Page 98 of Isn't It Obvious?
“It’s not like that,” Ravi protests. “It’s just too much right now.”
“It cyah be like this, Ravi,” Suresh says. “You cyah be giving up your life for mine.”
“It’s not yours. It’s mine, too.”
Suresh’s eyes soften then, like he realizes this is part of what had upset Ravi earlier, and Ravi is grateful for it. “Itisyours, but you can’t give this up. If you like her, you should be with her.”
“Wouldyoudate someone right now?”
“No,” Suresh admits. “But it’s different.”
“How?” Ravi asks, his voice cracking. “How is it different?”
Suresh stares at him for a moment, ready to argue. But he must not have anything to say, because eventually he takes a deep breath and turns his sights back on the screen, controller in hand.
Ravi is grateful for that, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The days go by slowly for Yael, but when they’re over, she can hardly remember anything that happened. She only takes the one sick day from work. Her absence persists from the rest of her life—nights spent useless in bed, an inability to even think about doing a lick of work for the podcast, ignoring a call from Sanaa and telling her she can’t talk about it yet, ignoring calls from Dad and Pops, making excuses to get off the phone when they call back a third time.
She wakes up in a cold sweat the following Saturday morning, nine days of wallowing behind her and only six hours before Charlie’s flight from Hong Kong gets in, and hauls herself out of bed to frantically assess the apartment’s cleanliness.
It’s not as bad as it could be—there are dishes in the sink that she can scrape and load into the dishwasher quickly, and the discarded sweatshirts and socks in the living room are limited, but she still feels a crush of shame.
Sent into overdrive, she starts laundry; vacuums; dusts; scrubs. There’s a streak of pink slime feeding on the soap scum in the caulk between the faux tile wall and the bathtub.Is having Charlie here the only thing that keeps me from living like this?she thinks, and the self-disgust expands until it overflows, pouring out of her in a sob. There are no windows inthe bathroom, so even with the fan on and the door open, the airflow is poor, and the smell of the spray cleaner makes her nostrils burn. It only makes her cry harder.
Ican’ttake care of myself, she thinks, slumping against the bathroom wall.
The sobs turn to hiccups, and Yael catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her eyes are puffy, her face blotchy, and all she can think is how much she hates that she’ll wake up as herself tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
She rinses the cleaner off the tile, then strips out of her pajamas and showers herself off, too.
I’m not doing well, she thinks. When she returns to her room, dried, moisturized, and in a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt, she retrieves her phone from where she’d abandoned it on her bedside table. She chews her lower lip as she types out a message to Charlie:I think I’m having a depressive episode. I don’t need anything from you, I just want you to know what you’re walking into.
Then she peels off the clothing she just put on, climbs between her freshly changed sheets, and closes her eyes.
Charlie finds her like that hours later. “The apartment looks spotless. And you didn’t kill any of my plants,” he says after he nudges her out of her half-conscious state.
“You gave me good watering instructions,” she replies.
“The peperomia is a little sad.”
“Your instructions for that one were bad,” she mumbles, trying to smile.
He tells her that he ordered Thai food and leaves so she can get dressed. She joins him on the couch, curls up into her corner, and listens to him talk about his trip. They don’t talk about her or the podcast or Ravi that night.
But the next day, she tells him everything. And he never says “I told you so,” even though he could. Maybe he should.He asks if she’s told Sanaa yet, and no, she hasn’t. All she’s done is insist over text that she’s okay.
“Usually, I’d be glad you told me first,” Charlie says, “but in this case I’m more upset that you didn’t tell anybody.”
“I told Gina,” Yael protests weakly.
“You told Gina from work? Shit, Sanaa’s going to kill you,” he says.
“I know,” Yael says, and she presses the throw pillow she’s been hugging into her face.
He slides Yael’s phone toward her. “Call her.”
