She turned fully to Em now, crossing her legs and valiantly ignoring the slight chafing sting on her inner thighs where Griffin’s stubble had reddened her skin. She kept her voice low, glad for the love seat’s relative separateness from the rest of the lobby.
“How are you doing today?” she said, trying to inject some extra meaning into it. She sounded more like herself now—calmer, more in control.
Emily’s eyes dropped to her glass of fruit-infused water, one shoulder lifting listlessly, and Layla’s stomach sank with this confirmation of something she’d suspected since she first saw Emily this morning, anxious and tired-looking as she tried to nod along to something Paula was telling her in the lobby. Maybe it wasn’t full meltdown mode, like it had been on the morning after their first dinner here, but it also was a marked change from yesterday morning at the museum, when Emily’s expression had lit with joy and certainty as soon as Michael arrived.
“Em,” Layla coaxed.
Thankfully, when Emily raised her eyes, they weren’t wet with tears. But theywereworried, and Layla felt a guilty, nervous pang.
“Yesterday started so well, honestly, especially after Michael showed up. We had a really nice lunch before we went over to Les Invalides, and that was pretty good, too. There was atonof medical stuff; you probably would’ve loved it.”
There was that pang again. Layla opened her mouth to apologize, an automatic instinct, but before she could, Emily kept going.
“But, I don’t know.” Here, she raised her eyes, made sure Paula was still on the other side of the room. Lowered her voice even more as she continued. “Michael’s parents—it’s difficult there, and I don’t fully get it? Fitz is hard on Michael about the smallest, stupidest things, and then Michael gets in a bad mood.”
“That’s tough,” Layla said, meaning it, but she also knew her job here wasn’t really to care about Michael and his dad; it was to care about Emily. “But does he get in a bad mood withyou?”
“Not really, but—”
Layla did not like the way Emily was running her finger around the lip of her glass. Over and over.
“But what?”
Em shrugged again, blew out a breath. “Well, it’s like—Fitz makes these little comments to Michael, and then Michael gets quiet. And Paula”—another darting look across the room, an even softer whisper—“she doesn’t want Fitz going at Michael; she doesn’t want them at odds. So she sort of…I don’t know. She redirected, I guess. She blamed Griffin.”
Layla’s sore heart stuttered, her face heating.
“Blamed him for what?”
“She said that’s why Michael was quiet. Because Griffin didn’t come to anything yesterday.”
Layla wanted to feign surprise at this. To say something casually unaware like,He didn’t?But the pang of guilt was now more like a stake through the stomach. It wasn’tjustthat she’dabandoned her sisterly post yesterday; it was that she’d lied about it, too, or at least lied by omission. When she’d texted Em yesterday from outside the Rodin museum, she’d been standing right beside Griffin, but she hadn’t mentioned him at all. Instead, she’d typed out a too-long and strategically vague explanation, the main gist of which was:I’m a little overwhelmed this morning.Then, she’d made a few bland, nonspecific assurances.
I’m really okayandDon’t worry about anythingandI’ll text in a bit to check inandI’ll be back if you need me.
In that moment, she hadn’t cared if everyone thought she was overwhelmed about Jamie—about the end of her and Jamie, about Jamie and Sam, whatever.
In fact, as she’d stood there beside Griffin, knowing he was making his own excuse to Michael, there was a not-insignificant part of her that thought—about her own divorce!—That’s convenient.
Now, face-to-face with more of Emily’s doubt, the responsibility she should’ve felt yesterday roared loudly back. She was supposed to be making sure this wedding happened. She was supposed to beherefor Emily, making it up to Emily—all those months of absence when being amicable felt impossible.
“WasMichael upset that he didn’t come to anything yesterday?”
“I think he was worried, initially, but not overly so. Like, obviously, Griffin has”—she lifted a hand, waved it in a dismissive gesture that was so like one of Manon’s, Layla almost wanted to grab Em’s wrist in censure—“problems.”
Layla’s back teeth ground together.
“But it was more like, once Paula brought up Griffin, that got Fitz going—a couple asides about how Griffin has always been unreliable, how Michael would’ve been better off making his cousinBryan the best man. Which isrude, I’m definitely not on Fitz’s side about that, but…”
“But what?”
It sounded sharper than Layla intended, though Em didn’t seem to notice.
“But honestly? Michael issodefensive about Griffin. And if I press him about it—god forbid I try to actually find out why my fiancé’s parents are so weird about thebest friendhe’s had sinceliteralchildhood—Michael gets quiet withme. But shouldn’t I know? Shouldn’t I know what all this secrecy with Griffin is about?”
Layla swallowed, the question—with a slightly different inflection—ringing through her ominously.
Shouldn’tIknow?
