“Sorry to Mrs. Movilian,” he says.
A smile tugs at my lips. “You can tell her that in person when we hit Boston.”
“I look forward to it,” he says.
The image of Ryan meeting my mother is comical in its incongruity. Like Mr. Darcy meeting Lucille Bluth. I think she’d like him—her only hang-up would be that he’s odar.Not Armenian. When you come from people whose population was half wiped off the face of the earth by genocide, who have been persecuted, killed, and chased from their land for generations, many consider it dire to keep the pure lineage alive by any means necessary—namely by making sure your kids procreate with other Armenians. Not that I’m procreating with anybody, let alone Ryan.
My parents never forbade me from dating non-Armenians. They liked Nathan, the only serious boyfriend I ever had, and his ancestry was as British as it gets, evident in his blond, blue-eyed, fair and freckled looks. We met in med school, where he was on his way to becoming a doctor, like me. He sang music into my grandchild-hungry parents’ ears about wanting a big family one day and settling in Boston near both our families. He talked a big game…but turns out that’s all it was: talk. Because the minute things got real—the minute he saw the side of me I know now to never bare again—he was gone.
You can’t win ’em all.
Which is why I don’t even try anymore. If you don’t open your heart, it can’t be hurt.
It’s so much easier and more gratifying to have all the fun and sex without the heartache of commitment. It’s made life a lot simpler.
Take Ryan, for instance. If we didn’t have this…professional acquaintanceship, I would just let myself take a big ol’ bite out of this pheromone sandwich between us. Enjoy the way his dilated pupils are drinking me in, alcohol seeming to have loosened their usual tether. Rub myself against him in any way I could, like a cat in heat.
“You okay?” he asks, awakening me from my reverie.
“Aherm,” I say, taking another sip of the beer I meant to stopdrinking but is somehow almost gone. “I think I need to call it a night.”
“I’ll get the bill,” he says without hesitation.
Five minutes later, we emerge onto the wet street just as the monorail whirs by on the track above us. The rain has calmed to a light mist that carries the salty aroma of fish up from the marina a few blocks away. Good—all the better to block out Ryan’s scent so I can keep my head about me.
I’m grateful for the short drive back to our hotel, and ungrateful that the Uber has enough room for us to sit on opposite sides of the back seat.
When we get into the elevator, Ryan pushes only one button.
“You’re on the fourteenth floor too?” I ask.
“No, but I’ll make sure you get back to your room okay.”
A smile creeps across my face, the mirrored elevator multiplying it a hundred times. “You know I live alone, in New York City. No white knight to escort me safely home there.”
“You have my number now,” he says.
It feels like a mic drop. Is he inviting me to call him, beyond his capacity as my publicist? Boundaries be damned.
Okay, Ryan. Let’s fucking go.
“So your chivalry extends to my calling you next time I’m walking home from the subway in the middle of the night?” I ask.
Concern crosses his expression. “Please tell me you don’t walk around alone in the middle of the night.”
I shake my head. “But I might start if it means you’ll come to my rescue.” My limbs are soft, hazy. I don’t know what comes over me (yes, I do: three pints on the heels of being pressed against a body that should be accompanied by the2001: A Space Odysseytheme song), but my index finger is tracing a slow path from his shoulder down his arm. “Gotta use those muscles for something.”
He goes still as a statue, watching the movement carefully, the look in his eyes an evolution of the one I’ve seen a few timesnow—heated, hungry…dark. His breathing has become heavy, his chest visibly expanding and contracting as his gaze remains glued to my hand.
And that’s when I put the final nail in the coffin.
“Shame to waste them on being a gentleman,” I say.
His eyes snap to mine, pupils blown so big they swallow his irises. “Ana,” he says, a warning in his tone that only serves to embolden me.
“Ryan,” I say, a challenge. A dare. An invitation.
A war plays out on his features—keep things civil, or annihilate those boundaries he’s so horny for? He steps closer, despite himself. He’s had a few drinks tonight too, and who’s he kidding: He wants this just as much as I do.
