Chapter 4
Being on the road has many positives. Exploring new ground, meeting new people, the general excitement of change.
And hotels. Maral would say the high-thread-count sheets or fancy aromatherapy toiletry sets or plush robes are the best part, but I’m not exactly a relaxer.
For me, who has sprung awake with energy to burn since I was in diapers, a well-appointed hotel gym is manna.
The vast array of equipment is a pleasant shake-up from the stationary bike, free weights, and resistance bands I exhaust on a daily basis in my apartment.
The time difference between Chicago and New York is only an hour, but my body can’t help its commitment to rising before the sun.
Just as my mom can’t help her commitment to sending Good Morning memes.
She and Maral’s mom, Sosi, text them to us every day at the crack of dawn—garishly cutesy greeting-card-esque images with the words good morning emblazoned across them.
Today’s, for instance, is an AI-style illustration of a doe-eyed kitten holding a bouquet of sparkling roses.
I respond to Mom with a simple text wishing her good morning back, short and sweet given we were on and off the phone for over an hour yesterday.
After we arrived at the hotel from the airport yesterday afternoon, Mar, Shanthi, and I gathered in my room to get some work done.
(We get our own rooms when we travel because a.
we’re adults and b. to quote my sweet cousin, We get quite enough of you during waking hours, thank you very much.) But I spent a fair bit of time dealing with Mom’s gardener, followed by her bank, correcting their system glitch that keeps sending her mortgage and credit card bills to her instead of me.
I called Mom to fill her in on each development along the way, Maral ushering me into the hallway when my cell yell—necessary to be heard over Mom’s TV blaring in the background—started to give her a headache.
By the time I was done, Ryan had sent a message confirming the new bookstore for the event today, saying he was headed over to take care of logistics, and the three of us spent the remainder of the afternoon spreading the word to ticket holders about the change of venue.
“See?” Maral said in the elevator when we broke to grab some dinner—Shanthi had said she wanted to try a Chicago-style hot dog and our grumbling tummies wholeheartedly jumped on board. “It’s all coming together. No storm in the forecast.”
“Do you ever get tired of I-told-you-so-ing me?” I muttered, even though my relief was a living thing.
“No,” she said.
Now I hop out of bed, wasting no time digging through suitcase number two for running shorts and a cropped racerback tank. Teeth brushed and sneakers on, I’m out the door less than ten minutes after I open my eyes.
Being a (super-)early-morning person—though Maral calls me a relentlessly all-day person—means I’m usually solo in a hotel fitness center.
But when I arrive at the mirror-walled room filled with treadmills, spin bikes, ellipticals, rowers, and various strength training machines, someone is already there, running at an impressive speed on a treadmill that faces the window overlooking a still-dark North Michigan Avenue and Navy Pier beyond.
It’s only after I enter through the glass doors and catch a glimpse of the runner’s thick, dark hair, damp at the base of his neck, that I recognize it’s Ryan.
His confident stride and the slick sheen of his skin indicate he’s been at this a while.
His even breaths, despite the significant speed and incline, betray his level of fitness.
I don’t want to notice how his threadbare gray T-shirt clings to the perspiration on his back.
Definitely don’t want to notice that that back is corded with muscle, lats and deltoids that make me wonder what other movements would cause those muscles to flex.
What other activities might showcase his strength. His vitality. His endurance.
His thighs and calves are shaped like an athlete’s, pounding that belt like it’s wronged him. A determination in his tread that says he’s not just working out, he’s working something out.
“What did that machine ever do to you?” I ask.
Ryan’s pace falters, and he braces himself on the handrails, lifts his feet to rest on the sides of the running belt, and turns to me.
“Good mor—” he starts to say, but doesn’t finish. His eyes flick away from mine for a breath of a second, lighting on my bare midriff and legs. He clears his throat.
I feel the corner of my lip lift. So. I’m not the only one checking someone out around here. Well, get a load, Grant. These aren’t even the shortest shorts I own.
“Good mor to you too,” I say, climbing onto a treadmill a couple stations over. “I see I’m not the only early riser among us.”
