Chapter Three #2
Emily shrugged, sipping her wine, her lips stained slightly red.
Layla took a drink from her own glass, marveling at the reality of sharing wine with someone she still thought of, in some ways, as a kid.
She remembered one early weekend at the MacKenzie home, introducing Em to Mean Girls over a bowl of popcorn and too many cans of Coke.
It was bittersweet to clock how much Emily had changed—obviously, in the many years since Layla first knew her, but also in this comparatively short span of time that Layla had stayed away.
The essence of Emily was still there—her optimism, her cheerfulness—but she had matured, too: She spoke confidently about her work as a freelance technical writer, had taken the shifting tides of Michael’s job in stride.
A couple of months after the wedding, they’d be relocating to Germany for two years, and Emily’s research on and preparation for the move seemed impeccable.
More than that, she was more in command than Layla had ever seen her.
When they met in the lobby, Layla still buzzing from that strange interaction on the elevator with Griffin, she worried that she’d fail at the sort of pleasantries required of a dinner out where she didn’t know one of her companions very well.
But Emily had smoothed the way for her and Rosie effortlessly—engaging them about their respective jobs, finding overlapping interests.
And when they sat down at the restaurant, it was Em who took the lead, reading the menu where Layla and Rosie couldn’t, speaking in slow but competent French to their server, holding the line with her efforts even when the man spoke back to her in English.
“I’ve been practicing my French and German a lot since Michael and I made the decision on the relo,” she said, by way of explanation. “I want to feel comfortable getting around on my own.”
Frankly, Layla was in awe of her transformation.
And more than a little rueful that she’d missed watching it as it had happened.
The server came to clear their entrée plates—Layla had eaten a truly astounding piece of fish, reminded on her first bite that it was Paris that taught her to genuinely love butter—and Emily raised her eyebrows at her and Rosie in question about dessert, and suddenly, Layla felt so glad.
Yes, she wanted dessert, because it was dessert here, in a city that was basically hallowed ground for desserts, and also because she was having fun, and shockingly didn’t feel like she had to rush back to the hotel to recover from all this, and—
“Oh my god, okay,” said Rosie, slapping her hands down on the table as soon as the server retreated back into the crowd. “As much as I’ve loved listening to you catch Layla up, Em, we need to move on now.”
A little finger of foreboding tapped on Layla’s shoulder.
“To this best man Michael brought along.” She waggled her eyebrows. One, predictably, was pierced.
Layla swallowed, the taste of wine in her mouth turning sour.
The brother’s ex-wife, he’d said. Somehow it felt more like a censure than any single thing Cara had said to her leading up to this trip, all her different versions of You don’t have to do this.
When Griffin Testa said the brother’s ex-wife, he said it like she was the stupidest person alive.
On the one hand, Layla did not want the topic to turn to Griffin. But on the other, she did not like thinking about him already knowing something about her, and her knowing nothing about him.
Maybe she needed some kind of ammunition to be in the same room with him again.
And when Emily responded to Rosie with an uncharacteristic eye roll, a dismissive hand wave, Layla felt her curiosity pique.
“Emmmmmmmyyyyyyy,” Rosie said pleadingly, jutting her bottom lip out.
Em shrugged again, for the first time tonight looking unsettled. “The truth is, I don’t know much about him. He and Michael grew up together, and he’s very…”
She trailed off, took another drink.
“Very what!” Rosie practically shouted.
Layla loved Rosie, to be honest.
“Very private,” Emily said. “I don’t think he leaves home much. He’s like, a billionaire.”
Rosie slammed her hands on the table again. “WHAT.”
Layla was stuck in staring mode.
“A billionaire?” she finally echoed, her disdain obvious.
Being an even moderately aware adult in the twenty-first century had taught Layla that pretty much every billionaire belonged in prison, or at the very least kept in some kind of island confinement with other billionaires, where they could circle-jerk each other all day with their evil, society-destroying ideas.
“Okay, he’s not actually a billionaire,” Em clarified. She paused again while the server returned with more wine, as though she couldn’t say any more until they were alone once more.
Layla flashed back to Griffin’s words on the elevator.
Don’t tell Michael you saw me.
“But he’s wealthy,” Em continued. “Like, big-money wealth.”
The clarification, Layla knew, was speaking.
As a MacKenzie, Em had grown up with money—well-to-do grandparents on both sides, the MacKenzie side especially.
