“I just want to shower and go to bed,” Yael says, unable to look at him as she crosses the space to her bedroom door.
“Alright,” Charlie says, and she slips through her doorway.
Yael is a terrible, terrible person and a worse friend. She pulls on a shower cap, turns the water as hot as she can stand it, and scrubs at herself, trying to erase the map. The tears feel comparatively cool streaking down her cheeks.
She slathers on lotion and pulls on her pajamas afterward, and when she emerges from the bathroom, Charlie is knocking on her door.
“Come in,” she mumbles.
He appears with a bowl in hand. “You need to eat,” he says, and it makes the tears well in Yael’s eyes again.
“You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” she says.
Charlie’s brows knit together. “Yael,” he says.
She shakes her head. “I did something really, really stupid.”
“It can’t have been that bad.”
Yael takes a shaky breath. “You’d hate me if you knew.”
“Did you assault someone?” Charlie asks. Yael shakes her head. “Kill anybody? Commit a hate crime on the way home?”
“No,” she says, letting out a sad laugh.If only you knew, she thinks.I am a terrible person for letting you comfort me.
“Then I wouldn’t hate you, Yael. Just take the soup,” he says, and she does. “You’ll talk to me about it tomorrow, when you’re ready. Or if not me, Sanaa. Or, I dunno, Kevin, even.” And then he leaves, closing the door behind him.
Kevin. Another reason she’s suffocated with guilt.
Yael takes the bowl of soup to her reading chair by thewindow. It feels better to eat. Not good but better, and it makes her more certain that accepting this food from Charlie was wrong. She’ll correct it tomorrow, once she gets herself together. After she calls Sanaa and figures out what to say.
She sets the empty bowl on the windowsill and picks up her phone. Might as well try to fix the other thing eating at her, the one that doesn’t require her to pretend that she doesn’t want to cry.
In her thread with Kevin, she types,I kissed someone tonight, and I felt like I needed to tell you.
God, that sounds like she made out with someone and immediately went to text him. Which she did, but…
She holds down the delete button and instead types,I kissed someone this weekend, and I feel like I should tell you that, and presses send.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ravi lets Mia wipe the floor with him in every game of Connect Four they play, an apology in advance for his subpar bedtime-story skills.
“I’m sorry,” Ravi had said when he walked in the door and saw the tension in Suresh’s face. “I should’ve stayed with you.”
“Don’t beat up,” he’d replied. “There’s pizza in the kitchen.” And then Suresh retreated to his bedroom, a chilled towel for his forehead in hand.
Ravi really shouldn’t have gone to book club, not when Suresh and Mia needed him. Shouldn’t have stayed after it was over, without a second thought about either. And for what? So he could know what Yael Koenig feels like pressed against him? He’s astonished at his own selfishness.
But maybe he shouldn’t be, given how he met her. Maybe this is just who he is.
“Dada, you’re really bad at this today,” Mia says, dropping a token for the kill.
He scrunches his nose. “Or maybe you’re just really good.”
She grins. “Maybe. Another?”
“Bedtime,” Ravi says.
