Chapter Thirteen #2
Oh my god. What was she thinking?
She swallowed, faced forward again, except of course, the only thing to stare at straight ahead was Marie Antoinette’s stupid gigantic bed. She blinked at it, blurring its big, garish florals into a mess of color, waiting for the heat in her face to dissipate, for her breath to go back to normal.
Griffin waited, too. As though he knew.
And when she finally felt like she was ready to move on, he spoke again.
“Maybe I’ll tell you,” he said, sounding closer to her this time. Warming her up all over again. “When we’re somewhere more honest.”
* * *
More honest, it turned out, was hard to find in Versailles, even once you went outside.
In the vast, carefully cultivated gardens, their party sprawled away from one another—it seemed almost impossible to stay in each other’s sights across nearly two thousand acres (conversion from hectares provided, annoyingly, via Griffin’s phone), and so Manon had made the declaration: They would wander freely, if they so wanted, and meet again in two and a half hours by the front gates, making their way all together to the train back to Paris.
Initially, Layla felt a rush of relief at this new plan—the thought of how easy it would be for them all to drift naturally away from one another, for her not to have the sideshow sense of herself when Robert and Manon and Jamie and Samantha were all within easy reach.
But even though the splits she was hoping for seemed to naturally come to pass—Rosie (who had seen the Coppola Marie Antoinette many, many times) and Céline deciding to take the estate train over to Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet, Robert and Manon and Abram and Damaris opting to go to the Gallery of Coaches, Jamie and Samantha lingering longer in the Orangery than anyone else cared to—she still could not relax in the foursome she and Griffin formed with Michael and Emily.
It was stuck in her head, that Hm.
Not the second one, thankfully, which she was privately thinking of as the I must have my rusty horny wires crossed Hm, but the first one.
The one where Griffin seemed doubtful about Michael and Emily.
She could see it now, unfortunately, in the open air, where the excesses of each garden—huge sculptures, elaborate water features, gigantic shrubs carved into curving, unnatural shapes—at least had to contend with the ill-matching plainness of the now-cloudy sky above.
Layla could focus better out here, but unfortunately, that focus was on the way Emily held a huge map of the grounds in her hands, how she seemed to be smilingly but anxiously insistent about matching each grove they walked through with its official name.
Oh, Apollo’s Baths. This one is the Ceres Fountain. See, it’s called Star Grove because of how the paths are laid out…
Yeah, she could see it.
This was not an honest Emily.
This was an Emily Layla could remember from other moments over the course of their long relationship: their very first meeting, when Emily showed Layla her room, trying to make excuses for the Barbie apartment she still had in one corner (I don’t really play with those anymore, she’d said nervously, apologetically); the night of Emily’s junior prom, when Jamie and Layla had come to watch the getting-ready, picture-taking of it all, and Emily had laughed too loud at every joke her date made, had given too big of a gasp at the sight of her (objectively ugly) corsage that did not match her gown; the morning of Layla’s small bridal shower brunch, when Emily had pretended to like the taste of coffee to fit in with some of Layla’s med school friends.
And while Layla didn’t know Michael well—at all, really—she also started to see that soft smile of his in a new way.
A not-horny Hm sort of way.
A suspicious-Griffin way.
Was it adoring? Or was there something anxious about it, too?
She thought of Emily in that messy hotel room yesterday morning, her eyes pleading for Layla to somehow keep her grounded.
Put down the map! she wanted to call across the Colonnade Grove (fine; thank you, map). Put down the fucking sometimes-useful map and look at him. Talk to him, now that there’s no one watching.
Well. Almost no one.
“Maybe if we left them alone,” she said aloud, to the shadow responsible for all these suspicious thoughts she was having.
He was leaning a shoulder against one of the rust-colored columns, the hat he’d taken off inside the palace back on his head now, obscuring his eyes from her. But she could guess he was looking where she was, a dark chaperone for the couple across the way.
