“Work again?” Ryan sighs, putting down the oyster he was about to shoot. “Listen, Lanie, I’ve been thinking, and I just don’t think this is good for you.”
My champagne sticks in my throat and I cough. “What do you mean? What’s not good for me?”
“This job—if it’s not one thing with your work, it’s another. A week ago, you were so stressed about meeting the diva that you canceled your trip to D.C. Then, as soon as you did meet her, you transferred all that stress into panic over some arbitrary deadline.”
“This deadline is the opposite of arbitrary. It matters to Peony’s bottom line. It matters to Noa’s readers. It matters to me—”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Point taken.”
I’m working myself up—and sensing Ryan shutting down. He’s so focused on the oysters, it’s like he’s trying to make a pearl. Does he want me to fail with Noa Callaway? Does he want me to get fired?
“I don’t know anyone with a demanding job who doesn’t stress about work,” I say. “You stress about work all the time.”
“That’s different,” he says and tips the oyster to his lips.
“How is it different?” I raise my voice, drawing eyes from the couple next to us at the bar.
“Lanie,” Ryan says in his calm-down voice. It usually works, but not today.
“Please, enlighten me.”
Ryan sighs. “Because we both know the trajectory of my career. It’s different from yours. After we get married, you’re moving to D.C.” He looks at me, like, What? “Sometimes I wonder if the reality of that move has even occurred to you. When are you going to tell Sue that you’re relocating?”
He knows I’ve been putting off that conversation. Sue is a tremendous publisher, but she keeps out of her employees’ personal lives. She knows that I’m engaged, but I doubt she has any idea Ryan lives in D.C. My trial promotion has not made me any more eager to tell her.
“Best-case scenario,” Ryan says, “you’re commuting half the week. What are you going to do, sleep on Meg’s couch? And what about after we have kids? You complain all the time about this job. Is that really what you want to model for our family—”
“I do not complain all the time!”
“You might not notice it,” he says, “but you do. Maybe this isn’t your dream job anymore. In D.C., you could have—”
“Don’t say it—”
“A fresh start—”
“I will walk if you bring up that job at the Library of the Congress again.” I cringe, picturing tasteful archives, tidy shelves, and drawers stretching into organized infinity.
“You told me once you’d love to learn to read Braille!” Ryan says. “And Deborah Ayers is a very connected woman. If you’d been at the party last weekend, you would’ve met her. All I did was mention that you’ll be transitioning to D.C. soon, and she said she’d be more than happy to sit down and discuss your interests.”
Before I can groan, Ryan fills my hands with his. They’re warm and familiar. I squeeze them, wanting to fold myself inside him. But something holds me back. It’s this feeling that if I fold myself inside Ryan, I might get lost. Irretrievably. I’ve never felt that way before, and it startles me.
“You know what I think you need?” he asks.
“What?”
“A really top-notch couples’ massage. I’ll book it for us. Next Friday night, when you come to D.C. It’ll knock us both out, and we’ll wake up fresh for the chili cook-off at my parents’ country club Saturday morning.”
Ryan used to joke with me about his parents’ many social functions, but sometime in the last year he changed. Instead of laughing with me about the country club’s penchant for taxidermy, he gifted me the exact same sweater I spotted on two of his friends’ girlfriends at the last event.
“I’ve never been good at getting massages,” I say.
“I’ve never met anyone who’s bad at getting massages. You’ve never said no to a Ryan-rubdown.” He jazz-hands at me, trying to lighten the mood.
“That’s different.” I look at him pointedly. “My mind just whirls. And I always feel like the masseuse can tell that I’m not being Zen enough.”
“This is the best massage inside the Beltway. Everyone loves it. I promise, you will, too.” He runs his fingers through my hair. It’s tangled from walking in the wind after the concert.
“Yeah, okay,” I say.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s just . . . it’s a massage. Not some magic spell that’s going to fix our problems.”
“Our problems?” He shoots me an uneasy look. “I thought we were trying to address your stress.”
“Ryan,” I say, turning toward him.
“I mean, yeah, I noticed you’ve been distant all week. I guess I should have said something sooner,” he says, speaking quickly. “But work’s been crazy. Maybe I’ve been distracted. It happens. We just need to reconnect.” He signals to the bartender for another round.
It used to be easy for us to connect. Now, even the couple of days a week when Ryan and I are together, it feels like we’re pretty far apart.
I know he’s trying to help, and that he can’t really do that without knowing the specifics of my problem. A romantic reconnection is probably what we need. Then I could open up to him about Noah.
I turn to him, our knees overlapping under the bar. I touch my forehead to his, aware of how uncomplicatedly romantic we probably look to the table of thirtysomething ladies behind us. I’m often aware of that kind of thing with Ryan, probably because women check him out all the time.
“I’ve got it,” I say. “What about that motorcycle ride through the Appalachians we’ve always wanted to take?”
It’s a trip that doesn’t need advance planning, no airplane tickets or hard-to-get hotel reservations. We could go on a whim as soon as Noah gets an idea and retreats into his writing cave. A long springtime weekend on the bike with Ryan, stopping at B and Bs along the way, would be the perfect thing to distract me from wondering what’s happening with Noah’s word count.
“Or we could rent a camper van?” Ryan says, “Sleep under the stars. It’d be good practice for future family vacations.”
“A motorcycle would be amazing,” I push. “And it’s so us.”
He squints. “What do you mean, ‘so us’?”