The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2) - Rosie Danan Page 0,12
our activities calendar.”
Naomi considered her cuticles. “Can I pick the night of the week?”
“Sure. As long as it doesn’t fall on Shabbat.”
“Tuesdays,” she said. “I have Krav Maga on Monday and Wednesday nights.”
“Done. You can outline the syllabus. Whatever you think people should know about pursuing modern intimacy.”
She arched a brow. “You’re giving me carte blanche?”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.” Ethan didn’t usually review the class materials of the professionals he hired.
Naomi got to her feet. “We should have a trial run. If the first seminar doesn’t work out, let’s agree to be honest with one another and call it.”
“All right.” He stood up too. “In terms of compensation—”
She waved him off. “You can’t afford my speaking rates. I’ll do it as a volunteer.”
“No. That’s really not necessary.” He must have looked serious, because she relented.
“Fine. Sixty bucks a session?”
That was insultingly low and they both knew it. “I want to argue with you, but something tells me I’ll lose.”
She smiled at him, the false one that he remembered from the convention center. “You should trust those instincts.”
“Does it work for you to hold the first session in two weeks? That should be enough time to book the space and spread the word to the congregation. I’m planning to contact the Hillel organizations at USC and UCLA.”
“Two weeks.” Naomi stuck out her hand.
Ethan took it after a moment. Up close her eyes were almost green.
He had fourteen days to get his act together. He hoped it was enough.
Chapter Four
WHEN ETHAN’S MOTHER called him in the middle of the following week and said she wanted to have dinner on Friday to celebrate his sister coming home, he immediately knew she’d forgotten about Shabbat.
This was a fairly common occurrence. He’d gently reminded her about his weekly observance, assuming they’d make alternative plans. But she’d insisted and, in a few rapid-fire keystrokes that he could hear through the phone, sent him an email calendar invite. In Renee Cohen’s book, iCal was legally binding.
Only on rare occasions did his mom pull out one of the family’s handwritten recipe cards, passed down across multiple generations—half the words still in German—and decipher them. Especially on short notice.
Ethan prepared himself for an evening of minor disaster.
Sure enough, on Friday night, it was hard to decide who felt worse as his mom’s hand shook as she tried to light the candles. Renee’s cheeks colored as her tongue tripped over the Hebrew words, rushing to recall them before the match burned her fingers.
His sister, Leah, kept apologizing for not being able to step in. Leah spent the majority of her time filming in remote locations for her job as a reality TV show producer, and by her own admission, it was harder to keep up with the traditions living in a tent on a tiny island off the coast of Maui.
Ethan sweated under his kippah. His mother’s dining room was easily seventy-five degrees. Right off the kitchen, it seemed to absorb residual heat from her out-of-shape and consequently overworked oven.
“Why don’t you just recite the English translation?” Ethan’s stomach twisted. He was a jerk for putting his family in the position of practicing rituals that they didn’t fully embrace.
Before he’d become a rabbi, Shabbat dinners at the Cohen household had been few and far between, less religious practice and more an excuse to have friends or family over. The prayers had been hastily muttered in an effort to get to the food sooner. For a moment, Ethan selfishly envied the rabbis who had generations of devout practice in their bloodlines.
It was impossible to deny that on the spectrum of religion, he’d spent the last six years moving further away from his closest kin.
His mom winced. “I didn’t think this through, huh?”
“I’ve seen worse,” he said, which was technically true, but not by much.
When Ethan was growing up, the Cohens had worshipped ambition more than the Torah. His mother had made herself in this town, had risen through the ranks of the studio machine against men who wanted nothing more than to prove she didn’t belong. By the time Ethan was in high school, she’d become a powerful agent. Everyone had always assumed her children would follow in her footsteps, and maybe if his father hadn’t died, Ethan would have.
Renee had worked so hard and accomplished so much, sometimes all of them forgot there was anything she couldn’t do. Ethan had been groomed from childhood for a slick role behind a big desk, making and breaking deals