Page 84 of Isn't It Obvious?
Maybe if I just talk to her…
It feels dangerous even to finish the thought, to let himself hope.
He hears a knock at the door, and he sits bolt upright, clicking the side button to turn off his phone screen. “Yes?”
The door creaks open. “Dada?” Mia asks.
“What’s up?”
“Can I come sleep with you?”
His breath hitches. Over the past eight months, she’s slowly started asking him for a lot of things that she’s only ever asked of Suresh, but never this. “Of course. Come here,” he says.
She climbs into bed with him, curling up against his side, and he rubs soothing circles on her back.
“You didn’t want to sleep with Daddy?” he asks.
“He’s sad about Mommy,” she says, “and I don’t want him to know I’m sad, too.”
Tears well in Ravi’s eyes. He rubs Mia’s back until her breathing evens out, until he, too, falls asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On Tuesday, Yael wears a matching set of espresso-brown lace bra and panties to work. They’re slightly less than comfortable under her jeans and sweater, but when she imagines how Ravi might react when he (hopefully) undresses her later tonight, her cheeks heat so much that she has to tuck her chin and take a deep breath, praying none of her students see her face.
She distracts herself from the prospect of seeing Ravi by thinking of tomorrow’s dinner with Jami. She distracts herself from the dinner with Jami by thinking of—and remembering—Ravi. Mostly, she sits behind the checkout counter, hoping for a student to approach so she can distract herself from all of it.
Instead, she gets Gina, who arrives during last period with a finger pointed directly at Yael. “You,” she says, “are sexy-emailing Kevin again.”
“I very much am not,” Yael says, clicking to submit the returns for the day.
Gina hops up to her perch on the counter. “You are sexy-somethingwithsomeone.”
Yael keeps her hand on her mouse and her eyes on her screen. “Also not that.”
“I don’t beeee-lieeeeeve you,” Gina sings. “You’ve been low-key morose since that stopped, and you’re not anymore.”
Yael hums. “Please do not take the fact that I don’t feel like arguing as evidence you’re right.”
“You have a crush. I can feel it.”
Yael gives up and swivels toward Gina. “How’s your crush on the emcee?”
Gina scrunches her nose. “Less fun when we talk about me.”
“Foryou,” Yael says. She glances up at the clock—Ravi will walk up the steps in a few short minutes. “Don’t you have cleanup to do in your classroom?”
Gina lowers herself from the counter. “Whoa, sorry. I’m just playing. I can go.”
“No, no—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just—”Stressed? Horny? A little bit infatuated, for the second time in as many months, with someone I shouldn’t be?“How was your day?”
“You know how I had a student submit charcoal instead of watercolor a while back?” Yael nods. “Well, we’re on to oils, and she submitted charcoal again!”
She launches into a story, and Yael nods along, not breaking her focus on Gina even as the bell rings. Even as an internal countdown until Ravi pushes through the library doors begins.
“I think I might have to, like, preemptively email her mom this time even before grades are posted. Which I hate doing—I teach high school, not elementary school! But she freaked out on me at parent-teacher conferences last time, and even though she ultimately came around, I don’t want to deal with it again. I want peace.”
Yael smiles. “You shouldn’t have been a teacher of a subject parents expect to be an easy A, then.”
