Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“It’s fine,” Griffin ground out, going to the right, going up, ignoring the hitch in his leg.
Only a few steps to a corner, where they could turn and duck out of sight from the patisserie.
They didn’t go any farther: enough for privacy, for quick access back to where they’d been.
Griffin set his shoulder against a freestone building, getting the weight off his leg.
“Man,” Michael said, not leaning against anything. “What are you doing, getting into it with my brother-in-law?”
Griffin clenched his teeth, unsure how to answer.
He had not planned to tell Michael about Layla, maybe not ever and definitely not yet, not because it wasn’t important but because he knew it was too important.
Certainly too important for this week, especially now, when Michael was under additional pressure.
He said, “He was rude about your croissants.”
Michael blew out a breath, rubbed a hand over his face. More frustration, but also, Griffin knew him well enough to hear something else in that huff of air—grudging laughter.
But when he lowered his hand again and looked at Griffin—right at him, Michael always looked right at him—his expression was fully serious.
“I heard him say something about Layla.”
Griffin lowered his head.
“Oh, Jesus,” Michael said. “I knew it.”
“How’d you know it?” Griffin said, his eyes snapping up.
“As soon as you said I wouldn’t say we’re friends. Yesterday morning. I knew it by the look on your face.”
“I don’t get looks on my face.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “You sure had a look on your face with Jamie. Like you’d shove him in one of those ovens just for saying her name.”
Griffin said nothing. Michael rubbed his face again. He so rarely got mad. When he did, he was like this—fidgety, slow to speak.
“Years,” Michael said finally. “I wait for years for you to show genuine interest in literally anything again. Work. A hobby. That fucking farm you bought.”
“The farm was for my mom,” he interrupted uselessly.
“A woman,” Michael went on. “Anything. And it’s my future brother-in-law’s ex-wife?”
Don’t call her that, Griffin thought.
“During the week of my wedding? When Em’s already…how she is right now?”
“It’s not—” Griffin broke off. He was not going to say It’s not serious.
Michael stared at him. “Did you sleep with her?”
Griffin’s only answer was a request. “Do not tell anyone.”
Michael blinked. “Well clearly the cat is out of the bag!” he almost-shouted, gesturing back toward the patisserie.
Griffin shook his head, knowing instinctively that Jamie MacKenzie was not going to spread this information around.
Out of respect for his ex-wife or out of jealousy over her, or some combination of both.
Griffin didn’t care. All he cared about was that Layla would not want this to become the story, especially if everyone took it the same way Jamie had.
Layla broken and lost, falling into bed with someone not good. Someone not reliable.
“He’s not going to tell anyone,” he said. “Mikey, listen, I’m sorry. I—”
Michael spun away, took two stomping steps, hands set low on his hips, before turning around and stomping back.
“Don’t be sorry!” he said, still in that almost-shout. He added, “I’m happy for you!” in a way that sounded like, I’m so fucking pissed at you, and Griffin knew it was both.
And if he was honest with himself, both were upsetting.
He didn’t want Michael pissed at him, but also—
He didn’t want Michael thinking this was something other than what it was.
He didn’t want himself thinking it was something other than what it was.
He was not good. He was not reliable. And he and Layla had both known that last night was not today.
That today, they had to go back to this.
He still couldn’t bring himself to say something like It’s nothing or It was one night or There’s nothing to be happy for me about, so he focused on what mattered most about this, and that was protecting Layla.
He was already thinking about going back into the patisserie and quietly threatening Jamie MacKenzie with grievous bodily harm if he even attempted to express his “worry” to her.
She would hate that.
“You can’t tell anyone,” he repeated. “No one. She would not want that. She would not want to…to become the focus of this. You can’t tell Emily.”
Michael huffed out another breath, no amusement in this one. Only exasperation.
“Just what I fucking need,” Michael said, turning away.
But then Griffin caught it—the addition of something else. A muttered exhalation. Griffin thought maybe he wasn’t supposed to hear it, but at the same time, Michael wasn’t stupid. Wasn’t reckless with his words. If he said it, some part of him wanted Griffin to hear it.
“Another secret to keep from her.”
An ominous prickle went through Griffin’s skin. Left side.
What the fuck does that mean? he wanted to say, but those words were still too fresh in his mouth from talking to Jamie, from some other held-back piece of knowledge about someone else he—
Well. He couldn’t think about that now. His skin was getting pricklier, warmer. The flour on his hands felt itchy.
“Mikey,” he said to his friend’s back. Sharp, even with the nickname. “What secret?”
