Chapter Twenty #2
The waves slow, then stop, and he withdraws his hand and rests his forehead against her stomach, trying to catch his breath. Yael grips his shoulder like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Ravi starts to stand, but she whines, shaking her head.
He laughs. “I’ve got you; promise,” he says, keeping a steadying hand at her hip while he gets to his feet.
Yael slumps against him. “I need a second before we do anything else,” she says.
He kisses her shoulder. “We don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to,” he says.
She pulls back, frowning. “That’s not how this works. You don’t just get to be the one who’s doing the fucking,” she says.
His grin spreads slowly. “Are you gonna fuck me, Yael?” he murmurs.
In answer, she undoes his fly and pushes down his boxer briefs, wrapping her fist around him for one smooth stroke.
The breath he releases is stuttering. He’s painfully close already, dizzy with want.
She watches the motion of her hand at first, but when he twitches in her grip, her eyes flick to his.
Yael is unreal like this. Maybe the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
Absently, he lifts his hand, pressing a finger into that crease in her bottom lip.
She sucks it into her mouth, her tongue swirling over his fingertip, and he somehow feels it everywhere.
He runs that hand down her throat to the valley between her breasts and kisses her.
Her orgasm is still on his tongue, and tasting her all at once like this, her hand moving in maddening strokes, sends him over the edge.
He comes apart, groaning into her mouth, making a mess of her bunched-up skirt.
You are going to destroy me, he thinks, leaning his forehead into her shoulder as he waits for his heart rate to come down.
RAVI’S HAND ON Yael’s hip stays firm as his breathing slows, and she’s glad for it. Her legs have felt weak and useless for minutes now, and she doesn’t think she could stay perched against the couch on her own. Paradoxically, it feels like she’s holding him up, too.
A breathy laugh cascades over her shoulder, and Ravi lifts his head, the hand on her chest coming to rest on her other hip. “You taste,” he says, “so fucking good to me.”
Two blooms of heat unfold at his words, one from her core and another, terrifyingly, from her chest. She tries to focus on the first. “You smell,” she says, “so fucking good to me.” With the hair at his temples sweaty and curling, his lips kiss-bruised and glistening, his chest on display and his shoulders relaxed, he looks even better.
She feels sated, languorous, glowing, and yet a seed of hunger germinates, ready to sprout at any moment.
“I’m sorry about your skirt,” he says.
“I’m not,” she says. She hadn’t even considered it. “It’s washable. Let me just put it in before it … dries.”
Yael winces, feeling like her inelegance has ruined the fragile moment they were in, where they’d just wrung pleasure out of one another and nothing else mattered.
But Ravi doesn’t say anything. His expression doesn’t even change—that same easy, satisfied smile as he steps back.
One hand hovers at her waist as if to check for stability as she pushes off the edge of the couch, dropping her heels to the ground.
Ravi tucks himself into his boxer briefs but doesn’t fasten his jeans. He watches as she undoes the clasp at her waist and drags the zipper down the side of her skirt. She steps out of it and wads it up, and when she adjusts her underpants, Ravi’s dimple and incisor make an appearance.
Yael rolls her eyes at him, and he laughs, pulling her in for a kiss. He tips her head back, and she hates that she sighs at the first trace of his tongue along her bottom lip.
“So responsive,” he says when they part.
“You’re so smug,” she says.
Ravi shakes his head. “Pleased with myself.”
“Is there a difference?” she asks, crossing the room to the cramped closet that hides the washer and dryer. God, they barely made it five feet into the apartment.
“In connotation,” he says. “I’m pleased with you, too.”
“Are you hungry?” Yael asks. She wonders if he can hear the rest of it—that she wants him to stay, that she’d like to do this again, maybe on a different surface, maybe with him inside her, maybe with him in her mouth. She buzzes under his gaze.
“Very,” he says.
“I’m going to start this and go pee,” she says.
“Make yourself comfortable.” She adds the detergent and shoves her skirt in the washer.
Then, after a moment of hesitation, she steps out of her underpants and shoves those in, too, not missing the “Christ” he mutters under his breath as she hits start.
Quickly, she tucks herself in her bedroom, not yet comfortable being so bare in front of Ravi.
