The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(9)

“Am I interrupting?” She gave a nod toward the room behind him.

Morey was now blatantly watching them through the interior window.

“Don’t mind me,” he shouted through the plexiglass, straightening to his full five feet, five inches. “I was just on my way out.” He exited the room and escaped down the hall as quickly as Ethan had ever seen him move.

Once he was gone, Naomi pinned Ethan in her gaze. “Do you still want to hire me?”

“Uh,” he said, thrown. “I mean, yeah. Yes.” Just having her in the building seemed to make the faded space come to life. “I do.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “Then pitch me.”

“I’m sorry?” Maybe if he looked at her from an angle instead of straight on, it would be easier to concentrate.

“This is a business proposition, right?” She folded her arms. “You outlined the basics at the convention, and now I’m willing to consider your offer, but in order for me to come to a decision, we need to go over the details.”

While Naomi seemed slightly less hostile tonight than she had at the convention center, the hallway’s dim bulbs couldn’t hide the way her flame-colored hair flashed, threatening to send their immediate vicinity up in smoke.

Ethan said the first thing that came to mind. “I’m not trying to trick you.”

Her eyes lingered on the exit behind him. “That’s what they all say.”

Right. It was on him to show her that she was safe here, that she was welcome.

“Why don’t we go outside? There’s a bench out back we can use.”

She might feel less caged outside the synagogue walls.

“I’m not usually skittish,” Naomi said as she followed him to the door, as if worried he’d bring up the way everything in her body language threatened to run.

They got to the old bench Sal Stein had dedicated to his departed wife. Ethan said a quick prayer as he touched the plaque, his thumb brushing absently over the inscription, lingering for a moment in borrowed memory.

As they took their seats at opposite ends, silence and the early-spring evening stretched out between them, everything fragile and new.

She’d asked for a pitch, he reminded himself, and cleared his throat.

“So, the synagogue supports a variety of cultural and educational programming—”

“I don’t get it,” Naomi interrupted him.

“Don’t get what?” He didn’t mind the immediate interjection. Lots of people got defensive when they were uncomfortable.

“You said you were a physics teacher. Back at the conference center.”

Ethan sat up straighter, surprised she remembered.

“I was. At Greenbrier in Santa Monica.” The fancy prep school catered to the offspring of the rich and famous.

“But now you’re a rabbi?” The set of her shoulders was intensely defiant. “Isn’t there inherent contradiction between science and religion?”

Ethan exhaled. His call to become a rabbi had occurred as a messy combination of grief and yearning. It was easier to distill the origin of his belief system to a single book, though it wasn’t any book people expected.

He lifted a shoulder. “Blame Einstein.”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” Her words were flinty, testing his speed to spark.

He let them smolder and die.

“Einstein wrote, in 1930, ‘To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.’”

Naomi shook her head. “You memorized that?”

“Those words made sense to me when nothing else did,” he said, thinking of standing in the rain at his father’s funeral. “The idea that there was so much in the universe I would never understand, never unravel, no matter how much I studied. The knowledge that my life wasn’t a problem I could ever solve let me focus my energy elsewhere. Those words felt like freedom.”

She stared out at the dark courtyard. Probably cataloging all the overgrown weeds.

“So,” Naomi said, as if choosing her words carefully. “You’re saying Einstein helped you discover that ignorance is bliss?”

“More like faith,” he corrected, his voice light.

“Tomayto, tomahto.” The hint of teasing in her tone shot pleasantly up his spine.

Well, that was inconvenient.

“I’ve always wanted answers.” He used to make himself sick over the lack of them, actually. “Both my study of physics and my study of the Torah started in pursuit of understanding the infinite mysteries of an interconnected universe. Both are continuous study. Man’s search for meaning. Judaism offers a ladder to being a better person that I never have to stop climbing.” Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. “I just realized how idealistic it sounds when I say it out loud.”

Naomi let out a gentle scoff. “If idealism is the worst of your traits, you’re the best man I’ve ever met.”

He was grateful that the twilight provided some cover for the way that half of a compliment went straight to his head.

“I bet you’re a big hit at services,” she said, throwing her arm across the back of the bench and shifting a few inches closer to him. “Young, handsome, smart.” She wrinkled her nose, alarmingly mischievous all of a sudden. “Good with your mouth.”