The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,48
moment before realizing he had pressed his sweater against the marker, then jumping back.
“So, about the other night,” he said, too loudly.
She kept moving the eraser without turning to look at him. “What about it?”
“That thing I said in the car, about looking for a girlfriend?”
“Oh.” Naomi stopped wiping for a moment, and he watched her spine go straight as a ruler. “Yeah.”
“That was nonsense.” Releasing the truth on an exhale, he breathed out relief.
Finally Naomi turned around. “It was?” Her words came out careful, giving him plenty of time to reconsider his excuse, but he didn’t want to have this flimsy deception between them. He didn’t want anything between them, if he was honest.
“Yeah. I was a little drunk, and perhaps vaguely concussed. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
She put the bottle of cleaning spray down on the lectern as if it had suddenly become too heavy to hold. “So, you’re not looking to date anyone, then?”
Did she sound relieved? He wished he could wipe the tension from her forehead. He shoved his hands in his pockets instead.
“It’s not that I don’t want to date, exactly. It’s more that I don’t want to impose upon you to find someone for me.” Why was telling her how he felt so hard? Why couldn’t he just say that he liked her?
She reached up and swept her hair off her neck into a knot, securing it with a band from her wrist. “I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?” There was his answer, then.
If she had any romantic interest in him herself, surely she wouldn’t volunteer so nonchalantly. He supposed this was for the best, her subtle dismissal. Obviously entering into a deeper relationship with Naomi would make continuing the seminar series more complicated.
Still, disappointment curled his shoulders toward his ears.
“Nope,” Naomi repeated. “As you said, chemistry—even other people’s—is one of my gifts.” Her tone softened for the first time all night. “And besides, you deserve to find love.”
Her emphasis on the word you caught him off guard.
“Doesn’t everyone?” To have something to do with his hands, Ethan walked the aisles and collected stray pens and crumpled-up paper left on or under the seats.
“No,” she said simply, resuming her task. “I keep a list.”
“Of people who deserve love?” He should like the vicious side of her less, probably.
She shrugged. “Love is precious, right? Something coveted. Why shouldn’t people have to earn it?”
He wanted to tell her love was inherent. That it existed in many intangible forms. That she could build love by extending it. But something in the twist of her mouth and the guarded curve of her jaw made him swallow the promises.
“Love is valued at an individual, societal, and evolutionary level, and certainly Judaism tells us to honor marriage, the most commonly held institution in love’s name,” he conceded instead. “But I think in the simplest terms, love makes surviving easier, and everyone deserves that.”
Naomi flattened her mouth into a hard line. “Not everyone.”
Her undercurrent of anger warned Ethan to tread carefully. He bent and made a little Lost and Found sign out of notebook paper and placed it with the pens on the lectern.
“Anyway,” Naomi said after a long moment, picking her supplies back up and resuming cleaning. “Tell me what you’re looking for in a partner.”
“Now?” Ethan’s insides twisted in alarm. He sank down into a seat in the front row.
“Now seems as good a time as any.” She finished up her task and joined him.
Ethan racked his brain for adjectives Naomi might not immediately recognize as describing her. He settled for a trait she held but thought she masked.
“I’d like someone kind.” He couldn’t keep himself from adding, “Who knows themselves and what they want.”
Naomi frowned. “Kind is too subjective to use as a filter for potential dates.”
Ethan turned toward her. “What if we settled on a common definition?”
“You and me?” She gestured between them skeptically.
He nodded. “What if we define kind as someone who treats others with respect and tries to think the best of them?” Surely they could find common ground, in language if not in practice.
Naomi granted him a bitter smile. “I think the word you’re looking for is naive.”
A shot of pleasure ran through him. He liked when she was a little mean, could feel the affection underneath it. Sitting so close to her was a privilege, as ridiculous as it might sound. She was so often in motion when he saw her, splitting her attention in ten different directions. Juggling. Performing. Relative stillness made her appear deceptively