Chapter 5 #2
It takes him a moment to turn back to me, though. His eyes are stolid as usual, but his pulse is noticeably beating double-time at his jugular. Fuck.
“Just doing my job,” he says.
Did I imagine that hoarseness in his tone?
I decide to act like he didn’t see anything. What’s he going to do, ask me about it? I could deny it, anyway, play it off like he’s mistaken, it’s something else entirely. A high-end thimblette for turning the pages of my book. Yeah.
I halt my spiraling thoughts. What the hell. This is my room. I’m a grown-ass woman who can pleasure herself all she wants.
He doesn’t have to know what I was thinking about this morning while doing said pleasuring.
“I guess it’s a good thing you came after all,” I say. Christ. Did I have to say came? Put me to bed, I’m done.
“Glad to be of service. I had some making up to do.”
This brings me up short. It’s the first time he’s addressed the elephant in the room. But hey, I’m here for it. “Well, your chivalry today is a good start. Rescheduling events and calling out douche canoes at Q and A’s certainly add points in your favor.”
“Well, I think if we’d found a better venue, the…douche canoe would likely have been moot. That was not our target demographic.”
“Don’t worry, the points don’t cancel each other out or anything. That’s not how the math works.”
“There’s math involved, is there?”
I nod, serious. “Complex calculations. I don’t expect you to understand.”
His lips quirk again, showing the barest hint of a smile—tiny but mighty, if my heart rate has anything to say about it—before he sobers. “Listen, what that guy said. You know that’s about him. Not about you. Right?”
Is he trying to console me? Does he think I need consoling? “Of course,” I chirp. “You can’t exhale in this world without breathing on a guy like him. It’s no sweat.”
He opens his mouth, closes it again. Then says, “I know you could have handled yourself. Formidably. He just made me so—” He unfurls his hands from fists, shakes them out. “I didn’t mean to speak for you. I hope I didn’t overstep.”
If only he knew. You didn’t overstep. Having you speak in my honor was like throwing a warm blanket over my shoulders on a cold day. Wrapping it tight, rubbing the feeling back into my arms.
“It’s fine,” I say.
He shakes his head. “It was unacceptable, the way he disparaged your work, in public, at an event intended to celebrate it. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
My heartbeat drums in my ears. Not only do Ryan’s words paint a completely different picture than the one I had of what he thinks about my book, but the empathy he seems to show so effortlessly is even more unexpected—that has to be why my chest suddenly feels like there’s a monkey playing a tambourine inside it.
I’m sorry that happened to you. Such a simple statement, containing so much.
Has he experienced something similar? Had his work disparaged publicly? Now I feel guilty for asking to have him taken off my book’s campaign. That can’t have been a good look for him at Woodsworth, an author shouting that she doesn’t want to work with him.
I realize I know nothing about this person standing in my room, next to my unmade bed.
A surprisingly intimate scene for two relative strangers.
But it doesn’t matter. Even if I did know him, it’s not like he’d know me any better than the rest of the world does.
That door is sealed up tight. Has been for years.
Because I’ll never forget how it ended the last time I opened it: with my heart swirling down a drain.
And that was with Nathan—the person who was meant to love me the most. There’s no chance I’m about to open it to some rando.
I wave a hand through the air. “I’ve already forgotten it.”
He studies me for a long moment, as though unsure whether to buy what I’m selling.
“And I appreciated your kind words,” I say. “Even if they took me by surprise.”
“How do you mean?” he asks.
“Just…I’m glad you liked the book, in the end.”
“In the end?”
I shift on my feet. “You didn’t seem thrilled with the proposal. At that first meeting.”
His furrowed brow clears, and his face falls.
“If I gave the impression that I didn’t believe in the idea, forgive me.
I did—I do. Your book is excellent, Ana.
” My name on his deep voice makes a slow, liquid heat drip from my stomach down to my toes.
“I think it’s going to make a difference in people’s lives. But I’ve told you that already.”
My chest deflates on a release of air.
He believes in it.
Relief washes through me like water through a parched throat. Not because I care what Ryan thinks so much as I want the on-tour publicist to be an actual champion of the work. Knowing he isn’t begrudgingly shilling what he considers a subpar product feels like unbuckling weights from my ankles.
