“Andnotto be a creeper but I was definitely in the lobby when you came down last night. You didn’t see me because I was behind one of those big dumb columns! He looked at you like…” Rosie did not finish this sentence. Instead, she raised one of her hands and fanned her face.
Like what?she wanted to ask, but she said, “He isn’t a billionaire.”
Rosie ignored that. Layla had the feeling that Griffin being a billionaire was going to be part of an elaborate lore Rosie was writing about this entire week.
“So nothing happened? You didn’t get him drunk and then bang him into the worst hangover of his life, hence him not showing up this morning?”
Layla faked a laugh. She felt like laughing was the right response, the calm-and-in-control response, when the truth was, every joking, flippant thing Rosie said scraped over all of Layla’s sensitive spots. Somethinghadhappened, including him making some asinine, deflecting comment about the wine he hadn’t drunk. Somethinghadhappened, including her absolutely wanting to bang him beneath a doorway.
Something had happened to make him not show up this morning.
And in spite of everything, half of her mind had constantly been on whether he was okay.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said, and tried not to think of all the ways she’d touched him. Tried not to think about him backing away from her.
“Ugh, that’s disappointing. Although, I sleptalonein our room last night, sosomeoneis still getting it, right?”
Rosie waggled her eyebrows in the direction of Emily, one room ahead, now flanking Fitz on the other side as he read another placard like it was the only antidote in the world for having to speak to people in his current and future family unit.
For a few minutes, she and Rosie drifted together, arm in arm, weaving through pedestals and other museum patrons, and a few students with sketchbooks in their hands, concentrating on somelesser-known piece, or a small cast of something more famous. Rosie kept the conversation going, funny and easy and something Layla should—anddid—feel grateful for.
But there was so much thematter, so much her mind couldn’t let go of. She was thinking of Emily, quiet in the van, wondering about what secrets Michael might be keeping from her. She was thinking about Jamie and Samantha at the opera, and why she’d barely beentrulythinking about it at all. She was thinking about the press of tears behind her eyes last night, and how she wanted to call Cara to talk about it, but she’d shoved her phone under the pillow instead, unable to think of how to even begin.
And she was thinking so, so much about Griffin.
She thought she might get a reprieve when she and Rosie caught up—not just to Em and Fitz and Paula, but to the whole group who’d left together this morning: Céline, the only one of them to get an audio guide, standing elegantly by a window, listening intently (“I don’t even need this,” she whispered to Layla, when they’d first walked in. “I just need a break from Paula.”); Robert and Manon, comfortable in the museum they’d declared “their Parisian favorite!” this morning; Jamie and Samantha beside them, holding hands, Samantha’s head resting on Jamie’s shoulder.
Great, she thought earnestly, fixing her posture, disentangling herself from Rosie to smooth her still-not-wrinkled shirt.A distraction from thinking about Griffin. A reason to put a good face on. Maybe someone will even throw up, and give me something to do.
Of course, then shereallylooked, and realized what made this a room everyone wanted to dwell in.
“Hot,” Rosie said.
It wasThe Kiss: big and bone-white in the center of the room, sun and shadow lines cast across two nude figures as they embraced, curling around each other—his huge hand on her hip, herarm curled around his neck, their fused-together mouths hidden by the curve of her shoulder.
Oh no, Layla thought immediately, because there was no way she was hiding her reaction to this. A reaction that was so specific totoday—to this morning, to seeing something in the light of the sun that she’d done with Griffin in the dark of last night.
That sculpture was…it was how it hadfelt, to be kissing Griffin. The two figures looked so beautifullyaloneatop the great slab of marble, the shape of which was nothing specific, really. A chair or a rock or a cloud, it didn’t matter, because only their kiss mattered.
In this room, in this world, in this universe.
Layla was…she wasbereft. That’s how it felt to look at this sculpture this morning.
That’s how it felt to look at it without him.
“Blergh, sorry,” Rosie whispered, and Layla looked over at her, still in the thrall of that kiss, confused and then newly embarrassed. Could Rosietell; had Layla’s face undone thatNo! Absolutely notfrom before; if Rosie could tell, could everyone else—
“With yourexin the room, very awkward,” Rosie said.
Layla blinked. She almost said,Who?but it was only a glitch, a second of being too stuck in a memory of someone else. And because she was out of sorts, she didn’t think to say anything calm and amicable like,Oh gosh, it’s completely fine!
She just snapped her eyes up, across the room, to where Jamie stood.
Which was a critical mistake.
He was looking at her, too, Samantha still by his side, but separated from him now—a slice of space between them that was so deliberate, so respectful andsympathetic, like the look on his face, an expression she’d gotten so accustomed to in those last few months. In their therapist’s office, in the mediator’s conferenceroom, across the table from her in their condo during quiet dinners when they both already knew it was over, when it was only the didn’t-really-matter details that needed to be worked out.
It didn’t make me think of him, she thought frantically, her words from last night that absolutely wouldn’t work here—not in this lovely room of elegant treasures, everyone subdued and respectful, this…thismonumentright in the middle to what people did in secret, to what she and Griffin had done in secret on that street he claimed for himself last night.
