The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(10)

Ethan swallowed hard, shifting to survey the door of the synagogue even though he knew they were alone.

She laughed gently. “I meant this whole scientist-meets-man-of-God spiel you’ve got going on. It works. Or I mean, I assume it works on people who are interested in that kind of thing. You don’t need me here to act as bait.”

“I’m not looking for bait,” he said, frustration bleeding into all the ways he found her charming. “Look, if I can convince you to do this seminar series, and that makes Judaism accessible to new people, maybe I can appeal to a wider base. Keep the religion of my ancestors from fading into oblivion. Faith and science, at least in my definition, are fluid. They flex and adapt, bend and evolve, just like people, to survive. It’s a thoroughly logical proposition.”

“That,” she said, slowly, “is a very fancy and complicated justification for attempting to hire a former porn performer to bring young people to your synagogue.”

Ethan ran his fingers through his hair. He knew he needed a haircut. The overlong strands brushed the back of his neck, but he didn’t feel particularly inclined to give up anything that he could hold on to at the moment.

“You don’t have as good a read on me as you think you do.”

She turned to look at him more directly. “How do you know?”

“Because you keep trying to catch me in a lie.”

She shrugged, the movement too fluid by half. “I’ve met a lot of liars.”

“I want to hire you because you’re magnetic.” The truth came out too soon, too unguarded. Stark enough to hit them both in the face. For a long moment, no one said anything.

“I mean”—Ethan began to course-correct—“obviously you have unique expertise. Besides,” he rushed to add, “you want to teach, and you deserve a classroom.”

Her mouth kicked to the side. “Did you memorize that speech too?”

“No.” He wiped his thumb across his lips. “But I would have put something together,” he said, “if I’d known you were going to show up here tonight.”

Ethan hadn’t been able to get Naomi Grant out of his head. There was something refreshing about her. Grit wasn’t the right word. Everything about her outward appearance was polished to a high shine. She just seemed . . . tough.

Naomi was what his synagogue needed. He hadn’t exactly planned on offering prospective congregants a lecture series about sex and love before he’d heard that she was an educator without an audience, but in hindsight, the curriculum felt perfect. A modern intimacy seminar to spark Beth Elohim’s rebirth.

“It probably won’t work, you know,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “Your hopeful vision, I mean. People are afraid of porn.”

“Yeah. Well, people are afraid of religion too.” Life had been easier when he was just Ethan Cohen, absentminded physics teacher.

“Are you suggesting,” Naomi said, “that makes us a double negative?”

He mustered a smile in the face of her stoicism. “I can work within the odds of probable failure if you can.”

She chewed her bottom lip for a moment. Ethan envied her teeth.

“Those are the only odds I’ve ever known.”

In the beat that passed between them, something absurdly hopeful built in his chest.

As if sensing this, Naomi narrowed her eyes at him. “If you start waxing poetic about divine intervention, I will clobber you.”

“I’ve never been clobbered,” he supplied cheerfully.

“It shows.” Her eyes gleamed in the darkness.

Ethan could tell he was close to winning her over. At least for tonight.

She crossed her legs, back to being impatient. “Why modern intimacy?”

Ethan wondered if some people found battling her demanding instead of exhilarating. He’d always loved pop quizzes.

“Intimacy is the least common denominator between the popular zeitgeist and the kind of community I want to build here. It’s the most accessible entry point I can think of for young single people.”

“Because young people are all horny?”

“Because,” he said, avoiding that conversation like the plague, “we’ve left the communal village of our ancestors and migrated to big cities, and now we’re suffering.”

“Speak for yourself,” Naomi muttered under her breath.

“As soon as I met you,” Ethan kept going, “I thought, what does today’s version of connection, today’s love, look like relative to Jewish faith? If we can answer that, if we can even scratch the surface of the answer, it’s revolutionary.”

“Does the phrase ‘too big for his britches’ mean anything to you?”

“Yes. Believe it or not, even rabbis understand dick jokes,” he deadpanned before breaking into a grin at the flash of surprise that washed across her face.

He had to school himself to stop smiling at her. She was going to think there was something wrong with his mouth that meant he couldn’t keep it closed.

“The content of the seminars is relatively flexible.” He tried to shift back into business mode. “I trust you to develop the right series of lectures, given the audience and what we’re trying to accomplish.”

“And what we’re trying to accomplish is . . . for young people to find religion?” She said it like his mission was a lost cause.