Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Gideon laughed. “Yeah, I definitely got lucky,” he said, smiling fondly as he tapped his fingers against the amber glass.
“I left an entire life behind in the hopes that someone like Liana existed, even conceptually, and then I met her someplace I never should’ve been.
Makes it easy to believe in love, and fate, and even God. ”
“You do make it sound easy,” Judah said wistfully. “Or clear, at least.” He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the fans whirring like propellers from the ceiling of the bar. “The girl who entirely unmoors you is probably not your future. Noted.”
“I think it’s probably a little more complex than that.” Gideon grinned as he lifted his bottle to his lips. “Arielle Becker throwing you off your game is an entirely different situation.”
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 think one should’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 and messy.
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 I could be 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 for me either—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 ever want to 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 not not religious 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 to be anyone other than this.
I saw people losing respect 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’t have anything else. ”
His voice nearly cracked on the last words, and he ducked his head, cheeks filling with heat as he scraped his hand over his jaw.
This might’ve been worse than the conversation in the car with Arielle.
It was neck and neck, surely. But Gideon just nodded patiently and signaled the waiter for another round.
“That obvious I need another drink, huh?” Judah muttered.
“It’s a lot,” Gideon said, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a grin, “but I get it. I’ve been there.
Turning your identity upside down isn’t easy.
Doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. But it’s a lot to think about.
And I didn’t have the pressure of my financial future riding on it.
But—and I know I’m not exactly an industry expert here—I’m not sure yours is either.
I saw your interview in Noted. I’ve seen so many of your old performances against my will.
I think you have more power and fame than you realize, and you haven’t quite figured out how to use it.
But maybe it isn’t the worst thing to push yourself to try. ”
Judah gave a brief smile to the server who placed fresh bottles in front of them, then cringed behind his drink when he saw a glint of recognition spark in her eyes. Thankfully, she walked away without a word, and Gideon smirked, as if evidence of his hypothesis had just been handed to them.
“I cannot confirm or deny whether you have a point there,” Judah said after a long drink, “but it’s not only that.
” In for a penny, in for a pound. “When I said dating didn’t work for me, that was kind of …
an understatement.” The rest came out in a rushed mumble, fully buried in the din of the bar.
“Sorry, what was that?”
Judah huffed out a breath and took another quick sip, as if it’d help lubricate the words.
“I’ve never been sexually attracted to anyone else.
I don’t know how to be certain if I’ve really fallen as hard for her as I think I have, or if this whole …
wild animal magnetism thing is screwing with my head.
And part of me is afraid I’m fooling myself and sacrificing my whole life for something I’ve built up in my own imagination. ”
“Oh. Wow. Okay, that’s definitely another wrinkle.”
“Don’t I know it.” Judah snorted. “You know, I always assumed guys were just lying to sound cool when they talked about how great fooling around was.”
“You thought literally every single guy you know was lying?”
“Shut up.” Judah threw a peanut at him, and Gideon laughed.
“Judah. First of all, I need you to understand that having ‘a whole wild animal magnetism thing’ with someone is kind of a big deal, even for those of us who are nowhere near the asexual spectrum. Even when Meredith and I were good and the sex was good, I wouldn’t have described it like that.”
The asexual spectrum. It was a familiar phrase from a run of late-night Google searches in the weeks after he’d first talked to Nate, but he’d never dug too much.
It was the kind of thing he’d needed to talk about in person, and he hadn’t known how—hadn’t thought he had anyone to do it with.
Anyway, he wasn’t sure where on it he could’ve possibly stood now.
Was there a word for “There is exactly one person in the world who sets my libido on fire, and if things don’t work out with her, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel that way again”?
“I—”
“Second of all, it’s pretty clear to me you’re fucking crazy about her, and I know that Orthodoxy’s emphasis on being shomer negiah and virginity can be confusing as hell, and that it can be difficult to understand what a physical connection can mean when it’s ‘forbidden’ to have one, but you don’t look at her like a guy who’s just thinking about a good blow job, and you don’t talk about her that way either. ”
Judah exhaled sharply. “Of course not.”
“Third of all, have you ever thought about what it means that you feel like you can be this completely different person with her? That you feel safe enough with her to be that guy even when everyone else expects or wants you to be somebody else? That it isn’t ‘thinking with your dick’ but not having to think nearly as hard as you usually do because being with her allows you to breathe and be yourself? ”
Judah screwed up his face and forced himself to look up at Gideon. “You … may be making some good points.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “No shit.”
“Okay, so I have feelings for her.” The words stuck on his tongue, but it didn’t make them any less true.
“But she clearly doesn’t feel the same way.
” Gideon opened his mouth, no doubt to call him an idiot again, and Judah amended his statement before he could.
“Or she does, but she thinks I’m delusional for thinking it’s worth trying. ”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re the one deluding yourself.” Gideon drained the rest of his bottle, rested it on the table, and looked up at Judah. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
Gideon snorted. “You know where. Now c’mon. We have to make a pit stop first.”