The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(81)
Naomi took a deep breath. “So, I’ve kind of been attending classes here.”
“What kind of classes?” He would have been less surprised if she’d said she came here to wash windows.
She flipped her book over so he could see the title. To Be a Jew by Hayim Halevy Donin. “An eight-week series on reconnecting with faith.”
“Oh. Wow.” He shifted his bag off his shoulder and placed it between his knees. “Okay. And uh . . . what week is this?”
Of course he supported her pursuing religious study. The idea of her with a pen between her lips, poring over ancient texts, actually made him kind of hot. But the fact that she’d kept this obviously relevant detail about her life from him still sat squirming in his gut.
Naomi bit her lip. “Three.”
So that was . . . the entire time they’d been dating. Most of the time she’d been running the seminar. “Right. Okay,” he said again. He guessed he couldn’t really blame her. Endmore Boulevard was great. He’d grown up coming here. The staff, congregation, all of it was top-notch, thriving. Shiny and well-funded. Practically dripping in respect. Not that Ethan was envious or anything.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I actually signed up under my given name.” Naomi pushed her hair off her face, sending it cascading in a wave of shiny red silk. “It made things easier. Let me blend in. No baggage.”
“That makes sense.” He tried to process this new info, but his brain struggled to keep up.
“At first I didn’t want you to think I was doing it to impress you, and then I just got into it, I guess. I liked having this part of my life to myself. Growing up, my parents weren’t super religious, and so I never really got the chance to figure out my relationship to faith. My mom is actually—”
“I get it,” Ethan assured her. He’d had a similar experience, after all. Faith was so personal. Sometimes sharing that part of yourself felt like exposing something fragile to the windstorm of the world.
“Hey, if you were gonna cheat on me with another rabbi, you couldn’t find a better one than Sarah.” In addition to being beloved, she’d built her own organization dedicated to advancing access to sustainable energy solutions. He couldn’t begrudge another religious scientist, even if he wanted to.
Naomi wrapped her hand around his arm and pulled him in so she could lean her chin on his shoulder. “You’re still my favorite.”
Ethan kissed the top of her head, breathing in the lavender scent of her shampoo. “Yeah, but for how long? Her singing voice is way better than mine.”
“Oh, well, yeah,” Naomi teased. “I assume I’ll have to leave you when I’m ready to start a band, but we can have fun until then.”
“In that case, I’ll see you at softball practice on Sunday?” Ethan got to his feet reluctantly, already late.
“You know I’d never miss a chance to admire your butt in those pants,” Naomi shouted at his retreating form.
He gave her a dorky wave, cheeks hot.
Are you sure we can still have fun? he wanted to ask her.
After three nights ago, when she’d walked out of their auditorium and into a snake pit? When Ethan hadn’t been able to protect her from people condemning her, condemning them?
She’d come home with him after the seminar. Let him make her tea and fuss over her for a while until she told him she had better ideas for how he could use his mouth than wasting it on apologizing for things he couldn’t control.
He hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her about what she’d said—he swallowed tightly—about love. Tuesday night had been so overwhelming in every sense of the word, and she’d said it from across a huge auditorium. Through a microphone. Knowing he couldn’t answer. Did that mean something? Ethan wanted her love without question, but the more she cared about him, the more power she gave him to let her down. To take from her. Naomi had just said how much it meant to her to have this independent relationship with faith, but if they kept dating, wouldn’t he want her to belong to Beth Elohim? To come to his services? To be able to share that part of her?
He pushed down a wave of unease as he walked toward Sarah’s office, nodding to a few people he knew from the community on the way. Naomi wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been completely forthcoming. He’d asked Sarah to get coffee today because he wanted her advice on how to handle moving forward with the seminar series after the incident at the JCC.
He’d gone through deescalation training with his local precinct several times as part of his responsibilities at Beth Elohim. Had spoken at length in the past with fellow rabbis and religious leaders from other faiths about how to respond to hate speech or violence. But nothing had prepared him for how rabid and helpless he felt in the moment when Naomi stepped out of their lecture Tuesday night to those protesters.
Obviously, he wasn’t taking the matter lightly. They would probably have to increase security and maybe even move the remaining seminars to a more controlled location. Ethan probably should have seen something like this coming, but he’d been so blinded by his own happiness. Drunk on dreaming about what he and Naomi could accomplish together.
They board had backed off a little as enrollment steadily climbed over the last month, but would the increased costs of maintaining the Modern Intimacy series change their minds? Convince them the investment outweighed any potential benefit to the shul?