Chapter Eleven #3
“I…Shoes?” She said it like she didn’t know the word. She was still hearing her name in Griffin-translation. Something about the way he said that first syllable, a leaning-in. Lay-la.
“Madame,” came a second voice. “I bring you some athletic shoes. A few sizes, as your friend suggests.”
“Oh,” she managed, her eyes drifting to the hooks. Option two, she thought. They brought me something for option two.
She wanted to cry in relief, if only for having the decision made for her. She’d worry about what not going back would mean later.
“Thank you,” she said, then added, “Merci.”
“The Galeries closes soon, madame,” came the woman’s reply, which was—with the accent especially—very motivating.
She reached for the jeans, face flushing.
While she clumsily unbuttoned and unzipped them, she could hear the low tones of Griffin’s voice speaking to the woman before silence descended again.
She wondered if Griffin had wandered away like a cloud of smoke, wafting his way through the don’t-mortgage-your-house-for-it women’s clothing department.
Then, from what sounded like way too close, came his voice again.
“Does this happen to you a lot?”
She paused, one leg in. “Does what happen a lot?”
He cleared his throat. “You go on trips and manage sick people the whole time?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. She lifted her other foot, sliding it into the other leg. Jeans felt good at the moment. Comforting and right.
“Sort of,” she finally said.
“Sort of?”
She hopped a little, settling the jeans over her hips. A good fit, the kind she liked. Loose in the legs, like she was used to with scrubs.
“I travel for work,” she answered. “I do physician leave and shortage replacements at hospitals around the country. So, yeah. Trips. Sick people.”
He made a noise, a little Mm of understanding that she felt strangely warmed by.
It was easier to talk to him through a curtain—those dark eyes off her, that frustration on his face hidden from hers.
She thought, maybe, that he’d go quiet again, and was prepared to still count one normal, civil exchange as a victory.
But right as she did up the button on the jeans, he spoke again.
“What kind of doctor?”
“A hospitalist,” she said, pleasantly surprised by his curiosity. “That’s a doctor who—”
“I know what it is.”
She closed her eyes, pursed her lips tight, grateful he couldn’t see this cringe of embarrassment.
Of course he knew what a hospitalist was.
Someone with scars like his didn’t escape prolonged hospital stays.
He’d probably met a half dozen doctors like her, late adds to an already big care team: trauma and critical care, plastic surgeons, infectious disease specialists, probably a couple of psychiatrists.
She thought of the burn patients she’d treated—coming on board for Covid infections acquired during their stays, an allergic response to a new medicine, a patch of bedsores on a part of the skin that had escaped the burn injury.
She almost apologized, but he spoke first.
“You shouldn’t have helped her.”
She froze in the act of reaching for the sweater, back on the boat again: Samantha sick over the side, Emily’s panicked, pleading gaze, Jamie hovering uselessly from far away.
“What was I supposed to do?” she said, too quiet, not sure if she was answering him or asking herself.
“Not help her,” he said, closer now. Right on the other side of the curtain, if she had to guess. The skin on her arms prickled with goose bumps, and she took the sweater off its hanger.
“Let her boyfriend help her,” he added. He said boyfriend like the word itself was an embarrassment to his mouth.
She thought of explaining the weak stomach thing—an old instinct to protect Jamie. She wondered if that ever left you, once a marriage ended.
Somehow, though, she didn’t think this explanation would be much of a protection from Griffin’s poor opinion of her ex. The boyfriend, as it were.
“It’s my job,” she finally said, sliding her arms into the soft sleeves of the sweater, the texture on her still–goose bumped skin pleasantly shivery.
From the other side of the curtain, Griffin snorted derisively. “It’s not your job. You’re not on the clock here.”
She pulled the sweater over her head, heedless of what it would do to her hair. It didn’t matter now, if they weren’t going back.
Should they go back?
“It’s a moral obligation,” she said as her head popped through the neckhole. “I took an oath.”
Do no harm.
I do.
You promised you’d always be my sister.
She tried to sound confident, like all the oaths of her life weren’t suddenly colliding uselessly in her brain, but even she knew what was coming next.
Another snort. More scornful this time.
Fine. Mentioning the Hippocratic oath was a long shot. Samantha wasn’t having a heart attack. She wasn’t even a minor on a transatlantic flight traveling alone. The father of medicine himself would probably snort at Layla right now.
But still. Still, he didn’t have to be such a dick about it.
About everything.
She yanked the sweater over her bare stomach, spun on her heel, and fisted her hand in the curtain, yanking it back. A slice of petty satisfaction went through her as he took a half step of surprise back, and she wanted to keep him there. On the ropes.
So she reached, again, for what little she knew of him.
“At least I have a job,” she snapped, setting her hands on her hips, readying herself to stare him down with the same sort of judgment he constantly seemed to be leveling at her.
