Chapter Seven
“Thank god you’re here.”
Rosie said it with one slight, precise emphasis, exactly where Layla needed it.
Thank god you’re here.
That emphasis—it put Layla back into a version of herself she better recognized.
Not a version where she sat alone in a courtyard café, staring at a man’s coffee cup, heart racing, wondering what in the world she had agreed to.
Instead, a version who didn’t waste time wondering. A version who got the job done.
She had Rosie to thank, because Rosie was the one who texted her: a vibration that finally got Layla’s eyes off the coffee cup, the dark, untouched drink like the lightest part of Griffin Testa’s eyes.
Come up to Emily’s room, the text said.
Then, another. It’s Rosie, btw
And one more, when Layla was standing from her seat:
Obviously, Rosie’s texts did not have much in common with the sort of texts that most often got Layla moving with the kind of no-nonsense purpose that had propelled her across the courtyard and into the hotel’s lobby, pressing the elevator button with a specific tap of her knuckle that was so familiar it felt like teleportation to another time, another place.
But still, they had the same effect: like she was getting a room number in a less luxurious accommodation, a nurse or doctor’s name, a code more specific than a cringe face.
Now, standing at the threshold of Emily’s room, staring into Rosie’s real-life wide-eyed Yikes face, Layla felt like she was doing a handoff. An official transfer of care.
“What happened?” Layla said, half expecting Rosie to reply with a heart rate.
“What didn’t!” Rosie said, her voice pitched strangely between a whisper and a shout. She reminded Layla of a sweaty first-year resident.
“Start at the beginning.”
Rosie swallowed and looked over her shoulder, then leaned in, committing to the whisper.
“She’s in the bathroom. Again. Her stomach is upset. Because she is doing something crazy, absolutely crazy, and this is me saying that, so you know—”
“Rosie,” Layla interrupted.
“Well everything was fine when I went to sleep!” She paused, then added guiltily, “I didn’t fall asleep, okay? I passed out! Because of the champagne; I should never drink champagne, god! I know better. New Year’s 2023!”
Layla blinked, and Rosie mumbled, “Never forget,” like an out-loud hashtag.
This was absolute chaos, but it was also revealing: Rosie had said nothing about Layla’s role in this, no I need to know what it is you said from her, not that a sentence like that—bossy, precise, tinged with cruelty—was Rosie’s style.
But Rosie’s style would have been to say something immediately, if she thought Layla was responsible.
So, Emily hadn’t told Rosie what prompted all this, at least not yet.
“And when you woke up?”
“When I woke up, it was three-something in the morning and Emily was getting sick in the bathroom! Which I thought was the champagne, because what did I say? New Year’s 2023, know what I mean? But it was not the champagne. It’s that she says she doesn’t want to get married!”
Layla swallowed. That was more forceful than having doubts. More final than canceling tonight.
Before she could stop herself, she thought of the faces of her former mother- and father-in-law: the way Manon pursed and then crooked her lips when she was trying not to cry, the way Robert got a tipped-to-the-right trench between his eyebrows when he was worried.
She thought of Jamie when he looked disappointed: a sort of hangdog passivity that overtook his handsome face, eventually pulling his whole body downward.
She’d gotten so familiar with those expressions during that final, wrenchingly sad part of her marriage.
Thinking of them now wouldn’t do Emily any good.
She took a breath, trying to clear her head again, but instead, her brain conjured the sight of Griffin Testa’s clenched fist on the table. The sound of him saying, The wedding has to happen.
“I think I should come in,” Layla blurted.
“Yes!” Rosie sagged with relief, releasing the white-knuckled grip she’d been keeping on the door handle. She stepped back and waved Layla inside.
Thankfully, the room itself went a long way to distracting Layla from rogue thoughts of brokenhearted former relatives and coldhearted current acquaintances.
It was big—twice the size of Layla’s—but the current state of it muted any grand impression it might’ve made.
Five suitcases out that Layla could see, all open and partially unpacked.
Two queen-size beds, both unmade, and one covered in more wadded-up tissues than Layla had ever seen outside of a wastebasket.
The thick drapes were pulled shut, darkening everything, and the air was close—a dorm room after a secret night of drinking.
Part of Layla was appalled. This sort of square footage in a central Paris hotel, two beds, and what was—if she had her sense of direction right—almost certainly a great view, treated like this?
