You look up. “How did you know I had something to drop on you?”
Ryan scoffs. “Bro. I’ve known youforever.You’ve always had a lousy poker face, at least to me. I haven’t seen you in years, and you randomly decided to show up on my doorstep five days before Christmas? Something’s eating you. Am I wrong?”
Casting your eyes down, you poke at your dessert with the tines of your fork. “No.”
“Your folks all right? Noemi?”
“Yeah. Thanks. They’re great. It’s not them.”
He slides your coffee across the table and sits down beside you. “‘Kay. No time like the present. Spill.”
“Would you say that you and Sienna are happy together?”
Ryan laughs. Takes a sip of his coffee, and makes a face when it’s clearly too hot. “Yeah. Tired and chronically busy in this stage of our lives, but definitely happy. At least, I am. She seems like she is. Hasn’t indicated otherwise.”
“What do you do when you screw things up with her?”
His eyes widen, and he nods. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s gonna be one of those types of problems, huh? Okay. How bad a screw-up are we talking, here?”
“That’s a complicated question,” you hedge.
“Not really. Did you cheat?”
“No.”
“Did you lie?”
“Um.” You rack your brain. “I’m not sure. I was accused of withholding truthful feelings, though.”
Ryan stabs a big piece of babka and sticks it in his mouth. Talks while chewing. “It really would be easier if you would just tell the full story,” he says. “My time’s notquiteas valuable as yours, but we’re gonna be here all night at this rate, and then you’ll be telling the same story to Sienna. And she won’t be nearly as considerate of your manly feelings.”
You take a moment to sample the pastry. It reallyisgood, brown sugar and cinnamon dancing on your tongue. The texture is delicate and flaky, and there are chopped nuts in the center. Youwill need to get Sienna’s recipe. Then you heave a deep breath and spill your guts.
You start at the beginning, telling Ryan about how you and Kai were set up, and give him the quick-and-dirty rundown of your early relationship. You mention GoGo and Gabi and everything that went on there. Face hot, you recount all the disasters that have taken place in the last half-year: the hate comments, the rocks thrown at windows, Artemis’s kidnapping, the bomb threat in Miami. Kai’s concussion and recovery. And then, holding your coffee mug so tightly that you are worried about it shattering in your clenched fingers, you tell him about the fight. You don’t hold anything back, making sure to fill him in on all the nasty details. You don’t mention how you and Kai fucked in a garden shed, but you do tell him aboutthatargument as well.
You sit back, feeling slightly unburdened, but also raw and wrung out. It’s not like you to share your problems. Even with your therapists, you parcel out little necessary disclosures like bread crumbs. It’s not in your nature to overshare. Whether Ryan knows it or not, you have just unlocked the chains around your heart and spilled its contents all over his kitchen table.
He tries his coffee again, realizing that it is much cooler now that almost ten minutes of rambling have gone by.
“Let me get this straight,” he says slowly. “You refused to talk to him about all this shit you have going on and bottled it up until you had a temper tantrum? You accused him of trying to sabotage your reputation?Andyou doubled down and wouldn’t apologize even when he told you that’s what he needed?”
“When you sum it up like that,” you say miserably, “it sounds pretty shitty. What do I do?”
“Itisshitty,” Ryan agrees. “Brother, there’s only one thing you can do when you fuck up like that, and it’s grovel with everything you have.”
“Grovel?” you repeat blankly.
“Look, Ster,” he says. His babka is gone; he leans over and takes a bite of yours, wagging his fork for emphasis. “You are surrounded by yes-men. Probably not your intention; not saying you did it on purpose, but that’s what happened. Nobody wants to give it to you straight. They’re too worried that you’ll get offended, and you can’t offendSterling Grayson, the world’s biggest superstar…”
“Come on…” you groan.
“Shut up,” he cuts you off. “I don’t have those same compunctions. I was there when you performed in public for the first time, man. I remember when you came home from high school and cried after the first day because Jase De Meyer insulted your stupid Justin Bieber haircut, and you didn’t want to go back. Noemi had to get me to talk you down.”
“I think I get your point.”
“Mypoint,” he echoes, “is that you have your head so far up your own ass, getting high on your own farts, that you’ve forgotten how to be normal. Normal people can apologize. Normal people realize that it isn’t a fatal mistake if they mess up. Normal people can just say what they’re thinking to the people they love, and not save all their big feelings for hit songs.”
“I donot…”