“Not sure it’d help,” he said. The grim note in his voice unsettled her further.
“Is this—” She broke off, embarrassed at first to ask what she was thinking. She tipped her head up to the sky, the unadorned gray expanse of it, and gathered her courage up.
“Is this their usual dynamic?” she finally finished, hating how plain it made the truth: that she had not been there, at all, for this very important thing in Emily’s life. That she was a latecomer to it, completely unprepared for the task of fixing whatever was wrong here.
Griffin cleared his throat. Shifted his shoulder against the column. “I only met her once,” he said. “Before this.”
She lowered her head again, meeting his eyes. Well, the brim of his hat, at least.
“Really?” She was strangely thrilled by this information. We really are friends! she felt like shouting, except, obviously, that would be deranged. You weren’t friends with someone on account of you both being shitty friends and/or sisters to other people.
“You might have heard,” he said, a note of knowing sarcasm in his voice, “I don’t get out much.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “On account of your not-job,” she said.
A huff of air while he lowered his head, shaking it a little, the brim of that horrible hat hiding his whole handsome face from her. She bet he was trying not to laugh.
After a few seconds, he spoke again. “Not to defend”—he lifted the arm not leaning, gestured to where Michael trailed a still-talking Emily—“whatever this is, but I guess if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t be a good judge of their dynamic.
Like I said, I met her once, and it’s not as though I’m good at putting people at ease. ”
“You should’ve showed her stuff on your phone,” Layla deadpanned. “It helps.”
“Can’t take credit. I picked that tip up from Michael yesterday,” he said, the curve back on his lips briefly, before it fell again. “Anyway, that’s how I know it’s not going right. Not from watching her. But from watching him.”
Layla swallowed. “How do you mean?”
Griffin shrugged again. “He’s too afraid of losing her to…to even try pressing her. To try really talking to her. He’s watching her like she might disappear. That’s what he’s most afraid of.”
For a wild, inexplicable second, Layla thought about taking two steps toward him. Close enough to reach out and up, to lift the brim of the hat and take the full measure of him, because she could hear something in the way he said this—something honest and hidden and devastating.
“Guys!” Emily’s voice called, saving Layla from herself, and Griffin straightened away from the column immediately, as though he was grateful for the interruption.
Layla did not miss the irony—Emily acting as some kind of intermediary, when that was meant to be Layla’s job.
When that was the promise Layla made.
So as they wandered through the next few gardens, Layla left Griffin to his more natural silence, instead interrupting Emily’s ongoing anxious map-matching—Oh, the Chestnut Room, I wonder why it’s called a room!
And this I think is the Saturn Fountain, yes!
—with questions to Michael: about his job, about whether he was excited to see his parents later, about when he knew he would propose to Emily.
And eventually, it did seem to have a grounding effect, Emily letting the map fall to her side in one hand, holding Michael’s with her other as he answered Layla, sometimes chiming in with funny asides or additions or loving corrections—You did not know on our second date!
At one point, the four of them standing idly by the almost comically plain-by-comparison Mirror Pool, Michael and Emily effortlessly tag-teamed a story about getting lost on their first trip together, and the huge roadside argument that ensued, and as Layla watched them, both of them laughing their way through the memory of it, she thought, They’ll make it.
This is what a good marriage looks like.
I know, because for a while, I had one.
A sobering thought, but it was easy not to dwell for too long on it, especially when Emily and Michael drifted ahead, his arm draped over her shoulders, his head turning to press a kiss to the top of hers at one point as she laughed in an honest-Emily way.
“Fine,” Griffin said grudgingly from beside her. “That was helpful.”
She clamped her lips together to keep from smiling. “Your contributions were essential.”
He didn’t quite laugh again. But still. Maybe an indulgent snort at her dig, since his contribution had been complete and total silence during all of it.
“I consider it a moral obligation,” he said.
