When he could see them all again, Paula had her arms around Emily, rocking a little, her smile huge and warm. Fitz was shaking Robert’s hand, probably too hard, because he was that sort of guy, even if you’d already met him a hundred times. Still, he wasn’t frowning, which was basically the same as him smiling, and even from only being able to see Michael’s back, he could tell that his friend was at ease—his posture not snapping unnaturally into his father’s, which sometimes happened when Michael was stressed and around his parents. When Emily pulled away from Paula and waved Rosie over for an introduction, she so naturally stepped nextto Michael’s body again that Griffin thought that maybe Layla Bailey reallyhadfixed everything today.
Obviously, not him.
But everything else that mattered.
Layla was standing with Céline now, her hands clasped loosely in front of her, her smile close-lipped. A perfectly patient posture, waiting her turn for introductions. If she noticed that the ex stood on the other side of Fitz and Paula, his hand cupped protectively on Samantha’s hip, she didn’t betray even a whisper of awkwardness about it.
Maybe she had managed to fix herself, too.
He eyed the elevator bay. Wondered if he could cross to it, unnoticed, and slip away for a while.
Then he heard Rosie say, “Wait! Where’s the best man?”
He suppressed a groan. Stopped hanging back.
Fucking Rosie. Even if that milkmaid story from the train was sort of funny.
When he stepped up to the group, he knew he was braced—his body the polar opposite of a perfectly patient posture. It was how he felt anytime he saw Fitz or Paula. Not as frequently now, but not never, either. Last year, not long after Michael had first called to tell Griffin about meeting Emily, he’d seen Fitz in the produce section of a twenty-five-miles-away Wegmans, ten minutes after store opening. It was his usual haunt, haunted at a not usually busy time. Fitz had stared at him across a display of unnaturally shiny waxed apples and said only, “Griffin,” as though a bare acknowledgment was all he could manage.
Then he’d walked away, still holding the empty plastic bag he hadn’t filled with apples.
“Griffin,” Fitz echoed now, probably choking that leatherbillfold he held. He flicked his eyes up, and added, “Still with the hat, I see.”
Fuck you, Griffin didn’t say.
“Nice to see you, Major,” he said as quickly as he could, before shifting his eyes to the side, tipping his chin down slightly in respectful but distant greeting. “Hello, Paula.”
“Hi, Griffin,” she said, and then—because Paula was always a better parent to Michael than Fitz was—she leaned into him, giving him a fleeting, cursory hug that made his whole left side ignite. She kept her face turned fully away.
As compared to the hug she gave Emily, it might as well have been a kick in the nuts.
Griffin could not claim, by any measure, to have a good sense of social cues, even after the last couple of days of being dropped into a deep end of them. But in the aftermath of that half hug, he would have sworn that the temperature in the lobby changed—a chill wind that was impossible to ignore. In the silence that followed—it could only have been a second, though to Griffin it felt like an eternity—he imagined the entire group of guests changed the channel on the little remote controls inside their brains.
No moreIs Layla Looking at Jamie?
A new show, a surprise drop. TheWhy Do Michael’s Parents Hate Griffin?show.
“So!” Emily’s dad said, bringing his hands together in a mutedclap, as though he was about to retune an orchestra. “Two more to our roster! We’re so happy to have you here, Fitz and Paula.”
Paula practically sagged with relief. “Paris, I can’tbelieveit!” she said, turning to Michael. “And this hotel! It’s beautiful!”
Is it?he thought idly, a strange and safe dissociation from being stuck here for the moment, doing his best not to make that chilly moment worse for Michael. In his own mind, the hotel—whichinitially seemed like a comparatively comfortable option, with its larger rooms and more familiar amenities—had started to feel weirdly discordant, its luxury too bare and modern in comparison to the Paris on the other side of the doors. A different Versailles, but a Versailles all the same.
His eyes drifted to Layla’s, still with the posture, but now, she watched him, her brow faintly crinkled. Probably, she had clicked over to the new show, too, but also, he wondered—or pretended, maybe, pretended that after seeing that palace, she was thinking the same thing as him.
“Now, I know you might want to rest,” Manon was saying to Fitz and Paula, in a teacher-type voice, and Layla’s gaze wandered automatically toward it, so he let his own grudgingly follow. “But there’s this bistro in the 15th that Robert and I have always loved, very sweet, very Parisian! And we thought you could join us tonight, if you feel up to it?”
Griffin could tell Fitz did not feel up to it. He recognized that thousand-yard stare from probably hundreds of dinners over at the Plackett house, Paula keeping the conversation going while Fitz methodically worked through his plate like he was eating mess hall food and not Paula’s consistently good cooking.
A petty satisfaction moved through him, picturing Fitz with that face on in one of the Paris restaurants Griffin had passed on his walks. That first night, he’d seen people stuffed inside each one, spilling onto sidewalks with tables crammed together, sitting so close to strangers by necessity, no one seeming to mind.
Good luck with your thousand-yard stare there, Major, he thought.
Which was not a helpful attitude to have. For Michael’s sake.
“Well, we don’t want to impose!” said Paula. “If you already had a plan!”
A light rescue effort on behalf of the Major. Something elseGriffin could recognize. Fitz never came to school shit, if he could help it—not any of Michael’s baseball games, or his honors society stuff. He was there at high school graduation, and that was it. Somewhere in a shoebox Griffin had a picture of it, one his mom took. Him and Michael flanking unsmiling Fitz, both of them gangly-looking in their caps and gowns.
