The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,95
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?
He didn’t know how to make them see all the intangible gains. Like the way the audience had rallied around Naomi. So many of them had volunteered to walk her to her car that she’d ended up fenced in like a pop star. Or how week after week her vulnerability made them brave enough to reach out for connection themselves. He had at least five new members a week coming to his office, saying things like, “I didn’t think shul was a place for me, but if this synagogue is open enough to host a seminar like that, I guess I was wrong.”
But . . . for how long could Ethan keep putting her in difficult situations? She’d said she used her given name here because it made things easier. Well, she deserved easier. Deserved the chance to walk around unguarded for once. Secure in the knowledge she was welcome.
As long as she continued to date him, both the people who respected their relationship and the ones who resented it would want a piece of her. Would demand attention and access.
There are certain expectations of a rabbi, Mira had told him when he first confessed to his mentor that he’d enrolled at the rabbinate. It’s hard, and even though people tell you, you won’t believe them. The hours are impossible. You’ll never feel like you’re doing enough. You sign up, and your life is no longer just yours. Your first duty becomes service. Half the time you’re acting on behalf of people who don’t even want to be helped, and that’s not even the hardest part. The hardest part is, you can’t simply make the people you love okay with the life you’ve chosen. Either they’re along for the ride, or you have to let them go.
Ethan’s insides twisted, his body rejecting even the idea of losing Naomi. But there was one truth he couldn’t deny: no matter how much he wanted to, an easier life wasn’t something he could offer her.
Chapter Thirty
RUNNING OUT OF road was the latest problem Naomi had discovered with using the Modern Intimacy syllabus as an outline for her relationship with Ethan.