Chapter 2 #2
What does he mean I already have? He could, and I assumed did, pitch So Proud of You without having read it—the proposal he practically dismissed was thorough enough for him to know its general deal. Not that his pitching was award-worthy, given that the media outlets he reached all pooh-poohed it.
Like that Talon magazine interview he set up.
He positioned it as a huge coup when he first told me about it—exposure to Talon’s circulation of 1.
1 million readers meant potentially garnering a new audience, and the journalist was Ryan’s buddy from college.
Daniel Fox. His very name brings bile to my throat.
While he was supposed to write a glowing feature on my rising star after my book deal was announced, instead he took a derisive spin, ultimately lambasting me as a trite internet personality who had no business getting a book deal at all.
I’d tried to quash my suspicions during the interview, when he asked leading questions with a permanent smirk on his face.
Tried to ignore the discovery in my pre-interview internet stalking that he was a creative writing major turned journalist and thus may have Opinions that would bias his take.
Ultimately, I wanted to trust Laura’s assertion that Ryan’s instincts would pay off.
Trust that my work would speak for itself.
But certain people will never take you seriously—trolls, Daniel Foxes, Ryan Grants.
The lesson is to surround yourself with people who will.
And try to convince yourself they’re the ones who know what they’re talking about.
Over an hour later, when the line thins to an end, the room is still filled with guests holding dwindling glasses of wine, grease-stained napkins that previously held canapés, and copies of my book tucked into their armpits or branded totes. I should mingle, and I will, but what I really want is—
“Here,” Maral says, handing me a sweaty glass of clear liquid, a curl of lemon rind floating among the ice cubes.
Bless her. She knows me so well.
I take a sip of the vodka soda. “Boyid mernem,” I whisper. An Armenian expression that translates literally to I’ll die for your height but somehow means I love you. Aggressive devotion is an endearing quirk in our culture.
“Full house,” she says, clinking her own glass of white wine against mine. “Cheers, Ayn. You did good.”
High praise from Mar—she’s not usually so effusive.
“This is all Meredith and Alison,” I say.
She points to the dwindling display of books on the table. “You did write that thing, right? I seem to remember you working twenty-hour days for several months instead of your usual sixteen.”
“Yeah, my workout regime really took a nosedive during that stretch.”
She purses her lips. “You dictated the first draft into your phone from your Peloton.”
“Movement helps with creativity,” I say. “If only Siri knew how to separate my voice from Ally Love’s, that might not have ended up being more work to edit afterward.”
“Speaking of editing,” she says, checking her phone, “I’m going to head out in a minute—the last episode still needs to be spliced and Simu just uploaded better audio from his end of the interview to Dropbox.
Shanthi’s got his video, so she’ll be able to post clips as a Reel tonight too. She says she’s not sleeping anyway.”
If there’s anyone who works more hours than I do, it’s Shanthi. I’ve told her to take a page from Mar’s book (she only works twelve-hour days—something about boundaries, whatever those are), but she’s clearly cut from the same cloth as me.
“But first,” Mar says, turning covertly toward the group of Woodsworthians still by the bar.
Laura, Meredith, and Ryan are clustered together, body language casual as they converse.
Well, Laura and Meredith are casual. Ryan always looks like he forgot to take the hanger out of his jacket.
“I’m still wiping my jaw off the floor from when the Storm Cloud showed up in the middle of your speech. Nice recovery, by the way.”
I shake my head. “An email and an in-person showing. What if that’s a double bad sign? Bad things come in twos.”
“That’s threes.”
“Fuck.”
She tsks. “Take it down a notch. So he’s here—it’s not like he’s working on your book. He can’t taint something he can’t touch.”
I exhale. “You’re right.”
“I was surprised he introduced himself to me. Like, why make the connection at all, you know? But maybe he’s a fan of the podcast.”
“If he’s ever listened to a single episode of the podcast, I will go camping for a week straight.”
