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.
Epilogue
Two years later
“Gray or blue?” Ryan asks, holding up two identical shirts.
“Which is which?” I ask.
He makes a face. “Come on.” He holds out the hangers, as if bringing them nearer will help me differentiate the colors. If I squint, one ismaybea slightly cooler gray than the other, but that could be a trick of the light. The sun is starting to set outside our bedroom windows.
“Are you playing a joke on me?” I ask. “They look the exact same. Just pack both, who cares?”
“I don’t want to be lugging three suitcases to Germany.”
I shrug. “It’s not so bad. You just need a handsome publicist to help you carry them.”
He throws the shirts down on the bed and hooks an arm around my waist. This kind of easy, sensual touch has become so commonplace you’d think my body would no longer respond so viscerally, but it does. I wonder if it’ll ever get old—Ryan’s natural, carnal knowledge of my physical responses. Hard to imagine it ever will.
“I’d carry a thousand ofyoursuitcases,” he says in a low rumble as he backs me toward the bed. “Open them up, go hunting for the delicious surprises inside.”
He sucks at the base of my throat and I whimper, both at thesensation and at the memory of the last trip we took together, to Toronto for a speaking event a few weeks ago—when he discovered the vibrator I’d packed. Not the travel one, but one made specifically for couples. The one we put to such thorough use that my thighs tingled for days afterward.
“Now I wish I was coming with you,” I say.
“Oh, I’ll make sure you come with me,” he growls into my skin.
My low laugh turns into moans, then cries, then sighs, as Ryan works his reliable magic on my body. On my heart.
Both shirts become crumpled beneath our bodies and he doesn’t wind up packing either of them. It’s fine—he’s packed plenty of gray shirts already, and he’ll only be in Frankfurt for four days. Just enough time for his agent to introduce him to foreign publishers as the face behind the hottest upcoming release on her list: the multiverse love story that’s been deemed the most-anticipated book for the winter season here in the U.S. His agent, Gwen, says the foreign rights will sell so fast that four days at the international book fair will be overkill.
Ryan’s debut novel is getting so much buzz that Gwen could sell the rights herself. She doesn’t need to parade him around to get bites. But her argument is that meeting him will sway publishers to pay double. I can’t say I disagree. Even if he weren’t a vision and didn’t have deep connections within the industry, his book—about a man pining for the love of his life across dimensions until they’re united at last—is so heart-wrenchingly amazing that the attention is absolutely warranted.
Anyway, it’s not like Ryan needs convincing to accompany Gwen to Frankfurt—not when his dreams are coming true. Starting with a multibook offer with an advance so robust he was able to quit Merit after a year and still cover the remainder of Celine’s tuition until she graduated last June. It also helped that we’d moved in together by that point, cutting down the cost of rent. But the real prize is living with me. Now my kitchen actually gets used! I get to eat homemade food every day. His pancakes are indeed todie for, and for an odar, he’s doing a commendable job learning some of my mom’s best Armenian recipes. My favorite part is waking up to spectacular dark roast pour-overs every morning, served by Ryan in the drool-inducing gray sweats I got him for our first Christmas together. And he gets to grumble about living with the hottest chaos goblin in the world. Win-win.
After Germany, Ryan will meet me in Boston, where I’m heading tomorrow to visit Maral for the second time this month alone. Mom warmed to him early in our relationship when she saw how readily he showcased his love for me. Not only in the way he saysI love youtwenty times a day, but in the way he devotedly listens to everything I say, understanding, validating, empathizing. Acts that are wholly foreign to her. He accompanies me roughly half the time I visit, begrudgingly staying home the other half at my insistence. He’d lose too much writing time only to spend days doing Mom’s bidding while we’re at the house. He still requires reminders to put his needs first sometimes—we’re working on it.
But he will be joining me more frequently now that Celine is in Boston too, starting her paid internship at the MPA with the team Maral has built. Our girls are killing it.
Mom definitely enjoys the increased frequency with which she’s gotten to see me these past couple years. Happily, it has cut down her entreaties for me to move back. Plus, having Maral there acts as a welcome buffer during my visits. Win-win-win.
The only non-win is Maral living in a different city from me. That is still taking some getting used to.
Through the wonders of modern technology, we’ve been able to keep our daily morning routine largely intact—only instead of her coming over, we FaceTime. She says she prefers it, because she’s no longer subjected to me post-workout, but I know better. She misses me, sweat stink and all.
Woodsworth is publishing my second book next spring. I’m not sure yet if I’ll do as elaborate a tour for it as I did for the first one.Alison, now my primary publicist, suggested we do a pared-back version, only hitting a few major bookstores in cities where book one sold particularly well. Shanthi said we can pepper in a handful of bigger speaking events if they make sense timing-wise. While I’m happy to publicize the book on the podcast and my ever-growing socials, part of me is less interested in shouting my message from rooftops across the country this time around. Probably because this book is a lot more personal than the first one, and I feel…protective, maybe, of my story.
Shanthi is being an excellent Shanthi 2.0 by convincing me that it doesn’t matter either way. There will be good reviews, there will be bad ones. Lovers gonna love and haters gonna hate. It’s the way of the world. And I’m coming to terms with it.
