Chapter Twelve
Yael holds open the door to Stepping Stone Cafe for Ravi.
He reaches around her to take over the job, silently signaling for her to go in ahead of him.
Yael’s eyes flick upward, a half roll, but she doesn’t argue.
As Ravi releases the door, several action figures attached to it by pulleys float upward.
“Anywhere you like,” the person behind the counter grunts. Yael shoots them a cheery smile and steps up to a wood-sectioned booth in the corner.
It’s more diner than café—robin’s-egg blue–paneled walls paired with red booth benches, flannel-backed vinyl tablecloths, and checkerboard linoleum flooring. The action figures fit in with the rest of the art, in that none of it really makes sense.
Ravi is instantly charmed.
He slides onto the bench opposite Yael and gestures at the Christmas ornament hanging overhead. “A little early, no?”
“Or late,” she says, “considering it was definitely up last December. And quite possibly every month since the beginning of time.”
A server with a handlebar mustache and a Pride flag trucker hat appears with two cups of water. “Anything else to drink?”
“Decaf coffee for me, please,” Yael says, and looks to Ravi. “You?”
“I’ll take one as well, thank you,” he says.
Their server disappears without a word.
Yael takes a few gulps of water, and Ravi isn’t totally sure where to look.
The booth is small enough that he’s sure one wrong move would put their knees in contact.
It’s not particularly well lit in here, but suddenly, the prospect of sitting this close to her for an entire meal, when he’s already noticing that the roots at her hair part are more of a dark auburn than a brown, seems like a bad idea. “You like pancakes, right?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says.
“Good.”
The server returns with two steaming mugs, the Stepping Stone logo printed on them above the phrase YOU EAT HERE BECAUSE WE LET YOU. Ravi laughs; Yael purses her lips, but a smile breaks through; and their server does not react at all.
Yael orders something called a “Short Stack” to share, and Ravi marvels that the waiter has managed to say all of four words to them the entire time.
While they wait for the food, they sip their coffee, both reclining in their seats in feigned casualness. At least for Ravi. I am comfortable here with you, his posture says. I’m not worried about our knees brushing, says the lazy space he’s allowed his legs to take up.
“Damn, it’s warm in here,” Yael says, slipping out of the jacket Ravi gave her. She folds it as best she can, and when she’s done setting it down next to her, she stretches her neck to each side, sighing.
“Long day?” Ravi guesses.
“Day, week, year—always,” she answers. And then she does a little wiggle of her shoulders before rolling them back.
If he had to guess—and by that he means he is one hundred percent certain—she doesn’t have a bra on under that dress. He clenches his jaw and lifts his coffee to his lips, trying not to think about it. Makes eye contact with her over the mug, again trying to project all the ease he doesn’t feel.
“So,” he says. “What’s with the bunny shoes?”
She leans back a little to look under the table at them, like What, these? “Ah, I kind of ran out of the house when Leo called. That’s how I ended up outside in slippers and no … jacket.”
Ravi doesn’t think he imagines the brief pause between her last two words, especially with how she blinks in triple time for a moment. He doesn’t fight his smile.
“They’re not bunnies, though,” she continues.
“They’re the size of them.”
She sucks her teeth. “They’re warm! And very chic, some might say.”
“Who, exactly?” he says.
“Me. They’re my favorites, and I will be crushed if I can’t wash the soles off well enough when I get home,” she says.
“Ah,” he says. “And the pants?” He gestures at his lap.
Yael’s eyes narrow. “You’re being very choosy for someone who’d otherwise be covered in puke,” she says.
He pauses halfway through his sip, lifting his free hand in surrender. “I’m very grateful, just curious. You wear color, but not usually…”
She puts down her coffee and props up her chin on the palm of her hand. “My stepdad bought them for me, and he smoked a lot of weed in his twenties, so now they’re my Emergency Car Pants.”
“Emergency Car Pants.”
“Yes, for when my quietest pupils choose to vomit upon my sworn enemies before an arduous journey,” she says.
Ravi laughs, and it’s like Yael’s eyes don’t know what to do with that.
