Chapter Five
“Who’s that?” Gina asks, looking past Yael.
Yael turns, following Gina’s gaze, to see Ravi making his way toward the front steps, hands shoved in his pockets. “That’s the book club volunteer,” she says, frowning.
“Sounds like there’s a story there.…”
Yael groans. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Gina scans Yael’s face, lips pursed. She fiddles with the tie of her gray wrap cardigan.
It’s a B schedule today, which means that Gina doesn’t teach last period, and she usually ends up here, perched on Yael’s side of the library checkout counter, hoping for some gossip. “I think you do,” she says finally.
“Okay, fine, I do! But he’s about to be here, so I can’t.”
“Please, when has Sherine taken less than five minutes to check someone in?”
“I need more than five minutes,” Yael says.
Gina raises an arched brow. “Oh?”
“No, no, not like that. It’s not a long story, or even all that salacious”—Gina’s brow moves a millimeter higher—“I just … I don’t want any chance of him walking in while I’m telling it.
Besides, he wouldn’t be here if someone was a bit more gracious with her time.
” Yael folds her arms across her chest, narrowing her eyes for emphasis.
“But then there wouldn’t be a story for you to tell, and where’s the fun in that?”
Yael pouts. “It’s not too late to change your mi-ind,” she singsongs.
“Ah.” Gina brings her hand to her mouth, faux-apologetic. “I would, Yael. I just really, really don’t want to.”
“The worst. You are the worst,” Yael says.
The bell rings, and Gina slides down from the counter. “That’s my cue. I’m off to do whatever I want with my evening, away from my place of employment. Because I actually balance my work with my play.”
“The club is fun!” Yael protests. She wonders what Gina would say if she knew that Yael was doing the podcast, too.
“I’m sure it is, and I love that for you,” she coos, walking backward toward the door.
Bitch, Yael mouths.
You love it, Gina mouths back, flicking her hair over her shoulder. She makes it to the door at the same time as Ravi, and he holds it open for her to pass through.
“Thank you…?” she prompts.
“Ravi,” he says. “I’m, em, a volunteer here.”
“Is that so?” Gina flashes a smile. “Well, I do hope Ms. Koenig is treating you well.” She finger-waves at Yael.
“Gina,” Yael warns.
“See you tomorrow!”
“Oh my God,” Yael mumbles.
“Did I interrupt something?” Ravi asks.
“No,” Yael says a touch too forcefully. “That’s just Gina. She teaches art.”
Ravi nods, quiet. Yael can’t help but notice his under-eye circles are darker than they’d been on Tuesday. She’d had to apply a little extra concealer herself this morning. She wonders what’s been keeping him up.
No, she doesn’t wonder that. Yael doesn’t want to know anything about him beyond what he can offer this club.
There’s a moment in which she and Ravi are just looking at each other, and Yael wishes her eyes wouldn’t roam the way they do.
Over those lips, set in a flat line, the curve of his shoulders, the way his arms strain against his Pendleton overshirt when he folds them over his chest. She’s not even an arm girl, she doesn’t think.
She’s never really noticed them on anybody before. But Ravi’s are …
Eye contact, she thinks, and she guesses he does as well, but a beat later. Long enough for her to know that his eyes were roaming, too. Mostly, she wishes there wasn’t that feeling in her stomach, like a struck match sparking just before it catches light.
Tonight. Tonight Yael really needs to figure out how to tell Charlie about Ravi joining the club.
“I hope you came prepared this time,” she says, and she can feel how silly it is. How she’s baiting him for no real reason. She hadn’t asked Sherine to tell him in advance what they were reading, and even if she had, a day isn’t long enough for most people to finish an entire book.
“I’m not sure I need to be,” he says, his smile sly. “I got by just fine last time.”
“Ravi! You decided to stay?” JQ says excitedly as they walk in, as if to prove his point.
“As long as Ms. Koenig lets me, I’ll be here.”
God, he’s teasing her. Ravi lifts his brows a fraction of an inch, like he’s daring her to call him on it. Probably knowing that she won’t, now that her students are filtering in.
“It’s really up to you,” she says, smiling as genuinely as she can manage. “You’re a welcome member of our club.”
He only hums in response and falls in step behind JQ, heading to the circle of chairs. But as he crosses behind Yael, he bends toward her, his lips mere inches away from her ear. “If you’re trying to smile, it needs some work. You look like you’re baring your teeth before a kill,” he whispers.
