Chapter 25
Grayson, the mustachioed Infinitude Symposium coordinator, leads Maral and me through throngs of attendees to the main ballroom of the gargantuan Marriott Marquis in Midtown. Navigating the many escalators and corridors is practically a workout.
We’re seated at a speakers’ table near the front, where Shanthi is already set up to record the livestream of my speech. Grayson says he’ll cue me a few minutes before I’m set to go up and races away, presumably to deal with some emergency or other.
I sit quietly through the first couple of speakers, flanked by Shanthi and Maral, only barely registering that this may be the last time the three of us attend an event together. Which is good, because my makeup can’t stand another water feature so close to showtime.
“Are you okay?” Maral whispers as the MC takes the stage again. “You’re really…chill.”
“I’m always chill,” I say.
She rolls her eyes before getting distracted by the woman to her right asking her to pass the water jug.
She’s not wrong, though. My legs are motionless under the table and I haven’t been fiddling with the conference packet or my water glass or my phone.
Which is all very weird. Maybe it’s that my emotional stores have been depleted, but I’m actually feeling…
fine. At peace. Like something has settled into place inside my chest. Something new, but honest and real.
And while I don’t fully understand it yet, it feels good.
To my left, Shanthi is examining the angle of the camera on her phone, set up on a small tabletop tripod. I lean closer to her. “Hey, you can check if specific accounts are logged in to the Live, right?”
“Yeah,” she says. “You want to know if the Scope people are watching? Do you know their handles?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. I know it’s stupid to hope, but after my call with Celine earlier…“Search aintlovegrant.”
Her eyes dart to mine. She remembers our conversation with Ryan about Instagram—the revelation of his ridiculous username. “Sure, I’ll look out for him.”
“Cool. I owe you one.”
She makes a face. “I work for you.”
“A raise, then,” I say, just as Grayson signals me to join him at stage left. I rise from my seat, leaning down to Shanthi. “Or better yet—want to be my new brand manager?”
I wink at her slack-jawed expression, gratified by finally getting a reaction out of her, and walk toward the stage.
The ballroom looks even bigger from the elevated platform than it does from the floor, but the lights pointing at the podium are bright enough to obscure the faces in the crowd.
I smile and wave as the audience welcomes me with applause and camera flashes, a familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through me.
“Thank you,” I say into the mic. “Give it up for the organizers of the symposium, who have done a colossal amount of work behind the scenes for the event to feel so seamless to those of us attending. And thank you all for giving me such a warm welcome this evening.”
The uproar gradually dies down and I glance at the notes I brought.
I prepared today’s speech a while back. It combines pieces of my regular keynote with anecdotes from my book and the odd joke thrown in for good measure.
It’d be easy to deliver it as planned, to lean on the stories I’ve been culling and telling over the past several years.
I know from experience which ones are the most crowd-pleasing, and I could deliver them in a way that will paint me in the best light for the Scope execs and make me seem like a shoo-in to host an interview show.
I scan the room, my gaze automatically landing on Maral.
I’m a heliotropic plant and she the sun.
As she’s always been—the center of my universe.
Casting light when I’ve needed it most. And now that she’s illuminated certain truths, allowing me to see them clearly for the first time, nothing about the Before feels right anymore.
So I go off script.
“I have something to confess,” I say, inhaling. “I am a disappointment.”
Silence turns to confounded murmurings throughout the room.
“One of the questions I get asked the most is some variation of How do you reconcile your own happiness with your family’s expectations?
” I continue. “People look to me as some kind of authority on the subject, as though I’ve mastered a self-actualized life—successful, fulfilled, with parents who are satisfied with where I am professionally and personally.
I haven’t exactly dispelled this image, mostly because I avoid talking about myself in any real way.
“Sure, people know details about my life. Tidbits about my parents and my family. That my beloved cousin Maral is my right-hand woman, that I went to med school, that I look forward to my morning coffee when I go to bed every night—which is somehow the most notable of those items, given how much I talk about it.” Mild laughter ripples across the audience.
