Judah tried to imagine that level of certainty that a wedding was in the immediate future, and failed miserably.
“I got about a thousand texts from her after those videos of us went up over Pesach. She can’tbelievewe’re dating. None of my friends can. You really are a celebrity to them.” She pushed a carrotaround on her plate, her cheeks pinkening. “Well, I guess you’re one to me too, but now you’re also a guy who occasionally beats me at board games and takes me to eat good Georgian food.”
“So that’s what I’m good for, huh?” he teased with a smile.
He said it without thinking, the kind of joke Arielle would’ve seized on and turned filthy immediately. He didn’t even realize how much he was counting on getting a flirty response until Mira’s blush deepened as she protested.
“I was kidding,” he said gently, sticking a fork into the pelmeni.
“Right.” She cut her carrot into small pieces with the side of her fork but didn’t take a bite. “I’m pretty sure people are taking pictures of us.”
He exhaled slowly, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. “Of course they are.”
“I keep not wanting to eat in case someone catches me in a weird pose,” she said with a giggle.
“Do you want to leave? I can get the check.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine!” she said, although he wasn’t sure how it could be. He couldn’t help but imagine what Ari would do in the same situation, and he felt reasonably confident she’d continue eating with a fork in one hand and her middle finger permanently up on the other. The image made him smile before he realized he was being a jerk, thinking about one girl while on a date with another. “I’ll get used to it. I mean, I have to get used to it, right?”
Her hopeful tone slashed at his heart. When he’d landed in New York, absurdly, improbably, his first thought was to call Ari. His second, as he clutched his phone, was that he’d be better off using the number Mira had put into his cell. And so he did, a casual hello that turned into grabbing coffee, and then a few days later, another coffee. (It was hard to be creative during the Omer when movies, concerts, shopping, and parties were all off-limits.) She was easy enough to talk to, mostly because she never seemed to run out of questions about his job. Then somewhere around theirfourth date, she started taking pictures and videos of him for social media, delighting as they racked up Likes. Now it’d been almost a month, and she’d become something of a de facto publicist. They were seeing each other a few times a week, and apparently, she was angling for a more permanent position.
Which was good, right? More permanent was the point. More permanent was a home and a family and an end to the aching loneliness that had begun to permeate every minute of every day that he wasn’t performing, and even some when he was.
So she didn’t set his blood on fire the way Arielle did. That made sense, since they were adhering to the laws of modesty and propriety. And eventually, if they did get married, that was going to include kissing, and touching, and sex. Surely that would make things different—make them fun and comfortable and open him up, bringing his sexual attraction back to the surface.
It had to.
And if he wanted to get there—if he wanted to end this miserable dating cycle—then he had to step it up.
“Right,” he said with a smile, digging his fingertips into his thigh as if to give himself courage for these next words. “Speaking of which, my brother’s been bugging me about meeting you. Are you up for having dinner next week, just the three of us?”
Mira beamed so hard, Judah could swear a ray of sunshine had just come through the restaurant window. “Definitely. I’ve been dying to meet Akiva.”
“Great!” Judah said brightly, even though he couldn’t quite imagine a conversation between the two of them lasting more than a minute to save his life. “It’s going to be great.”
“No.”
“No?” Judah was tempted to throw his cell phone at the wall. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean that you’ve been dating this girl for a month, and I don’t want to meet her at a noisy restaurant with everyone staring at us because we’re sitting with Ein Klein Hotmusic.”
Judah groans. “Can we just pretend that article doesn’t exist?”
“Absolutely not. I cannot be the only one to suffer. Do you have any idea how many people have tried to gush about you to me because of that article? If I hadn’t gotten an excellent blow job out of it, I’d have given you a much harder time these past few months.”
“You’re welcome,” Judah said wryly. “And in honor of that blow job, I think you can do me this one favor.”
“I’m not refusing to meet Mira,” Akiva clarified. “I just don’t want to do it at a restaurant. Why don’t you guys come for Shabbos lunch?”
“Mira lives in the Heights. I’m not having her walk all the way down here for Shabbos lunch.” Though he had a sneaking suspicion she’d do it.
“She can stay here! Liana’s going to her sister’s for Shabbos—I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if Mira stayed in her room. I’ll text her now.”
Liana’s room. Which happened to be in Arielle’s apartment. Which, knowing Akiva, was exactly why he was insisting on this in the first place—he probably wanted to see for himself that Judah was totally over Ari and happy with Mira. Which wasfine, since that’s exactly what Akiva would see. But still, the arrangement didn’t sit right.
“She just wrote back that it’s cool,” Akiva said.
“Akiva, I can’t—I’m not askingArielleto host Mira. That’s…” What? Cruel? Not if Arielle didn’t care.
