“Is thereanychance Woodsworth hasn’t seen it?”
“Unlikely,” she says solemnly. “The whole team follows you, and you’re tagged all over the place.”
Notifications keep popping up at the top of my screen—didn’t peg her for a slut; Wonder if that’s how she got her book deal?—and my eyes clench shut.
I try to calm my frantic mind, ease the nails-on-chalkboard feeling in my gut at the injustice of being painted with the wrong brush. At not being able to defend myself against mischaracterization. At not being able to defend Ryan against the shitstorm that’s going to come for him because of this. Because ofme.
Ryan stands next to me, so substantial and gorgeous it makes me want to cry. He’s clearly heard my end of the conversation. I raise my phone to show him, then watch as his face loses every ounce of color.
“Shit,” he says, cradling the device in his hands.
“I know,” I say.
“It’s limited to social media, at least,” Maral is saying on the landline. “It’s not like it’s headline news or anything. Maybe he can head it off at the pass.”
“Maybe,” I breathe as Ryan’s skin goes from white to slightly green. “Should we put out a statement or something onSPOY?”
“No,” I hear Shanthi yell on the other end. Oh god, Shanthiknows. Obviously—if randos know, she would too. But still, it feels shitty that she found out from a source other than me, when she’s been adjacent to us all along.
“That will only make things worse,” Mar says.
“So, what?” I ask. “Just let it ride?”
“It’s rage bait,” she says, her tone soothing—as though anything about the wordsrage baitis soothing. “Engaging only substantiates it.”
It goes against everything in me not to stand up for myself as I’m vilified for being a woman who has a sex life. After spending my whole life working my ass off, being depicted by even random internet trolls as someone who didn’t earn her success is a dropkick in the teeth.
But there’s a more practical and much more pressing problem at hand. Involving the man to my left, who’s becoming progressively grimmer as he doomscrolls my phone.
The job he didn’t want to jeopardize? It’s in jeopardy now.
Thankfully we are past the crest of notifications, being in California—the East Coast had already had its heyday by the time we caught wind of the uproar—and they peter off over the course of the morning. For not the first time, I’m glad my mom is not tuned in online. She doesn’t know anything about my personal life (nobody does, which makes this all the more mortifying) and I’d like to keep it that way. The last thing I need is to give Mom fodder for diatribes about how kissing random odars is not going to lead to my marriage and her grandchildren. But her Good Morning meme came in like clockwork, followed closely by a two-minute voicemail complaining about the neighbors’ dogs who keep defecating on her lawn, confirming that she’s none the wiser.
I left Ryan to call his boss and weather the fallout in private. I offered to face Woodsworth with him. To tell his employer thatthere’s nothing untoward here, that I’m totally complicit—the instigator, in fact. But he said there was no chance he was going to put me in that position, then kissed the back of my hand before leading me to the door.
My heart is still living in my throat.
I know just how important his job at Woodsworth is for his entire family, given that the company bankrolls a large portion of his sister’s significant tuition. If he gets fired for breaching the first rule of publicist–author relations—thou shalt not bed thy client—it is going to be a nightmare for them financially. The guilt may well eat me alive.
Shanthi, for her part, has shown zero opinion on this whole thing. She just denounced gossip-hungry trolls—dropping F-bombs galore—when she and Maral gathered in my room and has since focused her attention on giving me only non-negative updates.
Somehow, I have not lost any followers—in fact, I’ve gained some. People scouring my posts for Easter eggs about my sexual proclivities, I imagine. Gawpers gonna gawp.
I’m considering turning off my phone entirely when a name I recognize fills the screen.
“Nadia,” I say as I pick up.
“Ana, my god,” she says. “Are you okay?”
I feel a sting in my nose at the concern in her husky tone—a telltale sign I’m about to tear up, which only adds to the absurdity of this whole morning. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t look at any of that vile shit.”
Easier said, etc. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Hell, who is anyone else to judge? God knows if they were hotel-hopping across the country with that daddy, they wouldn’t be able to resist him, either.”
A watery laugh escapes me. As if just any woman in Ryan’s proximity would be powerless against his sexuality. As if he and Icame together simply because I was near him. It’s impossible to imagine that Ryan and I could ever not have connected, whether we were in proximity or not. How could attraction that potent, sex that good, be possible and just never materialize?
