He was also looking at her with that same unimpressed—no, not unimpressed…scornful, maybe?—expression that he’d leveled down at her from beside his business-class seat.
There was a buzzing, electric-shock feeling all along her spine.
Was she hallucinating him?
Had the disgusting bed-and-baguette plan brought it on?
But no: He was really there. She knew because he blinked—flinched, maybe—when Emily bounded to a stop beside him, throwing her arms around the other man Layla now noticed for the first time. He was a little older than Layla expected, older than he had looked in those probably filtered photos—a slightly receding hairline, deepish crinkles around his eyes. But when he smiled and bent his tall form to embrace Emily, he looked younger. He looked like the sort of person who recognized how great his fiancée’s hugs always were.
She probably would’ve been able to appreciate that more about him, but she was too busy snapping her eyes back to the other man, who now stood with his hands in his pockets. A sentient column of smoke.
This was not a coincidence.
Not two separate hotel guests entering simultaneously.
He waswithMichael.
He had come here with Michael.
How?
“Layla, hi,” a deep, gentle voice said, and then Michael was in front of her, arms out tentatively for a hug, the sort of introductory embrace you give someone you have a built-in bond with, awe’ve-been-waiting-to-meetconnection.
Even through her shock, Layla could tell that he was like Emily: friendly and confident and kind.
She leaned in, her return embrace feeling awkward and stilted. She knew the other man—the man in black—was still watching. Taking in, perhaps, that she had never been a natural at hugging someone new.
“I can’t say enough how much it matters to Em that you came,” Michael was saying as they parted again, his voice soft, as though making his best effort at discretion. “It was a huge ask, I know.”
Closer up, Layla could see that those eye crinkles framed a world-weariness, and she wondered whether he was nearer to her own age than Emily’s, maybe even a little older. Were she able to think about anything else but the stranger still watching her—she was certain he was still watching her—she would’ve been curious about this, maybe concerned about it. Would have been eager to learn more about what had brought Michael and Emily together, what their relationship dynamic was like.
“Let me introduce you to my best man,” Michael said, and Layla’s stomach flipped. “This is Griffin Testa.”
She moved her eyes to him again, because it would have been rude not to. But he didn’t smile. Didn’t take his hands out of his pockets. Didn’t acknowledge that he had been introduced to anyone at all.
“Hi, Griff,” Em said, in the pause left there, and for the first time, the man broke slightly, shifting his gaze to Emily and offering the smallest tip of his lips. The very barest imitation of a smile.
“Em,” he said, nodding. His voice was less like a lightning bolt for such a small syllable, but that didn’t seem to matter to Layla, who felt the clutching silence from the plane grip her again.
Emily, it was clear, could not abide it.
“This is my…” She trailed off for a second, made a wincing recalibration. “This is my friend Layla,” she finished gamely.
The man—Griffin—said nothing.
And suddenly, that electricity that had been humming through Layla took on a new cast.
It animated her, spreading from her spine out, sparking into her fingers and toes and behind her teeth. She’d spent the last couple of hours doing her absolute best tobeher absolute best, and this man was so needlessly rude forno reason, right here in front of the person he was supposed to be the actual best man for?
It made her…it made herangry.
“We’ve met,” she found herself saying, wishing she could manage something like the cutting sharpness he’d used back on the plane. But still, she could hear a faint coolness in her tone, and that was a victory of a sort.
“What?” Emily said, eyes darting between them now. “Where?”
Layla waited a beat to see if he would answer.
He didn’t.
