“No. Listen.” He pushed himself up from where he’d gradually slumped down in the seat. “You’re exactly the person you were born to be, and you’re not even afraid of it. Do you know how hard that is? How rare?”
“I think I’ve got an idea.” Sometimes it felt like it took all her energy just to keep her body from flying in a million directions at once.
Naomi had received a lot of compliments in her life, but never one that acknowledged the work she’d done on herself. How hard she tried to be a good person. The way she strived, even when it was exhausting, which was most of the time. She lowered her own window a crack, out of necessity. It figured that in a lifetime of compliments, the best one she’d ever received came from someone who could never make good on it.
“I’m sorry that man hurt you tonight,” Ethan said, his tone stony and quiet.
She knew he wasn’t fishing for her story, the reason she’d lost her composure. Her past, especially that past, belonged to Hannah, and she hardly ever gave it up. But...
Maybe it was because he was drunk, or because he’d taken a punch for her earlier tonight. Maybe it was because he was a rabbi, and lots of people dropped their problems in his lap. Maybe it was because he’d just compared her to one of the most brilliant artists who’d ever lived. In any case, telling him didn’t seem like the worst idea she’d ever had.
“Normally, I can let that stuff roll off my back. Occupational hazard, you know?”
“I hate that.” His jaw snapped on the wordhate, turning the sound into the way the emotion felt.
“I try to anticipate people being terrible,” she said. “So I won’t be caught unaware again.”
Ethan tipped his head back. Naomi could feel his gaze on her, sweet and inquisitive.
“Again?”
She swallowed around her tongue. No matter how much time had passed, it was still hard to let the words out.
“When I was eighteen, my boyfriend shared naked pictures I’d sent him with my entire high school. He was pissed I didn’t want to sleep with him.” Sleep with him again, actually. He’d convinced her to try it once. Whether it was the guy or the timing or just starting to discover she was queer, she hadn’t been ready to continue.
“Naomi, I’m so sorry. What a horrible betrayal of your trust and privacy.”
He had a good voice for sympathy, smooth and warm and rich.
She let it wrap around her. Wished she could keep it.
“Yeah. It was awful,” she said, the word only a little hollow. “Everyone turned on me. My friends, my teachers, they all looked at me like I’d done the bad thing. Like I’d offended them by making myself vulnerable.” The email on her phone had felt like it weighed down her pocket. “That was the first time that I realized my body could be both desirable and disgusting to people at the same time. That those two emotions could twist inside a person, mixed with their own shame, and turn venomous.” She couldn’t even count the number of times she’d been told she should have known better.
“But in the end, I wouldn’t take any of it back. That moment is pretty much the catalyst for my whole career. I wanted to prove that being naked, being sexual, didn’t make you less valuable, less worthy ofrespect. In my quest to redeem Hannah Sturm—that’s my given name—I became Naomi Grant. Sex work let me save myself. Let me regain my power.”
“Do you ever miss who you were before, miss being Hannah?”
She drove for a while. Long enough that when she did speak, it startled him.
“I didn’t know who I was back then. It’s hard to miss the potential of a person. I may be a coldhearted bitch now, but I like the life I’ve built. Maybe if I’d stayed Hannah, stayed in Boston, gone to veterinary school like I planned, my quiet life out of the public eye would be depressing and awful.”
“I don’t think there’s as much difference between the time Before Naomi and After as you think there is.”
She shrugged. It didn’t matter anyway. There was no going back.
“Being exploited changed my life.”
“You can change but still be the same,” he said, the words thick on his tongue from the tequila.
She knew what he was trying to say, but where was the breaking point? The threshold where identity fissured? Some experiences must shock the system on a molecular level.
She should ask Ethan. He was a physicist. He would know. But she was tired of talking about herself. Tired of dragging up old wounds. She’d given enough time and energy to the past tonight. To men who had behaved badly. Neither deserved any more of her breath.
“This is my exit,” Ethan said, granting her the favor of changing the subject.
Naomi caught another angle of his face when she turned, and sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Fuck. Does that eye feel as bad as it looks?”
Ethan squinted into the side mirror. “No. Not yet.”