I walked to the cabinet, grabbed a glass, and poured myself a scotch as well. “What are we going to do about the website?”
He took a long pull from his glass. “I was hoping you didn’t see that.”
Then he shrugged.
“Well,” he said, “the stuff with your past, I think I can finagle.”
I met his eyes. “Seriously?”
“Who can’t relate to someone pretending to be something they’re not in order to please other people? It will make A Little Sunshine even more popular. Every girl who ever lied about her age on OKCupid will be rooting for you.”
“People don’t like a fraud.”
“Everyone is a fraud, Sunshine. Everyone with an Instagram page, a Facebook account. And certainly everyone with a cooking show. How many of these folks are cooking for themselves, really? They’re figureheads. All of them. That test kitchen at Cook TV? It’s never busy with the real people. It’s their cronies. Other people making the recipes. And don’t get me started on the Food Network.”
“Think we went a step beyond that, Ryan.”
He waved me off. “Tomato, tomahto! We sell an image of the person in front of the camera. And that’s the job. To be the perfect image. You did the job and did it beautifully. So now we just have to change the image.”
“To what?”
“Learning, getting real, for real. Self-embrace. It’s the latest thing. And it doesn’t matter how big the lies are. People forget. They always forget the details.”
“It’s the internet, Ryan. Naked pictures aren’t quickly forgotten.”
“Craig’s pulled them, my lawyers are all over it, that part is handled. And Meredith will calm down and handle the rest. She wouldn’t want to put her children in that position. Outing their father, as it were.”
I didn’t know if it was the scotch, but I started to think that it could actually work. “So . . . it’s your plan to ignore the lies?”
“My plan is to change the story. My plan is to fix this for you. For us.”
He leaned forward, holding each side of my egg chair. And he looked into my eyes. Despite everything I knew about him—everything he showed me over and over again about how he felt about the truth, how he felt about doing what was ostensibly right—it was in the moments like this that Ryan amazed me. Because he wasn’t playing around when he looked at me like that. He wasn’t pretending. He was looking into my eyes, so I would see it: his sincerity. How much he wanted to do right by me.
“Look, the Food Network gig, they’re going to put that on hold. Those guys don’t like controversy. But we’ll get it back. I swear to you. The only thing America loves more than adoring someone is hating her. And then having a new reason to love her all over again. So we pretended a little about where you came from because you were embarrassed about where you came from. Everyone can relate to being embarrassed. Everyone can relate to wanting to change their own story so they’re presented in their best possible light.”
I nodded, starting to feel calmer.
Ryan had made up the story once, he could make it up again. If anyone could, it was Ryan.
Sensing my quiet praise, he smiled. I smiled back, taking a breath.
This was probably a mistake. He took it as an invitation and kissed me. I pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
I shook my head. “Ryan, we decided not to do this.”
“We decided it would get too messy. It’s not messy anymore. Danny’s out of the picture. And . . .”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
My heart started to hurt. Fourteen years. He couldn’t be. Not just like that.
“It’s not about our spouses anymore,” he said.
“You think Meredith is going to go along with your plan if you leave her?”
“Yes,” he said, totally unfazed, and I realized my error. Ryan didn’t operate in the world of self-doubt. He believed he’d get away with anything. And, really, he was probably right.
He pushed my hair behind my ears, leaned in again. “I love you,” he said.
Love. Ryan never said he loved me, not like that. The closest he’d gotten was when he hired a crew to film the behind-the-scenes of my photo shoot—the day that was now all over the internet. The camera operator was this really good-looking guy—tall, smart, and studying to be a director at NYU. Ryan thought we were flirting even though it was innocently friendly. And Ryan fired him. When I asked Ryan why later, he begrudgingly admitted to being jealous. It’s hard to see someone you love interested in someone else. That was what he had said, daring me to argue. I didn’t say anything. It hadn’t seemed worth the fight.
“I love you and I want to be with you. And I will work it out so ultimately it doesn’t hurt us. Look at Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman . . .”
“I don’t think they’d like the comparison.”
Ryan waited. “I know you love me too.”
I took a large sip of my scotch, finishing the glass.
Ryan didn’t move. “Sunny?”
“I think we should talk about this tomorrow.”
“No. I think we should talk about this now. I want this.” He motioned between us. “No wives, no husbands. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.”
Ryan didn’t say things like that. He’d never said that we should leave our spouses, be together. He wouldn’t. Not unless he was certain it would be reciprocated.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.
“Did you do this? So I’d have no choice but to be with you?”
He laughed awkwardly. “No choice? Wow.”
“You sure came up with a plan to fix it quickly.”
“That’s how my brain works. Quickly.”
My head was blurry. He had to go, right now.
“If this is about Danny, believe me, he isn’t coming back. Not that you belonged with him anyway. I’m proof positive of that.”
“Well, I can’t do this.” I motioned between us. “Sorry.”
“Of course you can.”
“Then I don’t want to.”
It came out firmer than I meant it to—but I was angry that he was putting everything on the line, angry he assumed the answer would be yes.
“Well, I don’t want to do anything else,” he said.
“Ryan, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re the first person who would say that there is an empire at stake here.”
“There are a lot of things at stake here.”
My head was spinning. He was putting the entire plan he’d just made on the line? It was now contingent on there also being a plan around us?
He took my face in his hands. “So it’s you and me, or I’m going another way.”
There was my answer. So I thought about it. I actually thought about pretending. The smart thing would be to pretend that I wanted to give things a shot with him, especially if that was what he needed in order to stay committed.
“Okay, fine.”
“Okay, fine?”
I looked away. “What do you want from me?”
“A little bit of gratitude, for starters. I made you what you are.”
“Please! I just happened to be the girl behind the right bar.”
Ryan stood up, his eyes turning cold. “That’s only true right now,” he said.
Then he took a last sip of his drink and headed toward the door.
“See ya,” he said. As though he wasn’t saying good-bye. As though he wasn’t walking out on a nearly decade-long partnership.