“That’s not what I—” The driver blared his horn, cutting Layla off, and then the car slowed to a crawl, packed-tight traffic in the street. She wanted to take her own patience-gathering inhale, but there was still the matter of her lap. Ahead, through the windshield, she could see it: the Galeries Lafayette, the jutting front of its entrance on a corner, making it look deceivingly manageable.
But inside, it was vast. Stunning. So beautiful it’d once made a newlywed Layla clutch at her chest in plain, overwhelmed awe.
“What about the dinner?” she said, quietly now, unsure whether Griffin would even hear her. “I promised Emily I’d be there for her; I said I’d—”
“We could not stay on that boat,” Griffin interrupted, as quiet as she had been, but still as effective as any car horn. Grim and final. “We weren’t helping.”
Suddenly, it cut through her, thatwe.
We, when it had been her.
We’re going.
She could not imagine it was a kindness, not from this man. He must mean something else, something harsh and censuring. We, because you couldn’t be left to your own devices.We, because I had to stop you from somehow making it worse.
“I,” she said, a note of defiance in her voice, and didn’t let the next thing drown. “Iwasn’t helping.”
He turned and looked at her, not a sideways glance this time. Somewhere between the boat and the walk and this car ride, the black hair that had been pushed neatly back from his forehead had gotten mussed, and now a lock of it fell over his brow, like an arrow that directed her right to the dark pools that watched her.
Saw through her.
“We,” he repeated, and before she could ask him what exactly he meant by that, he said it again.
This time in his halting, careful French.
This time, to the driver.
“Nous descendrons ici.”
We’ll get out here.
* * *
In the dressing room, behind a thick, floor-length velvet curtain, Layla tried to appreciate a moment of relative silence. Outside, the Galeries was still, only thirty minutes from closing, packed with people—tourists, judging by the way they posed for selfies beside luxury brand displays, or crowded along the inner edges of each floor to gape up at the massive dome, to record videos that Layla knew from experience would never quite do it justice.
Experience, as it turned out, had come in handy when she and Griffin had first walked through the building’s glass doors. She was still mortified to walk into Paris’s most famous luxury department store in a vomit-stained dress, still dreading the fact that this place wasn’t one of the Band-Aids she’d thought to rip off during her walk today. But once inside, something had shifted between her and the man who’d basically dragged her here: gone was the frustrated haste from the boat, the purposeful determination of the rideshare.
Gone, too, was any trace of thatwe.
Instead, Layla felt immediately the way he seemed to shrink into himself—hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching against the tide of people on the ground floor, eyes going unfocused in spite of all there was to see. She wasn’t even sure if he’d yetregistered the dome, despite its near inescapability once you were inside.
“Up,” she’d said, and gone for the escalators, instinctively knowing he wouldn’t want one of the elevators, no matter that they were a tourist attraction in themselves.
He’d followed her mutely, seeming to relax slightly once they emerged into the less crowded space of the third floor: women’s fashion, but the sort that didn’t require a second mortgage. When Layla had first come here—her arm linked with Jamie’s, three hours of gaping at every level—she’d giggled to see a Levi’s display on this floor, a funny American anomaly in a place of such elegance.
If Griffin Testa noticed any familiar brands, he didn’t show it. Certainly not with a giggle.
“I’ll just…pick something,” she’d mumbled, and tried not to notice the way he trailed her, an absent presence, a shadow she tried not to keep checking for.
Now, the curtain separated her from him, but there was no real relief. Instead, she stood before the floor-length mirror in her underwear, her ruined dress carefully balled into itself on the floor, tied against an unfurling with its straps, her heels set upright beside it. On the hooks beside her, there hung her two options:
First, a not-all-that-cheap black dress, one that would look fine with her shoes and her purse, fine for slipping on and showing up to the post-boat-cruise restaurant, for waving a hand at the gathered guests and saying, “We took a detour!” and rejoining the party smoothly, maybe even laughingly, as though nothing had happened at all.
And second, a pair of light-wash jeans—Levi’s, even, because she knew how they’d fit—and a lightweight gray sweater, neither of which would work with her heels or her clutch, neither of whichwould do for rejoining the party, neither of which would do for anything other than going back to the hotel, to admitting that tonight was a total wash, a complete failure that she could not hope to fix.
She could not guess how long she’d been standing here, not picking either one. If Griffin was still out there, he was dead silent. Shadow silent.
What do I do?she thought, blinking at her reflection, suddenly feeling as alone as she’d ever felt in her life.
