“Yes?”
“Ms. Grant,” Molly said, “we were wondering if you’re dating anyone?”
Naomi had told her a million times to quit calling her Ms. Grant.
A few nearby students stopped talking to listen. Ethan raised his head from his notebook as well.
Naomi chewed her bottom lip. She could hardly tell them to mind their own business. She and Ethan had built this seminar around the idea of radical transparency and a safe space for self-disclosure.
“Why do you ask?” When in doubt, answer a question with another question.
“Well, I guess we just wanted to know if you follow the course methodology yourself, or if it’s based more on theoretical concepts.”
Sheesh, what a question. Naomi supposed this was a common pitfall of academia. The gap between research and lived experience.
“I am dating someone, and we are currently employing several of the strategies and techniques developed for this seminar.” There, that was honest but opaque.
Molly leaned forward in her chair. “Will you tell us about the person you’re seeing?”
Naomi cleared her throat. “Excuse me?” She reached for her water bottle and took a long sip.
“I mean, if you’re comfortable opening up about your relationship, it would mean a lot to us. You’re so good at this stuff.” Molly’s dogged determination was another thing that reminded Naomi of her younger self.
“Are you dating someone famous?” Molly’s neighbor had her thumbs poised over her cell phone, no doubt ready to tweet about Naomi’s personal life.
“Uh...”
Jaime had their hand in the air now. “Is it someone we’ve heard of, at least?”
Naomi tried to make eye contact with Ethan, tried to say, without moving her mouth,Help me! You’re the one who thought this whole thing was a good idea. His frown had slipped completely into his beard.
This was a test neither of them had anticipated facing, at least not so soon. It was one thing to decide to date when they were the only two people who knew about it. Announcing they were dating in front of a room full of people seemed like far higher stakes.
Like so many other times since she’d met Ethan, she was torn between a choice that made her comfortable and a choice she thought was right. She held Ethan’s gaze for a long moment and then gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“Actually,” he said, loud enough to draw the attention of the room. “I’m the person Naomi’s dating.”
A pulsing silence filled the room as Naomi imagined the participants trying to figure out whether they’d been unknowingly cast in a televised social experiment.
They’d just entrusted a room full of people with a piece of information that could jeopardize Ethan’s career, not to mention their fragile relationship. Naomi had rules about arming people with information they could use against her. She’d had a lot of rules before she met him.
“Yeah, right.” Jaime waved them off.
“No. Seriously.” She gave the classroom her scariest look, the one Josh had once sworn caused a street harasser’s hairline to visibly recede. “Rabbi Cohen and I are dating.”
One of the students in the front row shook his head back and forth. “But... how?”
“What do you mean, how?” Naomi snapped. This dude’s tone implied that someone in this equation was out of the other’s league, and in either scenario, she was offended.
“You can’t date Rabbi Cohen, you’re not Jewish,” a girl toward the back said dismissively.
Naomi folded her arms across her chest, stung against her will. “Okay, let’s cool it with the assumptions.”
“Wait...” The first woman was looking back and forth between Naomi and Ethan like they were a tennis match. “Are you Jewish?”
Naomi had about ten retorts for that question on the tip of her tongue. “I’m—”
“Hey,” Ethan stood up. “This is not a forum for you to interrogate your instructor on her personal life. Naomi and I have been generous enough to trust you with details about our relationship as an act of community in this space. I expect you all to honor the covenant you signed at the beginning of this course and treat the information we’ve shared with you in the same respectful manner with which you’d want sensitive information about your own romantic engagements protected.”