“Well, I—”
“One hour,” he said, but he was already pushing back from the table. Already holding out his hand. “Just give me one hour.”
“That’s longer than a minute,” she said.
He was standing now. Smiling down at her. He said, “I lied.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
He took her to a perfume shop.
Aparfumerie, he thought the French word was, which was better for the place he’d seen on his walk over to the café: a tiny space, deserving of that-ieending thatsoundedsmall to him, tucked neatly and cozily into a row of stores in the shopping district of the Marais.
What made him notice it first was not its smallness but its color—his favorite color, which formed the shop’s facade, a striking matte black contrast to the pale stone above and around it. The lettering above the door was small, simple, no showy script or fancy logo. Through the glass, he saw a wild display of boldly colored flowers, deep reds and magentas and jewel greens, and because he’d been with her all day yesterday, because he’d walked by and in countless shops with her, he immediately thought—a relief from what had otherwise been pounding through him with each step—Layla would like that.
But he’d forgotten about it once he got to the café, once he sat and fully took stock of the smoldering remains of the morning. Hewaited and thought about how to tell her that Jamie knew, that Michael knew.
Aboutwhetherto tell her that there was something else, too.
A secret Michael was keeping, something that would matter so much to Emily.
The woman who was about to marry his best friend. The woman Layla thought of as a sister.
He’d forgotten about the shop even more once his conversation with Layla took a different turn. For a while, he’d forgotten everything, ever; he listened to her and lived only inside the cocoon of hate he seemed to be constructing around himself, the whole thing made up of every detail Layla told him about her ex-husband.
What a fucking idiot, to lose her. To lose the reality of Layla, all for some imaginary kid.
What an asshole, to try to convince her. To make family a bargaining chip. To use the thing she wanted most in the world against her. To change the meaning of it after you’d made your vows.
But the memory of the shop came back to him almost as soon as Layla brought Emily up again—her doubts, her doubts aboutMichael, Michael who’d shouted at him on the street, Michael who’d not spoken to him for the rest of the morning, Michael who’d left the pâtisserie with a basket of croissants that Griffin had made and a look on his face like he barely knew where he was anymore.
He did not know what to do about Michael. About Emily.
Not yet.
But when he thought about that perfume shop, he knew something he could do for Layla.
He walked her back there, holding her hand the whole way, even though he could genuinely not remember the last time he’d held hands with someone outside of a nurse in a hospital hallway,clutching and desperate during weight-bearing exercises that made him feel subhuman, gawked at, pitied.
He kept Layla close on his right side, like a bulwark against what was still hurting on his left—seven out of ten, he was pretty sure—ever since this morning in Montmartre. He didn’t mention it to her, because mentioning it to her meant explaining what’d happened with Michael, and in the end this detour was for him, too:a little more time, like he’d told her, even if what he was letting himself forget for a while was his best friend.
When they got close, she looked up at him, said, “Perfume?” and he was nervous for a minute, worried it had been a bad idea. He knew some women didn’t wear it, didn’t like it, and maybe she was one of them.
Except he had a sense that she wasn’t. He had a sense this was right.
So he took her inside the shop: dimly lit and den-like, the flowers on display highlighted with some hidden glow coming from somewhere tucked away. He said, “Bonjour,” to the woman dressed in all black who stood inside behind a long marble counter, because Layla told him yesterday that you always had to sayBonjourwhen you walked into a shop here,always.
She saidBonjourback, but also asked in English whether she might help them, so clearly he had not mastered his pronunciation.
He took out his wallet, slid out a credit card, and handed it to the woman, whom he trusted instinctively, what with her outfit and all. He said, “For her,” gesturing at Layla. “For whatever she picks.”
“Griff,” Layla whispered, like she was absolutelyscandalized,and he could not help but smile, especially given what he’d done to her last night.
“I can’t stay in here,” he said, which was true—the aroma was overwhelming, the kind of sensory overload that would get his wires crossed, especially at a seven out of ten. It was more than that, though: It was that he wanted her to pick something only for herself. He wanted her to go to that open house tonight wearing something she’d picked because shelikedit, and not because it looked a certain way for the MacKenzies, not because she wanted to blend in or be appropriate or fuckingamicable.
“But I—” She broke off, at a loss for words, as though no one had ever done something like this for her before, which added a layer to that cocoon of hate he’d been working on.
“I can pay for it myself,” she finally finished.
