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Just as he started to grab his bag, he saw a hand waving in his periphery and he turned his head, his eyes widening when they landed on Khai. Bodhi had only met him once at the beach, and they hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of sentences of greeting and goodbye.
Still, Khai was smiling, so Bodhi set his bag back down and lifted his hand for a hello.
“Sorry,” Khai was signing rapidly.
Bodhi shook his head. “You’re fine. I was just waiting for…someone. But they’re not coming.”
Khai’s grin was wide. “No. That’s me. You’re waiting on me.”
Bodhi blinked, confused. “No. I had a meeting with my interpreter.”
“That’s me,” Khai repeated, then pulled out his phone, tapped on the screen, then showed Bodhi the assignment letter. When Bodhi looked back up with wide, shocked eyes, Khai’s grin turned a little sheepish. “When I saw your name, I took the assignment. I thought…”
Khai’s hands hesitated, and Bodhi wondered if he looked pissed. He wasn’t though. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. He’d already been wildly nervous and feeling like a fool for not doing this sooner and Khai’s announcement had thrown him.
“It’s okay,” Bodhi signed, forcing himself to move away from his shock.
Khai’s brows furrowed. “Are you sure? You don’t look okay.”
“You’re not who I expected,” Bodhi told him. “I didn’t think I was going to know my interpreter. I didn’t realize you were a grad student,” he added. “You’re older.”
Khai laughed a little shyly and rubbed his palms on the side of his jeans before saying, “I know. I had to drop out ten years ago, but I signed back up this semester.”
“Does Jori know?” Bodhi didn’t know Jori very well, but he did know that Khai was his full-time sitter.
Khai just laughed and rolled his eyes. “He threatened to fire me if I didn’t take the opportunity to come back. It…” Khai licked his lips and glanced around before moving his body so only Bodhi could see his hands. “When I did my undergrads, my parents paid my tuition. They didn’t like some of my life choices, so they kicked me out and cut me off. I barely finished my degree, but I couldn’t afford grad school after that and I didn’t have time to look into funding. I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to go back.”
Bodhi’s heart ached for him. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if his grandparents had any financial control over him and Ravi. “I’m sorry.”
Khai quickly shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It’s better this way. I had to live in the closet for a long, long time.” Khai pinched and rolled his lips between his teeth, then shrugged. “I think they suspected I was a lesbian for most of my life. I shopped in the men’s section, and I never wanted to go on dates. I played softball.”
Bodhi was pretty sure there was some cultural reference was missing by the way Khai smirked.
Khai shrugged. “My senior year at UA, I came out of the closet as a man.”
Bodhi’s brow furrowed. As aman? As a…. “Oh! Trans.” His fingers flared and curled from one side of his chest to the other.
Khai smiled widely. “Yeah. I thought all my medical records were confidential, but my sophomore year, my parents requested my records and they saw my HRT prescription. They…” His hands hovered in the air as he trailed off with a small sigh that expanded and deflated his chest. “They didn’t say anything to me about it. I came home for Christmas break and all my stuff was sitting out on the lawn. My dad was out there waiting for me.”
Bodhi swallowed heavily. “What did you do?”
“Went to a shelter,” Khai answered, and Bodhi could see there was pain in his eyes from that experience. “It was the church that helped my parents adopt me, and they spent the whole time trying to…you know…fix me.”
Bodhi felt sick to his stomach. “You were adopted?”
Khai’s eyes darted away. “Yeah. Uh. It’s a complicated story.”
“I’m sorry,” Bodhi said. “I’m being nosy.” He spelled the last word though he was pretty sure there was some colloquial phrase for it, but he’d never been good with those.
Khai immediately softened. “No, no. I’m the one dumping all my trauma on you five minutes before we have to leave for class.”
Bodhi glanced over at the wall clock. “It’s fine.”
Khai nodded. “Anyway, I’m fluent in ASL. I’m a CODA—from my biological parents, not the other ones. I finished my interpreting certification online two years ago, but I wanted to go back in person and do all the things that my adoptive parents robbed me of. So this is part of my work-study financial aid.”
Bodhi wanted to hug him, but he didn’t think that was super appropriate, so he just tapped his Y-hand in the air.Peh-peh.
“You’re my first interpreting assignment, but I thought it might be okay since I know you,” Khai added.
