“Oh no, it’s not really that, it’s—” Manon began.
“AndIsaid that was fine,” Emily interrupted. “If that’s what they want to do.”
Layla watched as Manon gallantly fought a full grimace. But Layla had been there for the party where the punch bowl tipped over, onto newly refinished hardwood floors, and she’d been there for that one summer weekend when two hundred fifty dollars of petunias laid, irreparably wilted, across a hot front walkway.
So she still caught the slight twitch at the corners of Manon’s eyes, the wobble in her smile.
“Oh,” Layla managed. Her and Emily’s pressed-together arm skin already felt over-warm and damp. If Layla did not already have an inkling—morethan an inkling—of what was going on here, Emily’s bow-tight posture of obvious frustration would have given it away.
“You know how Jamie is,” Manon said, and then turned a soft gaze toward Layla. “He’s so tenderhearted; he doesn’t want you—”
“She’snotswitching hotels, Mom,” Emily snapped. “Ifhewants to move, he can.”
“Darling, of course she doesn’t have to switch hotels,” Manon said, as if Emily was being ridiculous.
As if she wasn’t the one who—judging by Emily’s sweaty elbow pit tightening on Layla’s bicep—had suggested it only a moment ago. As if she wasn’t leaving a too-long pause, hoping Layla might go ahead and offer.
But Layla was frozen. Yesterday, crammed into her airplane seat and staring at poor translations of cheerful platitudes, she would have probably been stung but ultimately grateful for a nudge like this—a reason to keep on keeping what distance she could during this event, but this time, at someone else’s prompting.
Now, though, with Emily plastered to her side—with the memory of Emily crying and saying, about every other person on this boat,it’s not the same as you—keeping her distance would at best mean breaking a promise.
At worst, it could mean breaking up this whole entire wedding.
Her brain was whirring through various stalling, noncommittal responses when Emily spoke again.
“I need Layla with me.” Her voice had gone worryingly high, and Manon’s eyes widened.
For the first time since she’d gotten here, Layla automatically, inexplicably, thought in French.
Non, non, non.
“I need—” Emily said again, but this time, that high pitch in her voice broke.
It sounded ominously like the start to more crying.
And then, to Layla’s horror, everything seemed to happen all at once, or at least in such quick succession that there was no time to count the seconds. It was simply a half dozen things that each earned their own specialnoninside Layla’s head.
Manon, looking between her and Emily and saying, “Is something going on?”
A uniformed employee ringing an overloud bell, the five-minute warning to the boat’s launch.
Robert, cluelessly yelling out his intention to “call my son again before this thing leaves without him!”
Michael, showing up to Emily’s other side, looking like a man who fully expected to get broken up with in the next five minutes.
Griffin, appearing behind Layla, bad enough on its own, but then impossibly worse when he set his hand—goddamnhis electric hand—on her arm, curling that rogue thumb over her bicep, leaning in close, way too close, to say, “Can Iborrowyou?” in a way that sent pinpricks of heat through her. She moved—an awkward step away from Emily, their arms still attached at first, and then a slight stumble from them both: Michael there to steady Emily, but Griffin only there to make Layla less stable, less in control of herself.
And then, finally: Jamie, Jamie’s dark blond hair and still-boyish smile appearing as he climbed the steps, more of him coming into view as he rushed his way up, pulling someone—Samantha, she was his new someone—behind him, his blue eyes scanning the deck and stopping on Layla’s.
Right as she tipped into Griffin Testa’s body.
Chapter Ten
Usually, it hurt to have someone touch him.
Not every time, not all the time.
Mostly when he wasn’t prepared for it. Like when a TSA agent at Tompkins Airport held out a hand and said, “Hold up a moment, sir,” grazing Griff’s side, or like when a flight attendant gently knocked into the knee he’d accidentally let drift too far into the aisle, desperate to get comfortable. Like when Michael clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder in a hotel lobby, so happy and surprised that someone had called Griff’s behaviorheroic.