Jamie’s dad, Robert, ran a successful financial management firm; Manon was a professor at BC.
When Layla first met them, they were buying a second home in the Berkshires, having recently come into an inheritance from Robert’s late mother.
They regularly talked about having a pied-à-terre here in Paris—Manon’s dream—when they retired.
So if Em was saying big money about Griffin Testa, she meant business.
“What’s he do?” Rosie asked, and in the growing fog of her wine-brain, Layla considered options that made sense given her experiences so far of Griffin.
Extremely mean vampire who has amassed money over the course of centuries. Crime boss who sells organs on the dark web. Inventor of nuclear-grade weapons.
Instead Emily said, “He doesn’t work, I don’t think.”
Rosie’s mouth was hanging open. “He doesn’t work?”
At this point, Layla felt more hungry for information than she did for the dessert she’d ordered. It was chocolate mousse, so that was really saying something.
“I think he has passive income, maybe? A…patent or something?”
Layla put a little mental check mark next to her nuclear weapons idea, but then Em waved her hand again.
“I’m honestly not sure. I know he doesn’t leave his house that much. Like I said, he is really private. Michael protects that.”
Layla wondered if she was imagining the slightly irritated note in Emily’s voice.
“Passive income,” Rosie said, her voice awed. “Let me get my vibrator.”
Emily snorted a laugh, but then her face grew serious again as she shifted her gaze to Layla.
“I am sorry,” she said, “that he was so rude to you in the lobby earlier.”
“He wasn’t,” Layla said smoothly. It didn’t really feel like a lie, because he’d been ruder in the elevator, though Layla was not going to mention that.
“I’d let him be rude to me,” Rosie said, gesturing vaguely to her face. “He’s got a real beast-in-the-castle vibe.”
Layla grimaced. It was cruel to bring up someone’s scars.
“That’s unkind,” she said, trying to gentle her voice so it didn’t sound too much like a scolding.
But Rosie seemed unfazed. “I don’t really mean because of his—” This time, she simply pointed at her face before continuing. “Just, you know, the being filthy rich and nontraditionally hot and also not leaving the house part.”
Strangely, the only part of that Layla seemed to be able to focus on was nontraditionally hot.
She guessed Rosie meant the scars, but honestly, if the man didn’t have some kind of apparent fetish for cutting Layla down to size, she probably would have been willing to argue that he was completely, entirely, traditionally hot.
All that thick, dark hair, those cheekbones.
In that soft-looking black shirt he’d been wearing, Layla could admit she’d noticed his build: lean and muscled, like a distance runner, or maybe a swimmer.
“You’re such a little dirtbag, Ro,” Emily said affectionately, and they laughed and then oohed as the server set down their various desserts.
For a second, Layla left her spoon sitting on the table, her brain curiously unable to let go of everything she’d learned over the course of the day. A man in black with some kind of medical condition. Griffin Testa. Not afraid of flying. Rich and private and homebound.
Traditionally hot.
“You okay?” Em said, snapping Layla out of her reverie, and she hoped the pink in her cheeks read like a wine flush.
She smiled and shoved Griffin Testa out of her mind and suggested that they get champagne with dessert.
And Layla thought it turned out to be her best idea, that champagne, because for the rest of the night—two more hours at the table, lingering like real Parisians—she and Rosie and Emily laughed and talked and drank until there was no chance of wandering into any more awkward topics, all of them giddy and silly, Layla just drunk enough not to worry about whether they all seemed too American to everyone around them.
When they spilled out onto the narrow sidewalk, Layla continued to absolutely nail it in her heels, a moral victory.
Around her, this corner of Paris at night practically sang with life: lights on, doors open, tables crowded.
Even the plumes of cigarette smoke didn’t annoy her.
She steadied her two companions and confidently led them back to the hotel, barely needing an assist from her maps app.
Fuck Griffin Testa, she thought when she got into the elevator to go back to her room, and she thought it again when she crawled, a little drunkenly, into her hotel bed.
She was not just the brother’s ex-wife. She was full of good food and good drink and she and Emily were okay, she and Jamie and the whole family would be okay, and this city was beautiful.
This wedding was going to be beautiful.
“C’est bon,” she whispered aloud to herself, having no idea that, the very next morning, she would wake up to find that she had apparently ruined everything.