Judah grimaced. “I’m that transparent, huh?”
“I mean, we’ve never hung out alone in our entire lives, and then you call me up to get a drink and immediately ask about my love life. Also, you were literally staring at her my entire engagement party, including during my speech. I don’t think you’re going for mysterious here.”
“Guess not,” Judah muttered. He jammed the heels of his palms in his eyes. “God, I’m pathetic. I’m sorry, we do not have to do this.”
“Oh, yeah, we do,” Gideon said with surprising force. “You called me for a reason, and I’m guessing it’s because you don’t have anyone else you can talk to about this, so we’re gonna talk.”
Judah opened his mouth to respond, then shut it. “It’s… a little embarrassing.”
“Okay, well, first of all, I just told you about falling in love with my fiancée in a total of eight days, so no judgment here. And second of all, I love Ari; she’s practically my family. She was my first real Dead Dads Club bond. Plus, if I repeated anything you told me about her, Liana would probably string me up by my balls. So you know I’m a vault.” He pushed his black, square-framed glasses up on his nose and folded his arms over the table. “Just talk, Judah. No bullshit about oversharing. No judgment. Just do it.”
And after a slow, shaky exhale, Judah did. “I’ve been dating my entire adult life, and it’s been one failure after another. No interest, no attraction, and I couldn’t tell you why. Plenty of them were nice and smart and pretty and wanted to make kosher homes and cute babies, and you’d thinkoneshould’ve clicked, right? But I hated every minute of it.
“And then one day, this infuriating bridesmaid steps on my foot at a wedding and gives me a glare that could ice a grown man to death, and suddenly, I find there’s a girl in my brain who doesn’t blur into all the others. And she isn’t ‘nice’ and she isn’t impressed by me and she isn’t ‘appropriate,’ but she is fiery and blunt and just so…” He squeezed his beer so tightly his knuckles turned white, then dropped his voice. “I can barely breathe around her. I can’t maintain any self-control. I went twenty years without so much as tapping a girl on the shoulder, but Ari glances in my direction and I literally drop to my knees. I can’t even brush my teeth without thinking about her naked.”
Gideon smiled knowingly as he scooped up a handful of peanuts and popped one into his mouth. “Best feeling, isn’t it?”
It was such an unexpected response that Judah barked out a laugh, then groaned. “Yes. No. Yes and no. I mean, being with her… God. It’s amazing. I feel like a different person, free to say what’s on my mind, to be open and curious andmessy. But I’m not supposed to be messy, and I’m definitely not supposed to think with my dick. I’m supposed to be a ‘Nice Jewish Boy,’ filling my head with Torah and keeping a clear head for God and going on shidduch dates with women who want to give me five children and never bare an inch of skin above the knee or below the collarbone.”
“That sounds… exhausting.”
Judah shrugged. “There’s a part of me that wishes I was that guy. I know those guys, and they seem perfectly happy. And I thought Icouldbe that guy, that wanting the life badly enough would somehow make everything gel. But I couldn’t make myself settle—couldn’t make a woman settle formeeither—and I had to recalibrate my whole idea of what my future would look like: that I wasn’t going to be married at twenty-three and have a whole bunch of kids by thirty and live in a brick house in the suburbs.”
Gideon raised an eyebrow. “That was your dream?”
Judah laughed despite himself. “What did I know? Looking around at all my friends from yeshiva and college, it seemed like that’s just what one did. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. And now I’m that stereotypical schmuck who has this whole great-looking life and no one to share it with. Which was bad enough when I didn’t think there was anyone out there I’d everwantto share it with, and everything I was missing was just an abstract idea. But now I know exactly what shape that gap in my life takes.”
“Going from zero to sixty,” Gideon said sympathetically. “It’s jarring, definitely.”
“Feels more like zero to a thousand,” Judah said, his laugh ringing low and bitter in the noisy bar. “I feel… ill-equipped. Like there has to be something in between that’s the right speed for me.But I tried that too, and everything about it made sense in theory, but in practice…”
“You felt the need for speed?”
“This metaphor might be getting away from us.” Judah took a peanut from the bowl and turned it around in his fingers. “I can’t wrap my head around it. I know we don’t make sense. I know it’s a bad idea.”
“Because you don’t like her?”
Judah furrowed his brows. “Of course I like her. We’re here because I like her ridiculous amounts.”
“Because she’s not religious enough?”
“She’s notnotreligious enough, I think. I mean, I feel like the important stuff is there—keeping Shabbos and a kosher home.”
“But you can’t talk to her about real things?”
“On the contrary,” Judah said with a sigh. “I might talk about too much with her. I swear the smell of her shampoo is like a truth serum.”
“I assume your brother doesn’t object?”
“My brother is Ari’s biggest fan,” Judah admitted, then frowned. “I see what you’re doing.”
Gideon’s smile dripped with smugness. “You do, do you?”
“You think I’m being an idiot, same as Akiva.”
“I mean, not to be a dick, but… aren’t you? You’re sitting here telling me how much you like a girl who, by the way, you also find obscenely attractive, and I can’t find a single reason you’re having this conversation with me and not her right now.”
Judah looked down at where his fingers were picking at another peanut shell and took a deep breath. “People have always expected me to be a certain way, and I don’t know what it would change if I stopped being that guy.” Mira’s words came shooting back at him, and he closed his eyes as if to soften the blow. “If I’m no longer that Nice Jewish Boy. I don’t know how to do anything other than this—how tobeanyone other than this. I saw people losingrespect for me in those stupid comments, and it was like watching my livelihood and my reputation all drain away in one shot, and I don’thaveanything else.”
