“How old were you?”
“Three.”
“If you were born there, does that make you first-generation?”
“Technically, yes. But because I was so young when we moved,I identify more as second-gen. I remember almost nothing from my life there.”
I have a couple of vague images from life in Armenia, where I was born. A wooden matryoshka doll in my grandmother’s house. The deep maroons and olive greens of a low-pile area rug. The hazy bumps of mountains on the distant horizon. My mother’s smile.
“How come you never talk about this stuff?” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ve written a whole book and recorded three hundred and thirty-seven episodes of a podcast about people’s experiences as children of immigrants, which you are too. Yet you rarely talk about your own life.”
My pulse ramps up a little as I remember our first meeting. His insistence that readers would be disappointed in a book that didn’t focus on my story, such that it is. “So Proud of Youisn’t about me. It never has been. Readers and listeners appreciate the focus being on our guests.”
He’s eyeing me, as though he suspects that’s another partial truth. Then he straightens in his seat, saying under his breath, “Guess I was just hungry for details.”
My heart hammers. I’m pretty sure I heard what I just heard, but before I can process it, he goes on.
“No wonder you and Maral are so close, having lived together.”
I nod, re-entering the moment. “We shared a room in the apartment our families rented. She couldn’t pronounce Anahid, so for the longest time she called me Aynay. Still does sometimes.” My smile turns wicked. “I used to terrorize her.”
He huffs a sound that could be a laugh. “You, a terror? But you’re so measured and easygoing.” The mirth in his tone is unmistakable.
I narrow my eyes. “Believe it or not, I am practically zen now compared to when I was a kid.”
“I would pay good money to see footage of young Ana.”
I whistle. “I wouldn’t even register on the screen, just a puff of smoke as I zinged around the room.”
He’s watching me, his indulgent expression mirroring the look he gave Celine earlier today. I don’t let myself linger on the comparison too long. On how it’s making my chest feel gooey.
“One time I folded myself into the bottom drawer of the dresser in our room,” I say. “Mar was playing peacefully by herself for, like, half an hour, lulled into a sense of solitude. She came to get something out of the drawer and I jumped out. I’ve never heard anyone scream that loud. And it’s the only time I’ve ever been punched in the face.”
His mouth drops open. “She punched you?”
“It was a fear response, unintentional. I would have pegged her for flight over fight, but shows what I know.” I point to the faded scar on my chin from where my skin split.
He examines it closely. “Huh. I guess you’re not perfect after all,” he says, a mock wistfulness in his tone.
“Far from it.” If only he knew.
“I’m glad you lived to tell the tale.”
“Well, it was the first and only time she physically assaulted me,” I say. “Although I have been a lot kinder since then.”
“Think she’d corroborate that?”
“Memory is fallible,” I say.
“Hard to believe memories of you wouldn’t stay vivid forever,” he says, his gaze dropping to my lips for a moment before he turns abruptly toward the window.
This time there’s no doubt in my mind—I heard it. And I know precisely which memory of me is playing vividly in his mind.
I also know that, as much as Ryan is playing the good boy, acting all professional and trying to put our kiss out of his mind, it’s haunting him just as much as it is me.
