Chapter Six
He’d forgotten his fucking sunglasses.
Outside, the Paris morning had turned bright. Clear-blue-sky bright, no sign of the gray clouds that had hovered over the courtyard he’d sat in to wait for Layla Bailey. He paused outside the hotel’s doors, fighting with himself about whether to go back up to his room to get them.
But if he did that, he might run into her again.
So, no fucking sunglasses.
He took his phone out of his pocket, squinted down at the screen, where he’d mapped directions to the spot Michael had texted him to meet.
Ignored the way his fingers still felt shaky.
Memorized the route: a half mile from here, a few turns down streets where he’d have to look for the dark blue signs stuck to the sides of gray-white buildings, not always easy to find.
Those signs had been a real pain in the ass while he walked last night, if he was honest. Form over function, that was the situation with those signs.
He put his head down and started walking, not even really having to try at tuning out the unfamiliar surroundings.
What the fuck was he going to say to Michael?
He didn’t know if he could admit to the full truth of what happened during his fleeting meeting with Layla.
Bad enough that the woman had no idea what she’d said to rattle Emily MacKenzie enough to have doubts; worse that Griffin himself was rattled enough just by sitting across from her that he’d fled the scene after barely ten minutes, not getting the specifics of her promise to fix it, not even getting her fucking phone number so he could find out when she had.
The thing was, she’d put her hair up. The russet-brown mass of it, streaked through with lighter strands, gathered at the back of her head.
A loose swoop at the front that kept falling over one of her muddy green-brown eyes.
She wore tiny pearl-drop earrings in her lobes.
If they were a gift from the ex-husband and she was wearing them here, to this week of events, that would be the most psychotic thing Griff had ever seen.
He supposed he had no room to judge.
But he did, he thought, as he crossed another street. He did judge her. He judged whatever she didn’t remember about last night, that she said things like Brides get nervous even though he could tell she didn’t mean a fucking word of it, that she never once looked away from his face.
He made one more turn, and now it was a straightaway to his destination—a relief to walk faster, to be a blur to everyone else on these sidewalks.
He stepped off a curb, passing someone who trailed the smell of cigarettes.
He didn’t care for that, but he’d already learned last night it was part of the perfume here.
Cigarette smoke, urine, car exhaust. Occasional butter and sugar.
He wondered if that server at the hotel ever brought out the promised croissants.
If Layla Bailey was still sitting at that table alone.
He stepped into a dark, cool corridor of stone arches, and paused.
Behind him, sun-drenched Paris streets he’d walked through and not really seen.
Ahead of him, his destination: some kind of park, but not any kind of park he’d ever seen.
A cream-and-green tile of effortful perfection, boundaried by black wrought iron and trees trimmed into unnatural, elegant little cuboids.
Surrounding it all, a great square of old redbrick buildings topped with steep blue-gray roofs and bolstered at the bottom with arches like the one he stood beneath.
He didn’t like the look of it. Too fussy, too pretty.
Under here, beneath the arch, where the stone was stained dark and marred by the occasional stripe of graffiti, Griffin could pretend he was in a little dungeon of his own making.
He should text Michael and tell him to meet him here.
A more fitting location to recount that conversation with Layla, and anyway, no need for sunglasses.
Tonight will happen, she said, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. Mostly, she still had that dazed, anxious look in her eyes.
A burst of rapid, laughing French startled him—a small pack of teenagers passing quickly by, jostling him slightly. He could not text Michael to come under here. Too dark, too depressing. Too on the nose.
He stepped into the sun, squinting as he crossed toward the park’s entrance. A sign on the fence: STOP AUX RATS. It gave him a little satisfaction to see it. Rats, in a perfect-seeming place like this.
Good.
Griff found Michael easily in the still-uncrowded space: He sat on a patch of grass, his jacket beneath him, his shoulders slouched.
It was a sorry-looking state of affairs, a grown man sitting on the grass like that.
The sun shone on the exposed skin of Michael’s receding hairline, and Griffin hated the way it made him seem even more vulnerable.
