He was doing it tocorrecther.
To let her know that she had the wrong idea about him. That he was not some rich, dissolute asshole who did nothing all day in a gold-paneled house with gold-covered furniture. That he was a person who once had ideas, and good ones, at that. That he stilldidthings, mostly small things, but still.Things. That he used his money to buy his mother a farm, that he helped her, that he was the sort of person who knew what he owed to other people.
That he’d even—
“Griff,” interrupted Michael.
He and Layla stilled—a slowing step into a stop, then both of them backing away from each other. The contact lost piece by excruciating piece: her right hand slipping from his back, his left hand sliding across her back, then her side, until it met the air again, the nerves jangling painfully in the aftermath.
Michael was smiling. He still had Emily in his arms, because that was a very normal thing for a groom and his bride, touching each other casually and constantly. Out of the corner of his eye, Griff saw the ex release Samantha into a spin and heard her giggle, which was also very normal, he supposed, for a boyfriend and girlfriend.
The heat was back in his face again, a shamed sort.
Look at me, that’s what he had been doing, telling Layla those things about himself. Not a distraction for her, but an invitationfrom him. A worse sort of looking than she could do even with her gold-flecked eyes so up close to him.
There was nopointto that sort of looking.
“Have I ever seen you dance, man?” Michael said. His expression was lit up in a way Griffin hadn’t seen in a long time, at least not in relation to him. A clean-slate hopefulness. Like opening his front door and seeing Griff standing there with two old lightsabers that he’d found in a neighbor’s trash.
Griffin shifted on his feet. “Not sure you could really call that dancing.”
He could feel Layla looking at him. When they stopped, she was on the wrong side of him, and he hated that.
“No but you were actually so good?” chirped Emily. “Did you ever take—”
“Oh gosh,” Layla interrupted. “Look what time it is!”
She made a dramatic show of holding up her phone—a noticeably odd move from her, since Griffin had already clocked that she seldom kept the thing in her hand, a rarity among people these days. He could probably count the number of times he’d seen her check it.
Emily made a noise, a squeak of surprise, disentangling herself from Michael. She called across the ballroom to her brother. “Jamie! We gotta head back!”
Griffin did not look over to see if the ex did another one of those stupid fucking bows when his dance was over.
Instead, he watched as Layla stepped toward Emily, linking their arms and walking toward the exit, their heads bent together in conversation. Heard it as Michael moved to stand next to him—right side, of course—and offered another word of gratitude to him, one he didn’t deserve.
Felt it, too. Fifteen out of ten.
The feeling of remembering who he truly was.
* * *
As if the universe really wanted to drive the point home, Michael’s parents were waiting in the hotel lobby when they returned.
Obviously, Griffin had not been in Paris for any meaningful length of time, but he still felt, upon walking through those glass doors and seeing them hovering near the reception desk, that there were no two people who fit in with this city less than Major Fitzpatrick Plackett and his wife, Paula.
Fitz—that’s how Griffin still thought of him, from years and years ago, even though he didn’t dare call him that, or really anything, now—stood tall, straight, one hand holding a stiff leather billfold by his side, the other set in a loose fist atop the telescopic handle of his suitcase, which he probably had not allowed anyone else to touch since arriving. He wore a pair of overly crisp khaki pants—medium starch, Griffin knew, from the times he and Michael had to take the major’s clothes to the dry cleaner—and a white collared shirt beneath one of those V-necked nylon pullovers, which Griffin thought of as the self-inflicted sensory torture device of all men who played golf.
Paula, for her part, was casting her eyes about the lobby, overawed and smiling, wearing skinny jeans and clunky multicolored sneakers, a bright pink oversize cardigan belted tight and slightly crooked at her waist.
They looked—in completely different ways from each other—like two fish entirely out of their familiar waters.
For the first time since he’d left Versailles, he was grateful to bepart of a large party—this crew of people who managed to talk even more on the way back, a round-robin ofHere’s what we sawand picture-sharing. Predictably, Rosie had dominated, with a very thorough recap of the part of the palace grounds that she had renamed “Milkmaid Con,” which made Layla lower her head with suppressed laughter.
He didnotfeel jealous about that. At all.
Fresh from their shared storytelling, they all seemed happy enough to let him drop, unnoticed, to the back. He’d been quiet on the train, hat tugged down, Michael beside him this time. “Hurting, man?” he’d asked Griffin quietly, while they’d waited for the train, and Griffin nodded—not lying, not really—gratefully accepting what he knew would come next: Michael making a subtle, discreet bubble of protection around him.
Now, though, back in Paris, Michael had more pressing obligations, and Griffin watched as he led the group—Emily right beside him—toward where his parents waited. For a moment, Fitz and Paula were lost to him in the little crowd of people, but he still heard Paula’s gasp of delight, her overloud “Oh, I can’t believe we’re finallyhere!”