But it…did not work.
Because Griffin did not stare back at her with the same sort of judgment, not this time.
Instead, he blinked once, and then…looked.
His gaze running over her, from the top of her surely messy hair down to her bare toes.
A long look, a leisurely look, and as it was happening—as the practical part of Layla was thinking, What is he looking at?
another part of her, an insensible part of her, was thinking about a couple of hours ago, about walking into the hotel lobby in her boring but elegant dress, and not having anyone look at her any kind of way at all.
Which was the point. Which was exactly what she wanted.
Or it was, at least until right this second, with Griffin Testa looking at her this way, what she thought she wanted.
She swallowed at the exact moment she watched his Adam’s apple bob along the column of his neck: a synchronicity neither one of them seemed to be able to abide.
She said, “What?” as in, What are you staring at? right as he said, “Socks,” and then she was caught in his gaze again.
Until she noticed that he was holding a hand out toward her.
Where he held a pair of casual black socks folded into a tidy cardboard sleeve.
“For the shoes you pick,” he added.
“Right.” She extended her fingers to take them, careful not to brush his. That look on his face plus his hand against hers again—she knew that was not a good idea.
They were interrupted again, then, by the woman who’d brought the shoes, a We’re closing look on her face that Layla thought must be universal in any language.
In her hand, she held a portable card reader, and with only the most minimal instruction—as though it pained her to speak any more English—she took the tags from Layla’s newly donned clothes, scanning them first, and then the socks, and then, finally, the one pair of sneakers in Layla’s size…
which she didn’t dare try on, for fear of slowing down the process.
“Let me get my purse,” she said, turning back toward the dressing room.
But before she could get to it, she heard the plink of the card reader’s approval, Griffin beating her to it. She tried not to let her shoulders sag in defeat. When she turned around again, the woman was gone.
“I told her we’d hurry,” Griffin said.
She nodded, and he turned away, drifting toward the inner ring of the floor—the place from which, she knew, he could stare up into that gorgeous glass dome, if he wanted to see something truly stunning.
With him gone again, it came back—that feeling of utter aloneness, of doubt.
The boat cruise had been a disaster, inarguably.
She had not helped Emily, not even a little, not even before Samantha and Jamie arrived.
She had been a distraction, a reason for Manon to be stressed about hotel arrangements, an elephant in the room big enough that Robert couldn’t help but acknowledge it in a toast.
She should go, no matter what she promised Emily. A flight out tomorrow.
Tonight, if she could swing it.
When she finished tying the second shoe and stood, she turned back to the open curtain, where an empty Galeries-branded bag sat on the floor, awaiting the clothes she’d come here in.
Honestly, what she wouldn’t give for a Walmart bag—the plastic ones, terrible for the environment—to tuck the soiled dress into.
As it was, she tried to arrange it all carefully: the balled-up dress, the shoes, even her clutch.
When she stepped out again, she thought the light was dimmer—displays shutting down, surely, one by one.
Get out, the store was saying.
She picked up the bag, smoothed her new sweater needlessly. Straightened her posture before she walked to where Griffin stood.
Almost right up against the glass balcony now.
His head tilted back the slightest amount, but enough to see what was above.
A kaleidoscope of color up high, intricate and impossible, a faraway heaven.
Ten long legs of glass curving downward from it, blue and green and orange and yellow, the expanses of opaque panels in between like a thick coat of the fluffiest snow blanketing your window.
Arch after arch after arch of more color at the bottom, a boisterous bolstering of the whole loudly luxurious affair.
“It didn’t go well,” she said.
Other than a faint lifting of his shoulders—a deep breath, maybe—Griffin didn’t say anything, so she continued.
“As a first outing, I mean. I know you want this wedding to happen—”
She watched as he slowly set his right hand along the top of the balcony railing. Curled his fingers around it.
“And I think it will,” she rushed out, even though she wasn’t sure of that, not now. “But I’m—I’m a distraction as I am. It doesn’t matter what I do. It’ll just be the Is Layla Looking at Jamie? show.”
For a long time, he stayed where he was, saying nothing. Long enough that she heard a soft announcement in French come over some unseen speaker, and another light—somewhere—dimmed.
Long enough that she started to say, “We should—”
“You’re right,” he interrupted.
She swallowed, unreasonably stung. She was right. Still. “About?”
“It will be that. Is Layla looking at Jamie.”
Only the second time he said her name. The way he said it—it sounded all wrong, next to Jamie’s like that, when Layla had always thought their names sounded so nice together. Perfect together.
“Right,” she reconfirmed, weirdly unable to say the rest.
That she would get a flight, go home. Get out of the way of this.
“So,” she added limply.
“So,” he repeated, and then he dropped his hand. Turned and met her eyes again, took a deep breath before he spoke again.
“So you’ll look at me, then.”