A smile sneaks across my lips. “Well, now I believe you.”
“Good.” His eyes dip to my mouth for the briefest of breaths and he clears his throat again, stands up even straighter, if that’s possible. “The early sales data says it will reach a lot of people.”
It’s all about hitting those sales targets. “And if it flops, I’ll just resign in disgrace.”
“What’s your fallback plan?” he asks, grave.
I sigh. “I guess I’ll go be a doctor.”
He exhales what sounds like a laugh. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you went to med school.”
“Because I’m just a pretty face?”
“Of course not. Not that you’re not—” He holds up his hand, shakes his head. Tries again. “Because you’re so good at what you do.”
My heart rate ramps up again.
“But,” he continues, “I’m willing to bet you’re good at anything you do.”
The slow, languorous honey in my veins obscures my thoughts. Which must be why I say what I say next. “Want to call my mom and tell her that?”
His eyes are warm, intent. “Does she not think you’re good at what you do?”
I take a breath. Did I just unseal the door? How did Ryan of all people cause me to?
“She doesn’t really understand my work,” I say, leaning a hip against the bureau.
“She’s from a different generation, a different world altogether.
To her, the internet is for Facebook propaganda and Armenian political news.
She doesn’t really read, let alone English books.
So my work is just…outside her purview. Medicine, she understands.
It’s global and goes back as far as humankind.
So yeah, she’d have rather I’d stuck with that. ”
He nods. “Why didn’t you?”
“You mean why did I focus on creating the brand that got me a mid-six-figure book deal from your publisher?” I bat my eyelashes at him.
The amused glint in his eyes is slight, but it’s there. “I mean, becoming a doctor is no small feat. Med school is competitive and challenging. And you were almost at the finish line. You were, what, in your second year of residency when you changed course?”
“Stalk me much?”
“Anyone who listens to your podcast knows that.”
My chin drops. “You’ve listened to my podcast?”
“Of course I have.”
Although I suspected it already, the confirmation is still startling.
Maybe it shouldn’t be—he was working on my book, after all.
Any publicist worth their paycheck would do their research, listen to a few episodes to get a sense of the brand and its market.
But still, it’s just so unexpected of the Ryan I thought I had a handle on.
“We started the podcast while I was still in my residency, and things kind of snowballed,” I say.
It was a few months after the first video went viral.
The potential audience for SPOY’s messaging seemed huge, given the response on YouTube, so we set up a makeshift studio in Maral’s tiny apartment in Boston and rode the wave.
“Within a year, my following had ballooned, we were offered sponsorships and paid ads, I signed with Nadia, I was doing tons of speaking events…it kind of took over my life. I didn’t have time to do both. ”
“How did you choose?”
My father died, collapsing my entire world and crushing my ambition for medicine in the rubble.
“The immediate positive feedback from So Proud of You showed me that there’s more than one way to help people,” I say. “I liked the community it created. And I wanted to see where I could take it.”
It’s not the full story, but it’s not untrue. The podcast, the community we built, was a ray of light in the eternal darkness of that time.
He takes me at my word. “And Maral felt the same.”
Mar’s path was an altered version of mine.
The same year we started the podcast, she started an entry-level job as an environmental engineer at a Boston urban planning firm after finishing her master’s.
She’s kind of a weirdo in that she likes to have a bit of downtime every now and again, and working two basically full-time jobs was not her idea of fun.
Finally, she decided—with some gentle, not-at-all-overbearing coaxing from me—that it was worth exclusively working on SPOY, to see out its potential.
She even agreed to move to New York, despite our parents’ protests.
I was making enough by then to pay her well, and she’s always been fiscally responsible.
“Yes,” I say, “so if you want to tell her parents she’s awesome at what she does too, you’d be doing us both a solid.”
“Not fans there, either?”
“I mean, would your parents have been cool with paying for your education, only to have you park it in favor of something you don’t even need a high school diploma to do?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “My mom could never have afforded higher education. She’d probably have been happy if I didn’t have to pay off so much student debt.”
Shit. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I’ll check my privilege.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“Well,” I say, “I didn’t exactly apologize.”
He smiles—his first full, unguarded smile. Goddamn, it’s a sight. “No, I guess you didn’t.”
I bite my lower lip.