Chapter Seven #2
“I know you didn’t say anything specific about it,” Emily continued, as though she could read Layla’s mind. “I know you wouldn’t. You never do.”
There was something in Emily’s voice for that last bit. Nothing quite like the ironic scorn of her I’m sure he’s thrilled, but nothing particularly complimentary, either.
Layla opened her mouth to reply, stalled between the familiar, bland withholding—It wasn’t any one specific thing—and an automatic, generic apology, but Emily spoke first.
“But remember when Rosie was asking you about your job?”
It took a second to register the question, since Layla was still stung by that You never do, but once she did, fresh confusion rose within her.
She did remember Rosie asking about her job, because when Rosie asked about her job, Layla felt like someone had lifted a weighted, itchy shawl from her shoulders.
It was so easy to talk about her locum tenens work, so natural to sell it in the same way the recruiter had sold it to her.
She remembered rattling off the names of all her placements so far, and playing up her enthusiasm for the next one—six weeks in Chico, California, a part of the country where she’d never spent any time.
“Yes,” Layla said, and it came out inflected. A question.
“She asked why you became a hospitalist.”
“Right,” Layla replied slowly, even more baffled now.
Another thing that had been easy to talk about.
She loved inpatient work, loved coordinating with other physicians and PAs and nurses and techs.
She was proud of her specialty, for all it was lesser-known by the world outside of the medical profession.
“You said you were going to be a surgeon,” Emily said. “A general surgeon, you said.”
Layla rifled through her memories of this part of the conversation: only a couple of sips of champagne in, a curl of rich chocolate mousse on her spoon.
She’d made a casual gesture with it as she answered Rosie’s question.
The original plan was general surgery for residency, but I wanted to stay in Boston for med school, and I knew it would be easier to get an internal medicine residency there.
That was…a very normal answer. Also, a true one. What was the problem?
Bewilderment must’ve shown on her face, because Emily clucked her tongue, exasperated.
“You changed your residency plan for Jamie,” she practically yelled. “So you could stay in Boston with Jamie!”
For what felt like a long moment, Layla couldn’t say a word. She simply stared. For the last couple of hours, ever since Griffin had come to her door, she had lived in anxious anticipation, readying herself for some huge, catastrophic—forgotten—revelation to come crashing down on her.
But this?
This was nothing.
She was so relieved she almost laughed.
See? she wanted to shout to Griffin. I told you; I didn’t say anything!
Instead, she softened her voice again and said, “Em, no. It wasn’t like that at all; it was much more complicated than—”
But she didn’t bother finishing, because Emily stood from the bed suddenly, throwing herself into pacing back and forth in front of the two beds, wringing her hands, her eyes swollen and her cheeks splotchy, her neck flushed.
Any relief Layla felt about her own culpability for this dissipated in the face of Emily’s obvious distress. She had never seen this version of Emily: wild-eyed and restless and unpredictable. Like a downed wire on a rainy, windblown street, spraying off sparks intermittently.
“Emily,” she tried, still soft, but her former sister-in-law barely seemed to hear her.
“I’m moving to Germany for him,” Emily said, the word Germany like it was a big, shocking arc of those electric sparks, and this time, when she paced back Layla’s way, Layla stopped her—reaching out a hand and touching Emily’s forearm.
“Emily,” she said again, firmly now, a real We’re going to talk about those cigarettes tone. “What’s really going on here?”
For a beat, Emily simply looked down at Layla’s hand on her arm, her chin quivering, her shoulders slumping again.
“I don’t know,” she finally admitted weakly. “I—I promise you, Layla, I haven’t ever felt unsure before now, before last night. It was like, you said the thing about doing your residency in Boston, and I thought, every decision I make from now on has to do with Michael.”
A pretty late-breaking revelation! Layla thought, in the kind of exclamatory tone that reminded her of Cara—of Rosie, too—but she tried to keep her face serene, leaving Emily the space to say more.
“And then once I thought of that, I snowballed, I guess? Like, all this stuff I’ve been doing for the move, and the wedding, is that avoidance? Am I avoiding the reality of what I’m doing? Marrying Michael, and moving abroad? Moving abroad as a newlywed?”
“Well, I—” Layla began uncertainly during the pause that followed, still processing all this, but as soon as she started to speak, Emily burst forth with more.