He strode over, watched as Michael plucked listlessly at the pristine grass, oblivious to everything around him. Griffin had to announce his arrival.
“Michael,” he said.
Michael lifted a hand to his brow and looked up. No sunglasses, which meant Griffin could immediately see hope in his friend’s still-reddened eyes.
“How’d it go?” he said.
Instead of answering, Griffin tipped his head toward one of the park’s outer edges. “We gotta go sit on one of the benches. I can’t manage the ground today.”
Michael’s face fell at the evasion, but he got to his feet immediately, bringing his jacket with him. He didn’t need to ask about the not-sitting-on-the-ground thing, and that gave Griffin a guilty pang.
His only friend, his friend who knew him best, his friend he never had to make explanations to.
And what good am I to him? Griff thought. I didn’t even get her number.
They fell into silent step with each other, crossing toward a bench. When they got close, it looked like a couple was on their way to the same one, so Griffin stared, a stare that felt perfectly natural to him, and they diverted themselves.
That was a satisfying thing, at least. About forgetting his sunglasses. About his fucked-up face.
When they sat, Michael went, as always, to Griff’s right.
“What did she say?” Michael asked, before Griffin could even fully arrange himself. He hated this stupid French bench. The back on it cut him in exactly the wrong spot.
“She said she doesn’t remember.”
Michael sagged, and Griffin tightened his middle.
“Not anything?” Michael said.
“Not anything unusual.”
Recounting this conversation to Michael was somehow worse than actually having the conversation.
It only reminded Griffin of how badly he’d done it from the beginning: storming down to Layla Bailey’s room without a plan, sitting across from her and bullying her into making a promise that he didn’t even know the plan for.
“She did say she never mentioned her divorce,” he added, as though that was a profound piece of intelligence.
Michael shook his head. “Well, she wouldn’t, probably. I’m pretty sure that situation was—”
Griffin faked a cough, drowning out whatever word Michael said next. If it was “amicable,” he probably would have destroyed this park with the blast radius of his annoyance. He’d watched Layla Bailey’s face in that elevator mirror when she first said the word, and he didn’t buy it for a second.
“Anyway, she said she’ll fix it,” Griffin said. “The thing tonight, it’ll happen.”
He could feel Michael’s eyes on him. An anticipatory gaze. Why hadn’t he gone back for his sunglasses?
“How?” Michael finally asked.
Griff swallowed. He could not bring himself to say the truth: I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I ran.
This time, when Michael shook his head, he swiped a hand down his face.
“I’m supposed to—what, wait for Emily to call me? I’m trying to give her the day; she said she wanted the day to think, but we’re meant to be on a boat with her family in like ten hours, man. And then what about everything else? My parents get here tomorrow. What am I—”
“It’s going to be all right,” Griff interrupted. Before he could stop himself, he added, “Brides get nervous.”
Jesus Christ. Borrowing that from Layla Bailey, of all things.
“You didn’t see her last night. She’s never asked me for space. She really means it with this…” He trailed off, shuffling one of his shoes against the fine-grained, chalky surface beneath their feet. Even the dirt here was sophisticated.
“Questioning,” Michael finished glumly.
“She’s young,” Griffin said, which was better than saying something empty and dishonest like Brides get nervous, but not by much.
If anything, it was too full, too honest: an insight into Griffin’s own doubts about Michael and Emily, which he’d kept to himself ever since Michael had called him with the news he’d met someone, was serious with someone.
The years between them probably would’ve felt pretty substantial to Griffin no matter who it was, but in the case of Michael specifically… well.
Well, Griffin didn’t know a lot about Emily MacKenzie’s life, he supposed.
But he knew about his best friend’s, and Michael hadn’t had an easy thirty-four years.
Griffin himself felt like an old thirty-four, and certainly when it came to some things—loss, heartbreak, grief—Michael had cause to feel even older.
“Don’t do that,” said Michael. “Don’t dismiss her like that. She’s a grown woman. Smart and mature. She’s not young. Not the way you mean.”
Griffin didn’t bother protesting. He set his jaw and looked out over the park, waiting out the response that hovered right on the tip of his tongue.