It’s tidy enough; The Catcher in the Rye is on her reading chair, left sticky-tabbed for the next Sophomore English Agenda episode and drowning under her favorite blanket, and there are three books under a random assortment of other clutter on her nightstand but no dirty socks on the ground or unmentionables hanging out of her drawers.
She hears a flush from the hallway bathroom and, right, he doesn’t have to ask her where it is, because he’s been here before.
It’s okay, she reminds herself. Charlie told me it was okay.
He also told me to be careful. The thought is paralyzing for a moment. But what, exactly, does she need to be careful of? She’s had her heart broken once this year already, and it wasn’t by him.
After she uses the bathroom, she pulls on her softest pair of sweatpants. She catches her reflection in the full-length mirror and makes the executive decision not to bother with a shirt.
In the living room, she finds Ravi on the couch waiting for her, his jeans off but his undershirt back on. He’s stretched out, arm slung over the back of the couch in her corner. It’s hard to believe how fluttery the look in his eyes makes her feel, even after everything they’ve already done.
“You’re in my spot,” Yael says, approaching him.
“I didn’t realize,” Ravi replies. He sits up a little straighter but makes no indication that he plans to move.
Yael steps between Ravi and the coffee table, looking down at him just as she had on the bus ride here, when she was trying desperately to convince herself that she was still in control of the situation.
He wraps his hand around the back of her thigh, and suddenly, she wishes she’d forgone pants, too, or at least reached for pajama shorts.
“Not sure if you’re aware,” she says, “but you’re still in my spot. ”
“You told me to make myself comfortable.”
Ravi can’t hide his smile, and she knows exactly what he’s goading her into.
For once, she’s happy to play into his hands.
She places one knee on the couch just outside his thigh, then the other.
But she takes her time sinking down, taking great pleasure at the way his jaw clenches and his hand skims up her leg while he waits.
He sighs when she finally sits flush against him, and she smirks victoriously.
Her victory is undercut by her sharp gasp when he shifts beneath her. Ravi chuckles, his eyes bright.
“Stop laughing at me.”
“I’m not,” he says, and Yael pouts. “I’m not! It’s … appreciative.”
“Appreciative?”
“Yes. I’m laughing appreciatively,” he says, sliding his hands up her sides.
Yael tips her head down to kiss him before he sees her do anything else to laugh appreciatively about.
It really is an experience, kissing Ravi. She absorbs into it, into him. So many parts of her—even parts that shouldn’t be—become sensitive, flushing and goose-bumping and burning under his touch. She’s being loud for just kissing; dimly, she knows that, but it’s impossible not to react.
Then again, he’s not exactly quiet, either, when she rocks against him or digs her fingers into his biceps.
Her stomach gives a traitorous, deeply unsexy grumble, and Ravi pulls back. “Yuh cyah make love on a hungry belly,” he says, amused.
“Hmm?”
“Ah, it’s a bad joke. That would only make sense if you also had Trinidadian grandparents.”
She drops her hands to his shoulders. “Explain it to me,” she says softly.
His eyebrows lift, like he’s not sure if she’s serious, and she nods. “It’s an old saying, means that money is as important as love in a marriage. But you literally have a hungry belly interrupting us.”
Yael smiles. “I would’ve laughed if I’d understood.”
“You’ve always found me funny,” he says. “Even when you wanted to pretend you didn’t.”
“I’m not very good at pretending about anything,” she says.
Heat flares in his eyes, his smile small. “That’s good to know,” he says slowly, and Yael’s blood feels fizzy.
“When did you move here?” she asks.
“To Portland? Or the States?”
She shrugs. “Both, I guess.”
“I came to the US for university,” he says. “To Portland, seven, em—it’s November now. Eight months ago.” The growl of her stomach interrupts them yet again. Ravi laughs. “Let’s fix that, yeah?”
“Now you’re definitely laughing at me.” He doesn’t deny it. “I was planning to go grocery shopping, so I don’t have much here, just one serving of leftover pasta.”
“Sorry I ruined your plans,” he says, squeezing her thighs. She ignores him.
“We could order Pizza Kat?” He nods, and Yael climbs off him to dig her phone and credit card out of her tote bag. It’s late; they’re just in time for last call. “Any restrictions?”
