Obviously, Rosie’s texts did not have much in common with the sort of texts that most often got Layla moving with the kind of no-nonsense purpose that had propelled her across the courtyard and into the hotel’s lobby, pressing the elevator button with a specific tap of her knuckle that was so familiar it felt like teleportation to another time, another place.
But still, they had the same effect: like she was getting a room number in a less luxurious accommodation, a nurse or doctor’s name, a code more specific than a cringe face.
Now, standing at the threshold of Emily’s room, staring into Rosie’s real-life wide-eyedYikesface, Layla felt like she was doing a handoff. An official transfer of care.
“What happened?” Layla said, half expecting Rosie to reply with a heart rate.
“Whatdidn’t!” Rosie said, her voice pitched strangely between a whisper and a shout. She reminded Layla of a sweaty first-year resident.
“Start at the beginning.”
Rosie swallowed and looked over her shoulder, then leaned in, committing to the whisper.
“She’s in the bathroom.Again. Her stomach is upset. Because she is doing somethingcrazy, absolutelycrazy, and this ismesaying that, so you know—”
“Rosie,” Layla interrupted.
“Well everything wasfinewhen I went to sleep!” She paused, then added guiltily, “I didn’t fall asleep, okay? I passed out! Because of the champagne; I should never drink champagne,god!I know better. New Year’s 2023!”
Layla blinked, and Rosie mumbled, “Never forget,” like an out-loud hashtag.
This was absolute chaos, but it was also revealing: Rosie had said nothing about Layla’s role in this, noI need to know what it isyou saidfrom her, not that a sentence like that—bossy, precise, tinged with cruelty—was Rosie’s style.
But Rosie’s style would have been to say something immediately, if she thought Layla was responsible.
So, Emily hadn’t told Rosie what prompted all this, at least not yet.
“And when you woke up?”
“When I woke up, it was three-something in the morning and Emily was gettingsickin the bathroom! Which I thought was the champagne, because what did I say? New Year’s 2023, know what I mean? But it wasnotthe champagne. It’s that she says she doesn’t want toget married!”
Layla swallowed. That was more forceful than having doubts. More final than canceling tonight.
Before she could stop herself, she thought of the faces of her former mother- and father-in-law: the way Manon pursed and then crooked her lips when she was trying not to cry, the way Robert got a tipped-to-the-right trench between his eyebrows when he was worried. She thought of Jamie when he looked disappointed: a sort of hangdog passivity that overtook his handsome face, eventually pulling his whole body downward.
She’d gotten so familiar with those expressions during that final, wrenchingly sad part of her marriage.
Thinking of them now wouldn’t do Emily any good.
She took a breath, trying to clear her head again, but instead, her brain conjured the sight of Griffin Testa’s clenched fist on the table. The sound of him saying,The wedding has to happen.
“I think I should come in,” Layla blurted.
“Yes!” Rosie sagged with relief, releasing the white-knuckledgrip she’d been keeping on the door handle. She stepped back and waved Layla inside.
Thankfully, the room itself went a long way to distracting Layla from rogue thoughts of brokenhearted former relatives and coldhearted current acquaintances. It was big—twice the size of Layla’s—but the current state of it muted any grand impression it might’ve made. Five suitcases out that Layla could see, all open and partially unpacked. Two queen-size beds, both unmade, and one covered in more wadded-up tissues than Layla had ever seen outside of a wastebasket. The thick drapes were pulled shut, darkening everything, and the air was close—a dorm room after a secret night of drinking.
Part of Layla was appalled. This sort of square footage in a central Paris hotel, two beds, and what was—if she had her sense of direction right—almost certainly a great view, treated likethis?
But another part was strangely, tenderly jealous. This was a room where two best friends had gotten ready for a night out, a room where one of them had cried enough to turn a bed into a wastebasket while the other probably sat beside her and spoke soothingly, a room where the shameless messiness spoke of the sort of intimacy Layla had been missing in her life—hadavoidedin her life—since the divorce.
The muffled flush of a toilet jerked her back to the moment, and she turned to Rosie, who had slumped onto the tissue-less bed as though her strings had been cut. Layla remembered that the champagne had been her idea, and almost apologized.
Instead, she heard the faucet turn on in the bathroom and thought about the apology she was maybe going to have to make for saying something she couldn’t remember.
There were the MacKenzie faces again, shocked and sad.Layla?she imagined them saying, a cocktail of disbelief and pity and dismay.Layla told Emily not to get married?
Frankly, she would rather think of Griffin Testa’s fist. His pure, undiluted anger, all of it directed at her.
