Chapter 10 #2
“Still,” Ryan says. “Ana gets paid a lot of money to speak at universities. You’re putting her in an awkward position to have to turn you down.”
“Oh,” she breathes, rattling her head. “I didn’t think of that.” After a beat, she squints one eye. “But if you don’t have plans, and you wanted to—”
“Celine,” Ryan warns.
Before I know what I’m doing, I drape my hand over his, hoping to calm his tirade but only sending sparks of electricity through my skin. I remove it immediately, but his gaze remains glued to the place where I touched him.
“Of course I’ll speak at your WOTF meeting,” I say.
“Ana,” he says, “you don’t have to—”
“I’d love to. Truly.” I smile at him. “I mean, these women are the whole future.”
There is no word for the sound Celine emits as she leaps out of her chair, sending it flying backward. She hugs me while I’m still seated, blathering gratitude and endless praise.
Ryan still looks grumpy.
“This isn’t a conflict of interest, is it?” I ask, smirking. “My speaking at your sister’s school?”
Pink creeps across his face even as he narrows his eyes with good humor. “I suppose we can make an exception.”
“Phew.” I smile.
Celine wraps her slim arms around his broad shoulders, and he softens into the hug. Seeing her bring out this more…unfettered, laid-back side of him makes me feel like I’m being let in on some kind of secret. She throws me a wink he doesn’t see. “He’ll do anything for me,” she coos. “Always has.”
She excuses herself to go call her fellow board members and let them know about the change to the agenda for the evening.
When she’s gone, Ryan turns soft eyes to me. “You really didn’t have to say yes.”
“I know.” I shrug.
He shakes his head. “She’s tenacious.”
“That’s the best kind of person.”
The skin around his eyes crinkles. “I couldn’t agree more.”
The Berkeley campus is just outside the city proper and takes forty-five minutes to get to by train. The three of us agreed to meet in the lobby before heading to the station, but when I arrive, Ryan is waiting alone.
“Celine had to head back early for a seminar,” he says. “She’ll meet us at the student union.”
Oh. Okay. This will mark the first time we’ve been alone together since the kiss. No big, right? Here’s my chance to introduce my chill.
Chill as lava.
Settling next to each other on the train makes me think of when he shared my earbud on the way to Portland.
It’s becoming habit, sitting next to Ryan in a moving vehicle.
No matter that his scent makes me want to do lewd things to his body, his very presence is starting to feel… expected. Comfortable. Welcome.
As elevated freeways and low-rise buildings whip by outside the window, I finally say, “You know, you may be taking the whole professional boundaries thing a bit too seriously. You could have told me your sister lives here and you wanted to spend time with her.”
He doesn’t make eye contact, looking sheepish. “I didn’t want it to seem like I had an agenda for coming on the tour, other than serving your book.”
“I would never have thought that.” It truly would not have occurred to me. Mar and I are planning to see family on this trip. If Shanthi’s family lived en route, I would hope she’d do the same. “Family is everything—of course you should see your sister when you’re in the same town.”
He nods. “Thanks. I didn’t want to miss the stock signing, but it was the last time we’d be able to see each other while I’m here.”
I wave him off. “I’m relieved, actually. I thought you were avoiding me.”
“Avoiding you?”
I take a breath. “I thought maybe you regretted…Seattle. You’ve been a bit distant the past couple of days.”
“I—” He scratches the back of his neck. “I’ve been feeling guilty for making such a creep move.
I meant to apologize the morning after, when I brought you coffee, but Maral was there and you were dressed…
” He clears his throat, and my nipples peak under my jacket at the memory of him seeing me in a thin camisole and panties.
“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.
I figured keeping my distance would be the best bet. Easier to stay in line that way.”
Something hot ignites in my belly. He’s not exactly saying I can’t be around you without wanting to rip your clothes off, but he’s not not saying that, either. “For the record, you didn’t make the move—I did. Even if you had, I wouldn’t call it creepy. Except when I thought Celine was your date.”
Realization dawns. “You thought she was my girlfriend.” He leans forward, his voice quiet. “Do you think I would kiss you if I had a girlfriend?”
One of my shoulders rises in a half shrug. “Maybe you had some kind of arrangement. Or maybe you two were casual. Or, hell, maybe you’re a cheater.”
