Chapter Eleven #2
“Alex doesn’t get it. He said, ‘Why is it such a problem?’ His dad is religious, too. But his dad is from Portland, and they go to a church that has a gay preacher!” He takes a few shaky breaths, like he’s trying to slow the tears. “My dad is from Honduras, and we’re Catholic! It’s not the same!”
Ravi closes his eyes briefly, trying to reach for what to say.
This isn’t exactly what happened to him, not quite the tipping point that pushed him to come out to his family.
But it could’ve been. He can still picture the look on Cole’s face when he’d said, You’re out, right?
and Ravi had replied with, Sort of. “You’re right,” he murmurs. “It’s not the same.”
“He’s not—” Leo hiccups. “My dad’s not … I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything to me. But I know he’s uncomfortable with it, and I just can’t do it yet. Not until I’m sure it would be okay.”
A taped-over portion of Ravi’s heart tears open a little. “You can’t let anybody rush you. This is about you, on your own terms. I’m sorry that Alex broke up with you, but I also know you can’t be with someone who refuses to understand you.”
Leo lifts his head. “Have you told your parents?”
Ravi nods.
“And it went okay?” he asks, those very drunk puppy-dog eyes full of hope.
“It didn’t go as badly as I feared, or as well as I hoped. I think that’s true for a lot of people.”
Leo deflates a little bit. “Do you think that will be true for me?”
Ravi wishes he could tell him that everything will be okay, that he’ll be welcomed with open arms. But he doesn’t know Leo’s family, and even if he did, sometimes people surprise you in the worst kind of way. “I don’t know. Nobody can tell you for sure before it happens.”
Leo deflates further. “How did you decide to do it, then? If you didn’t know?”
“I think, at some point, it felt better to me to have them know, no matter what happened,” he says.
That’s not quite true, though. It was more like there was something eating at him, slowly but surely, and there was only one way he could make it stop.
“Or maybe it just felt too awful for them not to know.”
“Okay,” Leo says.
“Hey, guys,” Yael says softly, the car slowing to a stop. “We’re here.”
“Leo, you need to do what’s right for you. I can’t tell you what that is,” Ravi says, “but I can listen, okay?” He waits for Leo’s nod, then presses the button to release his seat belt. “Alright, let’s get you to the house.”
A LIGHT INSIDE flicks on as they approach, and Yael gives Leo a sidelong glance. He’s not fooling anybody in this state. At the door, she helps him unlock it and waits for the sound of his footsteps inside to fade away before turning back to the car.
She finds Ravi leaning against her car’s front passenger door, one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded. “He’ll be in a lot of trouble,” he says.
“Yeah, probably.”
“You don’t feel a touch of guilt, delivering him to his sentencing?”
Yael shrugs. “My job as a SafeRide is to get them home in one piece, no questions asked. The rest is up to their parents.”
Ravi looks at her for a long moment, and the glint in his eyes sends a shiver down her spine.
She is suddenly very aware of the fact that she doesn’t have a bra on under what was the most accessible item in her closet—her favorite loose cotton jersey dress that now seems quite thin to her.
She’d cross her arms over her ribs for warmth, but that would pull the fabric taut, which would be much, much worse.
“I didn’t know you could be so ruthless with anyone but me,” he says.
She balks at the suggestion. “I’m not being ruthless,” she sputters.
“That’s what the deal is! And it’s good, you know.
We haven’t had a drunk-driving accident since the program started.
When kids are afraid to get in trouble, they do stupid, dangerous things.
The point is to delay the trouble long enough that they won’t be stupid, not to get them off scot-free. ”
And, God, he laughs. Incredibly frustrating.
A breeze cuts right through the weave of her dress, and this time Yael has to use all her mental fortitude not to wrap her arms around herself.
“Here,” Ravi says, pulling off his shearling-lined denim jacket.
Yael lifts her chin. “I’m fine.”
“Sure, except that you’re cold.”
“I don’t need your coat,” she says.
“Just take it, will you? Christ,” he says. He thrusts it at her before getting into the car and shutting the door loudly behind him, and she’s surprised enough to slip it on.
Mistake. It smells like him, fresh and warm.
But he’s looking at her through the car window expectantly, and ripping the jacket off and throwing it back at him like she wants to do would make her look petty and ridiculous.
She takes deep, careful breaths on the walk to the driver’s side, and by the time she climbs in, she’s pretty sure she’s projecting her desired air of normalcy.
“Where do you live?”
“Laurelhurst,” he says. “It’s across the river—”
“I know where Laurelhurst is,” she interrupts, starting the car and pulling onto the street.
Ravi sighs loudly. “I’m just saying you don’t need to drive me all the way there if it’s too far.”
“Nowhere in Portland is too far away at this time of night,” she says.
“You could just let me out back at your place; I already know the bus route home.” Yael stiffens as soon as he says it, and he must be watching her carefully enough to notice. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up,” he mutters.
It’s good that you did, she thinks, trying not to notice how the heat of him still clings to the coat, luxurious against the goose bumps on her skin.
Trying not to decipher how much of the sandalwood and citrus she inhales comes from his jacket versus from him, in the passenger seat next to her.
“It’s fine,” she says. I needed the reminder.
She thinks about pulling up a playlist on her phone, but something feels so intimate about it. Like, Here, this is what I like to listen to, you’re in my space, we’re somehow wearing one another’s clothing, and now you get this part of me, too.
It takes less than a minute of silence for Yael’s curiosity to get the better of her. “So, is this what Leo talks to you about after book club?” she asks. She tries to sound bored, like it doesn’t really matter to her if he’s willing to share.
Ravi’s eyes on her feel like a heat gun on shrink tubing. It takes everything in her not to wilt. “Yes,” he says slowly, “only I wasn’t sure until now.”
“Ah,” she says.
“I think he could tell … I don’t know.” Yael sneaks a glance and sees that Ravi is rubbing at the crease in his brow. “I think he could tell that coming out for me was different than for a lot of the kids around him. That maybe it was more like his situation. He was probably right.”
Yael swallows the lump in her throat. It always makes her feel claustrophobic with a specific breed of sadness, or maybe grief, seeing how it is for so many people.
Not only for those who are outright rejected or worse, but also for the Leos and Ravis, who have to settle for not what I feared, but not what I hoped.
She thinks of Kevin, how he said it was easier for him to live so far away from home, and suddenly she is holding back tears.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says.
“You didn’t,” Yael says, and her cheeks may not be wet yet, but anyone can hear it in her voice. “I just really, really hate this world sometimes.” Fuck, now her cheeks are wet.
“Yeah, me too,” he says.
She wipes at her tears with her sleeve. Then, remembering that it is not, in fact, her sleeve, glances down as quickly as she can to check that she hasn’t smeared mascara all over it.
She’d been in her pajamas, about to wash her face, when Leo called.
“I’m really glad you’re doing the club,” she says earnestly.
“Yeah, me too,” Ravi says again. There’s a short pause, and then he laughs through his nose.
Yael sneaks a look at him, and that incisor is on display, punctuated by his lone dimple. “I mean it,” she says, but she finds herself laughing, too.
Cornell Road finally spits them out of Forest Park, and an idea strikes. “You hungry?” she asks.
“It’s after midnight,” he says.
“I know a place.” They reach a stop sign, and she turns to meet his gaze. It flicks over her every feature, like he’s looking for some sort of trick but there’s none to be found. “Come on, I need to know which way to signal,” she says.
“Alright, yeah. I could eat.”
“Good,” Yael says, signaling left. “Because I could really fuck up a mancake right now.”
“A pancake?”
Yael shakes her head, grinning. “No.”