He starts running again, his gait less stompy. “Didn’t sleep great.”
I power up the machine to start at a light run.
“Travel can throw people off.” Sleeping in a different bed, those tight hotel corners, the unfamiliar surroundings.
I try to imagine the kind of creature comforts Ryan might rely on at home, but other than stacks of Nobel-worthy ARCs and an ironing board to press his one hundred identical gray shirts, I come up blank.
“What about you?” he asks. “Nerves?”
“Nerves?” I say, as if it’s a foreign word.
“Big deal, a book tour. Lots of authors get anxious.”
I increase my pace, not sharing that the only thing making me anxious is the last-minute publicist change-up. “I’m so used to putting myself out there, these events are pretty 101.”
“Music to a publicist’s ears,” he says. “Meredith was glad she didn’t have to broach media training with you.”
She said as much to me too. Apparently it can be a process, getting authors up to speed on how to present themselves best in interviews, talk about their book in short, snappy sound bites, and stay on message even when interviewers sometimes don’t.
But I’ve always been comfortable with public speaking (Mar credits my level-eleven extroversion for this), and doing so much of it over the years has given me enough experience that I could probably become a media trainer myself.
“She’s been a dream to work with,” I say.
I’ve been trying to keep my snark in check since the flight yesterday, but I realize belatedly that that may come across as a gibe if he reads comparison into the sentiment.
“I’m going to miss her,” I add, hoping that expressing something personal may soften my previous words.
“Meredith’s one of the best in the business, and your book was a big coup for her,” he says, decreasing the pace on his machine. “But career decisions are a trade-off. We have to go with the option that will meet our greatest needs.”
It sounds like he’s speaking from experience, and I wonder what needs Woodsworth satisfies for him.
If he studied creative writing, how fulfilling is it to promote other people’s creative output?
And yet, I can relate. I went to med school and was so close to becoming a practicing doctor—a career path that would satisfy the most important people in my life, offer financial security, and do some good in the world—only to abandon ship when my most pressing needs demanded I pursue something else instead.
Which at the time was less about So Proud of You itself and more about my desperate, clawing need for self-preservation when it felt like the ground was crumbling beneath my feet.
Ryan’s treadmill stops and he wipes it down, ever efficient in his movements.
He seems to be avoiding looking in my direction, but I do no such thing.
I blame the fact that I haven’t had sex in a few weeks, but if his shirt clinging to his back was a sight, the way it hugs his pecs and taut stomach is a goddamn spectacle.
I only just started my run and already I’m panting.
I throat-punch my libido. Ryan’s head doesn’t need any more inflating, even if he’s unaware that my thoughts are an air pump. What’s he trying to prove with that body, anyway? What does a publicist need so many muscles for?
“Excuse me?” he says, finally glancing my way.
My jaw clenches. I said that last part out loud, didn’t I? Shit. Fate won’t stop till she’s buried me under twenty metric tons of embarrassment, using my own inability to stop myself from blurting my every thought as a shovel.
He’s still waiting, and for once I’m not quick on my feet in coming up with a believable cover-up for my inopportune blurtage. Horniness is clouding my brain.
“I didn’t say anything,” I say instead. Like a smooth criminal.
He adjusts the weight on the chest press. Slowly, deliberately, as though to rub it in. “My mistake.”
He pushes the handles of the machine forward, his shoulders, biceps, and chest contracting in sharp relief beneath his shirt.
I’ve already worked up a sweat, but fresh heat tingles like pins and needles up my thighs.
Have I ever even seen his forearms before?
No. I definitely would have noticed those veins and sinews.
Or are they only emphasized by the light of the sunrise, glinting over the horizon of Lake Michigan?
“If my muscles offend you,” he says, pressing the handles forward again on an exhale, “maybe you shouldn’t stare at them.”
I scoff. “Don’t flatter yourself.” I stare straight ahead. Maybe if I glare at the sun long enough, I won’t be able to see anything anymore.
“I’m not the one flattering me,” he says, a bit under his breath, but I hear it. And was that a smile in his tone? Is his face even capable?