The server looked at him, as if requiring male confirmation, and Judah just raised his eyebrows and lifted his menu.
“Can I get you drinks? Wine, perhaps?”
Ari opened her mouth, shut it, and said, “Water’s fine, thank you.”
He knew she was uncomfortable with the prices, could see it in the way her eyes scanned the menu. He wanted to tell her not to worry and what stupid amounts of money people with way too much of it paid him to sing for a few hours. Instead, he asked the server, “Could you make the lady a Shirley Temple?”
She snorted a surprised laugh, and he couldn’t help grinning, way too pleased with himself for eliciting such a response. He suggested they get actual cocktails off the drink menu, and she conceded, choosing a passion fruit martini alongside his old-fashioned.
“Well?” she asked once the server had left. “I’m waiting.”
“For what?” As if he didn’t know.
“Tell me what you’re looking for in a partner.Besidesnice boobs.”
He folded his arms on the table. “All right, fine. Someone I can talk to. Someone who makes me laugh. Someone who’s passionate about things and kind and likes to have fun, but the kind of fun that doesn’t force me to leave the house more than I already do.”
“In fairness, you do leave the house a lot.”
“I do. It’s terrible.”
“What else?”
The server arrived with their drinks, and Judah waited until he left to keep going. “Someone who keeps Shabbos and a kosher home, obviously.” He took a sip of his drink, relishing the slight burn. “Wants kids. But maybe not five kids.”
“There goes my whole initial vision of you, up in smoke,” she said with a snap of her fingers as she lifted her martini to her lips.
He huffed a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Not disappointed yet,” she said, and he watched the line of her throat as she swallowed the drink. “But that’s the easy stuff. Prettymuch every Modern Orthodox Jew I know wants those things, or already has those things, including your brother.”
“But not you.”
“I never said that.” She plucked a breadstick from the basket between them but didn’t take a bite, and his gaze dropped to her hands as she fiddled and twirled. “I don’t want it rightnow. But I want to want it.” Those beautiful eyes fixed on some faraway point in the room. “I think I will want it someday. With the right person.”
It wasn’t a confession of love and commitment, but it was more than Judah’d dared hope for, and it warmed him like whiskey. He didn’t want to spook her by dwelling on it, though, so he casually returned to their previous conversation instead.
“Makes sense. I also want someone who has her own hobbies and passions, but it’d be nice if she liked music. Maybe even someone who understands what it’s like to have an unconventional job but still want a relatively conventional life.” He looked down at the ice in his glass. “Someone who wants to travel, who’d actually enjoy going where I go, at least some of the time.”
“Ah, yes, a free trip to—where is it you’re going for Sukkot again?”
“Amalfi Coast.”
“Such a hardship.” She shook her head. “What woman could possibly bear it?”
“You’d be surprised,” he murmured. “But I do want someone challenging. Someone who makes me think. Maybe even keeps me humble occasionally.”
“Impossible.”
“I know, but she should at least try.” He spotted the server walking their way again and suggested they actually look at their menus. Once they’d placed their orders—short rib tacos to share as an appetizer, then steak frites for him and duck gnocchi for her—he turned the tables. “What about you?”
She took another drink. “I don’t really know. Which has alwaysbeen my problem. What if you get it wrong? What if you’re so focused on the ways you thought were important to match that you miss the ways you never thought of? What if things seem perfect, and then you change them with a wedding and a family, and it turns out you don’t know how tobebridal and wifely and motherly? And the guy just assumes that everyone can be those things, so he takes for granted that you will be too, and then everything falls apart because you don’t know how to clean a toilet or change a diaper or make a Shabbos lunch for eight?”
His hand reached across the table to squeeze hers before she’d even finished her sentence, startling him at the ease with which he’d touched her in public. But she squeezed back, her face blooming in a pretty blush, and nothing in the world could’ve made him retrieve his hand right then. “Sorry,” she murmured. “That was kind of an absurd overshare. It’s just been on my mind a lot for some reason.”
“I think a lot of the fun of it is learning that stuff together,” he said, aching with how badly he wanted to learn it all with her. There was so much that even a week of sharing a bed couldn’t teach you about a person. “How many people know how to do those things before they get married and have kids?”
“Liana does.” She took back her hand and fiddled with her fork, her pretty lilac nails catching the light. “God, I am going to be so lost without her.”
