Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Yael tells the story as best she can from there—how she’d done the most she could to hold on to the grudge but it was increasingly difficult in the face of the totality of him.
The turning point of the night they’d both answered Leo’s SafeRide call.
The almost-kiss that became the real kiss that made her and Kevin break things off.
The margaritas come, and after a few sips (so few that it would be a stretch to blame her honesty on the tequila), Yael finds herself more forthcoming about the reasons for that first breakup than she thought she could be.
How Kevin had his brother and Mia to care for and didn’t think he had room for a long-distance relationship; how Yael knew her mental health couldn’t survive long distance, no matter how much she would’ve wanted it to work.
She tells Gina she was probably already in love with him then.
The tears start when she gets to this past weekend. Not yesterday, when everything came crashing down. Thursday, when she boldly invited Ravi over, nervous and excited and hopeful in a way she didn’t realize she was until now, recounting it to someone else.
Yael had felt good that weekend. Free and desired by someone she deeply desired in a way she hadn’t since before Halle. And now she feels worse than she has in ages.
“After the dinner,” Yael says, “I was worried he’d known for a long time and hadn’t told me because he didn’t want me.
And I was so angry with him, but that wasn’t it.
” She takes a deep, shaky breath, then another sip of her drink, which forces her to lick Tajín off her bottom lip rather inelegantly.
“As Elle, I told him about my bipolar diagnosis and what that meant for me, and also about my ex who wanted me to hide it because it was too much for her, and how I knew I needed to be better before I dated anybody.”
Gina’s face puckers with worry. “What did he say?”
“He said I deserved a better partner than that. And then yesterday, he said that he did want me, but he had too many people to take care of already, and I deserved a better partner than him.”
Gina winces. “Yael, I’m so sorry.”
“My ex was right,” she says, choking back a sob.
“What? No.”
“She was. It’s too much for me sometimes. Of course it’s too much for someone else.”
Gina reaches across the table and takes Yael’s hand.
“She was too little for you.” Yael tries to pull back, but Gina tightens her grip.
“No, listen to me. My ex dumped me when I transitioned. He was bi, so it wasn’t that I’m a woman.
It wasn’t even that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore, I don’t think.
He just said it was ‘all too much for him.’ But that’s a him problem, or at the very least a me-and-him problem.
Not a me-and-someone-else problem. I’ve had boyfriends since who have been good and bad for me in all sorts of ways but none of them in the exact same way as him. Your ex has nothing to do with Ravi.”
“It’s the same issue,” Yael says.
“Is it?” Gina counters. “It sounds like your ex told you that you needed to change. It sounds like Ravi knows that he would need to change to be right for you and he can’t.
I could smack him for the way he said it, though.
Take care of you? You’re a functioning adult.
Men are really delusional about their value in our lives. ”
Yael half coughs, half laughs. “Yeah, maybe.”
The waiter returns just as Yael finishes wiping her tears with the back of her hand, so timely that she wonders if they’ve been waiting for a safe entry point to take their dinner orders.
“I think a big part of it,” Yael says after the waiter disappears toward the kitchen, “is that when Kevin and Ravi were different people, I knew that each of them could hurt me. But I wasn’t giving either of them all of myself, so there was a limit to how painful it could be. I was unprepared.”
“And I think a bigger part is that you wish he loved you enough to try,” Gina says.
Yael squeezes her eyes shut against the tears, nodding. She drains the rest of her drink.
“Want another one of those?” Gina asks.
“Yes.”
Gina nods and turns in her chair to get someone’s attention. “You should call out sick tomorrow,” she says, facing Yael again. “Get a sub and take some time for yourself.”
“I’m not going to be hungover from two margaritas,” Yael says, forcing a smile.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I know. I don’t think this would count as a sick day in the contract.”
“If you logged it as a personal day, it wouldn’t get automatic approval, and you need this time, Yael.
” Gina pins her with the same stern look she’d used on Eli, waiting until Yael nods to relent.
“Good. Side note: I understand that this was not the point of the story, but Renegade, Yael? You’re so big time. ”
“I can’t believe it.” Yael shoves an entire chip in her mouth, chewing slowly. “Thank you, Gina. I promise I’ll be at your next show.”
“You better,” Gina says, smiling. “I’m spending an extra three hours a week at my job because of you.”
Over the next hour, they eat and drink and Gina even manages to make Yael belly laugh a few times. It’s good. So good, Yael starts to feel the ache of her empty apartment long before Gina actually drops her off on her street corner.
She climbs the stairs with heavy legs, leaning into the door to urge the old latch loose after she unlocks it. The quiet inside is cavernous, stretching deeper than the walls allow.
Yael toes off her shoes at the door, then drops her tote vaguely near the shoe rack, too tired to lift it to the hook.
Her coat ends up in a pile next to the bag.
It’s thick, her sadness. Filling. She gets herself to her bedroom, strips out of her clothing in a path to her shower.
She runs the water hot and doesn’t stuff her hair into a cap, just tries to keep her head out of the direct range of the spray.
It’ll frizz; she knows that. But it’s effort she doesn’t have in her.
After, she stands dripping on her bath mat and forces herself to brush her teeth, avoiding eye contact with her own reflection.
She stares at the bottles of nighttime skin products arrayed on her vanity for probably an entire minute, wondering how she’ll possibly be able to get through all four of her usual steps.
Eventually, she convinces herself on the moisturizer.
The walk to her bed is underwritten by similar agonizing. Picking up the pieces of clothing and carrying them to the laundry hamper in the corner seems a herculean task, but if she doesn’t do it, she’ll feel disgusted at herself for the mess in the morning. The disgust always makes things worse.
She finds herself staring again, paralyzed by indecision, the disgust already encroaching.
Do it now, she tells herself as she bends to retrieve her sweater, and you won’t have to tomorrow.
She shuffles to her bed, nestling into the pillows and pulling the duvet up to her neck. It feels … if not good, then right to be swallowed. On her phone, she navigates to the sub request system to put in her sick day, then to the Clock app to turn off her alarm.
When Yael wakes up, the paperwork from Jami is in her inbox, Ravi copied, and she forwards it along to the lawyer she found last week before rolling over and staring at the strips of light that peek through her curtains.
It’s a good thing she cleaned up after herself last night, she thinks, because she hardly leaves her bed the rest of the day.