So she said, “Do we have a destination today?”
Cara gave a dramatic scoff.Dramatic.
“What?” Layla said.
“Adestination, Layla? Really?”
“I’m—yes? Like do you want to go eat, or shop, or—”
Cara groaned. “Here I am,tryingto showinterestin yourinterests, and you ask me if we have a fuckingdestination, I can’t believe it!”
“My interests?”
Cara stopped and took out her phone, swiped and tapped at the screen for a few seconds, then turned it and held it up in front of Layla’s face.
It was a translation app.
The one Layla used to use.
The word on the screen wasflâner.
Layla flushed.
“To stroll, right?” Cara said, still exasperated. “Like, without a destination? That’s what it means?”
Only sort of, she thought, but she nodded. Sabine had been the one to teach her the word, only a few weeks ago now. The funnything about having Sabine—well, maybe not Sabine specifically, but having a French conversation partner ingeneral—was that sometimes, Layla ended up telling her moredetailsabout her days in Paris than she actually told Cara. They were good conversation prompts: She could describe, for example, a boat cruise, the sights seen, the food served, the disastrous moment when someone threw up over the side, and work out how to say it all in the tongue of the place where it had all happened.
And one day, only a couple of weeks ago now, when Layla’s conversation appointment had coincided with a particularly aching, lonely feeling, a restless impatience, aworry—she’d told Sabine about that day alone with Griffin. The walking, the shops, the random restaurants, the people-watching, the complete abandonment of the itinerary for the day. And Sabine had said, “Ah! You areune flâneuse!”
It didn’t really meansomeone who strolls. It meant more than that, a French something, something Layla suspected would be difficult tobeanywhere else. It meant…
Well.
To her, it meantsomeone who wanders.
Flâner, the verb form.Wandering.
To her, it would always meanwandering.
With a specific person.
With whom she still, absolutely, would.
She swallowed, unexpectedly emotional. Grateful and also heartachy. Cara was not making it easy to focus right now.
“You remembered,” she said to Cara, then added, “Je suis fière de toi.”
Cara linked her arm through Layla’s again, moving them back into their walk. Theirstroll. The truth was, it was a little toofast-paced to be called that. Cara—and also Boston, and all these runners—had limitations, when it came to being without a destination.
After a few minutes of walking quietly, Cara said, “I know I’ve talked a lot of shit lately. About your ex-in-laws.”
Layla laughed, remembering some of the greatest hits: Cara’s angry-face emoji response to the long email Manon had sent to Layla after Paris, part apology and part guilt trip over Layla’s “unceremonious departure,” her doubt about Layla’s decision to talk to Robert and Manon on the phone one day a few weeks ago, a painful but necessary conversation in which Layla had set some new boundaries, and, finally, her gasping proclamation of the MacKenzies ascheap-ass motherfuckerswhen Layla revealed that Griffin had been the one to pay for most of the wedding. Layla thought that last one was pretty unfair, but now, she didn’t always so readily push back on anything negative about the MacKenzies.
Sometimes, she’d learned, you had to let your friends—your family—howl at the moon for you.
Especially when you weren’t capable, at first, of doing it for yourself.
“You have,” Layla said.
