Chapter Fourteen #2
He could feel Layla looking at him. When they stopped, she was on the wrong side of him, and he hated that.
“No but you were actually so good?” chirped Emily. “Did you ever take—”
“Oh gosh,” Layla interrupted. “Look what time it is!”
She made a dramatic show of holding up her phone—a noticeably odd move from her, since Griffin had already clocked that she seldom kept the thing in her hand, a rarity among people these days. He could probably count the number of times he’d seen her check it.
Emily made a noise, a squeak of surprise, disentangling herself from Michael. She called across the ballroom to her brother. “Jamie! We gotta head back!”
Griffin did not look over to see if the ex did another one of those stupid fucking bows when his dance was over.
Instead, he watched as Layla stepped toward Emily, linking their arms and walking toward the exit, their heads bent together in conversation. Heard it as Michael moved to stand next to him—right side, of course—and offered another word of gratitude to him, one he didn’t deserve.
Felt it, too. Fifteen out of ten.
The feeling of remembering who he truly was.
* * *
As if the universe really wanted to drive the point home, Michael’s parents were waiting in the hotel lobby when they returned.
Obviously, Griffin had not been in Paris for any meaningful length of time, but he still felt, upon walking through those glass doors and seeing them hovering near the reception desk, that there were no two people who fit in with this city less than Major Fitzpatrick Plackett and his wife, Paula.
Fitz—that’s how Griffin still thought of him, from years and years ago, even though he didn’t dare call him that, or really anything, now—stood tall, straight, one hand holding a stiff leather billfold by his side, the other set in a loose fist atop the telescopic handle of his suitcase, which he probably had not allowed anyone else to touch since arriving.
He wore a pair of overly crisp khaki pants—medium starch, Griffin knew, from the times he and Michael had to take the major’s clothes to the dry cleaner—and a white collared shirt beneath one of those V-necked nylon pullovers, which Griffin thought of as the self-inflicted sensory torture device of all men who played golf.
Paula, for her part, was casting her eyes about the lobby, overawed and smiling, wearing skinny jeans and clunky multicolored sneakers, a bright pink oversize cardigan belted tight and slightly crooked at her waist.
They looked—in completely different ways from each other—like two fish entirely out of their familiar waters.
For the first time since he’d left Versailles, he was grateful to be part of a large party—this crew of people who managed to talk even more on the way back, a round-robin of Here’s what we saw and picture-sharing.
Predictably, Rosie had dominated, with a very thorough recap of the part of the palace grounds that she had renamed “Milkmaid Con,” which made Layla lower her head with suppressed laughter.
He did not feel jealous about that. At all.
Fresh from their shared storytelling, they all seemed happy enough to let him drop, unnoticed, to the back.
He’d been quiet on the train, hat tugged down, Michael beside him this time.
“Hurting, man?” he’d asked Griffin quietly, while they’d waited for the train, and Griffin nodded—not lying, not really—gratefully accepting what he knew would come next: Michael making a subtle, discreet bubble of protection around him.
Now, though, back in Paris, Michael had more pressing obligations, and Griffin watched as he led the group—Emily right beside him—toward where his parents waited.
For a moment, Fitz and Paula were lost to him in the little crowd of people, but he still heard Paula’s gasp of delight, her overloud “Oh, I can’t believe we’re finally here! ”
When he could see them all again, Paula had her arms around Emily, rocking a little, her smile huge and warm.
Fitz was shaking Robert’s hand, probably too hard, because he was that sort of guy, even if you’d already met him a hundred times.
Still, he wasn’t frowning, which was basically the same as him smiling, and even from only being able to see Michael’s back, he could tell that his friend was at ease—his posture not snapping unnaturally into his father’s, which sometimes happened when Michael was stressed and around his parents.
When Emily pulled away from Paula and waved Rosie over for an introduction, she so naturally stepped next to Michael’s body again that Griffin thought that maybe Layla Bailey really had fixed everything today.
Obviously, not him.
But everything else that mattered.
Layla was standing with Céline now, her hands clasped loosely in front of her, her smile close-lipped.
A perfectly patient posture, waiting her turn for introductions.
If she noticed that the ex stood on the other side of Fitz and Paula, his hand cupped protectively on Samantha’s hip, she didn’t betray even a whisper of awkwardness about it.
Maybe she had managed to fix herself, too.
He eyed the elevator bay. Wondered if he could cross to it, unnoticed, and slip away for a while.
Then he heard Rosie say, “Wait! Where’s the best man?”
He suppressed a groan. Stopped hanging back.
Fucking Rosie. Even if that milkmaid story from the train was sort of funny.
When he stepped up to the group, he knew he was braced—his body the polar opposite of a perfectly patient posture.
It was how he felt anytime he saw Fitz or Paula.
Not as frequently now, but not never, either.
Last year, not long after Michael had first called to tell Griffin about meeting Emily, he’d seen Fitz in the produce section of a twenty-five-miles-away Wegmans, ten minutes after store opening.
It was his usual haunt, haunted at a not usually busy time.
Fitz had stared at him across a display of unnaturally shiny waxed apples and said only, “Griffin,” as though a bare acknowledgment was all he could manage.
Then he’d walked away, still holding the empty plastic bag he hadn’t filled with apples.
“Griffin,” Fitz echoed now, probably choking that leather billfold he held. He flicked his eyes up, and added, “Still with the hat, I see.”
Fuck you, Griffin didn’t say.
