Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s only after Yael hangs up with Dad and Pops that she realizes she and Ravi haven’t exchanged numbers. She tries not to worry about what that might mean—he had a family emergency, and she’d also forgotten to ask.
To what end would she be worrying about it, anyway?
It’s not what it felt like with Kevin, she doesn’t think.
She likes Ravi—she knows that—but alone in the broad light of day it doesn’t feel so all-consuming as it had when she’d been tangled up in him.
And she still isn’t sure she’s ready to be dating at all.
You’re rationalizing because you want to keep sleeping with him, a tiny voice inside her head says.
I don’t care, a louder voice says back.
Yael opens her fridge in search of supplies for scrambled eggs. It’s time to stop obsessing. She’ll see Ravi on Tuesday. Even if book club seems far away right now, it isn’t.
Her apartment is so empty without Charlie. Without Ravi. Quiet except for her; endless empty space for her to think. Missing Kevin is especially sharp in moments like this.
Before she knows it, she has her thread with him pulled up, rereading their last messages to one another for the millionth time. I guess this is it, then. Her heart does a confused, guilty squeeze, and she opens her thread with Sanaa to distract herself.
Yael
I was very selfish these past couple days
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
DOES THIS MEAN WHAT I THINK IT DOES???????????????????
Yael
That is a suspiciously fast response. Is this actually Sanaa?
Think quick, what was the most embarrassing thing I did in high school
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Too juicy to pass up. Also I’m having a lazy nothing day and haven’t gotten off the couch yet
Helped Luke S.-B. ask the girl YOU had a crush on to prom with One Direction lyrics, next question
Yael
Oh my God I’d actually almost forgotten about that
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
I am WAITING
Yael
It does. He came home with me after book club on Thursday and just left an hour ago
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
And????
Yael shivers with a memory: Ravi’s voice scraping against the shell of her ear as he shifted her from all fours onto his lap, still inside her.
Remember when weed was legalized and we got super high over winter break and I was petting your furry blanket and I told you I thought feeling this good might be proof of God, she types.
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also stop feeling guilty right this instant
Yael
I’m trying. I think I like him more than I should
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
How much more?
Yael
It’s manageable
I think
LOML <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Okay well. I trust you’ll call me if it isn’t. I’m gonna force myself to leave the house now love youuuu
She writes back love you too and tosses her phone onto the couch cushion beside her before curling herself farther into her corner. Yael has plenty to do around the house and a podcast to record before she’ll next see Ravi. If it’s not manageable now, it will be by then.
RAVI MAKES IT home just long enough before Suresh and Mia to shower the sex off himself and start a load of laundry. Any more time alone and he’d probably have sent a text that just said Yael? for confirmation he doesn’t really need, even though that might be the worst possible way to do it.
He hears the car pull into the driveway and grabs the nearest thing he has to read, just so he has something to pretend to be doing. Of course, it’s a copy of The Tech Review, which Suresh always has lying around and Ravi has never once touched. He couldn’t look less casual if he tried.
The door unlocks, and Mia comes barreling through, Suresh behind her, draped in duffel bags. “Dada!” she shrieks, catapulting herself onto his lap.
“Hi, Mia,” he says. “I missed you.”
“I have to potty and I’m hungry,” she says.
“Why don’t you go to the bathroom, and I’ll get you a snack?”
As she climbs off him, he lifts his hand in acknowledgment to Suresh. “I’m going to put the bags down,” Suresh says.
The door to the bathroom clicks shut. What happened? Ravi mouths.
Suresh waves him off. Later, he mouths back, and he disappears up the stairs.
Ravi gets a bowl of baby carrots from the kitchen, returning to find Mia already on the couch. He sits down next to her, and she climbs back onto his lap and plucks the bowl from his hands. “How was the trip?” he asks.
“Good,” she says. “There were lots of rows of grapes, and I raced Mommy through them, and I beat her because she was wearing tall shoes. Can we watch the dinosaur woman again?”
