Chapter 21
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought I just heard you say you’ve taken a job? In Boston?”
Maral shoots a save me look at Meredith, who excuses herself, says she’ll talk to us soon, I believe apologizes a few more times—I don’t know, the thunder in my brain is so loud it’s drowning her voice out—and books it.
My head feels stuffed with cotton, or steel wool. Barbed wire.
This can’t be happening. Maral—my Maral.
“I was going to tell you,” she says.
“When?” I ask. “After you told my ex–book publicist?”
“Ayn, please calm down.”
I try my very best to obey the command. Try to breathe, to find some chill in the roiling volcano that is my mind. But it’s no use.
What is happening? Does nobody keep their goddamn jobs anymore?
I collapse into a chair, leaning over, head in my hands. Mar sits in the one next to me, gingerly, as though it’s a land mine.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “This is not how I wanted you to find out. It’s not personal. I just…I’ve been feeling like maybe So Proud of You has…run its course for me. I really want to contribute to climate action, put my degrees to use.” Her voice is small when she says, “I never stopped wanting to.”
My insides crumble like a sandcastle in the rain. The shock is so overwhelming that I have to remind myself to keep breathing.
How could Maral leave behind what we’ve built? The people whose lives we touch every day? Me?
How will I go on without her? I’ve never done a single podcast episode without her by my side.
Now I understand why she’s been so weird about L.A.
every time it’s come up recently. But we’ve been pursuing that for ages.
What about all our plans? She’s moving to the literal opposite side of the country, even farther away than we’ve been from her parents all this time.
And for what? To follow her freaking dreams?
Okay, that’s a good reason.
Through the betrayal and shock, I can’t help the pride that seeps through.
The happiness I feel for her. The gratitude that she’s stuck with SPOY, with me, for so long while secretly wishing she could be somewhere else.
The guilt over limiting her in what she wanted to do with her life.
This angel, this queen, worthy of every good thing the world has to offer.
Questions pile up and snake through my mind, bottlenecking and becoming trapped before they reach my mouth. I want to scream and rail. I’m in a place too public to feel this much hurt.
I stand up, test the ground beneath my feet, make sure it’s solid and not the quicksand it feels like.
“I need some space,” I say weakly. Then, with a bit more strength, I add, “Congratulations.”
“Ayn,” she says. A plea.
Her look of dejection tugs on my sympathy. My beautiful Maral. I reach out and clasp her hand, the most reassurance I can muster in this moment, before walking out of the salon and into the vast darkness beyond.
The doors leading to Fifth Avenue crunch loudly as I push through them and outside, inhaling the humid late-summer air in gasping breaths.
Hold it together. Get home, get alone. Then you can let yourself feel it.
At the base of the wide stairs, someone is racing toward the entrance. Someone so familiar now, so welcome, that I feel I may split in half at the sight of him.
Ryan.
He came.
He reaches me halfway up the broad staircase, breathing heavily from running. “Shit,” he says. “Did I miss it?”
Miss my life falling apart? I nod weakly.
“Are you okay?” he asks, stepping closer. “I’m sorry, I had a thing and didn’t expect it to go so long, and then there was traffic and my cab got stuck—I wanted to be here for it. I feel awful, I’m so sorry I missed it.”
He looks wretched with guilt. This man who owes me nothing yet gives me everything.
I can’t stop myself, stepping onto the stair just above the one he’s standing on, walking directly into him, and burying my face in the concentrated scent of him at the base of his neck.
Breathing deep for the first time since the ground collapsed beneath my feet and stole all the oxygen from my lungs.
His arms go around me so quick it’s as if they don’t obey the laws of physics.
And I’m cocooned, comforted, coveted. His touch is a snake charmer’s song, stoking the emotions in my belly, manipulating them to rise.
They crowd up my throat, threatening to spill out, and I swallow hard, push them down again. Step back, breaking contact.
“What happened?” he asks.
I want to tell him. Want to share the heaviness so he might hold some of it for me, ease its weight with his understanding, his care. His Ryanness.
But I can’t. I’m too raw—the walls around my heart papyrus-thin and ready to crumble. And if they do, that’s it. There’s no protection left.
