Page 22 of Isn't It Obvious?
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that it’s hard, and I get it, at least to some extent.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
It does sound like you get it. You also know a lot of court cases.
For the record, I don’t think you talk too much. I think you talk a lot, but it’s the right amount.
Did you get to date girls in high school? Since you were out already.
To:Kevin Kisson
RE:Not Work Thread
I have an issue with intellectualizing my feelings (which you may have gathered from how when you told me about yours, I was like DO YOU THINK IT’S BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY instead of, idk, trying to offer comfort) and I read a lot.
Thank you. Currently physically restraining myself from saying something inappropriately self-effacing that I’m sure would seem like fishing for compliments again.
And, no, sorry to disappoint. My bisexuality was a lot less relevant to my dating prospects than the fact that I was a huge fucking nerd.
Even if I wasn’t, despite being in a super liberal area, I was in high school at the same time you were, and most people didn’t come out until college. Please see previous screed about homonationalism, lmao.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
Youwerea huge nerd?
To:Kevin Kisson
RE:Not Work Thread
FINE! I AM a huge nerd! Some people find it charming.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
Very.
Yael wants to bathe in the single word. Maybe she’s already doing so, the way her skin heats almost painfully, like she’s sunken into water she ran a few degrees too hot. She wants to ask Sanaa what Kevin looks like. Or ask Kevin if maybe they could meet up the next time she visits New York. Or ask him if his skin feels hot, too.
Instead, she hits reply and changes the subject entirely.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ravi talks to Elle every day. About the podcast during business hours, in the Not Work Thread at night and on weekends. He finishes editing theFahrenheit 451episode almost an entire week ahead of schedule, something he never does. But he likes listening to her talk. He finds himself imagining her emails read aloud, and he wishes desperately that he could picture what she’d sound like if she wasn’t doing a radio voice. Whether her vowels would sharpen or soften, stretch or narrow, if the fry at the ends of her sentences would intensify. How she speaks on the podcast sounds so neutral, and he imagines that in real life she’d be anything but.
He finds emailing her to be a particular comfort when he returns home (or rather, as soon as he’s on the streetcar) from Kennedy High School. The book club meetings are a specific kind of whiplash—Yael looks relieved when he shows up, then takes a deep breath and greets him icily. Then she’s joking and laughing with the students and, albeit reluctantly, with him. And when they put the library back together, she’s icy again. And he’s, well… He doesn’t exactly disengage when she swipes at him.
Leo stops him afterward every time, making small talk like he’s working up to something bigger, and that’s what makes Ravi certain his effort is worth it.
Still, he regularly talks to exactly two adults in this city, and one of them seems to hate him on behalf of someone he didn’t mean to hurt and probably will never see again. He occasionally feels indignant about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it kind of fucking sucks.
And so Elle, who seems as interested in everything he has to say as he is in what she sends him, has quickly become the best part of his day.
Maybe that’s why he finishes the episode so far in advance of his deadline—another excuse to start a conversation with her, because even when it’s about work, she usually says something that makes him laugh. Sometimes at an intentional joke, other times in confused amusement.
