He’s seeing someone. He doesn’t want to flaunt it, not yet. He’s trying to be respectful. Kind.
Amicable.
She’d been right. She knew Jamie, knew him in her bones.
So of course she’d been right.
By then, she’d already accepted Emily’s invitation, and couldn’t bear the thought of how it would look to back out after his call.Couldn’t bear to take him up on his offer to not bring his new girlfriend at all,if it would make things too hard for you.
“I’m really happy for him,” she added now, hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick. “We’re all here foryou.”
Emily nodded and her eyes welled up again, but she rolled them upward in embarrassment, pulling her hand from Layla’s so she could press the sides of both of her index fingers gently against her lower lids.
“I’m so emotional!” she said, with frustrated laughter, and Layla laughed, too. It felt good to release some of the anxious air trapped inside her. She thought of those moments with Willa on the plane, and remembered who she wanted to be for Emily this week.
Pleasant, unflappable.
Supportive.
“I’m sure that’ll happen a lot this week,” Layla said knowingly, slipping into something approaching that big-sister role. Easy enough to maintain it for the next few minutes, for meeting Michael.
Emily dropped her hands and shook them dramatically in front of her, like she was drying them out.
“Okay, but! It’s not going to happentonight, because we are goingout!”
Layla blinked, the Google Doc’s blank spaces a photograph in her mind.
“My parents and Jamie and, you know, everyone”—a deft sidestep, thateveryone, Layla thought—“don’t get here untilwaylate tonight, and Rosie and I have a dinner planned. I would love for you to join, really! Rosieadoresyou!”
Rosie was Emily’s former college roommate and best friend. Layla had always liked her the few times they’d met, but not enough to abandon the blank space of her Google Doc. Right nowshe was thinking about getting a baguette from the nearest bakery and eating it like a turkey leg while fully under the covers in her hotel bed.
It would be disgusting.
“I think I better take it easy tonight,” she said.
“Oh, but you can’t! Rosie will absolutely die if you don’t come; she’ll be so mad. And I’m already in the doghouse because I’m pretty sure she hates the bridesmaid’s dress I picked for her, but you know how Rosie is, so particular about her style!”
As far as Layla could remember, Rosie’s style could be best characterized as “Add a piercing to it,” so probably there were a lot of ways for Emily to go wrong with her choice of bridesmaid’s dress. But either way, Layla was not in any condition to find out for herself this evening. She needed alone time, not dinner with two twenty-five-year-olds.
The baguette, the bed. That was the itinerary.
But as she was gearing up to make her excuses—she even thought about bringing up Willa and the bit of work she’d done on the plane to earn herself some more fatigue points—Emily practically vaulted from the couch.
“Michael!”
Layla stood, uselessly smoothing the front of her saggy lounge set, expecting to raise her eyes and see the blond, blue-eyed, and warmly smiling man she’d become superficially familiar with from Emily’s various social media posts.
Instead, her eyes clashed with someone else’s.
Oh no, she thought.No, it can’t be.
But it was.
It was the man in black.
* * *
He was,unfortunately, as striking as he’d been at first sight.
