Page 11 of Isn't It Obvious?
Fair, I guess. Still not a spy.
Ravi sits on the edge of the guest bed, staring at his phone, but Elle’s reply doesn’t come as immediately as the others had. Oh well. He may as well change into sleepwear and head back out to the living room to play FIFA with headphones on, like he did most nights.
As he stands in front of the nondescript guest room Ikea dresser, pulling a loose T-shirt over his head, the intimacy of that last message crystallizes. With it, embarrassment. Why would he say that to a client?
The conversation has been casual, and this is Elle’s passion project, and also he really only took it on because it sounded genuinely fun—the compensation she can offer isn’t worth it on its own—so maybe it’s not so bad. Or maybe he’s rationalizing and he made a complete ass of himself.
No wonder she hasn’t responded. Christ, maybe he should say something.
He should definitely say something.
He types as quickly as he can, racing against an invisible clock. The end of an unknown grace period for apologies, at which point she’ll text SanaaWhy’d you send me this guy?and he’ll never get to finish the rebrand.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Editor—The Sophomore English Agenda
I’m sorry for my last email. I’m not sure why I said that, and I recognize that it was inappropriate to share so much on a work thread.
Back soon with the updated cover art.
Good enough.
Suresh is right; Ravi needs some friends in Portland. Preferably over the age of four.
He finishes changing, and then when he grabs his phone to go to the living room, he’s surprised to see a new message from Elle.
To:Kevin Kissoon
Subject:Not Work Thread
I took a while to respond because I wanted to think about what I said, not because I’m uncomfortable that you told me. You do have a point about the work thread, though. Unless I’m misreading and you really just don’t want to chat casually at all, in which case you should ignore this. But I already typed the below out so I might as well send it.
I’m doubling down on that being nice of you, even if you feel like you owe him. Maybe “nice” isn’t even the right word. I think it’s more like “unbelievably kind.” I’m sorry to hear about it being recent. Sanaa mentioned that you quit for flexibility, but I had no idea. I had a single parent for the first part of my life, and I think my dad only got through it because we lived so close to my grandparents. We moved when he married my stepdad, and then I think it was okay because Pops was willing and able to coparent. Sometimes I wonder if he got a raw deal there, since he was happily child-free for 44 years prior. This world really isn’t set up for one person to be doing it on their own, and I don’t even think our species is set up to bereared that way, the pressures of capitalism, modernity, etc., notwithstanding.
Anyway, that’s all to say that I know your brother appreciates your contribution (I don’t want to say “sacrifice” even if that may be what it is; the connotation is heavy, and I’ll reserve that choice for you), and I’m sure your niece will, too, when she’s older.
Ravi wipes his hand over his mouth. Shit, what is he even supposed to say to that? He’s relieved, at least, that she hasn’t felt he’s overstepped. But taking care of Mia is not nice of him, not really. And it bothers him that she sees it that way, like he’s taking unearned praise. He sits back down on the bed, fluffs the pillows behind him, and gives up on FIFA entirely.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
It’s not something I’m doing to be nice or kind. Suresh called me to say that Margot had left him. He’d kept it to himself for an entire month before telling me. She’d realized that she never actually wanted marriage or children and she was feeling “suffocated,” so she decided to take over her grandparents’ vineyard in the South of France—I wish I was joking. I quit my job the next day, and I moved in a week after that. I still haven’t decorated my new room. I didn’t tell anyone at work, so Sanaa doesn’t know.
Suresh is nine years older than me, and he was always the smart one. I do fine, but he tested so well that he got a government scholarship that funded him to do seven years of schooling abroad, and not even one of the ones that would’ve required him to come back to the Caribbean. He graduated from MIT in three years, did his PhD in three and a half, got a job in tech, and then funded me to go to NYU for graphicdesign, of all things. My parents wouldn’t have approved of anything in the arts, even if I’d stayed at home.
I guess saying that I owe him is the wrong way to put it. It’s not transactional. I just don’t think he ever really considered doing anything else, and when I got that call, neither did I. I bet that’s what it was like for your stepfather, too. Not a sacrifice at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
The notification doesn’t flash atop Yael’s phone screen because she never closed the Gmail app. There’s just a quiet statement at the bottom of the email, black set against soft yellow, informing her that there’s a new message in this thread. She can feel a smile splitting her face, and she bangs on her and Charlie’s shared wall. “He responded!”
“Jesus, Yael!” Charlie shouts back. This time, a banner with an iMessage preview:It always makes me jump when you do that…Likely followed by a request that she just text him instead.
“Sorry!” she shouts again. Then: “Stopping now!” for good measure.
Yael hits the refresh button, pleased to see a few solid blocks of text this time. She’d retreated from her and Charlie’s dinner-and-YouTube-video-essay time the moment she’d read that first message about why Kevin quit, the one that he had tried to apologize for. It hadn’t seemed like something she should be reading in front of someone else.