And he keeps walking, face impassive, as goose bumps pinch along her neck.
RAVI brOUGHT A notebook with him to emphasize his preparedness. Under some rough design sketches and jotted notes from a client meeting sit the words Ideas for Book Club. Under that, nothing.
He hasn’t really read anything other than design books in ages. And before that, it was almost all science fiction, and not particularly queer. He has the belated thought to google “queer sci-fi novels,” but given that Yael is approaching her chair circle, he doesn’t want to pull out his phone.
“Agenda for today: picking a successor for Felix,” Yael says.
The only open seat is directly across the circle from him, but she manages not to make any eye contact as she takes her spot.
Maybe he’d gone too far with the teeth-baring thing.
But he couldn’t help it. She looked ridiculous, smiling like she’d rather devour him whole. “Ideas start now.”
Ravi swears he sees a few backs straighten, a few bums scoot toward the edges of their seats.
“The Song of Achilles,” a bony kid with cowlicked hair forced into a middle part says. Ravi really can only identify JQ and Zoe by name from Tuesday. “It’s set in ancient Greece, and it’s about Achilles and Patroclus—”
“Yeah, man, we literally all read it in middle school,” JQ says.
“All ideas are welcome here,” Yael warns.
“Except erotica, apparently,” Zoe mumbles.
“We are definitely going to read adult romance at some point, and maybe even erotic romance! I’m not even saying don’t read it!
I just said that erotica is not within the bounds of this club.
” Yael huffs, turning back to the student who suggested The Song of Achilles.
“Anyway, Jackson, JQ does have a point. Let’s try for something that will be new to most people here. ”
Jackson folds his arms across his chest. “Have you read it?”
“I was a queer high schooler when it came out; I read it three times.”
Now Ravi really itches to pull out his phone, just to see what year it was published.
How old Yael is. Admittedly, even he has read this one.
Plucked it off the dormitory bookshelf of the first guy he ever slept with in college.
The copy had been well-loved, its creased spine making the title only partially legible.
The guy let him take it back with him, said he’d read it enough times already.
“Damn, I didn’t realize it came out that long ago.” Another kid whose name escapes Ravi.
“Again, how old do you all think I am?” Yael takes a deep breath, closing her eyes in exasperation. But Ravi can tell that some of it is for show. That she’s enjoying herself, underneath it all. “Actually, do not answer that.”
“Ravi?” Jackson turns to him, eyes round and hopeful.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, I’ve read that one, too. What do you want to read next, Yael?”
“Yael,” a few murmurs echo.
Ravi clears his throat. She’d told him to call her by her first name. But maybe that offer had been implicitly rescinded once she realized she’d met him before? With the way her gaze settles on him, he can’t be sure.
“What do I want to read next?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not about what I want,” she says.
“Oh, did you not come prepared?” He says it without thinking, and tries his best to bite back a smile. “No ideas?”
The way her eyes change, how her dark irises seem to sparkle under the fluorescent lights as her eyes widen a fraction and then narrow just as quickly, shoots something through him. Probably why he said it. Riling Yael is fun. “I always have ideas. Do you?”
He shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “I want to hear yours,” he says.
She pauses, her gaze softening for a moment, before she seems to recover her resolve. “I’ll pitch mine after everyone else goes, so as not to exert any undue influence.”
Exert any undue influence. Christ, who talks like that?
Another kid—one with an impressive number of earrings—goes next, and then Ravi’s thinking of Yael in her bed, blinking lazily up at him as she informs him that she’s too cloudy to decipher subtext.
Right, yeah. She doesn’t like him, because of Charles. She’s not just having fun when she makes those digs at him; she means it.
And he’s not too keen on her, really, either. He’d tried multiple times to get out of there by honest means, to the point where sneaking out seemed the politest remaining option. She doesn’t know him or his situation and didn’t have any business playing his judge, jury, and executioner.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to go on a second date with someone right now, without knowing how little time and energy he can give. Without thinking the whole time about how pointless it is, because whoever it is will never crack top three on his priority list.
He can feel his mood souring. Why is he here? Yael hasn’t fired him, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay. He certainly doesn’t owe her anything.
Today is probably his last club meeting.
The minutes pass and ideas fly past his ears, and Ravi jots down anything that garners more than a minute of discussion, mumbling something about seeing himself as more of a secretary today when he’s asked to contribute.
When silence settles, he doesn’t bother reminding Yael that she’s promised a suggestion of her own.