“No.”
She places the order, and all the while, Ravi’s eyes are glued to her, roaming.
“Tell me something about you,” he says after she hangs up, making her way back to the couch. She doesn’t drop down to his lap, instead sitting on the cushion beside him and draping her legs across his. His hand runs along her calf through her sweats, easy, comfortable. “You got something about me.”
“You didn’t volunteer it; I asked,” Yael points out.
“Okay.” He thinks for a moment. “Why the braid?”
Unconsciously, Yael reaches up to touch it, twirling it around her finger. “Cowlick. My range of part options is a lot greater with the braid. And,” she says, “I dunno, I kind of like having a signature look.”
“And how long have you been dyeing your hair?”
“Two questions in a row?”
He shrugs. “Yours was technically two questions. And besides, we have time.”
She can’t tell if he means until the pizza arrives or after that, too.
“I think mine was one question with two answers.” Ravi’s eyes cut to the ceiling and back, and she laughs.
“I’ve been dyeing it for maybe four years?
The burgundy for only one. I got really into seasonal color analysis for a while, and it was in my palette. ”
“Seasonal color analysis?”
“It’s about what colors suit you. I’m a soft autumn,” Yael says. “It’s highly possible that it’s all meaningless, but I’m not an astrology queer, so I needed something.”
Ravi trails his hand down, tracing her ankle. New nerve endings form under the pads of his fingers.
“What do you miss most about home?” Yael asks. “Or Trinidad, I mean. Do you think of it as home for you, or here now?”
Graciously, he doesn’t acknowledge that she’s snuck another question in there, too. “Both are home. The US and Trinidad, I mean. I’m not sure Portland feels like home yet.” He sighs. “I think it’s sort of an obvious answer, but right now I miss the food most.”
“There aren’t any Trinidadian restaurants in Portland, are there?”
Ravi shakes his head. “No, not specifically. There are a handful of Jamaican restaurants, and pan-Caribbean. There’s a cart run by an Indian Guyanese couple, and that almost scratches the itch sometimes because there’re some overlapping influences. But it’s not the same.”
“Bake on the Run? I love that place,” Yael says. “I’m trying to think, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever had Trinidadian food.”
“My brother’s a really good cook,” he says.
Yael blinks. It’s not an invitation, she doesn’t think. But it could be read that way, if she wanted to. “It’s your turn for a question.”
“Portland’s home for you?”
“Yes.” Yael says. “My dad moved me here when I was seven, and then, save for a respite for college and my MLS, I’ve been here ever since.”
He nods. “And do you like it? I guess you must, if you came back.”
Yael frowns. “I think ‘like’ is too simple a word for how I feel. There have been times when I’ve hated it with every cell in my body. It’s definitely home, though.”
He nods again. “I … really get that.”
“Can I ask you something?”
His mouth pulls into a closed-lip smile, that dimple popping. “That’s kind of the deal,” he says eventually.
“I’m not sure this question is,” Yael says. Ravi holds eye contact, nodding like go on.
“Why did you sneak out of my bedroom that day?”
“Ah,” he says, and the apartment buzzer sounds.
Yael deflates, whatever courage she’d gathered to ask dissipating. “Looks like HaShem has saved you from answering.”
“HaShem?”
“Oh, it’s a Jewish thing. You’re not supposed to actually say God’s name, so what you say is ‘the name’ in Hebrew instead.”
Ravi gives her a sort of puzzled look. “You’re Jewish?”
“‘Yael Koenig’ didn’t give it away?” she jokes, before realizing that growing up in Trinidad might not have given him that specific cultural context.
Before she can apologize, he says, “No, it’s just … Never mind. You’re saying God saved me from answering you?” He smiles.
Yael grins. “Whatever higher power you believe in. God. Gods. The universe. Pizza Kat.”
Ravi laughs, nudging her legs off his lap to stand. He grabs his pants from the back of the couch and starts to get dressed.
“I can get it,” Yael says.
Ravi shakes his head. “I have cash to tip, and I want to consider my answer, because I think I should give you one.”
“Okay.”
“And,” he says, in a way that makes every inch of her skin feel hot, “I really don’t want you to put on a shirt.”