Chapter Eighteen
At the following Tuesday’s book club, Yael steels herself to reengage with Ravi.
He arrives at the last second, like he has done the past couple of weeks.
But when he reaches the circle of chairs and glances her way, Yael offers him an actual smile instead of a short nod followed by quickly averting her eyes.
He looks entirely taken aback, his gaze wandering before snapping to hers. The smile he returns is so hesitant, she feels a sharp pang of guilt. God, no wonder Leo asked if there was something wrong.
He withdraws that notebook he always has from his bag and drags his thumb against the inside of his bottom lip before turning the page, and even the briefest glimpse of his finger in his mouth is probably a crime in multiple states.
For several seconds, Yael tries to feel disgusted by it.
Futile, because it’s his personal notebook, after all, and she knows what those lips feel like against her neck.
They’ll be done with Camp Damascus next week, and the protagonists have just decided to return to camp, hurtling toward a part that helped it earn N.
K. Jemisin’s blurb. Yael can tell several of the students have started skimming or skipping it altogether out of fear, though none want to admit it.
And because she’s paying attention to Ravi again, she can tell that Ravi notices this, too.
That small, amused smile plays at his lips too many times to count, and he makes increasingly certain eye contact with her, a knowing glint in his eye.
After the club, she sticks around. She’s not yet daring enough to put herself directly in his path by helping with the cleanup, but she has new arrivals to shelve. At the sound of her dragging the step stool, Ravi’s head snaps up.
They look at one another in the pause. She lasers I fucking dare you to say it at him with her eyes, and he laughs and shakes his head, averting his gaze.
“Easier with the stool, yeah?” he asks innocently.
“Well, I guess that answers whether you can read my thoughts,” Yael says.
“Oh, I heard the threat,” he says. “It just didn’t scare me. Not sure anything could after that scene where Pachid broke Rose’s finger.”
“I warned you when we chose the book.”
“Don’t worry, I had someone’s hand to hold during the scary parts, like I said.”
Yael furrows her brow. He has a partner?
“My niece,” he says quickly, after taking in Yael’s expression. “I wouldn’t have, em, if…” He sighs. “I meant my niece.”
“Oh,” she says. Stupidly, she thinks of Kevin and Mia. It’s like a fingernail under the edge of a fresh scab, so she changes the subject. “I still have to get on my tiptoes to reach the top shelf.”
He frowns for a moment, a crease cutting between his brows, as though lost by her segue. When he gets there, he rubs his hand over his chin, chuckling. “You’re still arguing about this?”
“It’s true,” she says, and she grabs a book to demonstrate.
“Ah,” Ravi says. “But, as you can see, the step stool isn’t about to topple over.”
“The chair wasn’t, either,” Yael says, stubborn.
“The wobbling begged to differ.”
She steps down, pretending to go for one of the chairs. “I’ll show you.”
“Please don’t,” Ravi says, stepping toward her. The look on his face is so stern, she can’t help but laugh.
“I’m joking,” she says.
His shoulders sag in relief. “Good.”
Yael cocks her head to the side, observing him. “You seem to care a lot about this.”
He narrows his eyes. “Am I meant to wish you bodily harm?”
“Last week, Leo asked me if there was something wrong between us,” she says. Another non sequitur, but this time Ravi follows along just fine. “Is there?”
He gives her a long look, eventually breaking eye contact for one quick sweep of his gaze over her body, and she clenches her thighs to stay stable. “You tell me,” he says. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“So have you,” Yael counters.
“So have I,” he agrees. “I thought you’d want me to.”
I want a lot of things, and that isn’t one of them, she thinks. “I don’t want there to be anything wrong between us,” she says.
“There isn’t,” Ravi says simply.
“You’re good for this club,” Yael finds herself saying without really meaning to.
He smiles. “See you Thursday, Yael,” he says.
Devastating.
SURESH SHAKES RAVI awake before his alarm goes off—he wasn’t supposed to be on morning duty today. Sleepily, he props himself up on one arm. “Hmm?”
“Mia have pink eye.”
“Daddy, it’s itchy!” she shrieks, and that’s when Ravi locates her at the foot of the bed. One of her eyes is puffy and bloodshot.
