Page 16 of Isn't It Obvious?
“Again, how old do you all think I am?” Yael takes a deep breath, closing her eyes in exasperation. But Ravi can tell that some of it is for show. That she’s enjoying herself, underneath it all. “Actually, do not answer that.”
“Ravi?” Jackson turns to him, eyes round and hopeful.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, I’ve read that one, too. What do you want to read next, Yael?”
“Yael,” a few murmurs echo.
Ravi clears his throat. She’d told him to call her by her first name. But maybe that offer had been implicitly rescinded once she realized she’d met him before? With the way her gaze settles on him, he can’t be sure.
“What do I want to read next?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s not about what I want,” she says.
“Oh, did you not come prepared?” He says it without thinking, and tries his best to bite back a smile. “No ideas?”
The way her eyes change, how her dark irises seem to sparkle under the fluorescent lights as her eyes widen a fraction and then narrow just as quickly, shoots something through him. Probably why he said it. Riling Yael isfun. “I always have ideas. Do you?”
He shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “I want to hear yours,” he says.
She pauses, her gaze softening for a moment, before she seems to recover her resolve. “I’ll pitch mine after everyone else goes, so as not to exert any undue influence.”
Exert any undue influence.Christ, who talks like that?
Another kid—one with an impressive number of earrings—goes next, and then Ravi’s thinking of Yael in her bed, blinking lazily up at him as she informs him that she’stoo cloudy to decipher subtext.
Right, yeah. She doesn’t like him, because of Charles. She’s not just having fun when she makes those digs at him; she means it.
And he’s not too keen on her, really, either. He’d tried multiple times to get out of there by honest means, to the point where sneaking out seemed the politest remaining option. She doesn’t know him or his situation and didn’t have any business playing his judge, jury, and executioner.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to go on a second date with someone right now, without knowing how little time and energy he can give. Without thinking the whole time about how pointless it is, because whoever it is will never crack top three on his priority list.
He can feel his mood souring. Whyishe here? Yael hasn’tfired him, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay. He certainly doesn’t owe her anything.
Today is probably his last club meeting.
The minutes pass and ideas fly past his ears, and Ravi jots down anything that garners more than a minute of discussion, mumbling something about seeing himself as more of a secretary today when he’s asked to contribute.
When silence settles, he doesn’t bother reminding Yael that she’s promised a suggestion of her own.
But she remembers anyway. “Well, I am a person of my word, so I’m going to throw my hat in the ring:Boy Meets Boyby David Levithan.” Ravi looks around, and he doesn’t see any sparks of recognition. Yael takes a deep breath. “Okay, well, it was a huge deal when it came out. I found it a few years later, when I was in middle school, maybe. It’s what it sounds like: a rom-com about a boy meeting a boy. But it’s at this utopic high school where basically everyone who wants to be is out—the quarterback is the prom queen, and the cheerleaders are butch. I remember being totally enthralled, and I think it would be interesting to see what about it still feels subversive so many years later and what doesn’t. I read it after absolutely inhaling everything the author had ever co-written with Rachel Cohn, and it was my personal introduction to queer YA romance. Also, it’s only one hundred eighty-five pages.”
Everyone is quiet for a moment, and then Jackson says, “Yeah, let’s do that one.”
Others nod along, and Ravi watches Yael’s gaze pause on each person in the circle, as if giving them the opportunity to disagree. Even him.
But nobody does, and it’s not long before the students are heading for the door and Ravi’s dragging chairs back into place alongside Yael, still not bothering to say anything toher. He pulls on his overshirt, and then she says, “You were quiet today.”
“I thought you didn’t want me here,” Ravi says.
Yael looks stricken. “I—I mean, I might have preferred—”
Ravi laughs through his nose. “Yeah, me too.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Please don’t quit the club,” she says. She takes a deep breath, looking at the ground. “Charlie is one of my two closest friends in the world, and I… You know what? I don’t really want to relitigate this.”
“I’m notrelitigating; I don’t think you’ve ever let me get a word in edgewise.”
