“I don’t know how to date a rabbi. Honestly, I’m not sure I know how to date anyone. At least not seriously. And this”—she waved between them—“feels serious.”
“Yeah.” Ethan swallowed hard. “It does.”
“Ugh.” She pushed his shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he frowned.
“Like—where did you even get those eyelashes?”
He smiled. “If this look is working for you, can you do me a favor and describe it in more detail, ’cause I’m not sure I could re-create it intentionally?”
“No. I’m not making you more powerful.” Naomi pushed him again, farther toward the water. The bottoms of his pants were wet, and he definitely didn’t care.
“Hey, wait.” Electricity ran through him the way it always did when he fell for an idea. “We could use the syllabus.”
She raised her brows. “Excuse me?”
“You literally wrote step-by-step instructions for establishing modern intimacy.” He was practically bouncing on his feet.
“I guess that’s technically true.” Naomi bit her lip.
“Well, it doesn’t get more modern than this.”
“At least if it doesn’t work out, we could probably write an article and sell it to theNew York Times,” she conceded.
“Pragmatic, as ever.” He brought his hand to her back and steered her toward the parking lot. Ethan was pretty sure it was going well at this point.
“Okay, yes.” Naomi said finally.
Ethan held very still. “Yes to what?”
“Everything.” She ducked her chin. “All of it. All of you.”
She reached out and kissed him then—not his ear or his forehead, his lips. Naomi kissed him, and it was, impossibly, better than before.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and let his palms spread across her back. It was a kiss that felt like winning. Wine, red and warm, if he could paint it.
After a while, Naomi pulled back. “The syllabus gets us throughseven weeks, if we’re lucky. After that, we’re on our own.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you smiling again?”
He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to stop. “You said ‘after that.’”
Naomi spoke into his shirt collar. The ocean crashed against the shore. “You do realize if this intimacy experiment doesn’t work, it means we’re failures both professionally and romantically?”
“No.” He pulled her closer. “That’s not how science works.” Ethan reached around her to open the car door. “Even when they fail, experiments move us closer to the truth.”
Chapter Twenty
NAOMI FOUND HERSELFwelcoming the structure of using the syllabus as a road map for her controversial courtship with Ethan. Going on a first date after spending multiple nights a week together for almost two months was a recipe for awkwardness. In the midst of so much uncertainty, having any kind of reference material to cling to went a long way.
After minor debate the night before (interspersed with more heated kissing in the beach parking lot), she and Ethan had settled on dinner and a movie as their initial outing. Something about adopting such a traditional model for their untraditional pairing held irresistible appeal.
This morning, Naomi had texted Ethan three restaurant choices.
He had chosen her least favorite.
She hated trendy restaurants. The kind that spent more money on light fixtures and whiskey tumblers than they did on actually testing their menu or paying their staff a living wage. They’d only been here ten minutes, but already her ass was sore from the midcentury modern chair’s flat wooden seat. She supposed it served her right for issuing a low-key compatibility test out of the gate, but old habits died hard.
Ethan lowered his menu and smiled at her from across the table,every inch of him wholesome, eager in a way most people learned to hide.