Chapter Sixteen
Ravi sits on the living room floor atop a few garbage bags torn at the seam and laid flat, cutting white fabric into the shape of dinosaur bones, coating it in glue, and passing it off to Mia to douse in glitter.
Yesterday, while Ravi was … otherwise occupied, Suresh put on a suggested YouTube video posted by the Chicago Field Museum of a young curator sitting in front of their fossilized T.
rex. Mia was transfixed, and upon wakeup this morning demanded that Suresh do her hair like the woman in the video (she was Black and had big curly hair that, while beautiful, isn’t something Mia will ever achieve).
Her devastation was only assuaged by Ravi agreeing to return the living dinosaur costume that hung in her closet and craft a new, sparkly-bones version instead.
Maybe he shouldn’t have given in so easily, but he and Suresh were both so exhausted. And he likes doing this kind of thing with her, anyway.
Mia laughs, and when Ravi looks up, he sees that she’s dumped half the tray of glitter into her lap—inevitable, and the reason for the garbage bag tarp. He laughs along with her, relieved that it’s not tears over the spill, and pulls out his phone to take a picture.
The message to Elle with the attached photo is fully drafted before he realizes that he can’t send it.
One day. It’s been one day.
He has a new email: Jami from Renegade confirming their proposed call time for the Wednesday after next. A much-needed reminder. This thing that Elle has made—that he and Elle are making together—is special. It’s going somewhere, and he isn’t going to stand in the way of it.
WHEN YAEL GETS home, she is a second dose of naproxen in and, as predicted, none of the headache accoutrements faded with the pain. There was no book club today, so Charlie isn’t back yet, and Yael has time to chug something with electrolytes and get a snack in her belly.
By the time Charlie walks through the door, the food and drink have helped only marginally. It would be nice not to feel so physically gross while she does this. It would be nice not to be doing this at all.
“Hey, Yael, you feeling better?” Charlie asks, toeing off his shoes and bending to place them on the rack.
“Can we talk?” she says. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay. Preparing to hate you,” he replies jokingly, rounding their coffee table to join her on the sofa.
Their couch really pushes the size constraints of their living room, but they needed the deeper cushions to accommodate Charlie’s height.
Usually, Yael likes how she can fold herself into the corner of it, but today she sits upright, turning to face him full on.
“This weekend, I answered a SafeRide call for one of the kids in my book club,” Yael says, “but when I got there, he had already called Ravi. And then he threw up on him, so I gave Ravi my Emergency Car Pants, and when he returned them to me after the club yesterday, we sort of…” Collapsed into one another at full force? “Kissed,” she says.
Charlie stares at her blankly. “You kissed,” he says.
“We made out?” she says weakly, the end of her sentence pitching up in a question.
“I’m so, so sorry, Charlie. I know he hurt your feelings, and I did it without thinking.
Which was so fucking selfish. I’m pretty angry at myself, and I understand if you’re angry at me, too.
” Yael swallows, trying not to cry again. Her head pulses.
“Yael,” Charlie says, “is this what you thought I’d hate you over?”
She nods, afraid to say anything aloud. He stares for a beat before starting to laugh. Yael is stunned. “I thought you’d be upset,” she says. “You’re not upset?”
He shakes his head. “You made it sound like you did something terrible,” Charlie says.
“Didn’t I?” She thinks of what he said to her at Gina’s show, how Ravi was more a symptom than a cause. And maybe so, but she never wants to be the finger on his bruise.
“I don’t care who you kiss, even if I’ve kissed them, too. I haven’t even spoken to Ravi since that morning, and anyway, I’ve kinda been talking to my yoga instructor.”
Yael furrows her brow. “Did you start going to a new studio?”
“No,” he says.
“But I thought your instructor was married…”
“He says he and his husband are in the process of separating,” Charlie says, looking at the ground.
“Charlie,” Yael says.
“I know,” he says, making eye contact again. This time when he laughs, she laughs, too.
“You’re really not mad at me?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I would’ve been a little annoyed if you hadn’t made it sound like you murdered someone. This is nothing in comparison.”
“I felt really bad about it. I feel really bad about it,” she says.
“Don’t. Just … be careful,” Charlie says. “You know what he’s like.”
Heat creeps up Yael’s neck, into her cheeks. She rubs at a tense shoulder muscle. “I’m not—I don’t plan—it was just a kiss.”
He stares at her, and maybe it’s in her head, but it feels like he thinks she doth protest too much. “Do what you want. Just be careful,” he repeats.
There’s no point in arguing further. She nods, and he pats her thigh before pushing himself up to standing. “I love you, Charlie.”
“I love you, too, weirdo. I’m gonna go put on sweats. Wanna watch the new F.D Signifier?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Thank you.”
He waves her off, disappearing into his room.
In his absence, the pulsing in her head worsens.
Like if she’s not actively listening to someone, not carefully watching their every facial movement, there’s enough room for a ringing awfulness.
A slowly suffusing sadness, too, that she won’t be able to talk to Kevin about it.
She won’t be talking to Kevin at all about anything other than the podcast.
Yael thinks of the message from Jami earlier today, informing her that she’ll be in Portland in a few weeks for a conference and asking if Yael would like to join her for dinner on Renegade’s dime.
It made her feel like she might actually have a shot here.
Like her sadness is really worth it, because she’s opened a window for herself, even if she never chooses to climb through it.
When Charlie returns in his sleepwear, with two more bowls of parmesan-white-bean soup in hand, she forces a smile and tucks her phone away for the night.