Layla smiled and took a sip of her coffee. Complaining about people running for exercise was averyCara thing to do, one of the many things she’d missed about her friend. Layla happened to know that Cara had a Peloton (also a French word:small ball) in her apartment, which she rode at weird hours to accommodate her working, which was not always in the middle of the afternoon.
“It’s a nice day for it,” said Layla.
Cara snorted. “You would say that.”
Layla smiled into her to-go cup. Cara was grouchy today,sleep-deprived after too many long shifts in a row. But she’d been the one to suggest the Esplanade, texting Layla that the hospital had turned her into a fluorescent-light, stale-air gremlin, and she needed to get outside.
And Layla, who had two whole weeks here with no work schedule, was happy to oblige.
“I mean,” Layla said, gesturing toward the water. “Look at this. The trees, the boats, the city. It feels almost…”
She trailed off. It did not really feel Parisian, which was fine. It was nice enough on its own. Though sometimes, if she squinted at that bridge up ahead, say, the curving arch over the water, the—
“Let’s talk about your shitty apartment,” Cara said. A mercy.
Layla left a beat of silence, building the suspense before saying, “In ten days, it is officially no longer my shitty apartment.”
“Layla!” Cara exclaimed, grabbing her arm and shaking her, nearly upsetting Layla’s coffee. “That’s so good! So, you decided?”
Layla nodded, looking up ahead at the bridge, not squinting.
She did love Boston. Or liked it, at least. But over the last couple of months—since Paris—she’d been thinking about whether Boston was really her home base. Whether keeping ashitty apartmenthere for in between her placements made any sense, or whether she had done it as some kind of deferent, amicable monument to the fact that her home with Jamie had been here, to the fact that the MacKenzies were here.
“And you re-signed your contract?”
Layla swallowed, nodding again. This, she was less sure about: one more year, at least, as a locum tenens, though she had negotiated fewer total placements, with more time in between. Her salary was still more than she needed, certainly as a single person, and enough to make the most of the time in between with travel.
But not enough to keep renting a shitty apartment she didn’teven want anymore, in an expensive city she didn’t think she wanted to call home.
“C’est bon!” Cara said teasingly, knowing about the conversation-partner stuff. “How do I sayI’m proud of youin French?”
Layla rolled her eyes and didn’t answer. But she thought,Je suis fière de toi.
Je suis fière de moi.
She linked her arm with Cara’s, and said, “Thank you. For everything.”
She said it seriously, quietly, squeezing Cara’s arm as she did, so her friend would know the depth of it. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it to Cara since she’d been back from Paris, and it was the short version—the one that held all the other thank-yous Layla had offered to her friend in recent weeks.
Thank you for still being my friend for all that time, even when I couldn’t be a good one back.
Thank you for waiting for me to stop being so amicable.
Thank you for being there when I could finally admit that Jamie was not actually as good as I always said he was.
Thank you for not sayingI told you so.
Merci, merci, merci, merci.
Cara was the first person Layla texted when she got back from Paris. Cara had been there through it all. Not often in person—that was not how their friendship worked, not with their jobs and their schedules—but so often, in long text threads, voice notes, occasional calls. It was clear that Cara had, until then, actually been practicing great restraint when it came to Jamie—to the MacKenzies in general—and sometimes, she set forth with a torrent of complaint that truly made Layla laugh.
And that reminded her of someone, too.
Someone else who could be grouchy. Tilting toward cruel, at times, but only ever out of fierce, focused protectiveness. Kinder than most people could see.
She took a breath of fresh air—not even a trace of cigarette out here, not that she should be disappointed—and focused on Cara. She did not want to be thinking about a man when she was out with Cara, not after all the times she’d done that in the past, and all the harm it had caused their friendship.
Layla was learning how to be a better friend now. A friend who knew better what familyreallywas.
