“How?” he said, and two days ago, his voice would’ve sounded cutting to her. A slice through all her halting pauses.
Now, it sounded desperate.
So, she told him. First, about the morning at the Louvre: not the parts where Jamie trailed her, bored but indulgent, but instead about her favorite piece (theWingedVictory of Samothrace, not in any way a letdown, even if you’d seen it in pictures a hundred times), her biggest disappointment (theMona Lisa, small and huddled behind a pack of clamoring tourists with selfie sticks), and her biggest surprise (Death of the Virgin, Caravaggio, huge and dark and sad, punishingly but beautifully secular). Then, about the Boulevard: the shops she’d passed, the Café and its cursive-branded cups, its intellectual history. She even told him about her dog-eared guidebook, the way she’d read it at that café table as thoughit was a novel, not caring if anyone at all thought it was embarrassing.
At one point—maybe when she was talking about the shops and their careful window displays—she thought dimly about whether she sounded silly, or naive—uncultured and overawed about an experience from a decade ago. But she shoved the doubt away, because the main thing was, this—her talking—wasworking. Griffin was listening, looking at her steadily and a little too intensely at first, until she could sense him settling slowly, the look in his eyes less wild, his head nodding, sometimes, in understanding or encouragement.
When he finally unrolled his napkin and smoothed it over his lap, she had to concentrate on keeping at it, adding detail. On not letting him know what she was noticing.
And when he ordered a drink from the server—only sparkling water, but still, that was something; that was a commitment to this—Layla had to try so hard not to smile in winged victory.
“Thank you,” he eventually said, right when she was starting to run out of material about that one afternoon in Paris that felt uniquely hers.
She looked up from the menu she hadn’t really started to read yet. She’d been letting her eyes course over the French words she recognized, hoping that any one of them might jog an additional memory that she could offer up for him.
“When I said I don’t get out much,” he continued, “I was maybe not being completely honest.”
She cocked her head slightly. Tried for a Versailles quirk. Something clever and casual to keep him at ease. “You get out a lot, then?”
His mouth curved, but it didn’t last. He cleared his throat, reaching for the sparkling water, his hand clutched too tightaround the glass as he brought it to his lips. When he set it down again, she suspected that they’d both steeled themselves for what was coming next.
“I haven’t left New York in almost twelve years,” he said. “Upstate,” he added almost immediately. “That’s where I’m from, originally. Not the city.”
“I didn’t think the city,” she said, which was not the most sensible response, but somehow, it felt important to say: an acknowledgment of something she had observed about him,knewabout him without him having to tell her. Griffin Testa had never once struck her as a man who managed himself in New York City, of all places.
“Mostly I stick to my own house. My mother’s, sometimes, when she needs something. I do my own errands, but at specific times. To specific places. At night, I go for walks a lot. It used to freak people out, around where I live, which isn’t the sort of place you can be anonymous, but they’re used to it now. Also I built a gym in my garage. Put a shed out back, heating and cooling and everything. When I do work, I do it from back there.”
He paused—another reach for and sip of his water. She could tell he wasn’t quite done, so she waited, her menu in her lap, leaning against the table’s edge, long forgotten.
“I did twelve weeks of therapy to get ready for this trip. I ate out four times. Four different restaurants. Two in different towns. Once with the fucking therapist, if you can imagine anything more uncomfortable.”
Sympathy, she knew instinctively, would be exactly the wrong move here.
“My ex-husband’s new girlfriend threw up on me last night,” she said.
He smiled. No teeth, but a bigger curve.
“So,” he said. “Now you know. That’s why the—” He broke off, made a dismissive gesture with his hand that she supposed was meant to account for the almost–panic attack, the need for her to talk. “Because I don’t leave my house much. I don’t ever travel.”
She nodded. Did not look at him for her next question.
“Do you want to tell me about why not?”
She kept her eyes on her menu, making an effort to look in earnest at the dishes now. She hoped his therapist hadn’t done this exact thing. She hoped this night felt different to him.
“Do you want to tell me about your divorce?” he eventually responded.
She blinked up at him.Kind of, she thought, but she shook her head.
No, she tried to tell him with her eyes.Not tonight. Not on this street, which was always entirely mine.
He picked up his menu, put his eyes on it. Not in a disappointed or dismissive way. Somehow, in a way that seemed as though he understood her—her and this street—completely.
“Maybe you’ll tell me,” he echoed idly, after a few seconds of silence, while they both, she suspected, pretended to peruse the options.
He didn’t have to finish the sentence.
The quirk of his mouth finished it for him.