She gasps, knowing that’s the big guns. “Hey, he showed up tonight. Life’s full of surprises. Better order a tent.”
Although most of our interactions have been via email or teleconference, I’ve also met Ryan in person several times.
Maral might normally have come to one or two of those with Nadia and me, given that she’s my brand manager and the keeper—and maker—of my schedule, but as luck would have it, she had conflicts.
She was visiting her parents in L.A. the week we did the photo shoot for my cover—which Ryan didn’t even need to be at, let alone spend scrutinizing my every pose like Don Draper minus the cigarette for two hours straight.
On the day we had the pre-pub meeting with the Woodsworth marketing and publicity teams, she was ironing out the contract for Mindy Kaling’s appearance on the podcast (which paid off—it’s still one of our most streamed episodes, and one of my personal faves).
I recorded our discussion about the long-lead campaign and annotated the audio file with copious ideas that came to me during and after, then sent her an email or twenty over the next few days as more ideas bustled in, to which she replied, I’ll never miss a meeting again.
Maral’s eyes travel up and down the length of Ryan. “He’s not what I expected.”
“Less cumulonimbus, more human man?”
“That. And…” She tilts her head. “He’s hot. The way you described him, I imagined a dowdy old-world professor type. Spectacles perched on the end of his nose. But he looks…” She swirls her wine. “Like someone you’d have on rotation.”
“Ha.” She means the short list of men I call upon to serve my physical needs from time to time.
Okay, fairly frequently. (What can I say?
I have a lot of physical needs.) The prerequisites are that they be unattached, good in bed, and as uninterested in a relationship as I am.
No questions asked as to why. Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few takers. “He wishes.”
I sip my drink, trying to assess Ryan with unbiased eyes.
Sure, he’s handsome. But publishing as an industry is notoriously short on men, and everyone knows that when men are in short supply, the few options become more attractive by default.
He may be a publishing ten, but he’s a New York seven.
Whereas Jacob—the latest addition to my rotation, as Mar put it—is a solid ten all around.
My eyes trail from Ryan’s rich brown hair to his five o’clock shadow, the darkness of which makes the jade green of his eyes all the more vibrant, not to mention the soft pink of his lips (why am I looking at his lips).
He’s wearing a charcoal-colored button-down shirt that pulls a little across the breadth of his back, and dark jeans that look like they were measured and manufactured to mold to his exact shape.
He looks strong…substantial. Like a tree, rooted to the earth. Immovable. Steady.
Okay, maybe he’s a New York eight.
Or maybe I’ve just gone too long without having my physical needs served.
“Need a napkin for that drool?” Mar says, tone mirthful.
I snap to. “What? Shut up.”
“You look like you haven’t had dinner and he’s a juicy kebab.”
“You’re gross,” I sputter.
“Whatever you were just imagining doing to him is grosser.”
“I wasn’t imagining anything.”
“Then why are you getting so worked up?”
“I’m not,” I lie. Damn, I must be hard up if my mind is wandering as far as Ryan Grant. How long has it been since I last had sex? It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ll have to consult my Rolodex (aka the contacts in my phone grouped under hookups) posthaste.
“Right,” she says, eyeing me. “ ’Cause far be it from you to have feelings of any kind.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t you have a podcast to edit?”
She finishes her drink, setting the glass on a high-top. “Mingle, have a good time. I’ll see you in the morning. Pancakes on me before we head to the airport.” She double-kisses me before heading off to say her goodbyes.
I wander around the room, chatting with people and finishing my drink, then make my way over to where Nadia and Meredith are having an animated conversation.
“So, success?” Nadia asks me as I approach.
“I would say so.” I sling an arm around Meredith’s shoulders. “Thanks to this brilliant human.”
Meredith goes scarlet under her freckles, which never fails to charm me. “Does she ever stop with the compliments?”
“No,” Nadia says solemnly. “It’s one of her worst qualities.”
I smile, squeezing Meredith. “I can’t wait to spend the next two weeks embarrassing you with praise before the entire country.”
