Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot, page 16
“Study?” I asked with a slight grin as I dug through my bag for my keys.
“Oh yeah, we are gonna study,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
What the hell did that mean?!
Skip Notes
*1 Fine. Mildly.
*2 There were literal cousins in my family whose real names I didn’t know.
*3 My heart!!! I too had been told that I was a lot!!! Too much sometimes!
Chapter
Twenty
PAYAL MEHTA
What did that mean? What do you think??
PHILIP KIM
Uh…that he has something for you to do that is not studying, that’s for sure.
PAYAL MEHTA
It was so good tho other than that last part, but I think he got it.
PHILIP KIM
Yeah, I’m sure he definitely picked up on your extremely subtle slight push against his assumptions about an entire community.
PAYAL MEHTA
You can’t ruin this because you helped get me here lol
PHILIP KIM
Omg don’t remind me. I still can’t believe he didn’t say sry for the taco debacle.
Any way—sry I missed class this week. I’ll make it up later and I’ll be back next week.
PAYAL MEHTA
It’s fine. What are you doing?
PHILIP KIM
We had to visit my grandma—she lives near my aunts in PA.
PAYAL MEHTA
Oh where?? My masi’s in Jersey.
I mean my aunt
PHILIP KIM
I figured, I woulda said halmeoni but I know how to code switch better than u
PAYAL MEHTA
Omg
Shut up. Thats cool that u get to visit her—my dadi is in india
PHILIP KIM
But at least then u get to visit India. We haven’t gone to Korea in forever. I think my mom used to go every summer after they moved here when she was a kid? N the rest of my cousins go every summer now
PAYAL MEHTA
Why don’t ur parents wanna go?
PHILIP KIM
i think it’s bc my dad and his bro don’t get along but also it would be rude not to visit them if we go? idk its annoying
PAYAL MEHTA
omg we totally have family drama too. my other masi and my mom haaate each other tho they pretend not to, so when we go to India we always have to go to their house and it’s so awk
PHILIP KIM
ha ha idk which is worse
PAYAL MEHTA
there was like a 3 yr period we didn’t go to india but i got mad about it tbh
PHILIP KIM
Lmao oh I can hear it now MOM Y CANT WE GO TO INDIA IT IS MY RIGHT AS A PROUD INDIAN AMERICAN CHILD
PAYAL MEHTA
My mom would get mad if I said indian american lmfao I would have to like recite the indian national anthem or something
PHILIP KIM
Plz tell me you know the indian national anthem
PAYAL MEHTA
Ahahahahaha I know like the first line bc it was in some movie I watched a lot as a kid I think but no sry to disappoint even tho I know u r used to me disappointing
PHILIP KIM
Nah ur alright, I get u—and im not disappointed, ur a good nemesis bud
PAYAL MEHTA
I bet you say that to all ur nemeses
PHILIP KIM
Nemesi*** (and don’t worry I only have room in my brain for one nemesis)
PAYAL MEHTA
That is WRONG, it is nemeses, I saw it in Star Trek and Jean Luc Picard is always correct
N same
PHILIP KIM
Top 5 picard moments go and then I’ll tell u why janeway is the best bc she’s hard as hell
PAYAL MEHTA
Omfg we are gonna fight over star trek now too ok
[Incoming video chat from PHILIP KIM]
* * *
PAYAL MEHTA
Hey, maybe we can catch up tmrw?
NEIL PATEL
Maybe idk, school stuff is kicking my butt
PAYAL MEHTA
Oh ok
NEIL PATEL
Sry
PAYAL MEHTA
It’s fine but lemme know when you’re free
NEIL PATEL
Chapter
Twenty-one
The fourth and final night of study dates, I was on my way to Jon’s house and still feeling frustrated about Neil—especially since I’d been haranguing him about not talking to me. Chatting with Philip had been a great distraction…chatting with Philip, which had gone on way longer than I’d realized. I’d panicked when he’d moved us from text to video—but then I remembered that it was Philip. Not a big deal. Next thing I knew, it was past midnight! Just chatting with my archnemesis—no big deal. But Neil still hadn’t reached back out. I was dying to know what had pissed him off, dying to know how he and Finn had made up, dying to know about his college admissions stuff, dying to know—well, everything, really. But I couldn’t force him to change his priorities. The only thing I could do was keep reaching out.
I rolled up to Jon’s house again and parked. I’d been here three times already, but I still felt a little uncomfortable about it. Just hanging out with Jon was easy enough, but his parents had been interesting, to say the least. When I’d stayed for dinner, I’d offered to help clear the table because I don’t think anything would make me feel more uncomfortable than watching someone’s mom doing the cleanup while I sat there like it wasn’t happening. But they’d resisted every step of the way. Then, when his dad found out my dad was a doctor, he’d leaned back and laughed and said, “Of course he is. I should have known!”
