me into dust? Vivaldi and Debussy and Schumann, those had been who I played, but favorites—
“You know, I really liked Cats.”
He let out a startled laugh. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I loved it. ‘Memory’ did me in.”
“Wow. Who would have thought?”
“I was six, okay?”
“Young.” He raised his hand, fingers spread apart. “But pianists are just known for long fingers, not large hands.”
I raised my hand so he could see it. “It’s a perfectly normal-sized hand!”
He placed his against mine, palm to palm. A jolt of energy went through me at his touch. His hand was, in fact, much larger than mine, and warm. He curved the tops of his fingers around mine. “See?”
“Hmm.” Heat flushed my whole body. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter—”
He intertwined his fingers with mine.
I lost all capacity for speech. He smiled. His thumb stroked my palm.
And I yanked my hand out of his. “You’re an asshole.”
“Come on, Shir, you basically dared me. You said I had no personality.”
“It’s Shira. And that wasn’t personality, it was . . . being smooth.” I sipped my tea, picturing Isaac to calm myself down. Isaac would never play games like this; every time we’d talked, he’d nodded seriously. Of course, our conversations never lasted long and were usually about school or the weather, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who would mock me. “Being charming doesn’t count as a character trait.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s not real. It’s a surface thing.”
“What’s real, then?”
“I don’t know.” I was, in fact, not entirely sure I had a personality, as opposed to just conforming to all the expectations of the people around me. “Your aspirations, I guess? Your passions.”
“Okay.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the countertop. I was hard-pressed not to notice the golden dusting of hair on his skin. “What are yours?”
Oh no. My least favorite question, and I’d walked right into it. “Maybe I’ll save the sea turtles,” I said lightly. “They’re having a time of it.”
“The sea turtles,” he repeated.
“Yep.” I liked turtles; they were like cute old men with flippers. I’d learned if I mentioned sea turtles, people often laughed and moved on. Which was, in fact, my end goal. Because I didn’t like to talk about my future or what I wanted out of life.
I used to think I knew my dreams and aspirations. I knew I wanted to be great. Only it turned out I wasn’t.
Not at piano, not at skating, despite the years and practice I’d sunk into both. Now these things, which I’d once thought might be my life’s passions, hurt too much to get close to. I used to sting with jealousy when I watched professionals, hungering for their talent, their medals, but I could bear the envy because it egged me on, it made me want to be better. I could study and learn from them, and eventually, I would emerge from my own chrysalis, transformed.
Only I never had, and now skating and piano just made me sad.
My phone buzzed. Mom, probably checking to make sure I’d made it to Golden Doors. I hopped off my seat and walked into the hall so we could have a semiprivate conversation. “Hi.”
“Hi. Did you get to the house okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Um—I split a taxi with Tyler Nelson. His house didn’t have power, so he came over here.”
“Oh.” Mom sounded startled, but not unpleasantly so. “Do you two have food?”
“I think so. We haven’t looked yet.” I winced at the admittance. “I’m sure there’s pizza in the freezer or something.”
“Okay, good. Everything’s working?”
“Yeah, it’s totally fine, Mom. What are you guys up to?”
“We’re back at Aunt Liz’s—we got takeout, since no one expected to be here. We’re about to light the menorah. Do you want to FaceTime?”
A deep ache opened in my stomach. Part of me wanted to see her, see the whole family. On the first night of Hanukkah, we always sang “Sevivon” and “The Dreidel Song” and “Light One Candle.” It hurt, the idea they might sing without me. But if I watched everyone from a distance, I’d feel even worse when I hung up. “No, thanks—I need to start decorating anyway.”
“Are you sure? Here, I’ll—”
“Mom, it’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Why did you snap?” she said immediately. “What’s wrong?”
I sighed. “Nothing’s wrong. I don’t want to leave Tyler alone.”
“Okay. Well. We’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said, and hung up.
