The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(5)
“I haven’t stepped foot in a synagogue since my bat mitzvah,” Naomi said, which wasn’t exactly an answer, but he’d leaned toward her and she’d caught a whiff of spicy aftershave, and now she didn’t remember where she was supposed to be walking.
“Oh.” Ethan’s breath caught on the word. His pupils went wide. “You’re Jewish.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” She’d imagined this entire interaction going a lot differently a few minutes ago.
“Right. Okay. Sorry. I’m not trying to hassle you. If you change your mind, I’m at Beth Elohim in Pasadena almost every day of the week.” He passed her a card.
Naomi opened the door to a new classroom but didn’t enter. Instead she moved to stop his progress with an extended arm. “You’re sure you’re a rabbi?”
He gave her a last smile, probably relieved he knew how to answer this question.
“Very sure.”
“Just my luck,” Naomi muttered under her breath, crumpling the business card in her fist as she walked out of his life forever.
Chapter Two
SOMEHOW, NAOMI GRANT, renowned rebel of the status quo, had found herself with a nine-to-five job and a corner office. Two years in, Shameless, once little more than a defiant idea to revolutionize and democratize sex education, now brought in enough paid subscribers to fund an official headquarters in West Hollywood, in addition to studio space in Burbank. Despite her best efforts to resist routine, Naomi could now reliably be found at an established location on weekdays.
What was worse, when her company responsibilities had naturally evolved from taking her clothes off to organizing vendors and spearheading meetings, she’d had to surrender large swaths of her strategically vampy wardrobe in favor of slightly more boardroom-friendly workwear. Naomi’s one consolation was that most of her new blazers had spikes on the shoulders. No one was getting chummy on her watch.
A few days after the teaching conference, Naomi’s co-founder and unlikely best friend, Clara, entered her office presenting a tiny loaf of bread.
“It’s banana,” she informed Naomi the way one might try to entice a particularly grumpy bulldog to swallow a pill, “your favorite.”
“Uh-oh.” It was no accident that when Naomi had approved the office floor plan, she’d put Clara on the opposite end.
Not to be dramatic, but if Naomi could carve out the hard-won affection Clara had engendered in her with a steak knife, she’d consider it.
“Oh, come on.” Her visitor deflated. “Don’t ‘uh-oh’ like you hate presents. I happened to have extra bananas.” Clara bent in front of the bar cart Naomi had purchased to remind herself she used to be fun and opened a drawer to reveal cutlery and tea plates that Naomi definitely didn’t recognize.
“Did you hide flatware in my office when I wasn’t looking?” Naomi had never imagined herself in a permanent partnership of any kind. This invasion of her space really was a step too far.
“Relax.” Clara ignored her friend’s indignation. “We spend so much time here, I thought we’d have occasion to break bread eventually. Plastic cutlery is bad for the environment.”
No one except Naomi realized how devious Clara could be. Even her fiancé probably didn’t fully comprehend how much planning and strategy hid behind those big eyes. There was a reason they worked so well as co-CEOs. They both knew how to get people to do what they wanted. The difference was, people expected Naomi to scheme and seduce to get her way. Really, all she had to do was create enough air cover for Clara to disarm people through a lethal combination of well-bred manners and zealous enthusiasm. As it turned out, “fanatical but also polite and well-spoken” were excellent traits for a founder of a start-up.
“I feel like you’re about to ask me to donate a kidney.” Naomi accepted the treat anyway.
The choked little laugh Clara gave was unsettling. “I promise it’s not that bad.”
The bread melted in Naomi’s mouth, further arousing suspicion. Either Clara had significantly outdone herself or, more likely, she’d bought the confection and transferred it to her own Tupperware.
“All right, let’s have it.” The weight of the impending favor request hung in the air.
Clara closed her eyes and then spoke very quickly. “Will you be my maid of honor?”
Naomi stopped chewing. A piece of walnut stuck in her molar.
She’d known, after Josh—Clara’s fiancé—had proposed in the fall, that a wedding was inevitable. She’d just never stopped to consider the scale of the event’s consequences. Shameless took up so much of their time and energy, and Josh was booked solid as an expert witness in a new round of court cases defending the rights of sex workers.
Still, Naomi should have seen this coming, and would have if, for whatever reason, she hadn’t fallen so far off her game lately.
Her silence seemed to fuel Clara’s urgency.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, and if you’d rather not do it, I can call my cousin. It’s just, no one in my life knows me the way you do. You realize what a complete mess I am and still trust me to run a business with you. You’re the most competent person I know, and you always bring me pizza after my mother calls.” Clara cleared her throat. “Also, obviously, you know Josh rather intimately.”