The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(94)

“‘Thank them for making it so hard to leave. So hard to say good-bye that you thought, well, if this doesn’t kill me, nothing will.’”

After all of this, after everything, she’d do it again. For Ethan, she’d do anything.

“‘Fold up the letter, tuck it away somewhere. All that pain, that longing, that anger. The fear that leaving was the worst mistake you ever made. That you’ll never recover as long as you live. That you’ll spend a century looking over your shoulder for the life you let slip through your fingers.’ Well”—she tried to shrug—“that’s the universe’s problem now.”

She sat on the lip of the stage. Wanting to be closer to these students, these people on the cusp of adulthood, their whole lives ahead of them, waiting to be written.

“I promise that one day you’ll wake up and your hands will feel like they belong to you again. Some morning, you’ll look in the mirror and you won’t have to whisper, ‘You’re still alive. You’re still alive. You’re still alive.’”

Naomi wanted every good thing in the world for these people. Every happiness, every rush of daring, every surprise.

“I know you don’t know me. And you probably think I’m unstable at this point, but just in case you need to hear it, I think you’re bursting with potential. Even the rusty, bleeding pieces of you. So hang in there for me, okay? Eyes on the horizon.”

Sometimes you had to go back to go forward. Sometimes you had to wrap your arms around something in order to let it go.

“Remember, each new day is another chance to heal your sorry, broken heart.”

For so long, Naomi had carried it as a point of pride that she could wreck herself. That she could survive the fallout of abandoning love.

She didn’t need anyone, she’d said. She was independent.

How long had she believed that pain made her sharp? That enduring it made her strong?

Society wanted her to beg for approval, and she’d spit in its face.

Except. This time it was less clear who she was fighting. Less clear who was winning and why.

There was no glory in a soldier who kept fighting when the war was over. No honor in championing a cause that carried no one.

Coming back here, all the way to her high school, showed her how much she’d grown. Institutions, she realized, drew their power from the people inside them. This building couldn’t hurt her anymore. She’d let herself back in.

And maybe if she could do that after all these years, she could let herself back into other spaces too.

Naomi had found her footing in synagogues, after all.

Maybe—she took a deep breath—it wasn’t only physical locations once closed to her that she could revisit. She’d found a home in Ethan. Naomi needed to know if he’d let her in again if she knocked.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, and Naomi glanced down at an email. Her heart turned over like a pancake.

“And you never know,” she told the auditorium, getting to her feet, searching for the exit, her mind already three thousand miles away, “maybe one day you’ll find out the end wasn’t really the end.”





Chapter Thirty-Six


    MODERN INTIMACY—LECTURE 7:


   As you can see, I’m not Naomi Grant


ETHAN REALLY HOPED this would work, because he was already sweaty—emotionally and physically.

The bar he’d rented out, the same one where they’d held their first mixer, had quickly turned standing room only. The bartenders removed all the tables, pushing them out onto the patio in an effort to accommodate the crowd.

He supposed it was reassuring to know that so many people made sure that the Modern Intimacy email discussion list didn’t go to their spam folders.

Leah had made him wear a microphone. One of the little lapel ones he’d bought for outdoor events. The pack sat heavy in his pocket as Ethan stared back at his expectant observers. He reached down and switched it on.

“Hey, everyone.” The sound of his own voice echoed back in his ears. “Thanks for coming to the final lecture of our Modern Intimacy seminar series.”

He forced himself to plant his feet, despite the impulse to pace.

“I know you’re used to a different instructor. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here for our last session.”

The path of Modern Intimacy never did run smooth.

“I didn’t think it was right to use the JCC anymore, because, well, we can’t really have any affiliation with the original synagogue-sponsored series.” He swallowed against the tight knot in his throat. “Now that they no longer endorse this program and I no longer work there.”

Those words still didn’t feel real. Didn’t feel true.

“What are you talking about?” someone shouted from the back.

A plethora of emotions played across the faces of those gathered. Confusion and doubt chief among them.

“Rabbi Cohen.” Molly made her way to the front. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry.” It was the only answer he could offer. “We won’t be able to continue on in the same capacity,” he clarified, voice tight. “But I thought you deserved a full course, regardless of the circumstances. I wanted to do right by you, to the best of my ability.”