Once we were seated, menus in front of us, Dan asked if I knew what was good there. I shrugged. It was new to me. “If Ada picked it and didn’t tell us what to order, everything is good. But knowing her, she called in an order when she made the reservation.”
“She’s not what I expected when your mother told me where you’d gone.”
“I don’t think Ada is what anyone has ever expected anywhere.”
A waiter arrived, holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Courtesy of Miss Heller,” he said, setting the glasses down and opening the bottle.
Dan smiled at me.
“Told you,” I said.
He tasted the wine and nodded his approval, then the waiter poured mine. I immediately took a long swig. The corners of Dan’s mouth turned down. Good, I thought. He doesn’t like women who drink. This will be easy.
“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to that badly,” he said. I almost choked on the wine. “This was probably stupid. I know that. I just—I needed to try.”
I took a smaller sip of the wine, feeling like the worst person on the planet. He was reminding me that I did like him. It was why I had him meet me outside the sanctuary that day. And if we hadn’t gone crashing through the glass at the back of the ark—well, who knew what might have happened? But I wasn’t the same girl I was before all that. And it wasn’t because of Freddy. I had seen that life didn’t have to look like my parents’。 And that opened up a whole world before me that I never knew existed. I couldn’t go back now.
“It’s not you,” I said eventually, softer. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be mean to you—okay, I am. But it’s because you have to realize, I’m not like all those other girls who must be dying for you to ask them out. I—I want more than getting married and going to temple and having babies at twenty-one.”
“I know that,” Dan said.
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I mean, you told me. But it’s why I like you. You think all those other girls would make out with me in my father’s office?”
I shook my head. “Okay, so you like me for being fast? That’s not really who I am either.”
“No.” He reached over and put a hand on top of mine. I looked at it for a moment, but resisted the urge to yank mine back. “I mean, I like you because you’re different. You’re—with other girls, I don’t know what they’re actually thinking. They say and do all the right things, and I never know what they really want. And you’re the exact opposite. You’re like a tiger. You might destroy me. And I kind of think that might be worth it.”
My head tilted. “Probably a good thing you went with a cat analogy over a dog of my sex, or we’d be having a very different conversation.”
Dan laughed heartily. “This is what I mean though. I don’t know what you’re going to say or do. And I want to—I want to be here to hear it and see it and experience it all. I know we don’t really know each other yet, but I’m saying I want to.”
What excitement do you have to offer me though? I wanted to ask. I didn’t. I understood what he was saying. But he wasn’t going to be able to keep up. And so I made a decision to show him that.
The waiter arrived. “I’ll have the lobster,” I said, handing him the menu, then looking at Dan defiantly. A rabbi’s son would never go for shellfish.
He chewed his bottom lip for a few seconds as he pondered this, the waiter looking at him expectantly. “Will you show me how to eat it if I order the same?”
I inclined my head again. “Whatever would Rabbi Schwartz think?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
I nodded and he ordered the lobster as well. I sipped my wine. This had gotten a little more interesting after all.
CHAPTER FORTY
When the lobsters arrived, Dan hesitated briefly, both of us wearing our ridiculous bibs. “You don’t have to eat it,” I said, cracking a claw open. “But you’re missing out.”
He looked up at me, then his gaze traveled down to my hands. He picked up the claw in front of him and copied my gesture, breaking it open with a satisfying snap. I lifted mine to him in an approximation of a toast, then took a bite. Dan followed, gingerly, unsure what to expect. “It’s—almost sweet,” he said as he finished chewing.
I nodded, taking another bite of claw meat. “Practically melts in your mouth.” He took a second, heartier bite, and I grinned. “We’ll go get some bacon next. Maybe on a cheeseburger.”
Dan looked up at me in horror and I laughed. He swallowed his food and then shrugged. “In for a penny, in for a pound. If you say it’s worth trying, I’ll try it.”
I felt the corners of my eyes crinkling. “Sounds like a challenge.”
“If it gets you to smile, I will dive into the ocean and find one of these myself.”
“You’d have a long way to swim. There are crabs here. I don’t think there are lobsters.”
“Whatever crustaceans there are.”
He was looking at me the way he had in his father’s office. And I didn’t want that. He might have said he liked me because I was wild, but the reality was he still wanted to put me in a cage. And if I fell for sincere eyes and a smile, I was going to be walking into that cage myself while he locked it behind me.
“What happens if I don’t go back to New York?” I asked, leaning back in my seat and crossing my arms.
“Are you thinking about that?”
I wasn’t. The plan was always the summer. Ada was supposed to straighten me out or marry me off. And despite her machinations to get me on this date, she had done neither. It sounded like college was still on the table, and Ada hadn’t offered to extend my visit. But it was a way to make him realize this wouldn’t work.
“Maybe.”
“Would you transfer to Bryn Mawr?”
I studied him carefully to see how much he had gotten out of my mother. I didn’t have the grades for Bryn Mawr. Not by a long shot. But it seemed to be a genuine question. “I have no idea.”
“Just staying with Ada, then?”
“Maybe.”
He shrugged. “It’d be disappointing, but it’s only a two-hour train ride. If you wanted to see me, I could do that on weekends.”
It was the opposite of Freddy’s answer. And I kind of hated him for giving it.
“What about you? What are you going to do in the fall?”
Dan made a wry face. “That’s a contentious question right now. I’m working on convincing my parents that no, I’m not going to rabbinical school.”
“Why not?”
He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Absolutely not.”
He thought for a moment, pushing his plate away. Then he looked up, his blue eyes earnest and kind and . . . some other emotion I couldn’t recognize. “I want to be a photojournalist.”
“A what?”
“Someone who takes pictures for newspapers.” He looked down again, and I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed at the admission or just unsure how I would react. “I know. There’s not a lot of money in that line of work. I understand if it puts you off.”