“Yesterday,” she says. “Alison told me.”
So when he texted me thatall is wellyesterday, he didn’t mean he was still employed, but that heresigned?
“But…why?” I ask, completely dumbfounded.
She shrugs. “That I don’t know.”
I aced advanced calculus, yet my mind grasps at the pieces of this equation like so many wet eels, slipping and sliding out of its grasp.
Why would Ryan leave Woodsworth? He was in the end zone—his position safe. At a company that matches Celine’s sizable tuition fees and would save them from years and years of debt. Why would he walk away from that?
The photo. He must have resigned because of that. I consider the scandal of it and a cringe creeps up in me like a weed through cracked paving stones. Even though Woodsworth didn’t fire him over it, the very fact that he was caught kissing an author would scar his reputation. How can he face his colleagues if they know what he’s done? How can he work alongside them when a twelve-thousand-pound elephant is trampling everything in the room?
A hurricane brews in my gut. He didn’t want to put me in an uncomfortable position, but turns out I put him in one. I crossed his professional boundaries, and Ryan, a man of immeasurable honor,hadto step down from his post. Fuck.Fuck.
My pulse roars in my ears, my legs suddenly weak. I steady myself against a chair, clutching it as though it’s a lifesaving device in a swirling ocean storm.
Meredith gathers her bag from where she perched it on the banquet table. She and Maral are wrapping up their conversation, and I shake myself back to the moment.
“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” I say to Meredith. “Let’s grab lunch soon.”
“I’d love that,” she says. “And drinks too! We need to celebratethis one’sbig news.” She pinches Mar’s arm.
My cousin freezes, pure petrification overtaking her face.
“Big news?” I ask. I’m still reeling from the Ryan news—have I been so distracted by my own shit that I’ve somehow missed something? Or is this related to Maral’s mysterious recent caginess? No, there’s no chance Meredith would know whatever it is that Maral is not even willing to tell me.
Still, Mar’s expression tells me that Meredith has let slip yet another juicy piece of gossip. One that she specifically doesnotwant me to know about.
Meredith looks caught out, appropriately sheepish. “Shit,” she says. “I thought you knew…”
Maral glares at her, like,Are you fucking kidding me? Shut! Up!Knowing that she’s stuck, that I won’t let her get away with an excuse this time, she turns to me. “I was going to tell you. I was just working up the nerve.”
Oh god. Is her secret boyfriend really a secret fiancé? Secret baby daddy? She has been looking extra glowy lately—
“I’ve been offered a job as a consultant at the Metropolitan Planning Agency. In Boston,” she says quickly. Ripping off a Band-Aid. “And I’ve accepted.”
Chapter 21
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought I just heard you say you’ve taken ajob? InBoston?”
Maral shoots asave melook 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 myex–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 ishappening? 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.
