“Ethan?”
Now that the eggs were in the freaking pan, he didn’t have any more excuses not to meet her eyes. He rolled his sleeves higher up on his forearms. “I hadn’t really thought about evolving the program.”
“Oh.” Naomi snuffed a flicker of disappointment. “Well, I thought we could invite guest lecturers. Get some different perspectives. My friend Cass would be great.”
There was something so tight across his face, his jaw stiff. “I’m not sure now is the right time.” He reached for a spatula and poked at their breakfast.
“What do you mean?” Not the right time? But they’d made so much progress... and it was working. The seminars were feeding the synagogue, broadening the community, making it richer and more diverse. Sure, they’d had the protesters last week, but so what? Anyone who’d ever stood up for social change met resistance.
They just needed to get more milestones laid out. For... for the sake of the class, obviously. Not because she didn’t know how to—for the class. There had to be hundreds of other ports of intimacy to navigate. First holidays. First time one of you got sick. First stretch of long distance.
Just tell me where you wanna go. I’ll go anywhere with you.
Ethan turned down the burner, shook the pan in a way that didn’t look like it did anything. “Well, you know, you might not want to keepdoing it. You might be busy with work and the gym and stuff at Endmore Boulevard.”
Naomi reeled back. Was that what this was about? Her going to another synagogue? But he’d been fine with it. Hadn’t she explained why she wanted to keep that part of her life separate for a while? And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t at Beth Elohim all the time. She went to stand next to the stovetop so he couldn’t keep turning his back on her. On this conversation.
“Ethan, have you thought about what you want? In terms of our relationship?”
She shouldn’t have said it like that. A non sequitur. Charged. It was stupid to try to have this conversation right now. When they didn’t really have time before work, and besides, they hadn’t even been dating that long, and everything was going so well. Better than well. The sex was amazing. She got a little dizzy thinking about it.
He didn’t answer while he took down two plates from her cabinets. Didn’t answer while he divided the eggs and transferred them from the pan. Handed her the one that held slightly more. “I... I have thought about that, yes.”
They didn’t have forks. Naomi pulled out the silverware drawer, handed him one, and waited.
She didn’t want to say, “Well...” or “And...” but she could tell her body language did it anyway.
Ethan put down his plate. He crossed his arms. “You make me so happy.” His smile came out all wrong.
“You make me so happy too,” she said quietly, stabbing her eggs in a way that meant they could let the conversation die there. Since he obviously didn’t want to keep talking about this right now. Maybe didn’t want to talk about it in general.
Naomi swallowed her first bite. The eggs were good. Surprisingly light and fluffy.
They needed salt.
For some ridiculous reason she felt like crying.
It didn’t make sense, she thought as Ethan poured them both coffee. When Jocelyn, who was just as sweet, just as good as Ethan, who Naomi had loved in so many similar ways, had offered heralways, Naomi had run.
She’d run from the promise of a future laid out before her, open arms, certainty. She’d known then that love didn’t last. That it ebbed and faded with age, with self-interest. That people grew apart or revealed all the rotten parts of themselves they’d hidden from you.
And now, Ethan wasn’t sayingalways. He wasn’t saying anything beyond that he liked what they had. But this time, the lack ofalwaysstruck her as sure as any arrow. As sharp and deadly as Joce’s inscription. Because—well, before, he’d wanted—hadn’t he said he wanted—? Back before, when she hadn’t known yet what she could handle?
Didn’t he realize that now she wanted his plans? Couldn’t he see, as he ate his eggs across from her at her shitty IKEA kitchen table, that they needed more highway? To keep driving?
Couldn’t he tell that now that they’d started, she didn’t know how to stop?
Chapter Thirty-One
ETHAN DEFINITELY WANTEDa future with Naomi. He wanted vacations, and anniversaries, and mail with both of their names on it. He was even looking forward to their first big fight. Okay, not the fight itself so much as the possibility of makeup sex.
And sure, he was a bit tortured over wanting those things, knowing that she could pick a thousand people less high maintenance than him to share them with. But he’d started trying to make peace with it. Because hiding how he felt from her—not telling her this morning that ideally he wanted to fill multiple scrapbooks with memories spanning the rest of their lives together—had given him a stomachache. Seriously, it was four p.m. and he was sitting at his desk eating saltines.
He should just tell her he was all in. There was no use trying to fight it. He knew he couldn’t make decisions for her, even ones that might, in theory, make her life less stressful. And anyway, she’d never do something unless it was exactly what she wanted, what she believed to be right. She didn’t get scared, not in the way that he did, of asking too much of other people. She knew exactly how much she deserved.
He reached for his cell, but then thought better of it and reached for his Dodgers mug instead. This wasn’t the kind of thing you sent viatext, he decided, taking a sip of lukewarm tea. He’d tell her after the seminar tonight.
Which—he glanced at his watch—he needed to leave for soon if he didn’t want to get absolutely annihilated by traffic. He wanted to get there early, with plenty of time to check in with the new security guard, to run through all the updated safety procedures with her and Naomi. Having a trained professional guard the door to their auditorium wasn’t ideal, but it was responsible and necessary.