Chapter Twenty-Six #2
This is a complete mess. Everything is a mess.
Mia slept in his room for half the night again.
Suresh is at home moping and determined to pretend not to be.
He won’t talk to Ravi about it, and maybe that’s good.
Because half the time Ravi feels sad and sorry, and the other half he wants to shake Suresh out of whatever it was that made him think he was ready to see Margot.
Wants to shake himself for not realizing it was Suresh he had to worry about, maybe even more than Mia.
By the end of dinner, the three of them are more than full, but Jami insists that Renegade treat them to dessert to go. Ravi and Yael end up saying their goodbyes to Jami on the street corner, tiny brown boxes of tiramisu in hand.
“Please,” Jami says, looking between them as she pulls back from hugging Yael, “please let me know if there are any last questions I can answer before we draw up a contract, okay? I’m sure any lawyer you look it over with will have questions, too.”
“Thank you,” Yael says. “It was such a pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you for dinner. We’re both so excited,” Ravi says, even though he isn’t sure he’ll still have the editing gig half an hour from now.
“I think it’s gonna be huge. Really,” Jami says as a car pulls up to the corner. “This is me. Talk soon!”
She climbs in, and then they’re alone.
“Yael—”
“How long have you known it was me?” she says, looking straight at him, her gaze unmoving, for the first time since she approached their table.
Someone walks by then, and Ravi takes a half step toward her to get out of the way. When she takes a half step back, his stomach drops. “How did you get here?”
“That is not an answer,” she spits out.
“Did you take the bus or drive, Yael? I want to know how long I have,” he says.
She stares at him, her jaw clenching, one of her eyes narrowing slightly more than the other. Completely enraged. He tries not to shrink under her gaze. “I drove,” she says.
“Let me walk you to your car.”
Under closed lips, she runs her tongue over her teeth. “Fine,” she says, and starts down a side street.
He falls in step behind her. “I haven’t known for long,” he says.
“What qualifies as ‘long’ to you?” Yael looks up at him, the yellow light from a streetlamp only emphasizing the searing heat in her eyes. “Because if I knew, I would have told you immediately.”
“Really?” Ravi says, frustration creeping. “Because I wanted to know who you were, and you were the one who refused.”
“I thought you lived in New York, and that made the whole thing moot! That is not even a little bit the same.”
“I wanted to know you so fucking badly,” he says. “It’s not as different as you think.”
“When did you find out?” Yael demands, whirling around to face him. He doesn’t see her car anywhere nearby; she must have decided to give him more than just the walk.
The thought makes him a little desperate with hope. “Saturday morning, when I was leaving your place.”
“So, after…” She waits, biting her lip. The rest of her face is so steely, she must not realize she’s doing it. He feels like he’s sparring with her again, except none of it is fun anymore.
“Christ, Yael. You thought I—you thought I figured out that you were Elle, and then I had sex with you without saying anything?”
“How am I supposed to know? You didn’t tell me,” she says, but her eyes start to soften.
“I didn’t do that.”
“But you didn’t tell me, either. You saw me yesterday.”
“You’re right; I didn’t,” he says, taking a deep breath, trying to figure out what else he needs to say. What else he wants to say. He started writing it out last night when he got home, but he’d planned to finish tonight, and now he can’t even remember the parts he already had down.
“You were being so fucking weird, and even after I got your text today, I didn’t think you were you. Because that would’ve been a horrible thing to keep from me,” she says, her voice straining. “You must think I’m so stupid.”
“I have never once thought that.”
“How did you figure it out?” she asks. Her voice is quieter than before, but she’s still staring at him in a way that makes him wonder whether she descends from Medusa.
“When you were on the phone with your parents,” he says, “you called your stepdad ‘Pops.’”
“That’s it?” She pushes an incredulous laugh through her nose. “That’s not, like, an uncommon name for a parent.”
“There were other things that made me wonder,” Ravi says.
Her brows lift, imploring him to continue.
“You said you were Jewish, and I saw your copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I think I subconsciously knew you were sort of … like her. The way you talk in book club, even. Your voice is different, but the cadence is the same.”
“Book club,” she says slowly, “was definitely before we had sex.”