“I’ve never delved deeper, partly because it hasn’t been necessary, but more truthfully because I didn’t want to expose myself that way. ”
I take a deep breath, the lights shining bright in my eyes.
“I haven’t told anyone that I dropped out of my residency because every moment of it was such an unbearable reminder of my late father that entering through the hospital doors felt like being pierced through the heart.
I haven’t shared that my father would likely have been deeply disappointed in my choice, just as my mother is, but that it was a choice I had to make if I didn’t want to risk a complete breakdown. ”
A tremor courses through me. I hold on to the sides of the podium, steadying myself.
“How did I reconcile my own happiness with my family’s expectations?
I didn’t. And I won’t.” Air rushes into the microphone from my exhale.
“This is my life. If I could have it all, of course I’d want to meet their expectations.
But if that means veering off the path to my own happiness, I’m not willing to do that. Even if that means disappointing them.”
A few people applaud.
“I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to work on So Proud of You, because nothing has brought me more fulfillment than building its community.
I want to write more books, because I enjoy the creative process and I have so much more to share.
I want to live in New York, because I enjoy its hustle and energy and seasons.
I’ve never liked the idea of year-round sunshine. ”
Maral’s eyes are wide, but not as wide as her smile.
“Sorry to the Scope execs watching—I’m not moving to L.A.
,” I say to Shanthi’s tripod. Confused murmurings rise from the audience.
“Oh, yeah, I was pursuing an opportunity there, but I know now that I was chasing it for all the wrong reasons. I’m not leaving New York.
I love it here. And…there’s someone here I really don’t want to say goodbye to. ”
Mar’s jaw drops. I catch Shanthi’s eye, raising my brows in a question she understands immediately. She’ll make a good Maral 2.0 (though let’s get real, there is no better version of Maral than Maral. Shanthi will make an excellent Shanthi, just as she always has).
She taps at the screen quickly, and her face falls as she shakes her head.
Ryan’s not logged in. He’s not watching.
I wait for the pain to slice me open, but it’s not quite as sharp as I expected. Instead, it’s a soft ache, strangely satisfying in its familiarity. Like a contusion being pressed.
It’s okay. It’s good, in fact. He’s doing what’s right for him—serving his needs. Which happens to mean keeping his distance from me. I can’t fault him for that. I can only respect him for it.
Regardless of whether Ryan’s watching, it’s worth sharing this. Because it’s the truth—and I’ve spent far too long running from it.
“For a long time, I’ve believed that holding myself in is the only way to safeguard my heart and protect myself from getting hurt. But the joke was on me, because turns out denying your true feelings is more painful than feeling them has ever been.”
My vision blurs, casting halos around the spotlights beaming down at me.
“And I wasn’t the only one hurt by that denial.
Someone so special to me was brave enough to put himself out there and I wasn’t.
Even though I felt the same things, I paid my pain forward to him.
Hurt him just as I was hurting. But as soon as I’m done here, I’m going to find him, apologize a hundred times, and hope with my whole heart that he’ll… ”
My voice trails off as a silhouetted figure enters at the back of the room. Even from this distance, I recognize the set of his shoulders. Their proportion to his neck. The line of his jaw. That posture, the grace in his steps.
My heart rises slow and steady from my chest to my throat, bringing with it a wash of tears.
Ryan.
He didn’t tune in because he’s here.
And I could just about melt into the stage at the sight of him.
“You’re here,” I say, my broken voice cast loud into the room by the mic. If anyone in the audience wasn’t paying attention before, they are now.
I step around the podium, my legs finding their way to the stairs and down the center aisle of their own volition.
I make my way toward him, his face coming into clearer view as I swipe at the moisture clouding my vision.
God, he looks good. Wary, maybe, a little beaten down, but fucking gorgeous. A sight for cried-out eyes.