They’re everywhere—on his mouth, his left cheek, his shoulders, his throat.
Back on his eyes, and that’s when he sees that the irises he’d previously thought were almost black have a ring of brown near the pupil when the light hits them just right.
He finds Yael beautiful. Impossibly sexy, too, which he can admit to himself, sitting in the kitschiest, Portlandiest diner in the world at one in the morning, wearing ill-fitting stoner-stepfather pants. There are no rules right now.
And she definitely finds him … something. At the moment, that’s enough for him.
The ease in his body is real now, every muscle relaxing at once. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table.
“We’re sworn enemies?” he asks.
“Most of the time,” Yael says, not moving a millimeter.
The server returns to wordlessly deposit a plate between them of the two largest pancakes Ravi has ever seen, leaving before they can finish saying their thanks.
“It felt like we were on the same side tonight,” he says, watching her cut a questionably large section of the stack, hold it over the rest of the pancakes, and drizzle syrup directly onto it.
“We were. That’s why we’re breaking bread,” she says, and stuffs the entire chunk into her mouth.
They eat in silence for a bit, passing the syrup dispenser back and forth, each taking swipes of the pat of butter.
Ravi had been a little worried when they came out that it’d be a quantity over quality thing, but the pancakes are spongey-soft and a little tangy from buttermilk, and he understands why Yael had been so eager to make the stop.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends on what it is,” Yael says.
“Why did you start the club?”
Yael hums out a note of consideration. “I wish I’d had it,” she says.
RAVI LOOKS AT her for a beat, then nods. Like he expected more.
It’s not that she was being dishonest—she wasn’t. Of course that’s why she did it. But it’s also the shortest possible answer, the absolute least she could give him, and clearly, he knows that.
She takes a deep breath, leaning back against the wall of the booth. Her legs slide forward a bit, and though they aren’t touching, she swears she can feel the heat of Ravi’s bracketing hers. Neither of them moves away. Neither wants to be the first to do so.
“I went to Kennedy as a student,” she says.
“It was different then. Not just the building, which I’m sure you can tell is very new.
But it was way whiter—all of Portland was way whiter, if you can imagine, and the schools on the west side of the city even more so.
And the cool thing was to be a capital-A ally, unless you were on, like, lacrosse, but not necessarily to be actually queer.
There were three gay guys out between my grade and the one above me, and two of them were dating each other.
And one girl was out as a lesbian, and there was one trans guy, though I think a lot of people thought he was just really butch at first, because he took a while to pick a new name.
I was out really early, but people sort of acted like I wasn’t.
When we were reading Fathers and Sons junior year, my English teacher did this whole thing where he’d point at someone and talk about the hypothetical rebellion they’d choose to piss off their parents.
He pointed at me and said, ‘Yael’s going to go home and tell her parents she’s bisexual, just to be contrary,’ having no idea.
I think that basically sums up people’s attitudes toward it. ”
Yael traces the rim of her coffee mug, watching her finger as it goes, and when she looks up, Ravi is watching her carefully, a crease between his brows.
He’s looking at her like he wants to understand.
And maybe it’s the late hour or the gratitude for what he did for Leo, but Yael realizes she desperately wants him to understand her, too.
“I recognize that I probably attract a specific subset of the student body, but with these teenagers, nobody seems to think that anyone is bisexual for attention or that they/them pronouns are confusing, or that it matters if today you feel comfortable in one label and in a month something else fits you better. The kids are alright, at least here, but that doesn’t mean all their parents are.
Or that parts of our government aren’t trying to legislate them out of existence.
“And I … It’s hard, to be pushing thirty and working at the high school I went to.
When it was the only opening in the city, I convinced myself it would be okay, I could treat it as a totally new chapter, but I can’t.
Not unless I do something to change it. So, I guess that’s a very long way to say that it’s healing for me, and I want it to be a safe space for them. ”
Ravi nods slowly, fiddling with the handle of his mug. His lips stretch into a small, satisfied smile. This look of finally, like he’s been waiting for her to say all this, somehow. “Well,” he says. “You’ve done a wonderful job.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
That small smile becomes a grin.