I know from brutal experience that the price for that level of intimacy is too high. And I’m less equipped to pay it right now than ever.
“You resigned,” I say.
His face falls.
“Meredith has a mouth like the Grand Canyon, apparently,” I say.
He sighs, rubbing his jaw. “I didn’t want to worry you. Your book is in good hands there, my leaving won’t impact—”
“My book is the least of my worries,” I say. “Ryan, did you resign because of me? Because of what happened between us?”
“No,” he rushes to say, reaching for me but then thinking better of it, dropping his hands to his sides. “I mean, yes, but—”
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’m so sorry I crossed boundaries. I put you in an impossible position.”
“Ana, that’s not…” He swallows. “I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“Even more than keeping your job?”
“Yes,” he says faintly.
Butterflies are staging a mutiny in my belly. “You said Woodsworth served your greatest needs.”
“It did. Before. I’ve…reevaluated.”
“Reevaluated how?” I ask.
“I just signed on with Merit. As director of publicity.”
My heartbeat is erratic. That was fast. The kiss photo went out just last Thursday, and he had a new job by Monday morning? “Wait, Merit, the entertainment company? You want to leave publishing altogether?”
He waggles his head. “Not necessarily, but they’re staffed to the gills there, which means that at my level it’s a lot of strategy and oversight but not as much hands-on work. It’ll mean fewer hours spent putting out fires. More time to myself. More opportunities to pursue things I want.”
A single ray of relief peeks through the dark clouds of dread. “Like writing?” I ask, voice so hopeful I could be a wide-eyed Disney princess.
“Yeah. For one thing.” His gaze dips for a moment. “Someone wisely told me I should put my own needs first for once.”
A shaky smile reaches my lips, gratification tugging behind my rib cage. If nothing else, at least our acquaintance has given him this—the impetus to follow his own path.
But I know life isn’t that simple. Prioritizing himself necessarily means letting down the person he cares about most. “What about Celine’s tuition?”
“The pay is good, but it won’t cover the difference entirely.” His shoulder lifts in a half shrug. “So we’ll have a bit more debt. No different than anyone else in this country.”
While that part is certainly bittersweet, my heart swells knowing that, after a lifetime of taking care of everyone else, Ryan is finally taking care of himself. He said that writing is who he is. What could be more important than serving your true self?
“I’m happy for you,” I say. “I didn’t know Merit even had offices in New York.”
He nods, not meeting my eyes. “In Tribeca—that’s where I’m coming from. Met the team for a celebratory drink.” His Adam’s apple works on a swallow. His chest expands as he takes a deep breath. “They also have offices in L.A.”
The air feels thin, the ambient street noise going quiet. Breathe, I tell myself. “L.A.?”
“Good to have options,” he says quietly. Slowly, so slowly, his gaze lifts to mine. “If you’re there, I want to be there.”
Something unfurls in my chest, a rosebud’s petals unsticking in a slow, radiant bloom. Tears rise up my throat, the emotions that Maral’s revelation brought forth making themselves known. I bite my lip to stem them, Ryan watching the movement with concern etched on his face.
His hands fly up in surrender. “I heard you when you said you only want something casual…”
He pauses, and for a fleeting, heart-fluttering moment, I wonder if he’ll offer to keep this going on my terms. Take what he can get—fuck me when I want him and not expect anything more. My heart is beating double-time as I try to figure out if I’d take him up on it. It’d be win-win, right?
So why does it feel like lose-lose?
“I went with it, because…because I just wanted you so fucking bad, I’d take you any way I could get you.
” He shakes his head. “But I’m sure you’ve figured out that I’m not exactly a casual type of person, and I definitely don’t feel casual about you.
I never have.” His throat works. “So I’m going to honor my needs once and for all and tell you that I want something real with you, Ana. ”
That brittle wall in my chest cracks and crumbles away, a sinkhole behind it that grasps and claws to pull him inside. To swallow up his heart, this gift he keeps trying to give me but that I, ingrate that I am, keep refusing to take.
But sinkholes don’t target what they swallow up.
They consume indiscriminately. The good along with the bad.