“Sure,” Ravi says, and reaches for the remote to turn on the TV and navigate to YouTube. “How’s your eye?”
“Much better. But Daddy says I still have to do the drops, and they hurt.”
Ravi grimaces. “I’m sorry, but I’m glad it’s feeling better.” He looks down at her, but her eyes are fixed on the TV screen. “You had a good time?”
“Yeah, I told you already,” she says, but she leans back against his chest with full force, the way she does when she’s sad or sick.
“Okay,” he says, and he presses play.
Suresh takes a lot longer to reemerge than he should, and when he does, he is so busy with chores and lunch that he only has time to say four words to Ravi. He and Mia switch from Field Museum videos to Connect Four to Legos to, finally, nap time.
In that time, Ravi’s patience wears thin, so when he finally catches Suresh alone in the kitchen, he leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, and bluntly says, “Waz your scene?”
Suresh retrieves two beers from the fridge, uncaps them, and passes one off to Ravi.
This on its own is enough to raise Ravi’s brows—Suresh has a drink maybe once a week, and never during the day.
But Ravi accepts and watches his brother swallow two long swigs before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Margot decided to go back to Bordeaux early,” he says.
“Okay,” Ravi says. “She say why?”
Suresh plants his hand on his hip and brings the bottle to his lips again. “She wrapped up whatever she was doing with the vineyard. I guess she got what she wanted from her visit,” he says, looking at the ground.
Ravi looks at him for a beat longer. That furrow in his brow, how the muscle in his jaw keeps clenching and releasing. “You slept with her,” he whispers.
Suresh takes another swig. This time, Ravi joins him.
“Did you … Did you know she was leaving?”
Suresh’s eyes cut back to him. He shakes his head, and Ravi feels his own shoulders drop. “When she said she was going, I said, ‘Don’t you want more time with Mia?’ and she said, ‘Maybe she could visit for a couple weeks next summer.’”
Ravi winces.
“You don’t have to tell me that you were right,” Suresh says.
“I wasn’t going to.” Suresh shakes his head a little, looking away again. “I wasn’t trying to be right, Suresh!” Ravi says. “And Mia seems okay, considering.”
Suresh swallows. “She does. She can’t see me like this.”
“I can take care of her for the rest of the day,” Ravi offers.
“No, no. I just … I’ll be fine by the time she gets up.” He drains his beer, drops it in the recycling, and slips past Ravi toward the stairs.
“Suresh—”
“I will be fine,” he says, not looking back.
Ravi is left staring blankly into space in the kitchen, wishing desperately that he had any goddamn idea what to do.
And Suresh keeps his promise to pretend, so well that Ravi feels like he’s the one in danger of tipping Mia off. She smiles and laughs and dances to “Ah Drinka” in the living room, and he’s sure she’s back to doing okay.
At the end of the night, he finds himself lying in his bed, staring at his phone, rereading every message between him and Elle. It’s so strange, how he can hear Yael’s voice in each of them. Now it’s hard to believe that he hadn’t realized sooner.
Maybe if I just talk to her …
It feels dangerous even to finish the thought, to let himself hope.
He hears a knock at the door, and he sits bolt upright, clicking the side button to turn off his phone screen. “Yes?”
The door creaks open. “Dada?” Mia asks.
“What’s up?”
“Can I come sleep with you?”
His breath hitches. Over the past eight months, she’s slowly started asking him for a lot of things that she’s only ever asked of Suresh, but never this. “Of course. Come here,” he says.
She climbs into bed with him, curling up against his side, and he rubs soothing circles on her back.
“You didn’t want to sleep with Daddy?” he asks.
“He’s sad about Mommy,” she says, “and I don’t want him to know I’m sad, too.”
Tears well in Ravi’s eyes. He rubs Mia’s back until her breathing evens out, until he, too, falls asleep.