For the first time since she started speaking, she moved: crossing her arms over her chest, cocking a hip one way while her head tilted to the other. A posture of such evident annoyance that he knew he hadn’t managed anything approaching politeness.
“Wesupportthem until she decides.”
I’m not supporting anyone but Michael, he thought.
“We’re the only two people who are going to know,” she added. “That things are still…tentative.”
He stared at her through his own sunglasses, watched as she shifted again. Tightening the arms she’d crossed, repositioning her feet. In his own body, he felt familiar, echoey pains, which he tried to ignore.
“She’s not telling her family?” he said.
Her throat bobbed in what looked like an uncomfortable swallow at that last word.
“No,” she finally said, and then—as if to divert him, she added quickly, “You can’t tell anyone in Michael’s family, either.”
Before he could stop it, his face contorted—the unsightly twist he knew it made on the rare occasions he almost laughed. One minute of meeting Michael’s parents with Griffin in the room and Layla would find out that there was no risk of them hearing anything at all from him. They could barely look in his direction, let alone talk to him.
The little bit of the eyebrows he could see on her face disappeared as she lowered them, and when her lips parted as if to speak, he preempted her.
“I won’t say anything.”
He hoped it came out with the finality he intended. He did not want to talk about Fitz and Paula. They wouldn’t be here until tomorrow, and for Griffin, that was a temporary source of relief.
“Good,” she said, with a quick nod, a littledoctor-getting-ready-to-leave-the-roomnod that he knew very well, and for the first time in all the times of seeing that stupid nod, he didn’t feel as though he was about to get a reprieve.
He may not want to talk about Michael’s parents, but also, he did not want her to leave yet.
Because of the promise you made, he told himself firmly.Because you still haven’t worked out how to fix this for Michael.
“Support them how?” he blurted.
She uncrossed her arms then, lifting a hand to reposition the strap of her bag. He thought, for a second, that she might finally look around—turn her head one way or the other, remind herself that they weren’t in a hospital room, the cabin of an airplane, an elevator, a hotel hallway.
Instead, he watched her shoulders lift slightly, a tiny intake of air he thought she didn’t want him to see.
“Just—you know. Show up to the wedding stuff. Be there for them. Act normal.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, and he knew—heknew—that’s what he should be focused on. There should be some strategy, some timeline for it all—a way to give Michael and Emily more time alone, a firm answer by a particular day,something.
But Griffin was long out of practice at making plans like that, and anyway, he still couldn’t stop thinking about how still and shut-off she was being: a woman he’d first seen in motion, a woman he’d watched take in every single detail about a scared girl on a plane.
“Is this how you act when you’re being normal?” he said.
“Is it for you?” she snapped back, and for a few seconds, neither of them said anything.
But he was thinking: a hundred answers, all at once, flooding his brain.Normally, I don’t travel. Normally, I don’t go out muchduring the daytime, not where there’s a lot of people around. Normally, I only eat food I’ve cooked for myself. Normally, I only see Michael when it’s just me and him. Normally, I lie in my bed on a set schedule, even if I don’t sleep. Normally, I don’t see anything that looks as soft as that swoop of your hair—
“No,” she said, barely audible, and for a second he wondered if he’d imagined it—conjured a little light scolding for himself for thinking such a stupid thought about her hair.
But no—she had said it, and after a brief pause, she added, almost as if he weren’t there, “This is not how I act.”
Then, she finally did it: She turned her head. Looked to the left, westward, toward the river’s long unrolling through this city, toward all the things people came here to see. Her chest lifted again, a bigger breath this time, enough to smell the mossy dampness that came off the stone lining the water, the smoke that trailed at least every tenth pedestrian.
She didn’t turn her face back to him.
She said, with a finality more dismissive than any doctor’s nod, “I’ll see you tonight.”
And after she walked away, it was long minutes before he finally realized: He still hadn’t gotten her number.