“Nice to see you, Major,” he said as quickly as he could, before shifting his eyes to the side, tipping his chin down slightly in respectful but distant greeting. “Hello, Paula.”
“Hi, Griffin,” she said, and then—because Paula was always a better parent to Michael than Fitz was—she leaned into him, giving him a fleeting, cursory hug that made his whole left side ignite. She kept her face turned fully away.
As compared to the hug she gave Emily, it might as well have been a kick in the nuts.
Griffin could not claim, by any measure, to have a good sense of social cues, even after the last couple of days of being dropped into a deep end of them.
But in the aftermath of that half hug, he would have sworn that the temperature in the lobby changed—a chill wind that was impossible to ignore.
In the silence that followed—it could only have been a second, though to Griffin it felt like an eternity—he imagined the entire group of guests changed the channel on the little remote controls inside their brains.
No more Is Layla Looking at Jamie?
A new show, a surprise drop. The Why Do Michael’s Parents Hate Griffin? show.
“So!” Emily’s dad said, bringing his hands together in a muted clap, as though he was about to retune an orchestra. “Two more to our roster! We’re so happy to have you here, Fitz and Paula.”
Paula practically sagged with relief. “Paris, I can’t believe it!” she said, turning to Michael. “And this hotel! It’s beautiful!”
Is it? he thought idly, a strange and safe dissociation from being stuck here for the moment, doing his best not to make that chilly moment worse for Michael.
In his own mind, the hotel—which initially seemed like a comparatively comfortable option, with its larger rooms and more familiar amenities—had started to feel weirdly discordant, its luxury too bare and modern in comparison to the Paris on the other side of the doors.
A different Versailles, but a Versailles all the same.
His eyes drifted to Layla’s, still with the posture, but now, she watched him, her brow faintly crinkled. Probably, she had clicked over to the new show, too, but also, he wondered—or pretended, maybe, pretended that after seeing that palace, she was thinking the same thing as him.
“Now, I know you might want to rest,” Manon was saying to Fitz and Paula, in a teacher-type voice, and Layla’s gaze wandered automatically toward it, so he let his own grudgingly follow.
“But there’s this bistro in the 15th that Robert and I have always loved, very sweet, very Parisian!
And we thought you could join us tonight, if you feel up to it? ”
Griffin could tell Fitz did not feel up to it.
He recognized that thousand-yard stare from probably hundreds of dinners over at the Plackett house, Paula keeping the conversation going while Fitz methodically worked through his plate like he was eating mess hall food and not Paula’s consistently good cooking.
A petty satisfaction moved through him, picturing Fitz with that face on in one of the Paris restaurants Griffin had passed on his walks.
That first night, he’d seen people stuffed inside each one, spilling onto sidewalks with tables crammed together, sitting so close to strangers by necessity, no one seeming to mind.
Good luck with your thousand-yard stare there, Major, he thought.
Which was not a helpful attitude to have. For Michael’s sake.
“Well, we don’t want to impose!” said Paula. “If you already had a plan!”
A light rescue effort on behalf of the Major.
Something else Griffin could recognize. Fitz never came to school shit, if he could help it—not any of Michael’s baseball games, or his honors society stuff.
He was there at high school graduation, and that was it.
Somewhere in a shoebox Griffin had a picture of it, one his mom took.
Him and Michael flanking unsmiling Fitz, both of them gangly-looking in their caps and gowns.
“No, no,” Manon countered. “We hoped you’d arrive in time! I booked several tables, actually. I was hoping everyone could come!”
This, she pitched louder—to the whole gathered group, and Griffin’s gaze went immediately, again, to Layla.
Watched as her full, soft lips rolled inward, her lashes lowering, as though she needed a second to gather her strength.
Half of him had a mind to congratulate her: to tell her that this invitation was an obvious indicator of her success today.
The disastrous boat cruise not even a full twenty-four hours ago, and already Manon was unbothered about trying again, even if there was something obvious lingering between the best man and the groom’s parents.
But the other half of him thought nothing more than a steady refrain of Fuck, fuck, fuck, because now, the picture he conjured was of being shoved into one of those small restaurants with Fitz and Paula, Fitz not having the option for a thousand-yard stare and instead focusing on Griffin, an even worse sort of Look at me than he wanted to imagine.
It would absolutely ruin the fucking dinner; it would put Michael on edge; it would make Emily feel worse; it would probably undo every ounce of progress they’d made to the altar today.
Distantly, he heard a mixture of agreements and excuses—Rosie, in, probably because she’d have a new audience for her Marie Antoinette content; Damaris and Abram, out, too tired after Versailles; the ex, out, with another reservation for him and the girlfriend already made.
Up close, though, he could see Michael with that straight-up, stressed-out posture.
He and Emily were in; they had to be in.
He wouldn’t tell Griffin not to go, but also, he would’ve felt the chill, too.
Two days ago, that chill might’ve been another awkward thing he expected to deal with during his wedding week, but now, with Emily’s doubts in the mix, and at an impromptu cozy dinner…
I’ll pass, he thought to say, but he could not get the words out, could not imagine saying them in a way that didn’t sound like a blast of ice-cold wind, directed right at Fitz and Paula. He just stood, a cold column, freezing over slowly, completely unable to help his friend.
“Actually,” came Layla Bailey’s voice, not distant at all. Right next to him, in fact, though not touching. “I’m taking Griffin to dinner tonight.”