Chapter Eighteen
Day four dawned too much like day two.
Griffin lying in his all-wrong hotel bed, barely asleep, barely having slept. His body an open wound. Too much pain, too much trying to walk it off.
And Michael, knocking on his door.
Well, talking through his door. That was different.
“Griff,” his friend was saying. “You okay in there?”
When he sat up—quick, to get it over with—he let the differences from day two become clearer to him. Yeah, Michael talking, but also the light coming through the sheer curtains he hadn’t bothered covering with the heavier drapes, and the muted later-morning noises he could hear through the window.
Two kinds of pain this time.
“Fuck,” he muttered, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing. Another difference: He had not been under the covers. He had not even taken off his clothes from last night.
Don’t think about it, he told himself, but that was fucking crazy.
He was, of course, already thinking about it; he had not stopped thinking about it.
Her in the back seat of that car, alone, her lips still swollen from what they’d done in that doorway.
Her before that, standing in front of him on the street, slowly working out what had happened.
He’d tried to head it off, her realizing it. He’d said the meanest thing he could think of in the moment.
Calling them friends.
He thought of her saying the word amicable, and the one kind of pain, the pain that had nothing to do with his body, was almost unbearable.
He wanted to lie back down and die.
“Griff,” Michael repeated, muffled through the door, his voice pitched into a different register of concern now. “Open this door or I’m gonna get one of the hotel employees up here.”
Griffin blew out a breath and stood.
It figured. Michael had never let him lie down and die, even when he wanted to most.
“I’m coming,” he said.
When he opened the door, he was confronted with another difference: Michael looking way less hangdog than he had on day two. Not settled, not easy.
But not damp-eyed and terrified, either.
As soon as he took in Griffin, though, his brow wrinkled in concern.
“Did you sleep in your clothes?”
Griffin shrugged. The lie would be to say he’d slept at all.
“You look like shit,” Michael added.
“What’s new?” Griffin muttered, backing away from the door, wishing he’d done more to cover up the imprint of his body on the still-made-up bed.
He reached up, brushed a hand over the back of his head, felt the hair there, flattened and messy.
He must’ve been lying still for a long time, which probably was not going to help the other kind of pain, the body kind.
“You forget about this morning?” Michael said as the door closed behind him.
Griffin’s room here was big, the biggest they offered at this hotel, but this morning, his friend’s presence felt crowding, overwhelming.
He should’ve gone to the church again, instead of coming back here at dawn.
He could’ve stood in front of his bell tower. He liked it there.
Griffin moved to the nightstand, picked up a bottle of water he should’ve drank hours ago.
Physically, he’d done pretty much every wrong thing since the doorway.
Hadn’t hydrated enough, hadn’t rested when his body was telling him to, hadn’t done any of his damned stretches or put on any of his silicone patches, had stayed in the same position for too long, once he was lying down.
He would probably be a wreck today.
And that was so unfair to Michael.
He swallowed, cleared his throat. “No, sorry. Just—uh, had one of those nights.”
Michael nodded, brief and knowing: not only about what one of those nights meant for Griff, but also about Griff not wanting to say more about it.
Except one of those nights was only half-true. One of those nights was only one kind of pain.
“Layla sent me up,” Michael said.
Oh, Jesus Christ. It was so hard not to react to that: the searing, other-pain of it. He chugged more of the water he didn’t want, thought of Layla saying, You had water, which was exactly what he deserved for the lie. For saying something so cruel and untrue about the reason he’d kissed her.
“We were all in the lobby waiting,” Michael continued, settling onto the too-small couch in front of the room’s wall of windows. “After a bit she said I might want to check on you.”
Griffin winced.
“Discreetly,” Michael added. “No one heard.”
Holy hell, it hurt to have hurt her. All that, and she’d sent someone up to check on him. She’d done it quietly, unobtrusively. She’d probably managed to distract everyone—Fitz and Paula, to be sure—from noticing he hadn’t shown.
“Give me five minutes,” Griffin said, because the least he could do now was be good for Michael. “I’ll get a shower and get down there.”
Michael shook his head, leaned forward to pick up the remote off the side table for the television Griffin never turned on. “Take your time. I told them to go ahead, that we’d catch up.”
Griffin frowned. Thought of two-days-ago Michael, terrified of losing Emily.