Tonight, though, Jon had mentioned his parents were going to be at some dinner with friends and so we’d have the place to ourselves. I tried not to think of the implications, but there was sweat beading down my back. To be fair, he hadn’t phrased it that way, so my imagination was probably going into overdrive for no reason. Although…the study dates had been steadily becoming more date than study. With this in my head, it was no wonder that my hand shook a little as I opened my car door.
“Relax,” I said to myself before taking a deep breath in through my nose and holding it for a count of four before blowing it back out through my mouth[*1]. Nerves at least partially settled, I walked up Jon’s sidewalk.
I got to the front door and opened it, per Jon’s instructions to “come up whenever you get here.” The house was quiet, and my short-lived breathing-induced calm was already starting to slip away. I stalled at the decorative mirror near the base of the stairs. A last-minute face check couldn’t hurt, right? I looked at my reflection, and my cheeks went bright red. The girl looking back at me from the mirror was nervous. My eyebrows were scrunched, and there was fear in my gaze. I tried to smile, but it made me look more uncomfortable somehow. Had I forgotten how to smile?
Damn it, Jon, why weren’t your parents home?!
Finally, I couldn’t stall anymore and had to hope my face would look marginally normal by the time I got to Jon’s room. When I got there, he was sitting on the edge of his bed with a big booklet of what looked like CDs lying across his knees.
“Hey,” I said, standing in the doorway. Jon turned and looked at me, smiling before nodding for me to join him on the bed. While my brain began to short-circuit, he started speaking.
“Hey! Okay, so, you admitted to me yesterday that you’ve only seen She’s All That when it comes to primo classic nineties rom-coms, I thought I’d contribute to your education since you’ve been contributing to mine. This is my mom’s old collection of movies.”
Huh?
He pulled out one of the discs and held it up so I could see. It was white, with a neon font spelling out 10 Things I Hate About You. Oh my goodness, we were going to watch a romantic comedy together. Right now. Goose bumps erupted along my arms, and I quickly clasped my hands behind my back before Jon could notice.
“Oh! Okay, yeah,” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t shaking. “I’ve never heard of that one.”
Look, if you talked to me about Bollywood movies from the nineties and the early aughts, I could definitely hack it—American movies from before I was born, though? Not so much. It wasn’t something that played in my household. I thought about saying as much out loud, but I bit my tongue. I didn’t want him to say I was weird or make some other comment about how regular I was or was not.
“Man, pop culture has failed you. We are definitely going to do this.” He scooted back on his bed and patted the spot next to him.
Right, I still needed to sit down. My stomach twisted.
“We’re not going to watch it on the TV downstairs?” I asked. I didn’t see one in his room.
“Nah, if it’s cool with you, we can watch it here on my laptop. It’s old enough that I have a disc drive on it.” He opened the laptop up and rested it on his lap.
I took a hesitating step forward. His bed had a dark green comforter on it that looked soft and welcoming. Jon shifted so he was sitting closer to the wall, leaning against one of his pillows. He was cross-legged at least, but if he unfolded his legs, he’d basically be lying down and I’d be sitting next to a boy in his bed while the boy was lying down. I could feel my cheeks go hot at the thought. I hated blushing; it emphasized how round my cheeks were. Jon patted the space next to him again.
“Is this cool?” he asked. And I could feel the implication of for you, as a brown girl, specifically hanging, unsaid, at the end of that question. My stomach did another funny little flip. But I nodded brightly and unclasped my hands. Luckily, at least I didn’t have goose bumps anymore. I moved to sit next to him like I didn’t have a care in the world, hoping he wouldn’t feel how tense I actually was. I matched his posture so when we were settled, we both were kind of hunching over the laptop between us. There was a headphone splitter plugged into the port so we could both listen at the same time. Jon saw me looking at it and added, “It might have a disc drive, but the speakers are kind of busted, so we’ll have to use headphones.” He gave me a sheepish grin, and I tried not to think about why he decided this was better than watching the movie downstairs. “She’s All That is great and all, but it’s 10 Things I Hate About You that is the best,” Jon continued while I pulled my earbuds out of my bag and set about detangling them. A hand entered my vision while I was struggling with the white wire, and Jon’s fingers grazed mine as he took the buds out of my busy hands, and I nearly yelped in surprise. “Let me. You’re going to break it if you pull that hard.” He laughed.
“Oh…thanks,” I said. My heart was dhak-dhak-dhak-ing in my chest, and I subtly tried to take in a deep breath to slow it down into a normal rhythm. Watching him work at the wires, I couldn’t help but be thrown by how quickly this was moving. Was it really just a few weeks ago that this kid threw up on me at that party? How did I even get here? Then Jon was passing my earbuds back to me and plugging the end of them into the splitter. He slid the DVD into the slit on the side of the machine and leaned back…straightening his legs. Okay, we were definitely going to lie down next to each other and watch this movie.