“But like, what am I going to do about it now? We are here, right?” She flung a hand toward the still-closed drapes.
“Paris is out there, and you know how my parents are about Paris, and there’s all these activities we planned and people coming, so what am I going to do?
Once I started thinking of that”—she pressed her palms to her eyes—“I panicked more. You can’t get married just because you made a plan to, you know?
It’s not an event; it’s a marriage. Marriage is forever! ”
In the aftermath, there was an awkward silence—Emily dropped her hands from her eyes, looking guiltily at Layla as her eyes welled again.
“I’m sorry!” she said quickly. “I can’t believe I—”
“It’s okay,” Layla responded, even though it did smart, hearing it. Hearing her own years-ago naivete mirrored back to her.
Her mind wincing away from the sting, Layla landed on a more practical thought. A more bureaucratic one.
“Wait,” she said. “Haven’t you and Michael already done the paperwork back in the States? Aren’t you, you know…already married, technically?”
Emily shook her head, deflating onto the wastebasket-slash-bed across from Layla.
“We were going to do the courthouse ceremony when we got back home, so the official date would be exactly a year from when we first met. I thought that would be really special, you know? Kind of a bonus anniversary. Now I can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse that nothing’s legal yet. ”
Layla was quiet, caught for a moment in her own indecision about all she’d heard.
On the one hand, everything Emily had said so far could be the sort of bland Brides get nervous bullshit Layla had offered to Griffin Testa back in that courtyard, when she was still flailing from shock and fear over what she’d potentially screwed up.
On the other, though—well, on the other, Emily’s anxieties were real, prompted by real things. Moving abroad was big. The MacKenzie lore about and love for Paris was big.
And marriage was big.
Not really because it was forever, but more because sometimes it wasn’t, and that was the biggest thing to reckon with of all.
For the first time since she arrived in Paris—maybe for the first time since before she’d arrived in Paris—Layla was able to truly block out everything except Emily.
She didn’t, for once, think about her divorce and how she’d failed at it; she didn’t think about the MacKenzies’ disappointment in her, or Griffin Testa’s angry desperation.
She didn’t think about this hotel room like it was a hospital, about Emily like she was another version of an anxious Willa on the plane, or an embarrassed patient who’d been sneaking cigarettes after a surgery.
She thought only about the Emily who had once been her sister.
The Emily she’d known for years, earnest and kind and genuine; the Emily she’d seen yesterday morning, full of excitement; the Emily from last night, so authentically in love that Layla was grateful to witness it.
She did not want that Emily to make the sort of decision she couldn’t take back.
So she leaned forward and took her hands, ducking her head to meet Emily’s eyes.
“Honey,” she said, using a word she’d only ever used with Em, back when they were so much closer.
Emily sniffed and smiled weakly, as though she recognized the gesture.
“You have to know,” Layla said, “how much pressure you are under right now.”
Emily nodded miserably.
“And I know you feel overwhelmed, and tonight and the week ahead feel like a lot.”
“So much,” Emily whimpered.
“But is it…is it possible that making another huge decision right now—calling off this whole week, this wedding—when you’re this upset, might be a mistake?”
Emily sniffed again, soggy and uneven. “It’s possible.”
It felt like a huge victory, like stopping something from catching fire.
Part of her wanted to stand up and open the curtains, let some natural light in, but then she thought of the view again, and decided it was too soon: that crushing pressure of Paris perfection all spread out before a bride who’d planned her whole wedding around it.
So she stayed where she was.
“I think you need to take some of that weight off yourself, as best you can. Yes, there’s a week of events planned, and people are coming…”
Emily’s fingers twitched in hers—sparks weakly trying to make their way back into the fight.
“That’s happening,” Layla said calmly. “There’s nothing you can do about that.
But you can focus on today, okay? Today, there’s the boat, and the dinner, but that’s it, right?
That’s all you need to think about. There’s no rest of the week right now.
No other Paris plans, no rehearsal, no ceremony, no paperwork back home.
There’s not even Germany! There’s just today. ”
“Just today,” Emily repeated.
“Right, and today, you will see Michael, and you need to remember, that’s what this is about—you and Michael. You can keep your focus on you and Michael, and what’s right for the two of you.”