After a heavy silence, Michael looked up to find Griffin watching him, and must’ve read his mind.
“Things are good,” he said reassuringly. “Yesterday—it was really good. Em was so much more herself as the day went on. And the dinner with our parents, that turned out good, too.”
Turned out, Griffin repeated to himself. A speaking phrase, he thought, one Michael probably didn’t even realize he’d used. Turned out, once you weren’t involved.
“Everyone got along, though Rosie was halfway to giving my dad a heart attack, talking about her nipple piercing right there at the table.” He chuckled, then grew serious again.
“And after, Em and I got out for a while on our own. Went to this other little bistro, had wine and dessert. Walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower again, to see it all lit up. Really talked, you know?”
Yeah, I fucking know, Griffin thought. The chocolate soufflé, the crème br?lée flavor on Layla’s lips when he’d kissed her.
“She slept over,” Michael said, a little bashful. He’d always been like that—a gentleman.
I put her in a car alone, Griffin wanted to say. I hurt her feelings, right before I did.
“You should thank Layla,” he said instead. Tried to make it sound casual by crossing to the armoire, pulling out a fresh set of clothes to take with him into the bathroom.
“She’s great, right?” Michael said, which Griffin tried not to hate.
She was great. It wasn’t like he would ever be the sole possessor of that knowledge.
He pretended he was looking for a specific shirt, when in fact all of his daytime shirts were pretty much the same: same brand, same soft fabric, same cut, no tags, with seams in places that didn’t chafe.
“Em really trusts her,” Michael went on. “Last night, she told me that Layla always had a way of putting things into perspective.”
I know, he thought again, remembering that moment last night when they first sat down, when he felt cramped and stared-at and strange. Layla telling him everything she knew about the street they sat on, like her whole life depended on talking him through it.
“And she’s got a way with people,” Michael continued.
At some point, he’d flicked on the television and muted it, his eyes on the screen as he flipped channels.
The thing was, Michael was good with people, too, but more specifically, he was good with Griffin, which meant he was going to look at other things in case Griff had to get his clothes off before going into the en suite; he was going to talk about things he thought were totally innocuous so Griff wouldn’t worry about someone seeing his skin, even if that someone had seen it at its worst.
Griffin grunted, stacking his chosen clothes into a tidy pile he would set on the bathroom counter.
“This morning she was chatting away with Samantha, easy as anything.”
She lies, Griffin thought. I don’t know why any of you don’t see that she lies.
He’d told her it was a mistake.
“And yesterday, with Mom and Dad, she…”
He trailed off, and out of the corner of his eye, while he grabbed a pair of socks, Griff saw Michael cringe. He could finish the sentence for him, way harsher than Michael ever would: She knew to get you out of the way for the night.
“Anyway,” Michael said, his voice more falsely cheerful now. “It’s good you’ve made friends with her.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re friends,” Griffin ground out. God, this day was going to be hell.
Michael looked over at him, expression confused. “Oh yeah? She said you had a lot of fun yesterday. A really good dinner.”
Griffin’s hands clutched at his little pile of clothes. He could practically hear her saying it. So pleasant and calm and false, like how she talked to Robert and Manon, like how she talked to the ex, like how she talked to Samantha, easy as anything.
“I’m gonna get a shower,” he said, wishing he was alone. The room felt way too small for him and all this fucking feeling he had. “You should go ahead. Get a cab, catch up to Emily. I’ll be right behind you.”
Michael unmuted the TV, resettled himself. “Nah, I’ll wait. Fifteen fewer minutes at another museum won’t hurt, I’ll tell you that.”
Griffin clenched his teeth, annoyed, as he went into the en suite and closed the door behind him.
At first, he thought it was because Michael hadn’t taken his not-so-subtle hint at wanting to be alone.
That had been a thing between them sometimes, back when Griffin was in the thick of his recovery, when most days Michael was the absolute last person he wanted to see, or to be seen by.
But as he shucked last night’s clothes, waiting for the shower to warm to the temperature he’d spent twenty minutes two days ago learning how to get right, the exact temperature he needed not to want to scream—fucking hotel showers, why were they so complicated—he realized he wasn’t annoyed about not being left alone.
He was annoyed about that museum comment.