May 7, 1939

The conversation at the deli turned more pleasant. Jen and Mr. Marmelstein got along nicely. He kept calling her Shikzah and laughing at her questions about Nick as a young boy. The old man had a million stories. Jen kept glancing at Nick to see if he minded, but he seemed not to. He might have blushed a little, but he was smiling.

"Goychik, you ever go play baseball for the Yankees like you wanted?" Mr. Marmelstein asked with a laugh.

"Afraid not," Nick responded gently.

"You like baseball?" Jen asked, amused. She could almost see it, young Nick and the Shapiros, a little gang playing ball in the street of this very neighborhood and dreaming of Yankee stadium.

Nick shrugged. He often did that, minimizing a conversation that was about him. Jen had noticed how he didn't like to talk about himself much. He was quiet and humble but still confident. No self-deprecation to be seen. Jennifer had not found those traits in a man before. Confidence was usually transformed into arrogance in most men, and it seemed that if a man wasn't arrogant, he was meek and useless. Jen had seen both of those types in her work as a private detective.

"I remember when you were little," Mr. Marmelstein said, shaking Jen back to the conversation at hand, "you and your Zayde would sit by the radio and listen to the Yankee games and nothing in the world could have shaken you from it. And then you'd go outside and play catch until your Ma called you in."

"I think I tried to throw a curveball once and broke your window, Mr. Marmelstein," Nick recalled.

The old man laughed heartily. "That's right! But I wasn't going to say that in front of your Shikzah."

They all laughed at that. Jen could hardly take her eyes off Nick the whole time. Seeing him happy, reminiscing like this, it touched a place in her heart that she could not quite name. This kind, gentle man who had known such joy and love in his community, who had such a happy childhood. He had lost so much, she had learned. His childhood friends had gone into the shadows and were now all dead. His grandfather and his mother who had raised him in equal measure, it seemed, were both gone now, too. But Nick still had so many people here who obviously cared for him. Why had he never come back? Why was this the first time he had seen his neighborhood in fifteen years?

Jennifer didn't have that. She'd grown up in the midst of violence and terror. Her mother had done her best, Jen knew. It wasn't her fault that they were trapped in a neighborhood run by the Irish gangs. It wasn't her fault that everyone who ever seemed to get close to them would always end up leaving them high and dry. And it wasn't like Jennifer herself had much better luck with things like that.

Soon thereafter, Mr. Marmelstein paid for their lunch, insisting on doing so over Nick and Jen's protests. Mr. Marmelstein had some things to do with his day but hoped to see them both again. He hugged Jen and kissed her cheek, this time calling her "Shayna Shikzah." He hugged Nick and kissed his cheek, too, which Jen found charming.

Nick led Jen away from the deli. "We got what we came for," he said.

"Good," she answered, not entirely certain what that was, other than finding out what happened to the Shapiro Brothers.

He hesitated. "We should probably get back before Walker and Smith miss us."

Jen knew he was right, but the idea of going back to that apartment and that shop where they were trapped by recording equipment and the constant threat of danger was not so appealing. "We haven't been gone that long," she pointed out.

Nick's lips twitched as he almost smiled. "Wanna go for a walk?"

"Yeah," she answered with a little smile of her own. "Show me around the neighborhood, Goychik."

That made him grin, and Jen's heart jumped inside her chest.

They walked quietly together, their strides matching up quite nicely. Nick was tall and his legs were obviously much longer than Jen's, but she had a habit of walking fast; she usually had somewhere she had to be and a purpose to her journey. But walking together down the streets of Williamsburg together didn't have much purpose. It was nice. It was like they were just a man and a woman walking down the street.

Jen looked out at the shops they passed, so many of them with signs in English and Yiddish. She broke the quiet between them to ask, "What does Shikzah mean?"

Nick chuckled. "It's a term for a woman who isn't Jewish. Usually a very attractive non-Jewish woman."

"Oh!" she answered in surprise. "Well that was very sweet of Mr. Marmelstein."

"I think if he'd been ten years younger, you wouldn't think he was so sweet."

"No?"