“I know, sweetie, but you can’t touch it.”
Ravi grimaces sympathetically. “Need me to take her to urgent care?”
“I called the nurse on call at her normal doctor; they can fit her in around ten thirty. I can drive back to take her, but she not allowed at day care until five days after she starts the antibiotics. You could watch her?”
“This weekend? Of course.”
“No, just today,” Suresh says.
Ravi pushes a quick breath through his nose. “She not allowed at preschool, but you’ll take her to wine country?”
Suresh’s face tenses. “I cyah exactly reschedule this.”
He looks like he’s ready to argue if it comes to that, and Ravi doesn’t have the energy. He takes a deep breath and says, “Doh worry about the doctor. I’ll take her myself.”
Suresh blinks. “You’re sure?” Ravi nods. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll call a Lyft and leave you the car.”
“Can you stick around until I get myself ready?”
“Of course. Thank you,” Suresh says again.
Ravi waves him off, and Suresh tugs Mia out of the room with him.
He looks at his phone. No client meetings today, just the call with Jami from Renegade at eleven.
He sends her a message asking to reschedule for Wednesday next week, grabs his clothing for the day, and heads down the hall to shower as quickly as he can.
Fifteen minutes later, he relieves Suresh of Mia supervision duty, and Suresh expresses his gratitude yet again. The moment the door closes behind him, Mia reaches for her eye.
“No, Mia!” Ravi lunges for her, but it’s too late. “Don’t touch anything else. Let’s go wash our hands, okay?”
She nods, tears welling. “But it’s so itchy. And it hurts.”
“I know. We’re going to get something from the doctor that will help, but until then, you have to be really brave.”
Mia sniffles but lets Ravi lead her to the bathroom.
He pulls out the stool for her with his foot and nudges on the faucet with his elbow, afraid to touch anything since his hand was in hers.
They scrub together, singing through the ABCs twice, and then he parks her on the toilet while he googles what he can do to make her more comfortable for the next couple hours and if there’s any possible way to make a four-year-old stop touching her face.
He runs a washcloth under hot water to wipe away the crust from her lashes, then a cold one to soothe some of the itch. It seems to help with the swelling, too, and the skin around Mia’s eye calms to something approximating its usual hue.
They play Connect Four. Mostly to keep Mia’s hands occupied and directly in his line of sight.
“Dada, are you coming to see Mommy with me?” Mia asks after she drops her sixth token right into the trap Ravi set for her.
Ravi tilts his head, observing her. “Do you want me to?”
“Your turn,” she says.
He drops his token for the kill, and he watches her eyes scan across the diagonal, counting.
She pouts, reaching for the slider. “Again?”
“Sure,” Ravi says. “Do you want me to come with you and Daddy?” He doesn’t particularly want to see Margot, but if she wants him there, he will be.
She only shrugs. “Just asking,” she says, and begins the process of dividing up the tokens into red and blue piles.
Ravi watches for another few moments, but it seems like she really was just asking.
She doesn’t bring it up again for the rest of the game.
He feels like he’s holding his breath the whole day, waiting for her to break down and say she doesn’t want to see Margot, or that she misses her, or that Ravi should come, or anything at all.
But she never does. She cries at the pediatrician but eventually lets Dr. Hannah administer the first dose of antibiotic eye drops, and then all is well when they stop at a Ben & Jerry’s (a very good prize for a very brave girl) on the way home.
Maybe he’s projecting, being so worried about how this will be for her.
She’s at such an elastic age—maybe this can just be her normal, and she’ll never know any different.
How much time has Mia had with Margot, really?
In the year before she left for good, she’d often been gone for weeks at a time to “line up a buyer” for the vineyard.
Her absence has been the only constant since before Mia turned three.
Mia lives with two people who love her and care for her. She has enough of a community of kids her age to be at a birthday party practically every other weekend. Margot can be a once-a-year family bonus. The cherry on top of her warm brownie sundae—not something fundamentally missing from her life.
Ravi spends the afternoon and evening convincing himself of this. And when Suresh finds him after putting Mia to bed to talk about their schedule for driving out tomorrow, Ravi is able to wish them a nice visit sincerely.
By the time he goes to sleep, Ravi is actually looking forward to a weekend alone.