Page 81 of Isn't It Obvious?
He knows in his body, in hisbones, that it’s her, even as his brain scrambles to tell him differently.Elle told you she had kissed someone that weekend when you’d kissed Yael that night, he tells himself.
But he’d used the word “recently” when he’d replied to her because he’d felt gross admitting exactly how recently, and she probably felt the same.
You listen to Elle’s voice for hours, every other week, he thinks,you would have recognized it.
But would he? He’s always felt that Elle’s delivery was her impression of a radio voice, and he’s watched Yael change her pitch at will every time she reads aloud at book club.
Elle told you she lived on the East Coast, he thinks, a last-ditch effort.In that first email.
He moves slowly, opening his Gmail app and scrolling through their initial work thread. His mind is catching up to his body, so he knows what he’ll find before he even gets to it. She gave him a deadline in Eastern time, probably because Sanaa—and Ravi’s entire resumé—told her he lived in New York. He’d just assumed.
Elle told him she’d had a hypomanic episode, and that’s why she’d asked Sanaa for help. Yael hadn’t heard him and Charlie because she’d been out for fifteen fucking hours.Because she’d taken her emergency medicine.He’d gotten Elle’s—Yael’s—email the very next day.
Ravi is breathing heavily now, his hand trembling. So many near misses—they would have known immediately if he’d written his full name on his name tag. If she’d told him her real name on that phone call. If he hadn’t had just barely enough self-control to not tell her his. If either of them hadn’t had to whisper!
He looks at the time and, shit, the bus will be at the stop in four minutes. He takes off down the stairs, out the door, toward Burnside.
The bus arrives right as he does, and he climbs on, panting, and nods at the driver, who barely gives him a second look. He pushes his sweaty hair back from his forehead, his heart beating so hard that he worries he’ll choke on it, somehow.
It’s panic, too, that’s making his throat feel tight.What am I going to do?is wrapping around his rib cage.
Because before, he could mostly convince himself that no matter what he thought he felt toward Elle, he didn’t reallyknow her without meeting her. He could pretend that the effect Yael had on him was some dizzyingly intense form of the same physical attraction he’d felt countless times for countless other people.
But not anymore. Not when he understands just how intimately he knows so many versions of her.
Ravi is deeply, painfully in love with this person, and none of the reasons they shouldn’t be together have gone away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It’s only after Yael hangs up with Dad and Pops that she realizes she and Ravi haven’t exchanged numbers. She tries not to worry about what that might mean—he had a family emergency, and she’d also forgotten to ask.
To what end would she be worrying about it, anyway? It’s not what it felt like with Kevin, she doesn’t think. She likes Ravi—she knows that—but alone in the broad light of day it doesn’t feel so all-consuming as it had when she’d been tangled up in him. And she still isn’t sure she’s ready to be dating at all.
You’re rationalizing because you want to keep sleeping with him, a tiny voice inside her head says.
I don’t care, a louder voice says back.
Yael opens her fridge in search of supplies for scrambled eggs. It’s time to stop obsessing. She’ll see Ravi on Tuesday. Even if book club seems far away right now, it isn’t.
Her apartment is so empty without Charlie. Without Ravi. Quiet except for her; endless empty space for her to think. Missing Kevin is especially sharp in moments like this.
Before she knows it, she has her thread with him pulled up, rereading their last messages to one another for the millionth time.I guess this is it, then. Her heart does a confused,guilty squeeze, and she opens her thread with Sanaa to distract herself.
Yael
I was very selfish these past couple days
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
DOES THIS MEAN WHAT I THINK IT DOES???????????????????
Yael
That is a suspiciously fast response. Is this actually Sanaa?
Think quick, what was the most embarrassing thing I did in high school
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