The silence is so absolute that, despite my having left the mic back on the stage, my voice rings out, clear as day.
“Did Celine call you?” I ask.
“She did.” His tone is hesitant, his gaze darting around the room as everyone’s attention turns on him. Having just arrived, he has no idea why I’ve interrupted my speech to approach him, or why the whole ballroom is rapt by this moment.
“Ryan…I’m so sorry.” The words feel small, insignificant. “For everything.”
His eyes land on mine, surprise registering in them. “Hey, we can talk about this later—”
“No, it’s too important. I didn’t treat you the way you deserved.”
“Ana, you don’t owe me—”
“I was lying. All along.”
A groove etches itself between his eyebrows as a gasp rises from the audience members nearest where we stand. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“I lied to you and to myself. I said it was casual. Insisted on it, because I thought that would be safe. If I kept my heart out of it, it couldn’t be hurt.
I could keep you at a distance, not let you know me deeply enough to be turned off when you see I’m not always the sparkly, charismatic woman you were drawn to. ”
The lines melt off his forehead, his expression softening. “That’s not—”
“And I tried,” I say wetly. “I tried not to feel anything for you. Told myself those tugs in my heart were just because you’re an attentive publicist and a thoughtful friend, taking care of me in ways nobody ever has.
Defending my work, standing up in my honor at every turn, listening and understanding and supporting me when I opened up to you about things I’ve never told anyone.
Or maybe it was because you’re hands-down the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.
” Even though I dropped my voice for that part, for his ears only, pink flushes up his neck as heat flares in his eyes.
“I swore to myself that I wasn’t feeling the things I was feeling. ”
He swallows. “What were you feeling?”
“Besides terrified?” I take his hands in mine and notice the tremble in his fingers.
“I haven’t ever felt…safe, being my full self.
Showing any hint of the dullness behind the shine has only ever resulted in people pulling away.
But it wasn’t fair of me to put that baggage on you.
Not when you’ve proven yourself different at every turn.
And not when…” I steady my voice. “Not when I feel so, so much for you.”
His shoulders drop from up around his ears. “Don’t toy with me, Ana, I can’t take it. Not after the hell I’ve been through these past few days.”
From the corner of my vision I see audience members clutching their chests, their mouths. You could hear a pin drop on carpeting in here.
“I’m not toying with you,” I say. “I’m finally being honest. I’m sorry I wasn’t until now. I want something real with you, Ryan. Not just for a night, or the length of a tour. I want you for as long as you’ll have me.”
His eyes are glistening silver pools in the morning sun. “You’re serious.”
I nod, flash a hopeful smile. “You want to be my boyfriend?”
He exhales shakily. “Watch your mouth or I’ll commit public indecency.”
My cheeks hurt from the size of my grin. “I like you indecent,” I say.
“Good,” he says, leaning in to whisper in my ear. “Because as soon as this is over, I’m going to get you alone and make you call me that again and again.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him fiercely. The crowd rises to their feet, applauding and howling at top volume.
“Will you make me pancakes in the morning?” I murmur into his ear.
“I’ll make you pancakes every morning.”
“Good, ’cause that’s kind of a deal-breaker.”
He feigns stern daddy, but the trembling quirk in his lips gives him away. “Coming from someone who can’t make a pancake herself.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
His chest expands. There are diamonds in his eyes and I feel like my bones are no longer solid. But if I sink to the ground, I know he’s here to hold me up. I trust he always will be—as long as I’ll let him.
“Will you go up there and finish your goddamn speech so I can take you home?” he says.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I say.
Reluctantly, I tear myself away to head back to the stage, but not before he leans in to kiss me again—god, I’ve missed his kiss—and the room erupts in applause so loud you’d think it would drown out Ryan’s professions of devotion against my lips.
But it doesn’t. I’d hear them anywhere. I’ll hear them forever.