Page 32 of Isn't It Obvious?
She lets out a tiny, frustrated groan, and he feels it in his chest. “This has to be some sort of test,” she says, stepping down from her chair and plucking another title from the half-filled cart.
“What?” he demands, following her to ground level.
“You,” she says. “You know how many queer faculty there are here? Enough that when I came up with this club, I didn’t even think I’d need a volunteer. And then it took me weeks to find one, and it’s you.”
“This again?”
Yael’s eyes cut skyward, then back to him. “Well, you haven’t exactly improved, so…”
Ravi laughs through his nose. “What have I done?” She makes a sound of pure disbelief. “No, I’m not just asking about Charles,” Ravi says. “What have I doneherethat’s so bad?”
“Itisjust aboutCharles, except that’s not a ‘just’ to me!” she says. “That’s more than enough.”
He takes a half stride toward her, making the space between them small once again. Exactly as before, all her points pull up toward him. He lets his eyes trail up her face, searching for a tell. “You’re lying,” he says. “There’s something else.”
“You know nothing about me,” Yael replies.
“I know this much,” Ravi counters.
A bared-teeth smile. “You are unbelievably frustrating,” she says.
He swallows. “And how exactly do you think I’d describe you?”
Ravi holds her angry gaze until he can’t bear it anymore, and then,fuck, he breaks first. He backs away, shaking hishead as he goes, and practically rips his chore coat from the chair where he left it.
“If you’re going to keep doing that,” Ravi says without turning to look at Yael, “at least wait until tomorrow, when someone will be here to make sure you don’t break your neck.”
He doesn’t wait for her response.
CHAPTER NINE
Yael walks home, even though it’s gray and raining again. Just spitting, but she’s essentially resigning herself to recondition her hair tomorrow morning, because there’s no way she’s getting a third day of curl definition after this.
She stayed behind for fifteen minutes after Ravi left, intending to finish shelving out of spite. But even when she switched chairs, she couldn’t quite steady herself on her toes.
She couldn’t quite steady her breathing, either, and that’s why she forced herself out into the nearly twenty blocks of fresh air.
Absently, she curls the fingers of her right hand into the left sleeve of her raincoat, dragging them lightly over the pulse point of her wrist.
God, is she really that touch-starved? All this over the barest moment of hand-to-arm contact?
Except it’s not only that, not really. She can feel Ravi’s eyes on her mouth, as warm as his fingers were. The smell of him—bright and smooth, not unlike her favorite candle. Sandalwood and citrus.
Yael tries to blot him from her mind for the rest of the way home. She looks at the masses of wet leaves collecting at street corners, listens carefully to the sounds of cars andpeople that bracket her from Twenty-First and Twenty-Third Streets.
It doesn’t really work, but at least Charlie has his drinks with Shane tonight, which will probably last to her bedtime and beyond. Yael feels like her thoughts are written on her face in neon lights, and she doesn’t think she can face Charlie right now. She tucks herself into a quiet apartment, hangs up her outerwear, and switches to her slippers, then goes to put on some tea.
There’s food to cook, but there are also leftovers, and tonight Yael is definitely on the path of least resistance.Lord of the Flieswaits for her on the coffee table, three-quarters read and sticky-tabbed to oblivion, and she turns on a ContraPoints video that she’s already seen.
She manages a blissful twenty minutes thinking of nothing but the philosophical and political ponderance of shame unfolding on the screen in front of her before reaching for her phone.
The first notification is a message from Kevin. Yael smiles into her sip of tea. If she can’t abate the feeling in her belly, well, she may as well give it a new target.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
Looks like you’re number one in Books now. Did you do anything to celebrate?
