Chapter 3 #2
“In my entire life, I’ve never heard you say the words all coffeed out,” Maral says.
“Madam,” I say, “don’t think I didn’t notice you swoon when he offered to get you any beverage your heart desires.”
She sets her weekender on the floor. “I don’t get people tripping over themselves to fulfill my desires every day like you do. Especially not men who look like him.”
“What exactly is doing it for you?” I ask. “Is it the black cloak? Or the scythe?”
“Maybe the way he fills out that blazer,” she says. “Shanth, you agree, right?”
“Yeah, he’s hot,” Shanthi says impassively.
“You’re not even attracted to men,” I say.
She shrugs. “I can still appreciate the goods.”
“Did you two miss the fact that tomorrow’s event got fucked the second he stepped in as publicist?” I ask.
“Did he set fire to the dry cleaner?” Shanthi asks, not looking up from her phone.
Mar gasps dramatically. “Of course, it’s the only answer. He must have flown to Chicago after your launch last night, committed arson, and then flown back to New York so we’d be none the wiser and he could fly back to Chicago with us this morning. Diabolical. The carbon emissions alone.”
I glare at her. “You of all people know how hard we’ve worked to make this tour a success.”
“And it will be,” Maral says, in the voice she uses to mollify me when I get worked up. “The event is not fucked—they’ll find a new spot and it’ll go great. I know the shitty coverage freaked you out—”
I begin to sputter a rebuttal, and she holds up a palm to silence me.
“—but it’s far outweighed by the well-deserved praise the book has received.
You got a starred review in Booklist and Publishers Weekly—do you know how incredible that is?
The book is solid, you killed it. Preorders were strong.
All the tour events have been arranged by Meredith and me, and he’s just here for logistical execution, which it sounds like he’s on top of.
You know he’s not trying to sabotage the book. ”
I exhale. God, I hate it when she’s reasonable. But it doesn’t change the fact that he just doesn’t get the book, or care to. I don’t want to promote something I worked so hard on with someone who looks down on it—there are enough haters out there without having one inside the house.
“Maybe you’ll warm up to him by the end of the flight,” Maral says.
“Unlikely,” I say, “since you and I are spending the flight going over the interview questions I’ll be—”
“Nah,” says Maral. “I’m going to sit with Shanthi, and you’re going to sit with Ryan.”
“What?” The plane is an Embraer, with two seats on either side of the aisle, which means we have to couple up. “Why?”
“So you can make nice.”
“I’m always nice.” There is no need to socialize. He is on this trip in a strictly professional capacity, his only function being to make sure things go smoothly. Although whether he’s capable of doing that remains to be seen.
She purses her lips, unconvinced. “If you’re going to be this stubborn for the next two weeks, you’re going to be even more insufferable than usual. The last thing you want to do is sabotage the tour yourself by assuming he’s going to ruin it.”
To my dismay, yet again she has a point. I don’t want to do anything that could threaten this tour. I realize I’m clenching my jaw and try to relax my muscles.
Make nice it is.
Storm clouds do pass, after all. The sun always comes out eventually.
If Ryan is surprised by the seating arrangements, he shows no sign of it.
He placed my carry-on in the overhead compartment, lifting it as though it were filled with feathers, before settling into the aisle seat next to me.
He’s since been typing witheringly into his phone—probably dealing with publishing crises of various proportions, including tomorrow’s event venue—ignoring the announcement to set devices to airplane mode.
I can’t help feeling smug that, if the plane explodes because of Ryan (and whatever the reason is behind airplane mode), Maral will be proven wrong for once.
I regard the advance review copy of a book sitting next to the Starbucks cup on his tray. The author is a famous astrophysicist. Must Ryan be so predictable?
“Looks like a fun read,” I say.
He glances from his phone to the ARC. “That’s for work. It releases next year—I have to pitch it over the next few weeks.”
“I suppose your old buddy Daniel Fox would love to feature an astrophysicist in Talon. Such a worthy profession.” I’m grateful Mar is too far away to overhear us lest she chastise me for the dig.
“He probably would,” he affirms. “Dr. Conrad’s world-renowned—”
Confirmation bias has me itching to roll my eyes.
“—but I don’t pitch to Daniel anymore,” he finishes.
I stop short. “Really? I imagine he’d fawn all over a science darling writing about astronomical phenomena for the highly educated layman.”
The corner of his mouth quirks—the first sign of a non-scowl I’ve ever seen on his face. “Did you finagle an ARC from Meredith?” he asks.
“No, but I’ve read enough of this kind of book to know its deal.”
He puts his phone down on the tray table. “I would have thought you’d go for a different kind of book.”
Oh, I’ll bet. “Let me guess. Untamed or We Were Dreamers?” Surely all celebrities-turned-authors are on his shit list.
“I was thinking more When Breath Becomes Air or Women in White Coats.”
So he remembers my bio. I suppose it was his job to pitch me for a while there too. It’s not like it’s a secret, anyway, the fact that I went to med school. “Believe it or not, I don’t only read books that reflect my education. Do you only read about publicity?”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t study publicity.”
Inwardly I gasp. But you’re such a pro. Nary a misstep to be seen.
He moves his phone and book to his lap as he stows his tray table. The screen keeps lighting up, notification after notification filling the space. Emails with all-caps subject lines and exclamation points galore, and a few texts from someone named Celine. The last one is three heart emojis.
Huh. Ryan has a girlfriend.
I guess it’s not totally preposterous. He’s attractive enough. Assuming Celine doesn’t mind going out with a starched shirt.