This time, she laughed: a crackling Ha! emerging right as they crossed into a new space—another circle paved in fine gravel, this one surrounded not by columns, but by risers—two arcs of bright green hedges cut into curved benches, interrupted in the middle by a grand stone-and-shell sculpture that was clearly intended to be a fountain, bone-dry now.
There was, of course, some gold—huge urns punctuating the gray stone, but out here, they weren’t such an eyesore.
Layla thought, for a fleeting second, of Willa from the plane—her book about the fae prince.
This looked like the sort of place a fae prince would have, a fairy choir commanded to sing for him, lined up on those lush risers.
“Wow,” she said, and for the first time since this outing began, she was not annoyed when Emily lifted her map long enough to look down and say, “This must be the Ballroom Grove!”
Well, fine. An outdoor ballroom made more sense than a fairy choir, but still—still, Layla was happy enough to feel like a moment of whimsy was finally possible, with some of the tension between Emily and Michael now broken.
By some magic—not the fae prince sort, obviously—this particular grove was comparatively uncrowded, a bored-looking guard in a navy polo standing near one of the urns, and only a couple of other flagging spectators, turning in slow circles with their phones raised in front of their faces, looking like they’d come to the sort of sightseeing saturation point that necessitated video evidence of new things.
“You know what we should do,” Layla heard Michael say to Emily, and she looked to see Emily beaming up at him, nodding.
A second later, still smiling widely, Emily was shoving her now-crumpled map into her crossbody bag, taking Michael’s outstretched hand and stepping into his arms for a music-less dance, like they were in their own little world.
Layla was glad she and Griffin had still been lagging behind, that they hadn’t crossed too far into the grove. Without thinking, she stepped back farther, toward one of the risers near the grove’s entrance, Griffin following.
“They took lessons,” he said quietly, though she doubted it was necessary for him to mind his volume—Emily and Michael had very likely forgotten they were there, and didn’t even seem to notice that at least one of the video-taking tourists had turned her phone onto them.
“Cute,” Layla replied, also quietly, remembering that she, too, had once taken dance lessons—a gift Manon had given her and Jamie for their engagement, even though they were insistent about wanting a small wedding, with none of the big, fussy traditions.
Every couple should know how to dance! Manon had said, and Layla imagined she said the same to Michael and Emily, who watched only each other, alternating between shared humor and concentration—knowing they weren’t very good at the steps, but enjoying the project of doing it together anyway.
They’ll make it, she told herself again.
“This way,” she heard from somewhere behind her, a voice from another time, a dance lesson a decade ago, and she stiffened, dread pooling in her stomach.
“Oh, Jamie!” came a gasping exclamation, a happy version of the voice that Layla had mostly heard only in a shamed, strangled way up to now. “This is so pretty!”
“Goddammit,” Griffin muttered from beside her.
“Look who we found!” Jamie’s voice again, closer now, probably on the other side of the stone-and-shell wall that flanked the entrance to the grove. Close, but not yet close enough to see her.
Or the shadow beside her.
She watched as Emily and Michael both turned, stilling in their dance.
Emily’s smile brightened first at the sight of her brother, then wobbled and dimmed, her eyes darting nervously over toward where Layla stood.
Goddammit, she echoed Griffin silently, this scenario somehow way worse than a simple bonus episode of the Is Layla Looking at Jamie?
show. Because in this scenario—in that wobble of Emily’s smile—Layla saw all the worry from yesterday morning coming back, Layla and Jamie apart here in this garden palace ballroom, a couple Emily had once watched having a perfectly coordinated, devotedly practiced first dance at their beautiful backyard wedding.
“Let’s, uh—” she started to say to Griffin, with absolutely no meaningful escape plan in mind, save maybe a fae prince ordering his choir to sing a spell that would make her disappear.
But before she could voice something so desperately ridiculous, a strong arm came around her waist.
Turning her toward the body that had been hovering near hers all day.
One of her hands enveloped in electric warmth. Her arm lifted.
And then, suddenly, she was dancing.