I feel her stiffen. She and Nadia share a wide-eyed stare.
“What did I say?” I ask.
“Um,” Meredith says quietly. “Nadia?”
Nadia waves her hand. “We can talk about it later.”
“Talk about what?” I ask.
“Just some news,” she says, too quickly. “You and I can go for a drink after the launch and I’ll tell you—”
“What news?”
“Sweetie, let’s just enjoy the rest of your—”
“Nadia Vivian Chan, so help me god,” I growl. “You know there is no chance I am going to be thinking about anything but the fact that there’s something you two know that I don’t know for the rest of the night unless you tell me right now.”
There’s no pulling wool over my eyes, no matter how temporarily. Nadia is all too aware of this—I’m not exactly what you’d call low-maintenance. She and Meredith share another glance, this one sheepish.
“Well,” Meredith says, her voice a little brittle, “it’s my news, really. I told Nadia this morning but we didn’t want to ruin your day.”
“Ruin my day?” I say, aghast. “What the hell is going on?”
“It’s actually great news. For me.” Meredith’s smile is a rictus. “I, um. Got a new job. Senior publicist, at Burton Publishing.”
Oh. Wow. “The educational publisher?”
“Yeah,” she says.
She told me early on—when I insisted on taking her out to lunch so we could get to know each other better—that she’d wanted to be a teacher when she first left school.
A friend of her family’s is some muckety-muck at Woodsworth and offered her a publicity assistant role right after she graduated five years ago.
Being up to her eyeballs in student debt, she took it.
While she enjoyed it—and is amazing at it, frankly—she hoped she’d eventually be able to parlay her experience into an educational publishing job. Best of both worlds.
Now here she is, dream fulfilled.
A rush of happiness washes through me, and I can’t help hurling myself at her in a full bear hug. “Oh my god—congratulations!”
Her eyes are glistening when I pull away. And then, I go stock-still.
Wait.
She’s my publicist. I need her. How could she have gotten a new job when she’s in the middle of this job?
“I know, the timing is shit,” she rushes to explain.
“But I’ve been at the same level for a few years and Woodsworth has put a freeze on promotions so I’ve been looking for a while.
I need a higher salary, I don’t want to live with three roommates in a one-bedroom anymore, and I just happened to get an offer from Burton last week.
Actually, So Proud of You made my portfolio that much more impressive. They specifically said that.”
“Glad I could help,” I say weakly.
“I’m sorry. The role is too good to pass up.” She’s watching me anxiously. “I just handed in my resignation. My last day is next Friday.”
Next Friday. “We’re in L.A. next Friday. What, are you going to fly home in the middle of my All Day interview?”
Meredith swallows. “No…”
“Are you going to stay on for the full tour?” I ask, my brow knotted. “I admire the dedication, but will you get paid beyond your last day?”
Nadia puts her hand on my arm. “Hon.”
“I, um.” Meredith coughs. “I can’t go on the tour.”
I need another drink. This is worse than I thought.
“So. Okay.” My voice sounds low, hollow.
“I guess we don’t need someone from Woodsworth.
But Maral’s only arranged some of the speaking events, we still need someone to do all the bookstore event logistics.
” My mind is spinning through all the details that could go wrong that absolutely can’t go wrong.
This tour has to go well—my reputation, my career, my future depends on it.
“We don’t know anything about the store reps you’ve been in contact with or their expected shipments or—”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Meredith says quickly, as if glad to be called upon to deliver some good news at last. “We’ve got that all sorted—someone’s coming in my place.”
I suck in air through my teeth. “You know I love Alison, but she’s still pretty green—”
“It’s not Alison,” she says. “It’s someone way more experienced, senior to me, even. And luckily he knows everything about your campaign because he worked with me on it.” Her eyes flick to Nadia, who nods for her to go on.
No. No. Not the Storm Cloud. Please don’t say—
“Ryan is going to come on the tour with you.”