A dark, yawning mouth hungry not only for the good that is Ryan, but for the dangers—the utter devastation—inherent in giving my whole self to him.
Those fracture lines in my heart, hastily superglued so many years ago against any further pain, won’t be able to withstand the test. This knowledge is fossilized, deep within the cavernous pit.
“Ryan,” I say, my voice cracking, “I can’t be what you need.”
His eyes are so soft. “Hard to believe. Since you already are.”
“You don’t know me. Not really. If you did, you wouldn’t want me.”
He frowns, taking a step up. Closer to me.
“I know that you’re strong. And smart. And caring, and thoughtful.
That when you love someone, like your cousin or your mom or even your content manager, you give them every ounce of yourself.
I know being with you makes me feel more like myself than I ever have in my life.
No matter the circumstance—listening to audiobooks on trains, or feeding you orgasms in bed, or crying in alleyways—I never don’t want to be in your presence. ”
My insides feel as though they’re filling with helium. Any moment, I’ll float away.
“I know that the only time you stop fidgeting is when you’re unconscious.” He leans closer. “I know how breathtakingly beautiful you are when you sleep, and how your hand reaches for mine under the covers like it doesn’t even realize it.”
My breathing is shallow. My hand reaches for his?
“I know enough,” he says. “I know enough to want to know everything.”
I’m trembling so hard that he finally makes contact, gently holding me by my arms. “I know you’ve been hurt.
I may not know all the details of your past, and you don’t have to share them with me if you don’t want to, but Anahid…
” His thumbs rub back and forth on my biceps, spreading that unmistakable Ryan warmth through the fabric of my blazer.
“I’ll never be callous with your heart. I promise, I’ll keep it safe.
Protect it. Cherish the privilege of having it in my care. ”
Tears spill over my lash lines, sending wet spots onto the silk of my white camisole.
My heart, its sutures holding together so tenuously, knows it can trust his words.
Knows that Ryan would treat it with utmost tenderness.
That it would be safer than it’s ever been, sealed away from peril in the lockbox of his love.
But even if my ruined heart could figure out how to trust, my brain has a longer memory. Nothing lasts. Not romantic love, nor any love. Nobody stays by your side forever, not even the people who are unconditionally tied to you.
I take a breath, razor blades in my airways.
“Ryan,” I whisper. My face is damp, downcast. “If I could, I would. But…” I worry my lip, not meeting his eyes.
Not having the courage, the resolve. Sure that the moment I do, I’ll snatch it back, fall at his feet, and offer him everything. Damn the consequences.
“Can you seriously tell me you don’t feel anything for me?” he asks. No edge, all earnestness.
“It’s not that simple—”
“I didn’t say it was.” His voice is so gentle. “But admitting that would be a good first step.”
Toward what? Being known? I’ve already been through that fire and lived to drag the scorched wreckage in my wake.
“I can’t do that,” I say.
“Can’t?” he asks. “Or won’t?”
I don’t answer, and he doesn’t push me to. He simply drops his hands, my arms suddenly cold at the absence of his touch, and nods.
He’s quiet for a long moment. Jaw working. Wheels turning behind his eyes. “I wish there was a way I could be in your orbit and not feel…” He gestures broadly with his hands. “It’s been hard enough to deny it all this time—it would be impossible now. I can’t do that to myself.”
As far as goodbyes go, it’s devastating. Final. “Ryan,” I say. Whimpering.
“Good luck with your TV show.” His voice is thick, strained. “And with everything.”
I reach for his hand, and he doesn’t snatch it away.
In fact, he grips mine tight, uses it to pull me close.
Guiding me into his chest, wrapping his arms around me, burying his face in my neck, my hair, breathing deep.
One last time. He whispers into my skin, but I can’t hear the words over the reverberation in my ears.
I turn my face, my lips finding his like a homing beacon.
He kisses me gently, his heart hammering against my chest, my face wetting his.
I clench my eyes shut against the tears that continue to spill out, dripping on the shoulder of his jacket.
When he presses his lips to my forehead, I dissolve out of his embrace more than I pull away.
Legs numb, I take one step, then two. Down the staircase, away from Ryan, my descent feeling like a tumble down the side of a mountain.