I really needed my heart to calm down because this was totally no big deal! It was super cool and something teens did every single day in America, and if Random American Teenager Number Forty-Seven could get through this, then so could I! Making a deliberate effort to appear as casual as possible, I mimicked Jon’s movements so my legs were parallel to his, heels digging into the comforter. I regretted wearing shorts—I should have put more lotion on. My knees were definitely ashy. But if I tried to move or cover them now, would it call more attention to them? Jon was busy fiddling with his laptop, so I decided to deflect instead.
“Alright, let’s see this magic movie that is the best cinematic experience of all time,” I teased lightly, trying to get back some of that ease of conversation we’d had when we were pretending to study. But he paused before hitting play and looked at me seriously.
“Okay, I don’t want to overhype the movie, so please lower your expectations. It’s still from, like, over twenty years ago, so there’s some, uh, problematic stuff in there. I should warn you. It’s not as bad as, like, what my mom watched from the eighties, but it might shock you a little.”
“Consider my expectations managed,” I said, grinning and hoping it wasn’t coming across as weak as it felt.
* * *
Turns out when Jon Slate meant “watch a movie,” he literally meant watch a movie. We were halfway into the movie, and no moves had been made. It was just a pretty fun story that I was surprised to find out was based on a Shakespeare play called The Taming of the Shrew[*2].
The shrew showed up to the epic high school party that her little sister wanted to go to, and then a fight broke out on-screen. Jon and I laughed together at the creepy guy screaming, “Ooh, fight!” and running off to find the action. But then I noticed…well, like in a lot of older movies, there were, like, twenty to thirty people on-screen and the vast, vast majority of them were white kids. And nearly every one of the leads was a white kid. Definitely not a single South Asian among the bunch. Honestly, I wanted to laugh. If I’d been with Neil or Divya or probably even Philip, one of us would have definitely made a joke about it to cover the slight burn of not being included. I looked at Jon out of the corner of my eye. Was it worth risking it?
The beats of an old hip-hop song interrupted my thoughts, and Jon said, “This part’s a little hard to watch.”
I followed his eyes to the screen, where the angry girl was drunkenly dancing on a table while everyone watched. I cringed. He was right, it was hard to watch. But then she literally fell into the arms of the romantic lead, and I literally felt Jon sigh next to me and lean a little closer. It had taken me a good chunk of the movie to calm down, but my nerves came roaring back. My heart was pounding, and I felt jittery inside…but in a good way this time. I grinned. I was not going to disrupt this moment.
A few minutes later, I was screaming with laughter. “Did she—Did she just—”
Jon was in a full-body cringe; his hands were over his eyes, and he’d paused the movie. He was muttering something under his breath, and I leaned forward to catch it.
“Oh my god, oh my god, how did I forget—”
“That she threw up on him!” I yelped, a giggle bursting out of me right afterward. Jon pulled at his cheeks with his fingers as he scrubbed his hands down his face, uncovering his eyes. He was tomato red. I pursed my lips, trying to hold it in.
“I know I already said sorry, but I am seriously so sorry. I was embarrassed for days after that happened.” I’d never seen him quite so earnest. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Philip’s question of whether or not Jon apologized for what he’d said at Taco Bell hit me, but I ignored it. Jon clearly was feeling terrible about the party, and I didn’t want him to feel even worse by adding another thing he needed to apologize for.
“It’s—I mean, it’s okay. Things happen. Like, look.” I pointed at the screen. “I bet they’ll be fine.”
Jon shot me a massive smile. “Thanks for not making me feel like a huge tool even though you totally could have if you’d wanted to, S. P.” He pressed play, and if I scooted an inch or two closer to him when the movie started, who’s to say[*3]?
So far, the movie was not bad, if hilariously, hilariously specific to the experiences of the kids it portrayed. Even saying the words teen pregnancy out loud? My father would never. Go out with a rugged Australian teen and play paintball? As if. I looked at Jon sitting next to me and grinned to myself. Maybe next time, Jon and I could play paintball.
As the movie went on, I realized how quickly I could spit out a joke I knew Jon would get, so it couldn’t matter much that he wouldn’t get some of my references, right? Our rapport was starting to feel like second nature. Didn’t everyone adapt to the people they were with? I was adapting.
Assimilating? I frowned at the intrusive thought from Phantom Neil.
That wasn’t what I meant. Ugh, assimilating. Ew. Whatever. It didn’t matter! What mattered was I was spending the evening with someone I liked, someone I had things in common with, even if it wasn’t everything, and it was really nice. My hands were still tingling from where our fingers had brushed together earlier! And I was pretty sure the sweater I was wearing was going to smell like his pillow when I left.
