“It must be uncomfortable,” he said, and it felt like an indictment. Like he was saying,Don’t pretend you’re calm, don’t pretend you’re not like me on the inside, panting and splotchy and sweating and twitching to be out of here.
She could not look at him directly anymore. Only in the mirror, where they stood side by side, her in navy, him in black.
We look like a bruise, she thought.
But she said, “It’s not. It was amicable.”
In the mirror, she saw his mouth move enough to make room for the noise of derision—of denial—that he made. He was watching her, too.
He could strip the polish right off her with his gaze.
“Whatis your problem?”
It was strange saying it this way, to the mirror and not to him. She could see too much of herself in it.
He didn’t answer. He just waited as the elevator slowed to a stop, as it offered up a pleasant, mechanical ding that felt far too light for the moment.
For the two of them.
When the doors slid open, Griffin Testa kept his gaze straight ahead and said, “I’m not afraid of flying.”
Then he stepped out, striding quickly across the lobby. Out of the glass doors.
Into the falling dark of the Paris night, alone.
* * *
“What. An.Asshole!”
Rosie made the proclamation so loudly that Layla had to stifle a groan of embarrassment. They were in a small restaurant in the Marais, not far from the hotel, crowded and rich with animated conversation. Still, Rosie—who had maintained her fashion for piercings, including a fresh one on the shell of her ear that was simply too red and puffy for Layla’s professional comfort—had the sort of giddy shriek to her voice that called attention.
Layla did not think this was the sort of restaurant where people yelled the word “asshole.” Plus, since Rosie was speaking in her brash American English, Layla was pretty sure she shouldn’t be yelling anything.
Just to avoid playing so much to type.
But it was hard to hold it against her. The truth was, Rosie wasfun.Distracting. Her elfin face full of shiny jewelry and her brain full of shiny thoughts, changing topics so frequently that Layla’s own mind couldn’t land on anything for too long, which was a relief after the elevator.
Beside her, Em laughed but also shushed Rosie mildly. “He’snot, not really!”
Emily’s defense of her future father-in-law was sweet, even if the description she’d provided of him over the last few minutes was really making Rosie’s case for her.
“He’s just like…verymilitary?” Em added.
Layla soaked this up, another detail she was glad to have about all things Michael and Emily. So far, even amid Rosie’s chaos, she’d managed to steer the conversation that way, and she was grateful.
It was good to know more about the man Em would marry: that he and Emily first met in a coffee shop in Beacon Hill, when Michael had been in town for work, a story that involved a spilled latte and a small dog in a purse (the dog was fine), which Rosie had proclaimed in advance “a meet-cute for the ages!”; that he worked for the government, though Layla got the sense that Emily wasn’t allowed to say too much about precisely what he did; that he was warm and sensitive and doting in spite of having a father who seemed the opposite; and that his hands shook with nerves on the night he proposed. He was, in fact, quite a bit older than Emily—about a decade—but Emily mentioned it only as the most passing, insignificant detail about their relationship.
“Michael used to be in the military,” said Rosie. “Andhe’snot an asshole.”
Emily shrugged, sipping her wine, her lips stained slightly red. Layla took a drink from her own glass, marveling at the reality of sharing wine with someone she still thought of, in some ways, as a kid. She remembered one early weekend at the MacKenzie home, introducing Em toMean Girlsover a bowl of popcorn and too many cans of Coke.
It was bittersweet to clock how much Emily had changed—obviously, in the many years since Layla first knew her, but also in this comparatively short span of time that Layla had stayed away.
The essence of Emily was still there—her optimism, her cheerfulness—but she had matured, too: She spoke confidently about her work as a freelance technical writer, had taken the shiftingtides of Michael’s job in stride. A couple of months after the wedding, they’d be relocating to Germany for two years, and Emily’s research on and preparation for the move seemed impeccable.
More than that, she was more in command than Layla had ever seen her. When they met in the lobby, Layla still buzzing from that strange interaction on the elevator with Griffin, she worried that she’d fail at the sort of pleasantries required of a dinner out where she didn’t know one of her companions very well. But Emily had smoothed the way for her and Rosie effortlessly—engaging them about their respective jobs, finding overlapping interests. And when they sat down at the restaurant, it was Em who took the lead, reading the menu where Layla and Rosie couldn’t, speaking in slow but competent French to their server, holding the line with her efforts even when the man spoke back to her in English.
“I’ve been practicing my French and German a lot since Michael and I made the decision on the relo,” she said, by way of explanation. “I want to feel comfortable getting around on my own.”