“None of the above,” he says, his eyes intense. “Ever.”
I fidget with the hem of my jacket. “Well, I wouldn’t know. There are all kinds of relationships these days.”
“I’m out of the loop. Haven’t had a relationship in a long time.”
“I don’t have them at all.”
He regards me for a beat too long. “Why not?”
“Not worth the heartache,” I say before I can think better of it. “Anyway, I’m glad I was wrong. And Celine is an utter delight.”
He’s silent for a moment, inquisitive eyes roaming my face, then nods. “Thanks for indulging her. She was, uh, very excited to meet you.”
For some reason, this touches me. I don’t know why it would matter that Celine thinks highly of me. But it does.
“You must miss her, living so far away,” I say.
He heaves a breath. “I do. It’s hard to go from sharing the same space for so many years to her being almost three thousand miles away.”
“You lived together until she went to college?” I ask, surprised.
“Part-time. She stayed with me in the city on weekends, but during the week my work hours were too long. She’d spend too many hours alone, so she mostly lived in Queens with my mom.”
This doesn’t clarify the picture. “Most high schoolers live with their parents anyway, don’t they?”
“They do.” He hesitates for a moment, as if searching for words. “Our situation is a bit different.”
“How so?”
“Celine’s my half sister. We share a father, although share is a generous term for it. He left my mother when I was a baby.”
“Shit,” I say. “That’s awful.”
“We’d hear from him every few years—a Christmas card or a call if he happened to be passing through and remembered we lived in the neighborhood. Then, when I was sixteen, we got word that he’d had another kid. Well, gotten a woman pregnant, anyway. He didn’t exactly stick around for her, either.”
His voice doesn’t carry the level of accusation or vitriol you’d expect from someone whose father abandoned him and the person he cares most about in the world. Maybe that’s just Ryan being Ryan, buttoning himself up. Maybe that whole shtick helps to keep unwanted emotions from spilling out.
Maybe we’re not so different in that regard.
“It was important to me to be in Celine’s life,” he says.
“It’s weird—even though neither of us knew our dad, really, I felt a connection to her.
Every time she saw me, her little face would light up.
Her chubby arms reaching for me, making grabby hands until I picked her up.
I swear, there is no acceptance like an infant making you feel like the most important person in the world.
” He smiles faintly. “Luckily, her mom, Devon, was okay with me coming over, helping however I could, even if it was just watching the baby while she slept or went out. But it was pretty clear she was struggling from the beginning. She couldn’t keep a job, didn’t have any family to help.
Didn’t seem particularly maternal, which is not a knock on her.
She was in a tough position. One day, she just… up and left.”
Oh wow. My heart aches for Celine, abandoned by both parents at such a young age.
“Celine was almost two years old when she went into foster care. I turned eighteen a few months later and applied to take legal guardianship. I wasn’t exactly ready to be a full-time single parent, though, so my mom agreed to be my co-applicant.”
“Jesus,” I say before I can stop myself. My mind is abuzz, re-forming the image of the life I assumed Ryan had, trying to absorb the sheer amount of responsibility he took on at such a young age. Becoming the father his own father wasn’t. “And your mom was okay with adopting your dad’s other kid?”
“She had feelings about it, obviously. It wasn’t easy for her, emotionally or practically.
It took some convincing—she didn’t have the same level of emotional connection to Celine that I did, being that they weren’t related.
But we were granted a visit as part of the potential guardianship process, and when we arrived, Celine ran straight into my arms, squealing my name with the biggest smile on her face, and, well, Mom’s not made of stone. That sealed the deal.”
“Still, she was basically an empty nester by then, right?” I say. “She probably thought she was done raising kids, and then had a toddler running around again.”
He focuses on the middle distance, as if remembering those days.
“It was a lot. I had just started college, and she didn’t want me to give it up.
I was still living at home, commuting to NYU.
I had some scholarships, but money was sparse.
I contributed what I could from part-time jobs.
Mom had a day job as a receptionist at a dental clinic, and I changed my schedule so I could take classes at night.
That way, we traded off being home with Celine until she started preschool a couple years later. ”
“What about your social life? Friends, parties…dating?”
He meets my eyes. “Not much time or bandwidth for those things.”
“And you weren’t bitter about that?”