Nick had a sparkling little smile on his face. "Mr. Marmelstein never got married. But I remember a lot of different women who I thought were Mrs. Marmelstein until my grandfather told me that they were just friends of Mr. Marmelstein's. So count yourself lucky that he didn't try to charm Shikzah out of her dress."

Jen burst out laughing at that. The idea of that sweet old man being instead a dirty old man was quite unexpected. "Was that what he was doing when he kissed my cheek and called me 'Shayna Shikzah' then?"

"Shayna means beautiful," Nick explained. "He might have been flirting. But considering he told me not to waste time, I think he probably assumed we're more than friends."

That made more sense. And it made Jen feel warm inside. "We are more than friends," she reminded him.

Nick looked at her with surprise, nearly stumbling as he walked.

Jen just smiled. "We're partners."

He softened at that. "Yeah," he answered softly. "Partners.

For not the first time, Jen thought about how she'd never had a partner before. And she liked it a lot. Especially when her partner was Nick. But she didn't say anything else as she reached out and took his hand in hers as they continued to walk the streets of his old neighborhood.

Nick could hardly believe what was happening. He was walking through the old neighborhood with Jen, holding her hand. He could feel things changing between them and he didn't know how to stop it. He didn't really know if he wanted to stop it.

They were here to do a job. They were posing as man and wife, running a shop and facilitating illegal gambling so the FBI could get evidence against organized crime. And in Nick's mind, he and Jen had done a damn good job so far. But knowing it was a job didn't change the fact that it had gotten personal for Nick. The Shapiro Brothers were long dead, he'd discovered, but the people responsible for killing his old friends were still out there and had just killed a man in front of Jennifer last night.

Had it really only been last night? Last night when he'd heard her scream and practically flown out the door and up the stairs to make sure she was safe, last night when she'd put on a brave face in front of the police as Trish Claybourne and held herself together until they were finally alone at last. She was magnificent, and the more Nick learned of her and saw of her, the more captivating he found her. She had allowed herself to trust him last night, too, asking him to stay with her. They'd fallen asleep in a bed together, and when they'd woken up, she had nearly kissed him. He knew that's what had happened this morning. She had almost kissed him but stopped herself. If she hadn't stopped herself, Nick wasn't sure what would have happened.

But now they were walking together and holding hands. It wasn't the first time they'd done that, but having it be here, in this place of his youth, it felt different. They were far away from Bushwick, far away from being the Claybournes, but Nick felt closer to her now than he ever had pretending she was his wife.

"Oh," Jen breathed.

Nick didn't blame her. They'd turned the corner at the end of the street and come to the East River. They could see the Williamsburg Bridge a little ways away, and on the other side of that was Manhattan. "Feels far away," Nick noted.

"Hard to believe that was home just a couple months ago." She turned to look up at him. "Does it feel like home here? Being back?"

"No," he answered fondly. "It's so much the same as it was in my memory, but I'm not the same as I was when I was a boy. Mr. Marmelstein and Mrs. Kazan and the Cohen girls are all still here, but it all feels far away. Manhattan feels far away, too."

Jen hummed in understanding. "I guess being Trish and Wesley, everything else in our lives is far away."

"You're not far away," Nick said before he could stop himself.

She looked up at him. The sun was high in the sky in the middle of the afternoon, and her blonde hair was shining like precious gold and her skin glowed gold, too. And she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Warm and soft and strong and bright and everything he'd never really thought about but always yearned for all wrapped into one.

He still held her right hand in his left. He reached his other hand out gently stroked her cheek with his fingertips.

"Nick…" she whispered.

Looking into her sparkling turquoise eyes, Nick didn't see anything to stop him. No fear. No regret. No warning of any kind. He leaned in slowly, giving her time to move away. But she didn't. She tilted her head up toward him, and her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes closed. That was the last thing Nick saw before his eyes fell closed, too, and their lips met.

All the air was sucked out of his lungs and time stood still. The world stopped and nothing existed but Jennifer Mapplethorpe and her kiss. Her lips caressed his and her hand squeezed his tighter. He felt her other hand find purchase at the back of his neck, holding him to her. He didn't need any more encouragement. He never wanted to let her go.

This was what he'd been afraid of this morning when she had almost kissed him. He knew that if he kissed her, he would never be able to stop.