But another part was strangely, tenderly jealous.
This was a room where two best friends had gotten ready for a night out, a room where one of them had cried enough to turn a bed into a wastebasket while the other probably sat beside her and spoke soothingly, a room where the shameless messiness spoke of the sort of intimacy Layla had been missing in her life—had avoided in her life—since the divorce.
The muffled flush of a toilet jerked her back to the moment, and she turned to Rosie, who had slumped onto the tissue-less bed as though her strings had been cut. Layla remembered that the champagne had been her idea, and almost apologized.
Instead, she heard the faucet turn on in the bathroom and thought about the apology she was maybe going to have to make for saying something she couldn’t remember.
There were the MacKenzie faces again, shocked and sad. Layla? she imagined them saying, a cocktail of disbelief and pity and dismay. Layla told Emily not to get married?
Frankly, she would rather think of Griffin Testa’s fist. His pure, undiluted anger, all of it directed at her.
“Rosie,” she said, keeping her voice low. “How about you go pick up a couple of croissants? Some hot tea?”
Rosie stood again, wobbly but with a little light in her eyes.
“Yes! Pastries! That is such a good idea! I will be in charge of pastries. And tea!”
She was already shoving her feet into a pair of thick-soled sneakers, not bothering with socks. She had on a pair of flared yoga pants and a neon-green T-shirt cut off into a crop top that absolutely looked slept in. Her hair was…not brushed.
Layla thought, You can’t go out into Paris like that! but then the faucet shut off, and Rosie’s eyes widened with panic as she looked up at Layla again.
“She knows you were on your way up,” she said. “Just tell her I’ll be right back. I need fresh air before I see her again, so I don’t say the thing about her being crazy! I’m literally on the verge!”
Clearly, she meant it: Right as the bathroom door opened, the door to the room closed softly behind Rosie’s retreating form.
Leaving Layla alone to face whatever she had done.
* * *
At first, mostly it was more crying.
Emily came out of the bathroom and crumpled against Layla’s shoulder, fresh tears soaking through her shirt within seconds.
When Emily finally lifted her face long enough to swipe a hand across her reddened, puffy nose, Layla gently guided her toward the non-tissue-splattered bed, patting her back and encouraging her to take deep breaths.
Patience, Layla knew, was a virtue—an important part of getting to good information, true information from someone in a crisis. Were they really staying away from cigarettes, had they truly been consistent with their medication, was there some symptom they were too embarrassed to mention?
But as the minutes ticked by, patience started to feel like a liability. Like Emily would never manage to dam up her tears, like tonight would get canceled purely because she’d drowned in them.
Layla decided to be proactive.
“Em,” she began, ignoring the nerves that crested inside her at the thought of confronting this directly. “Whatever I said last night—”
It was all she managed to get out before Emily swung her wet, devastated gaze straight at Layla’s face.
“You talked to Michael?” she said, her voice high and anxious. “What did he say? Did he…How is he?”
Talk about a symptom Layla was too embarrassed to mention.
But she wouldn’t lie, not now.
“I didn’t talk to Michael,” she admitted. “I talked to Griffin.”
Something shifted in Emily’s expression. Less devastation, more…frustration.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s thrilled,” she said, an ironic little laugh escaping her, and Layla felt her brow lower.
Griffin Testa was definitely not thrilled.
Not about this, and also probably not about…anything, actually. Layla could picture him being presented with a birthday cake or a box of puppies or a straightforward solution to climate change, and simply staring at all of it in bored, judgmental disgust.
“Why would you say that?”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t think he likes me. He’s never been all that nice to me.”
You should see him with a box of puppies, Layla thought.
“Some people aren’t nice,” she said instead, annoyance leaking into her tone.
This has to happen for him, she could hear him saying.
“He mentioned that it was something I said,” she prompted again.
Emily’s eyes dropped to her lap, her shoulders curving. A guilty posture, if Layla had ever seen one, a Yes, Doctor, I’ve smoked a few cigarettes posture. If Layla had any hope of Michael or Griffin misunderstanding this mess, it evaporated at the sight of Emily now: It had been something she said.
Layla watched another fat tear drop onto Emily’s clasped hands.
“It’s just—the thing with you and Jamie,” she finally said, and Layla’s stomach turned over.
I didn’t say anything about Jamie, she wanted to scream, so certain she would swear on it.