groan. “Get it together,” he muttered to himself in Hebrew.
There was a small noise behind him, then something like a laugh. “What the fuck language is that? Klingon?”
Jude turned his head and lifted a brow at the sight of Emilio who looked a lot more put together than he expected him to. “Klingon? Are you a secret nerd?”
“It ain’t a secret, rabbi, trust me. I grew up on that shit,” Emilio said. He hesitated, then sank down on the step next to Jude and let their thighs gently brush together. When he held out his hand, Jude hesitated, then rolled his eyes and handed the beer over. “You don’t get to be an engineer without being at least part nerd.”
His lips threatened to curve into a smile, but he managed to hold it back. “Secret romantic nerd.”
Emilio shrugged and handed the bottle back, now half gone. “And you’re a rabbi who says fuck way too much, sucks dick like a god, and drinks.”
“I think you’re confusing me with a priest again,” Jude said, then took a long swallow. “We have an entire holiday dedicated to getting pissed. And it wasn’t our people that spent years crying about the pleasures of the flesh being a sin.”
Emilio made a soft humming noise, but he didn’t ask him to elaborate, which he appreciated because he was already in the middle of a faith crisis. He didn’t need to throw his own choices into the mix. One bloody crisis at a time, thank you very much.
“Do you like what you do?” Emilio asked after a beat. “Being a rabbi?”
Jude cocked his head to the side. “Sometimes. It wasn’t what I originally wanted to do with my life.”
Emilio snorted a laugh. “Yeah? What did you want to be when you grew up?”
“Astronaut, probably.” He turned his face up toward the sky, which was slowly starting to darken with the impending dusk. “I wanted to walk on the moon.”
“Just the moon?”
Jude nudged him with his elbow. “For a start. What about you?”
Emilio’s face softened, not quite into a smile, but something kinder than the way he’d looked earlier. “I wanted to build rocket ships.”
“Fuck off,” Jude said, and Emilio laughed. “You’re only saying that so I feel less bad about having wanted to go hunt moon rocks.”
Emilio shook his head, still smiling. “I’m not lying. I was obsessed with the idea of combustion. I got suspended for two weeks because I managed to blow up one of the stations in the science lab.”
Jude blinked at him, then bowed his head and chuckled. “Is it odd that I can picture that happening?”
“Nah.” Emilio nudged him back, then left his elbow resting against his side. “It’ll only make more sense the more you get to know me.”
Jude felt that like a jolt—the idea that he might have the chance. He didn’t know what Eliah had gotten himself into or what that would mean for his life after this was all over, but it occurred to him that people like Emilio might be a regular fixture in his life from now on.
“Do you think we’re going to be followed?” he asked after a beat.
Emilio licked his lips, then shrugged and picked at the edge of his jaw with his thumbnail. “Maybe—I didn’t see shit on my way here to grab you, and I didn’t see shit behind us when we left. But things are…” He trailed off and gazed into the distance like he could see straight through the trees. “We’ve reached a point where I can’t predict what’s coming next, and it’s unsettling.”
Jude leaned back, and the wood on the porch dug into his elbows, but he didn’t mind the discomfort. It was grounding in the way he needed it to be right then. “How are things normally?” When Emilio turned his head and gave him a dark look, Jude sighed. “I’m only trying to understand. I mean, I was minding my own morality crisis when my brother phones and tells me he’s nearly been shot and is in hiding with a biker in the middle of nowhere—and No, Yehuda,” he mimicked his brother’s posh professor voice, “I can’t tell you what happened or where I am. And, by the way, some strange man is going to pick you up and take you to some undisclosed location so you don’t die.”
Emilio made a choking sound like he was covering a laugh, and when he lifted his face again, a hint of a smirk rested in the corners of