Page 64 of Isn't It Obvious?
Ravi looks at him in disbelief. “Doh make joke.”
Suresh nods. “I don’t want my… issues with Margot to get in the way of Mia knowing her.”
“Yourissues?” Ravi asks, stunned. Suresh still won’t look at him. “You know she left Mia, too, right? She walked out on both of you.”
“Margot is a part of her, too.”
Ravi lets out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, I can see that every time I look at her,” he says, and Suresh winces. “That doh mean you have to get her hopes up about her mother, just for Margot to leave again.”
“If Mia doh want to have a relationship with her later on, she can make that choice herself. Right now, I choose, and I am bringing her with me,” he says calmly. Resolutely. That’s when it becomes clear to Ravi how angryhefeels about this.
Not just about this, even. About what Suresh said to him about family, when it became clear that their dad wouldn’t or couldn’t truly accept Ravi’s queerness. Ravi had ultimately decided to maintain a relationship with their dad, of his own volition. It seemed to him the lesser of two great pains. But Suresh had made him feel judged for even considering cutting off the relationship. It had been so clear that he never saw it as an option, that if Ravi had chosen to stop joining him on trips to Chaguanas over the holidays, Suresh would see it as Ravi’s fault. That in everyone else’s story, he’d be the one whobroke up the family, because their father had never explicitly said Ravi wouldn’t be welcome.
Suresh has never had a parent fail to love him as completely as they should. Even though the circumstances are entirely different, this is something Ravi and Mia share. And right now, Suresh is picking at a scab without even realizing it.
“You think I shouldn’t,” Suresh says.
“No,” Ravi says. “I doh know! But think how painful it could be for her. If she too young to know what Margot did to her now, she will understand eventually.”
“It would be more painful for her not to see her mother.”
“You might be right. I might make the same choice if I were you. But you don’t know that, Suresh. You really don’t,” Ravi says.
“It doh matter what choice you’d make.” Suresh clenches and releases his jaw. “She ismykid,” he says.
“Steups, why yuh stubborn so,” Ravi says. He looks at him for a beat longer, then stands up, walks directly to his room, and shuts the door behind him.
Later, Suresh comes knocking with an apology, but it’s for all the wrong things. Ravi tries to accept it, anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At the following Tuesday’s book club, Yael steels herself to reengage with Ravi. He arrives at the last second, like he has done the past couple of weeks. But when he reaches the circle of chairs and glances her way, Yael offers him an actual smile instead of a short nod followed by quickly averting her eyes.
He looks entirely taken aback, his gaze wandering before snapping to hers. The smile he returns is so hesitant, she feels a sharp pang of guilt. God, no wonder Leo asked if there was something wrong.
The problem with deciding not to avoid Ravi is, well, him. In the past couple weeks, he’s traded his usual T-shirt and button-down combo for sweaters and crew neck sweatshirts that drape so nicely over his shoulders and the planes of his chest that she wonders if the designers used a 3D-printed replica of his upper body as a mannequin. His hair has a lot more texture than when Ravi and Yael first met—maybe because it’s been a while since he cut it, or because there’re more rainy days now and it curls in the persistent mist.
He withdraws that notebook he always has from his bag and drags his thumb against the inside of his bottom lip before turning the page, and even the briefest glimpse of his finger in his mouth is probably a crime in multiple states. For severalseconds, Yael tries to feel disgusted by it. Futile, because it’s his personal notebook, after all, and she knows what those lips feel like against her neck.
They’ll be done withCamp Damascusnext week, and the protagonists have just decided to return to camp, hurtling toward a part that helped it earn N. K. Jemisin’s blurb. Yael can tell several of the students have started skimming or skipping it altogether out of fear, though none want to admit it. And because she’s paying attention to Ravi again, she can tell that Ravi notices this, too. That small, amused smile plays at his lips too many times to count, and he makes increasingly certain eye contact with her, a knowing glint in his eye.
After the club, she sticks around. She’s not yet daring enough to put herself directly in his path by helping with the cleanup, but she has new arrivals to shelve. At the sound of her dragging the step stool, Ravi’s head snaps up.
They look at one another in the pause. She lasersI fucking dare you to say itat him with her eyes, and he laughs and shakes his head, averting his gaze.
“Easier with the stool, yeah?” he asks innocently.
“Well, I guess that answers whether you can read my thoughts,” Yael says.
“Oh, I heard the threat,” he says. “It just didn’t scare me. Not sure anything could after that scene where Pachid broke Rose’s finger.”
“I warned you when we chose the book.”
“Don’t worry, I had someone’s hand to hold during the scary parts, like I said.”
Yael furrows her brow. He has apartner?
“My niece,” he says quickly, after taking in Yael’s expression. “I wouldn’t have, em, if…” He sighs. “I meant my niece.”
