Page 15 of Isn't It Obvious?
“See you tomorrow!”
“Oh my God,” Yael mumbles.
“Did I interrupt something?” Ravi asks.
“No,” Yael says a touch too forcefully. “That’s just Gina. She teaches art.”
Ravi nods, quiet. Yael can’t help but notice his under-eye circles are darker than they’d been on Tuesday. She’d had to apply a little extra concealer herself this morning. She wonders what’s been keeping him up.
No, she doesn’t wonder that. Yael doesn’t want to know anything about him beyond what he can offer this club.
There’s a moment in which she and Ravi are just looking at each other, and Yael wishes her eyes wouldn’t roam the way they do. Over those lips, set in a flat line, the curve of his shoulders, the way his arms strain against his Pendleton overshirt when he folds them over his chest. She’s not even an arm girl, she doesn’t think. She’s never really noticed them on anybody before. But Ravi’s are…
Eye contact, she thinks, and she guesses he does as well, but a beat later. Long enough for her to know that his eyes were roaming, too. Mostly, she wishes there wasn’t that feeling in her stomach, like a struck match sparking just before it catches light.
Tonight. Tonight Yael really needs to figure out how to tell Charlie about Ravi joining the club.
“I hope you came prepared this time,” she says, and she can feel how silly it is. How she’s baiting him for no real reason. She hadn’t asked Sherine to tell him in advance what they were reading, and even if she had, a day isn’t long enough for most people to finish an entire book.
“I’m not sure I need to be,” he says, his smile sly. “I got by just fine last time.”
“Ravi! You decided to stay?” JQ says excitedly as they walk in, as if to prove his point.
“As long as Ms. Koenig lets me, I’ll be here.”
God, he’s teasing her. Ravi lifts his brows a fraction of an inch, like he’s daring her to call him on it. Probably knowing that she won’t, now that her students are filtering in.
“It’s really up to you,” she says, smiling as genuinely as she can manage. “You’re a welcome member of our club.”
He only hums in response and falls in step behind JQ, heading to the circle of chairs. But as he crosses behind Yael,he bends toward her, his lips mere inches away from her ear. “If you’re trying to smile, it needs some work. You look like you’re baring your teeth before a kill,” he whispers.
And he keeps walking, face impassive, as goose bumps pinch along her neck.
RAVI BROUGHT Anotebook with him to emphasize his preparedness. Under some rough design sketches and jotted notes from a client meeting sit the wordsIdeas for Book Club. Under that, nothing.
He hasn’t really read anything other than design books in ages. And before that, it was almost all science fiction, and not particularly queer. He has the belated thought to google “queer sci-fi novels,” but given that Yael is approaching her chair circle, he doesn’t want to pull out his phone.
“Agenda for today: picking a successor forFelix,” Yael says. The only open seat is directly across the circle from him, but she manages not to make any eye contact as she takes her spot. Maybe he’d gone too far with the teeth-baring thing. But he couldn’t help it. She looked ridiculous, smiling like she’d rather devour him whole. “Ideas start now.”
Ravi swears he sees a few backs straighten, a few bums scoot toward the edges of their seats.
“The Song of Achilles,” a bony kid with cowlicked hair forced into a middle part says. Ravi really can only identify JQ and Zoe by name from Tuesday. “It’s set in ancient Greece, and it’s about Achilles and Patroclus—”
“Yeah, man, we literallyallread it in middle school,” JQ says.
“All ideas are welcome here,” Yael warns.
“Except erotica, apparently,” Zoe mumbles.
“We are definitely going to read adult romance at some point, and maybe even erotic romance! I’m not even saying don’t read it! I just said that erotica is not within the bounds of this club.” Yael huffs, turning back to the student who suggestedThe Song of Achilles. “Anyway, Jackson, JQ does have a point. Let’s try for something that will be new to most people here.”
Jackson folds his arms across his chest. “Haveyouread it?”
“I was a queer high schooler when it came out; I read it three times.”
Now Ravi really itches to pull out his phone, just to see what year it was published. How old Yael is. Admittedly, even he has read this one. Plucked it off the dormitory bookshelf of the first guy he ever slept with in college. The copy had been well-loved, its creased spine making the title only partially legible. The guy let him take it back with him, said he’d read it enough times already.
“Damn, I didn’t realize it came out that long ago.” Another kid whose name escapes Ravi.
