"Please," I finally managed, "please let me go, Ryan." Time seemed to stop as his real name fell from my lips, the room seeming to grow brighter around me. Ryan's eyes widened even more.
"You know my name," he said. "You do know who I really am. I wasn't sure . . ."
The woman he was with took a tiny step back, looking between the two of us.
"Let her go, Ryan," my grandmother repeated for me. "You're making a scene."
"Grandma, it's okay . . . " I glanced at my grandmother, and Ryan, following my gaze, finally looked from me to her.
"You," he said. "You were there."
"Yes, now let go of her and we can step outside and talk. Let go of her." She looked around, offering a small smile to the crowd in general, some milling nearby, some looking at us and whispering. Nothing to see here, folks, nothing at all.
Ryan looked back to me, his eyes wild, his expression still arrested. He dropped his hands from my arms, and I stumbled back slightly. He stepped forward to steady me, but my grandmother was closer and wrapped one arm around my waist, holding me up. "Let's just step outside," she repeated. She smiled at the man she'd been talking to, the man who I briefly noted was watching the scene with a worried frown on his face.
"Yes, please, I'd just like to go," I said, turning, my grandmother moving with me. My legs felt like they were weighted as she led me out of the ballroom. I had to focus to make them move. Behind me, I heard Ryan speaking to the woman he was with momentarily, and then I heard his steps on the marble floor behind us. I was woozy as if the half of a martini I'd consumed had gone straight to my head. As if I were drunk.
I felt his heat behind me before I turned, his hand again on my arm. "Lily, please," he said. We were just outside the ballroom now, the music filtering out into the vestibule where we stood. "You're real," Ryan whispered, his hand took mine and his thumb made a circle over my pulse as if he was checking to make sure I was really alive. I blinked. "You're real," he repeated as though he needed to say it twice to convince himself.
I felt my face move into a frown. "Did you think . . . that I wasn't real?" I finally asked, confused.
He let out a gust of breath. "I, Christ, Lily, I wasn't sure. I questioned it. I've been questioning it."
Something about that hurt. "I . . . see," I said. If he hadn't known if I was real or not, he couldn't have missed me, pined for me as I'd pined for him. He couldn't have. He mustn't have. That's why he was with that woman, giving her his body and his heart. He'd forgotten about me, moved on. He'd dismissed me as nothing more than a dream.
"You left. Why?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell me you were here? In San Francisco? How long—"
"Let's move aside," my grandmother said, walking several steps so we were farther from the open doorway. I followed her and so did Ryan. Ryan was staring at my grandmother.
"You were there," he said, repeating what he'd said inside. He turned to me. "She's your grandmother."
"Yes," I whispered. "My grandmother," I hesitated and then added, "Bianca Corsella." I had considered not offering her name, but there were a hundred people inside the ballroom who could tell him both our names. It hardly seemed worth withholding now. Ryan's eyes were moving over my face, his expression still shocked, confused.
"Where was your mother, Lily? I don't understand any of it. Please tell me."
My grandmother took my hand. "My daughter, Lily's mother, has been dead for a long time," my grandmother said calmly. "My granddaughter is ill, Ryan, just as you are. Everything you know of her is a lie. It was Lily living a lie." She looked around to make sure no one had heard her. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them. "Please, you have to understand that she can't see you again." Heat was rising up my chest to my neck, filling my head, making me feel like I might pass out. I didn't want him to know. It was irrational because I'd understood him, I'd understood that he was ill, but I just . . . didn't want him to know. Not about me. I felt humiliated and small and filled with despair.
Because now he'd realize what I had already come to understand: We could never be together. There could never be an us. It wasn't possible. I wasn't good for him, and truthfully, he probably wasn't good for me either. The woman inside the ballroom, the woman waiting for him, the beautiful woman in the black dress who he was going to take home tonight and make love to, she was better for him than I was. I knew nothing about her, but I knew that. And it filled me with pain and a sick, fierce jealousy. I pictured his naked body moving above hers and sucked in a miserable breath.
Ryan was staring at me, clearly trying to understand. "Lily?" he asked.
I closed my eyes momentarily. "It's true," I said, meeting his gaze. "My mother is dead. I've been in a hospital this year. I'm sick, Ryan. I've been . . . getting better. It's happened before, I . . ." My voice grew smaller. I didn't know what else to say.
"Okay," he said, "we can work through this, Lily—"