“For God’s sake, Arielle. I’m not soliciting you.”
“Then what do you want from me, Judah?”
“I don’t know!” Heads turned in their direction, and Judah took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Ari sighed and led him out the side door and into the yard, where they dropped into the grass. “I’m sorry if I hurt you by dating Mira,” he said quietly. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You were, I guess.” She plucked a blade of grass and rubbed it between her fingers. “She’s The Girl, right? Perfect on paper. Young and skinny, pretty, probably childbearing hips—whatever the fuck those are. Guessing she wants marriage and kids and to be the perfect social media and Pesach program wife. And she even puts out.”
“I didn’t—we didn’t do…” His cheeks flushed with color. “It wasn’t the same.”
“But you kissed her.” The memory of hearing their first was still seared into her brain.
“I did.”
“You did more than kiss her,” Ari guessed.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “No, I didn’t. For whatever that’s worth.”
“I have no idea what it’s worth,” she muttered. She hated that he did any of it. Shehatedthat their first kiss was in her apartment. She hated that she couldn’t take her eyes off his beautiful hands, couldn’t stop thinking about how elegant they looked on his guitar, how good they felt on her skin, how well he’d mastered using them to—
“Arielle.”
She tore her eyes off his hands and looked up into his soft gaze.
“I’m sorry. I am. I met her and she was nice, and she wanted all the things I want and I thought maybe I could want those things with her. I was so excited to finally know what it was all supposed to feel like, and I thought… I don’t know. Like I’d become someone different, maybe. That it’d be different if I tried again with someone who actually wanted to date me. But it just… didn’t work.”
Someone who actually wanted to date me.Meaning that in his mind, she wasn’t that. And that was fair, she supposed, since she’d told him exactly that the night he’d cooked for her.
But again, it’d been so early. Surely he could tell things had changed over the course of the week, couldn’t he? Hell, she’d called him in Mexico. Did he really think that meant nothing?
Yeah, she was still pissed.
“So you broke up with her because you got horny and she wouldn’t put out?”
He sighed. “No, Ari, I broke up with her because it turns out it doesn’t matter how much you want the same things if you want them with somebody else.”
Her heart flipped in her chest, the last of her anger deflating. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to say that.”
If she were smarter, she might tell him not to. “It’s okay to say that, I think.”
His eyes flickered over her from head to toe. “Is it okay to say that you look beautiful?”
“I guess that’s okay to say too,” she said, her lips twitching.
“Good.” Now it was his turn to fiddle with the grass, sliding his fingers slowly up and down a blade. “So you haven’t been with anyone? I just figured, when I was in Mexico…”
She snorted. “You thought my hometown shul was a hotbed of sexy single thirtysomething men?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” he said with a laugh. “I think I just like torturing myself. I’ve done a lot of that lately.”
“Does talking to me right now count?”
The corner of his mouth curved up. “What do you think?”
Heat prickled her skin. “I think—”
The door behind them flew open, and Liana’s sister, Aliza, stuck her head out. “There you are. Liana’s about to make her speech. Come on.” Then she glanced between them, smiled knowingly, and slipped back inside.
