Page 2 of Isn't It Obvious?
Yael presses on: “So ifCharlesisn’t asleep, why did you need to break out of my bedroom?”
“He wanted to make me breakfast. I told him no, I needed to be going, but he insisted.”
Yael looks at him now. Really looks. At his strong nose, dark stubble, the ridges of his triceps that peak under brown skin as he crosses his arms, the gentle cleft in his chin below an impossibly plush bottom lip, the kind of lashes that would make Yael wonder if he was wearing eyeliner if he wasn’t so sleep-rumpled. Charlie’s type to a T—gorgeous, and completely uninterested.
Her perusal lasts long enough for his smile to wilt. Something crosses over his expression, like he’s starting to put a few puzzle pieces together. “Are you alright?”
She nods her head, which weighs about a metric ton. “Peachy. You’re an asshole.”
He balks, those ridges of muscle in his upper arms ticcing along with the muscles in his jaw. “You’ve barely met me!”
“There is a kind, handsome man making you breakfast out there”—Yael nods to the door—“and you’re in here, lusting after the fire escape instead of being honest with him. You didn’t even have the decency to leave while he was still asleep. I know enough.”
His brow lowers. “I don’t think I explained myself very well.”
“No, I don’t think you did. Please finish breaking out—I’d like to get out of bed, and I’m not certain I’m wearing pants.”
He sighs, pulling himself through the window once again. Yael hears a few steps down, then a pause. His head returns to view. “Thank you for not making me use the front door,” he says.
Yael smiles wolfishly. Well, she tries—her naturally round cheeks and the aforementioned pillow creases probably don’t do her any favors. “Just want to make sure thatCharlesnever has to see your face again.”
RAVI LOOKS BACKup at the second-floor apartment window he escaped from, half expecting Charles’s roommate to drop something on his head as punishment, but she makes no appearance.
She was right; Charlesiskind. And handsome. Probably an altogether wonderful person.
But Charles is also looking for a boyfriend and lying to Ravi about it.
Maybe Ravi could’ve handled it better, but he had tried for polite directness about needing to leave post-sex and instead ended up with a spare toothbrush and a crick in his neck from trying to be big spoon for someone with half a foot on him. If he’d declined breakfast a second time, he probably would’ve gotten a gold band on his left ring finger.
Ravi is not an asshole. At least notfundamentally. It was an extenuating circumstance! She hadn’t given him a real shot to explain. For all her talk of a cloudy mind, he’d hit his head pretty hard and hadn’t quite known what to say with her dark eyes narrowing on him, fixing him in place.
He checks his phone—only two texts from his brother,thankfully.You coming home tonight owah?Followed by,Alright nah. Be safe. Call me in the morning.
Suresh is such a dad now. It makes him sad when he thinks too hard about it, so instead he presses call.
“How was your night?” Suresh singsongs.
“Fine,” Ravi replies.
“Fine?” Suresh waits, but Ravi doesn’t give in to the pause. “Alright. Where you now?”
“Near Twenty-Third, I think,” he says. He wasn’t paying that much attention when he got into the Lyft with Charles last night. Another reason Ravi should’ve pushed him on taking the bus.
“You’re in Northwest?” Suresh asks. “Shit, you must’ve been desperate,” he says, and Ravi can hear the laughter in his voice.
“Got enough scolding from his roommate this morning, I doh need it from you. You think I’m an asshole?”
Ravi regrets asking even before Suresh gets out his inevitable response: “Yes, next question.”
“What you doing the rest of the day?”
“Liming,” Suresh says, and his booming laugh follows. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing? As much laundry and cooking as I can fit around a trip to the zoo.”
“Again?” Ravi asks. They all went to the zoo last weekend, and it was their fifth time since June. It never really gets old to his niece, Mia, though, especially since it’s on the only underground MAX stop. She swears the elevator to the surface is an undercover spaceship.
“Mia thinks she’ll be brave enough to touch the anemone this time.”
Ravi rounds his way out of the alley, and sure enough, he’s on NW Twenty-Second between early-alphabet cross streets. At the nearest corner, there’s a telephone pole papered withinan inch of its life. A freshly stapled flyer catches Ravi’s eye:ARE YOU QUEER? CAN YOU READ?and a QR code. He chuckles.