“You’re supposed to turn that off,” I say, nodding at his device.
He locks eyes with me for a moment too long before he taps open his contacts. “That reminds me, we should exchange numbers in case we need to communicate on the road.”
“We have each other’s emails.”
“I’m willing to bet you get a million email notifications a day. Texts will sift to the top, priority-wise.”
I do get a shitload of emails and historically am not the greatest at keeping up with them, which is why Maral triages my inbox regularly. And there are many logistical reasons we’ll need to stay in touch these next couple of weeks.
A second after I recite my number, my phone blips with an incoming text. What the— Above the unfamiliar number and message preview reading It’s Ryan, the airplane symbol is missing from the corner of the screen. Oops.
“You’re supposed to turn that off,” Ryan says. His voice is deep, barely above a whisper, and it slinks up the sides of my neck.
I tamp down the shivery sensation as we both tap our screens offline.
“So what did you study?” I ask, unable to stop my curiosity, even about Ryan.
He hesitates. “Creative writing,” he says finally.
I suppress a smirk. I guess that’s how he and Daniel became acquainted—two Guy in Your MFAs sadboying all over each other. “What’s the deal, then—those who can’t do, publicize?”
He stares at the back of the seat before him. “Something like that.”
I catch the tension in his tone and guilt gnaws at me for how glibly I phrased my question. I pivot toward conciliatory. “It’s not easy.”
“What?” he asks over the roar of air pressure as the plane ascends.
“Writing,” I say. “I remember thinking, How hard can this be? But turns out—really hard.”
Writing a book hadn’t been on my radar until Nadia suggested it as a way to broaden my brand, but as soon as she did, ideas flooded my mind.
I was confident I could pull it off—challenging tasks have never scared me away—and was so excited to distill the messaging from So Proud of You into a new format, offer a different audience a way to access it, that I stayed up all night putting the proposal together.
We started shopping it the following week.
When it came time to write the actual manuscript, though, it wasn’t quite so smooth.
I’d envisioned pulling more from my podcast transcripts and social posts, editing and recasting them as needed to fit within the framework of the larger narrative, but I wound up feeling like I was working from the ground up rather than the top down.
Hitting walls in every direction. The first draft felt like a beast that took every ounce of my brainpower to tame.
“Well, seems like you got the hang of it,” he says.
I tend to get the hang of things. Bust your ass 24/7 your whole life and that can happen. But if I had a dollar for every comment I’ve entertained about the effortlessness of my achievements, I could buy the airplane we’re flying in. “Doesn’t mean it was easy,” I mutter.
His eyes find mine. “I didn’t mean to imply that it was. Writing is brain-busting, no matter how capable the person doing it.”
Wait. Did he just…express compunction? I didn’t know men were capable of doing that. In my experience, they only double down when you refute them.
“A contract and deadlines provide prime inspiration,” I say.
That trace of a smile tics on his lips and, fuck me, something happens in my belly—like a guitar string being plucked. “Something tells me you’re in no need of a muse.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugs. “Just that you seem very driven.”
Credit to him for the euphemism. Driven has other implications, and I’ve been called every barbarous word out there. “I get it,” I say. “Overbearing type-A ballbuster, steamrolls her way into places she has no business—”
“No,” he says. “Drive is an admirable quality. It can take a person further than talent or skill.” He pauses for a moment. “I guess that’s why it’s called drive.”
I gasp. “Ew, was that the daddest dad joke of all time?”
He cringes. “Unintentionally, yes?”
I don’t know anything about his personal life, but I could have sworn he doesn’t have children. There’s no ring on his finger, not that that’s a prerequisite. “You better keep those gems to yourself, Grant. You do not need to be handing me ammo on a silver platter.”
He nods, his lips pressed together. “Noted.”
My eyes can’t help roaming over his jaw, his cheekbones, the line of his shadowed neck. His dark hair is thick. It would be easy to imagine the feel of it between one’s fingers. So easy.
If one were to imagine it. Which I’m not.
If there is one redeeming aspect of the Storm Cloud coming on tour, it’s that he is…not hard to look at. Hard not to look at. At least these next two weeks will be adorned with some nice eye candy, which will incite zero complaints from me.
It’s also not lost on me that he sort of paid me a compliment. Good to know he’s committing to the cheerleading aspect of the gig.
When the light on the console indicates we’re at cruising altitude, I lower my tray table and open my laptop. Entertainment Weekly is running a feature about me online next week, and I want to get a jump on their interview questions.
A flight attendant arrives at our row in short order, napkin in hand. “Anything to drink?”
Distracted, I blurt, “Coffee, please,” then mentally kick myself. For one thing, airplane coffee is barf, and for another, now I’ve outed my childish refusal of Ryan’s offer at the airport. It’s like the scent wafting from his latte embedded itself in my subconscious. I was powerless against it.
He watches as I take the small paper cup from her, declining cream and sugar. Ryan raises a hand to indicate he’s fine, his eyes not straying once from my burning face.
I avoid eye contact as I take a sip from the cup, and the flavor of the lukewarm liquid—somehow simultaneously burnt and insipid—causes me to gag involuntarily. I school my features, unwilling to let the revulsion show.
Ryan’s attention is rapt on me. Go back to your astrophysics book, perv.
“Good coffee?” he asks, his voice low. Taunting.
“Mmhmm,” I murmur, feigning absorption in my laptop screen.
“Smells good. Not quite sweet, but definitely smoky. Almost charred.” Finally, he drags his gaze away, raising his own cup to his lips to take a long swig of his latte. “Wonder if they grind the beans fresh on the plane.”