Ravi sighs, brushing his fingers through his hair. “That part was retroactive. I didn’t wonder until I was at your place with you.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t think it was real, Yael! I thought I was just looking for her in you. For you in you, I guess. And it felt terrible, thinking that I could do that to either of you. That I could have my hands full of you and my head full of someone else. Or have you in my head when I was talking to her.”
His voice strains around the words. Yael exhales, her eyes closing. Like she knows exactly what he means.
“And then when I knew I found you, I had to leave.”
A realization seems to dawn, followed by a look of concern with a little bit of guilt around the edges. “Oh my God, are Mia and Suresh okay?”
“Nobody’s injured. But no, not really.”
“What happened?” she asks, taking a step toward him.
He extends his hand between them, and she hesitates but takes it. When he runs his thumb along her pulse point, she sighs. “They went to meet Margot during her Willamette Valley winery tour, and she decided to leave two days early.”
She drops his hand and pulls him into a hug. It feels so good to be held, he worries he might cry. He might do or say something he shouldn’t, just so he can stand here like this a minute longer. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
“It was the first time she’d seen Mia since January.”
“That’s horrible,” Yael says. She traces his spine, and he tightens his hold around the small of her back.
“Suresh slept with her.” He pauses, listening to her sharp intake of breath. “I think I’m mad at him. I’m worried about him, too.”
“Of course you are. I would be, too.” Her hand wanders up to his nape, and when she drags her fingers against his scalp, he lets out a shuddering sigh, burying his face into her neck.
He’s dying to kiss her. More than kiss her, really, he wants to collapse into her. He wants them to take up the same space, every one of their molecules intermixing.
YAEL STRUGGLES TO think, wrapped up in Kevin Ravi Kissoon. She wonders, briefly, if some elemental part of her knew who he was, and that’s why it has always felt like this.
It doesn’t really matter, she supposes. All that matters is that he’s here now, and he’s hurting. “I wish you’d told me earlier,” Yael murmurs. “I would’ve been there. Even just to talk.”
His breath brushes hot against her neck. “That wouldn’t have been fair to you,” he mumbles.
That cuts through. “What?”
He lifts his head, looking directly at her, more pain than hunger in those dark eyes of his. “That wouldn’t have been fair to you. Or me, really,” he says. His thumbs trace circles on her hips.
Yael takes a moment to process, then pushes him away. She expects protestation, but he just looks resigned. Like he knew this train was coming, and all this has been him bracing for impact.
This, she realizes, is why he didn’t tell her last night.
“Nothing has changed for you, has it?” she asks, eyes welling.
He stares at her for a long moment, then, finally, gives a small shake of his head. Yael has to dig her nails into her palms to keep the tears from falling. “Mia and Suresh need me—”
“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” she interrupts. “If you don’t want me, that’s okay.” God, there really is no point in trying not to cry.
“Yael, we both know that’s not the problem,” he says. “I need you to understand that it’s the situation I’m in. I can’t—I have to take care of my family. I can barely take care of myself. I can’t take care of anybody else. You deserve a better partner than I can be to you.”
She furrows her brow for a moment, then brings her hand to her mouth to contain the sob racking through her. He can’t mean …
When Ravi met her, the olanzapine hadn’t even worn off. She’d told Kevin—she’d told him about how bad it could get. Of course he thinks a relationship with her would just be another person to take care of.
How could he think anything else?
Her chest starts to crowd with shame, her breath coming out shorter than it should. Halle was right, she thinks. She was right.
“I still want to do the podcast with you,” he says. “I can … I can quit the club, if you need.”
“That would probably be best.” She gasps, tears streaming down her cheeks. He reaches out for her, and she steps away. “I don’t think I can take you touching me.”
“Okay,” he says.
Her vision blurs. “I guess this is it,” she gets out.
“Can I walk you the rest of the way to your car?”
Yael shakes her head, and Ravi’s face falls further. Halle was right, Yael thinks.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Ravi says.
Yael shakes her head again, turning away. She knows she couldn’t speak if she tried.
Halle was right, she thinks on a loop as she heads down the sparsely lit street, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. She walks at a brisk pace, then faster, until she takes off in a sprint.
She makes it to the car with her lungs aching, tears still flowing, relieved to be able to slide into a space she can close around her. And she sits there, crying into the back of her hand, until the tears don’t come anymore.
Here it is. The bigger heartbreak.
RAVI MAKES THE walk home, slowly hollowing out, wishing that knowing he’d done the right thing would make it any less devastating.