The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(86)

This was wrong. That much was so, so clear to him. Like a bell tolling. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

But the fight was draining out of him through all the invisible fissures their words had carved across the surface of his skin. Naive questions pressed against his lips. What do you hope this will accomplish? What about everything we’ve built? Where would you tell me to go, if not here?

He was too young for this, and also somehow too old.

Ethan didn’t consider himself a huge worrier. Because it was always the stuff you couldn’t predict that took you out at the knees anyway.

He’d been sitting in his car in the parking lot of the grocery store when his phone had started ringing. It could have been any other afternoon. The sun had been hot on his face through the window, a Beach Boys song playing on the radio. His mom’s number had flashed across the screen, but then when he’d answered, it hadn’t been his mom.

“Ethan, Dad’s sick.”

No, she hadn’t said Dad. She’d said—he swallowed hard—“Daddy’s sick.”

Daddy, like Leah hadn’t said since she was a little kid.

“Ethan?” Ira had tears in the corners of his eyes.

He felt like lying down on the ground. Like telling them that if they wanted him to leave, they’d have to forcibly remove him.

Moses and Abraham had been turned away too. Blasphemed. At least he was in good company.

He’d never thought about failing when he took this job, even though most people probably expected him to end up here or somewhere like it.

Ethan closed his eyes, because he couldn’t look at them a second longer. “I’ve heard enough.”

“We can give you a week to wrap up your affairs with the woman,” Jonathan was saying, but his voice was far away. “We don’t want to cause either party any more pain than necessary.”

Ethan opened his eyes. “I don’t need a week.”

Some of the board members settled back in their chairs, slightly more at ease.

He headed for the door, was almost all the way into the hall when he remembered he had to tell them. He put his hand against the wood frame, trying to get the words out.

“I quit.”





Chapter Thirty-Two


    MODERN INTIMACY—LECTURE 6:


   A ship with no oars


A QUIET THREAD of discomfort unspooled in Naomi’s chest the first time Ethan didn’t show up in a place she expected to find him. She kept glancing at his usual seat in the lecture hall and losing her train of thought. From the first day, he’d always directed the spotlight of the seminar series at her, but his impact left fingerprints across each session, and now she shivered from the lack of them.

She wasn’t the only one. The whole room shifted in his absence, losing some of its form. Ethan subtly guided the heartbeat of these conversations, keeping them focused with little interjections or reminders. Without him, the whole class grew itchy, frustrated that they couldn’t quite descend to their usual depths of discussion. They needed Ethan to broaden their perspective, tying modern experiences to age-old stories, holding up a mirror between the past and the present.

Naomi looked at her notes more than usual. Drank two glasses of water instead of one.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed a man. Except. What if she was?

What if she needed someone? Would that be so bad?

She rolled her shoulders. Then her neck.

She didn’t, and resented the entire suggestion.

What would needing someone even look like, anyway?

Naomi didn’t have time to think about that right now. Ethan wasn’t here, and Molly had broken up with her lumberjack, and she just—she didn’t have time. It was fine for other people to need someone, but for the record, she didn’t like the implications. You could love someone and not need them. That was fine.

The lecture ended without incident. No more protests, even though they had their new security guard standing sentry in the corner. Nothing out of the ordinary.

She checked her phone after everyone left, but there was nothing beyond her last message to Ethan, so she drove to his house.

And if she drove a little faster than normal? If her hands were a little clammy on the steering wheel? Well, no one was there to see.

She felt jittery. Like she’d done something wrong. Even though she hadn’t. She knew she hadn’t. Tonight’s seminar had been fine. Not her best, maybe, but still interesting, engaging enough.

Ethan trusted Naomi. Not with stipulations or reservations. Not after she’d proved herself. He’d always trusted her to represent him and the synagogue, to do right by their participants, to serve his community alongside him. That trust made her open in ways she’d never considered before, and she couldn’t just go closing back up because he’d missed one night.

He was a rabbi. He was busy.

She found him bent over his telescope on the back porch. Ethan straightened up when she opened the door.

“Hey,” he said, letting it float on the breeze, but he didn’t move to her the way he normally did. The absence of affection was palpable. One of the first shifts she’d noticed when they’d started dating was the way he reached for her. Ethan was a hugger. It shouldn’t have been surprising, given his general demeanor.

Basically the second she’d given him permission to put his hands on her—“You can,” hot and harsh in his ear, “I want you to”—he’d lit up like the skyline and started holding her. In fact, since then, he’d never really stopped.