The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)

by Rosie Danan

the idea of “a porn star walks into a synagogue” had always been better suited to a punch line than real life.

“Yes. Believe it or not, even rabbis understand dick jokes,”

If you don’t know what you want, you shouldn’t be dating.

“Now, that advice may sound harsh. I’m sure some of you are saying to yourselves, ‘Isn’t dating how I figure out what I like?’ and you’re right. It is. But your efforts will go further faster if you first do the work of asking yourself, and being honest about, what you’re prepared to give and receive in a relationship with another person.”

“I, for example, consistently fall for people I know I can’t have, as a way of avoiding opening myself up to love.”

You only get one chance to make a bad first impression

Feel free to continue to apply social lubricant as necessary.”

“I take myself too seriously. I’m indecisive. I’m not good at saying no to people. I’m irredeemably clumsy.”

The dizzy, light-headed feeling of falling for someone. The way you catch yourself thinking about them at all hours of the day and night. Finding excuses to spend time with them.”

“I forgot that love is essential. That even in its absence, you occupy yourself with the lack of it.”

“But I’m more obsessed with you.”

“I feel like I’m falling,” she told him, her eyes wild with an emotion that might have been fear. “Not like in a romantic, greeting-card way. I mean falling like the ground is disintegrating under my feet.”

“I think I could be good at loving you,”

“I want to date you, specifically.”

“All of it. All of you.”

He was probably too busy thinking about world peace or the capacity for human suffering or something else equally righteous while she sat here shimmering like a horny disco ball.

The first time we met, he said my name like he’d known me his whole life.

Like I was the dawn, driving the light, inviting a new day.