“What book are we doing today?” Ravi directs thequestion to Zoe, not to Yael. She watches a blush suffuse her face at the attention. Zoe likes to describe herself as a Kinsey five, and Yael takes it that Ravi is in the small sliver of boys/men keeping her from a six. Which, yeah, Yael understands.
“Are you from New Zealand?” Zoe asks, blinking.
Ravi chuckles, shaking his head. “That’s a new one for me. Trinidad. It’s in the Caribbean, right by Venezuela.”
“I know where it is,” she mumbles, and Yael is certain she did not until this very moment.
“The book?” Ravi gestures—Zoe’s clutching it tightly to her chest.
“Oh!Felix Ever After.We just finished. Idiedwhen he was shouting at Ezra over the barricade at Pride.”
“Spoilers!” Ravi protests. Other students filter in around them, all eyeing him curiously.
“Ms. Koenig said it only counts as a spoiler if it’s past the point we were supposed to read to. That’s on you, man,” JQ says.
“My bad,” Ravi says. When Yael meets his gaze, she finds a glint of humor in it. “I was unaware there was coursework assigned to me, but I’ll come prepared next time.”
She purses her lips to keep from smiling. Ravi’s lips twitch, and Yael swears she can hear him thinking,Admit it,youthinkI’mfunny.
Ravi handles the group admirably. Yael wasn’t really ever in a position to refuse his help, and even if she were, she hopes she wouldn’t be so petty. It’s a true shame she knows just a bit too much about him. Had he waltzed in here a total unknown and fielded the blunt questions about his identity (volunteer,on a trial basis, said pointedly in Yael’s direction) and accent (definitely not British) and age (thirty) and reading habits (he supposes he’ll do fiction again now), Yael would’ve thought she’d made her first new friend in, like, five years.
But he hadn’t. He’d made Charlie pretend he wasn’t crying over French toast, and Yael will always sort of hate Ravi for that.
After the club ends, Ravi lingers, fitting the chairs with the tables that Yael drags back into place. Yael doesn’t say anything, partly because she’s sure that for the first five or so minutes post-club, Eli and Jaxon are either flirting or making out in the hallway just outside.
So, Yael is quiet in a room that isn’t empty—perhaps a genuine first for her—and all the while she can feel Ravi’s eyes on her. She tries not to stare back.
“You never answered my question,” Ravi says, slotting in the final chair.
Yael folds her arms across her chest. “What question?”
“Should I leave?”
“Well, the book clubisover,” she says. “Thank you for putting my library back together.”
Ravi does not restrain his eye roll. “I’ll rephrase: Am I fired from volunteering?”
Yael gives him a once-over, mostly to let him simmer in the pause. The chambray overshirt he’d shown up in now hangs from the back of a chair and, yeah, that white T-shirt fits himreallywell. “I don’t think I have the authority to do that,” she says.
“And if you did?”
She clucks her tongue. “Probably still wouldn’t.”
Ravi nods, and now Yael has to wait for his casual perusal. It’s a quick flick of his gaze, but she swears she can feel his eyes pass over each and every one of her sixty-six inches. He pulls the shirt off the chair and slips his arms into it. “Okay, then,” he says. “See you Thursday.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Dadi.” Mia pouts as she pulls the slider to let the Connect Four pieces crash onto the table. “I want to play another.”
“I’m Dada,” Ravi reminds her. “‘Dadi’ is for girls; your dadi would be my wife.” He and Suresh hadn’t grown up using Trinidadian Hindustani words for their relatives, even though some of his other Indo-Trinidadian friends did. But Suresh had wanted to try with Mia to connect her to something from back home. He’d pulled out a chart he found, which told him that Ravi would be Mia’s chacha, being her father’s younger brother. Ravi WhatsApped one of his friends who’d actually used the terms growing up to ask, and he’d said they just used “Dada” for every uncle on the father’s side. So, Dada he became.
“Girls are fake,” she says.
Ravi sighs, exasperated. It’s their third iteration of this argument. “Girls aren’tfake, Mia. It’s just that being a girl isn’t about what they said you were when you were a baby.”
“You’re the one who told a four-year-old that gender is a social construct,” Suresh says from the kitchen. Of course he’s listening in even over the running water. When it’s Ravi’s turn to clean while Suresh handles wind-down, Ravi opts for noise-canceling headphones.
“And they don’t understand gender permanence until age six. I know, I know. I read”—he cuts himself off when Suresh steps into view from the kitchen so that Ravi can see his eyes narrow—“okay,skimmedthe coursework—”
