Then at the bow on her hip.
She was probably pink all over.
“I picked a place,” she said, or possibly blurted, but that was better than simply standing there, blushing under his black gaze.
When he didn’t say anything, she started to wonder whetherthere was still time for him to cancel—whether he’d met her here to tell her in person, whether she’d end up watching him walk out those doors alone again.
She shifted in her heels.
Then she saw that little quirk at the corner of his mouth, the one from earlier today.
The Versailles quirk, is how she thought of it. TheMaybe I’ll tell you when we’re somewhere more honestquirk.
“That’s my favorite color,” he said.
* * *
The restaurant was on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, cozy and small, with an orange-and-white-striped awning jutting cheerfully out from the building’s Haussmann facade, the big-windowed, iron-balconied floors above dotted with planter boxes of trailing ivy and bright flowers, some better maintained than others. Square, wood-topped tables were arranged neatly under the awning, tiny bud vases of wildflowers in the center, or shoved to the side of diners’ plates and glasses. On the street, smaller round tables spilled out more haphazardly, some pushed together, surrounded by smoking patrons who leaned back in their woven café chairs, effortless and unbothered and so enviably used to a night like this, in a place like this.
She had not picked somewhere she had been before, because nearly every place in Paris she had been to before was weighted with the memory of Jamie, and their honeymoon, and because this was the first time since she’d arrived on Monday that she had the chance to be truly free of it—no Emily to protect, no ex-husband not to look at, no former family to make feel comfortable—she wanted, at least, to eat somewhere new.
But shehadpicked a place that was on a street she loved, andfelt some attachment to as an individual. On her trip here with Jamie, there’d been one afternoon they spent apart—him, completely exhausted by their morning at the Louvre (I’ve just been so many times, he’d said) and desperate for a nap, and her, wired from the newness of it all, absolutely incapable of imagining sleeping during the day when there was so much to see. They’d agreed that he’d get his nap, had kissed goodbye at the Place du Carrousel, and Layla made her way across the bridge that shared its name, a guidebook in her hands that she hadn’t had the chance to use much, not when she was with Jamie.
On her own, she’d been comfortable being a cliché. She went to the Café de Flore; she waited too long for a table and ordered a hot chocolate; she snapped a photo of the white cup with its cursive writing; she sat and read her guidebook—specifically, she read her guidebook about the very place where she was sitting. She thought that Saint-GermainwasParis: stylish with its luxury shops and uniformly beautiful buildings, but also subversive—coffeehouses where Albert Camus and James Baldwin wrote, where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre thought and talked and argued, where Picasso probably stared weirdly at women he’d eventually turn into painted cubist nightmares.
She loved that afternoon she’d spent on this street, all alone. Alive and curious and adult, but with the comfort of knowing she had her new husband to go back to.
With Griffin, she felt it all still.
Well. Minus the comfort, of course.
Once they were seated—outside, under the awning, not that anyone asked their preference—Layla noticed that the symphony of her nervousness, which had quieted somewhat on the walk over, was roaring back in a new key as his eyes tracked around the space: the interior of the restaurant on the other side of the glass, thestreet across the way, lined with a few flower vendors, the other diners in various stages of their meal.
She realized how much she wanted him tolikeit.
Not because she needed his approval, or his praise for picking something good and interesting and not-too-cliché.
But because she wanted him—after the way he’d helped her today, and after that awful, awkward exchange with Michael’s parents—to enjoy himself.
To feel comfortable.
He shifted in his seat. Tapped a finger lightly against the cloth-wrapped roll of his silverware, as though he was wondering whether he should unwrap it, or give up altogether and leave without saying a word.
She almost said,Are you okay?but before she could open her mouth to ask a question that she knew now, from a couple of days of experience with him, would not go over well, he blurted—no possibility about it—definitelyblurted, “Let’s talk about something.”
Her brow lowered in confusion. “Talk about what?”
“Anything,” he answered quickly. “Your favorite food. Where you went to college. Why so many places have these weird Edison bulbs hanging everywhere now. Why you picked this place. What you’re going to order.”
She blinked at him. In his eyes, there was something wild—like the plane, like the first night on the elevator, maybe a little like the boat last night.Notlike the walk over here, when he’d been seemingly calm—his steps slowed to match hers, his occasional harmless and sometimes even bluntly amusing commentary (Honest to fucking god, could they be consistent about where theyputthese street signs?;Whose job do you think it is to cut all the trees into this shape?;The trash can placement in this town is inexplicable.).
“Are you having a panic attack?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he answered quickly. Starkly.
For a few terrible seconds, her mind went completely blank of everything except all the questions she absolutely couldn’t ask in this situation:How often do you have these, when did they start, does this have to do with your scars, are you agoraphobic, do you take any medication or illicit drugs, does Michael know?She tried desperately to grab on to the questions he’d posed to her, but it was like she’d never eaten food in her whole life, like college was memory-holed, likeEdison bulbwas a phrase that might as well have been the rarest French slang—
“Because I never came here with him,” she said finally, and she watched as his wandering, panicked eyes darted back to hers. She wanted to hold them there. “This restaurant, which—well, I’ve never been here before, but also…this street. This street…it feels like it’s mine.”
