When he turned back around, Michael was pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“Your parents never said anything to her?” Griffin asked, astonished.
Michael shook his head. “I asked them not to. I told them I would, eventually. I just wanted…a fresh start.”
Griffin tried not to wince. It wasn’t his place; he knew it wasn’t his place.Griffinhad not lost his first love that night.
But he didn’t like thinking of Sara Beth as a person you tried to get afresh startfrom.
Another thought struck him then. “What ifIhad said something?”
Michael stared at Griff like it was a stupid question.
“You don’t ever talk about it,” said Michael, and that was true. Griffin never, ever did.
So why did it feel likehehad done something terrible to Emily?
Why did he feel he’d done something terrible toLayla?
He flashed back to himself, that first morning.You said something to her, he’d said, standing at the threshold of Layla’s hotel room door,accusingher.You need to fix this, he’d demanded in that shitty little courtyard, so separate from the reality of Paris he didn’t think he ever wanted to see it again.
The wedding has to happen, he’d said, and he was swamped with a sick, guilty feeling. How had that been any different than wanting afresh start?
Had he ever even made an effort to see Emily as anything other than the just reward for Michael, for his friend who’d lost so much?
“You have to tell her,” Griffin said, his voice flat and unyielding. “You cannot keep this from her. You can’t marry her if—”
For the second time that morning, Griffin watched as someone’s leashed anger broke free. But this time, on the face of his very best friend, Griffin didn’t feel anything close to victory.
“Why don’t you tell me, Griff,” Michael said, taking a step forward, speaking through gritted teeth. “Why don’t you tell me about the last timeyoutold the story of that night to someone?”
Griffin swallowed. He hurt all over now. The left side was nothing.
“No answer for that? No answer from a guy who’s spentyearshiding himself away so he never has to tell anyone it happened? Me, your mom, that’s it, and your mom probably only because she was your emergency fucking contact. Otherwise you probably would’ve tried to get someone to convince her you were dead. You think it’s easy?”
Michael’s voice was raised now, his face reddened, his hands at his sides curled into fists.
“You think it’s easy to say,A girl I loved once died. My best friend almost died, too. Sometimes I think hediddie, for all the ways he changed after?”
“Jesus,” Griffin said.
“You think it’s real easy, I bet, to explain to someone like Emily—Emily! Who thinks people are fair and good and forgiving and flexible—that my fucking parents blame that same best friend for the fire that killed a girl they thought of as a daughter? That they probably blame me a little, too, just for sticking by you?”
“Mikey.”
“No!” Michael said, slicing an arm through the air, drawing a line as real and sharp and uncrossable as Griffin had ever seen. “You don’t judge me for this. Youdon’t. You, never leaving your house. Never getting out there again, in all these years. And even if you did—” Michael broke off, something dawning on him now. “Even now that youhave—you still haven’t said, have you? You didn’t tell Layla? You didn’t break up the best feeling you’ve had in forever to say,Let me tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me?”
He didn’t know how Michael was managing to make this a searing indictment—not when telling Layla would have been disastrous for this wedding, for Michael and Emily.
But damn if he didn’t succeed.
Damn if Griffin didn’t feel like the worst, most dishonest person in the world.
He shook his head. A minute movement. Barely an admission, and Michael’s expression shifted into something Griffin hadn’t ever seen on his friend’s face. A curl of his lips like a sneer, even though his eyes were wet. Griffin thought of Sara Beth, of Michael’s grief. Of all the days Michael sat by Griffin’s hospital bed, never once blaming him for what happened. Clinging to the person he had left.
You should have been looking at me like this all along, Griffin thought.
You should have never let me be your best man.