It was a long wait. Griffin watched his friend’s shoulders move up and down, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“What secret?” Griffin repeated. Needles now. Hot.
Michael turned around. Did not look at Griffin’s face.
He said, “She doesn’t know about Sara Beth.”
For long seconds, Griffin could not think, just from the sound of her name, which he tried to never hear, even after all this time.
Because for so long, for years and years, that name had only been a scream to him: his own, first, desperate and searching and panicking, and then, later—after—Michael’s.
A sobbing howl, broken and disbelieving.
“You said you told her,” Griffin said eventually, his voice quaking. He thought distantly about how they were out on the street. Not a busy street, but not a desolate one, either. This was a different city than the one he’d been in yesterday. Steep and crooked and wrong.
“I did tell her,” Michael said. “I told her there was a house fire. That—that it’s how you got hurt. I told her a…a friend of ours died.”
“A friend of ours?” Griffin repeated. He could still feel the scalding pain along his skin, but also, he was strangely numb to it, his brain on fire now.
Michael looked devastated. Ashamed.
“You were going to marry her,” Griffin said.
He felt ashamed, too, saying that. It was too simple, really, for what Sara Beth had been.
Michael was going to marry her. He’d bought the ring the week before his graduation from the Air Force Academy.
He’d sent Griffin a picture of it. He’d already asked Sara Beth’s father, who was an absolute deadbeat, but still.
He’d known she would say yes. Everyone knew.
Because Michael and Sara Beth had loved each other for years.
Since ninth grade. High school sweethearts.
Kept it together long distance, all through college, a rarity.
Sara Beth practically lived at the Plackett house, from the time she turned seventeen.
Had chosen Paula to be her sponsor at her community college graduation, had been the only person that could ever get Fitz to laugh.
Had called Griffin “Griffy.”
She was sweet and sometimes annoying and Griffin had loved her because she was Michael’s girlfriend, Michael’s forever, but he had also loved her because she was herself. A good friend, a good person.
“How could you not tell her?” he said, and Michael winced.
“I wanted to,” Michael said. “I’ve tried. But Emily is…” He trailed off, and Griffin thought, He is not actually going to say it, is he?
“Young,” his friend finished, sounding utterly defeated.
Now Griffin turned away, a wild, short-stepped pacing that sent a shaft of pain through his leg. He had never wanted to lay hands on Michael in his life, but he did now, and he had to get far away enough—only a couple of steps, fine—for the feeling to pass.
When he turned back around, Michael was pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“Your parents never said anything to her?” Griffin asked, astonished.
Michael shook his head. “I asked them not to. I told them I would, eventually. I just wanted…a fresh start.”
Griffin tried not to wince. It wasn’t his place; he knew it wasn’t his place. Griffin had not lost his first love that night.
But he didn’t like thinking of Sara Beth as a person you tried to get a fresh start from.
Another thought struck him then. “What if I had said something?”
Michael stared at Griff like it was a stupid question.
“You don’t ever talk about it,” said Michael, and that was true. Griffin never, ever did.
So why did it feel like he had done something terrible to Emily?
Why did he feel he’d done something terrible to Layla?
He flashed back to himself, that first morning.
You said something to her, he’d said, standing at the threshold of Layla’s hotel room door, accusing her.
You need to fix this, he’d demanded in that shitty little courtyard, so separate from the reality of Paris he didn’t think he ever wanted to see it again.
The wedding has to happen, he’d said, and he was swamped with a sick, guilty feeling. How had that been any different than wanting a fresh start?
Had he ever even made an effort to see Emily as anything other than the just reward for Michael, for his friend who’d lost so much?
“You have to tell her,” Griffin said, his voice flat and unyielding. “You cannot keep this from her. You can’t marry her if—”
For the second time that morning, Griffin watched as someone’s leashed anger broke free. But this time, on the face of his very best friend, Griffin didn’t feel anything close to victory.
“Why don’t you tell me, Griff,” Michael said, taking a step forward, speaking through gritted teeth. “Why don’t you tell me about the last time you told the story of that night to someone?”
Griffin swallowed. He hurt all over now. The left side was nothing.
“No answer for that? No answer from a guy who’s spent years hiding himself away so he never has to tell anyone it happened?
Me, your mom, that’s it, and your mom probably only because she was your emergency fucking contact.
Otherwise you probably would’ve tried to get someone to convince her you were dead. You think it’s easy?”
Michael’s voice was raised now, his face reddened, his hands at his sides curled into fists.
“You think it’s easy to say, A girl I loved once died. My best friend almost died, too. Sometimes I think he did die, for all the ways he changed after?”
“Jesus,” Griffin said.
“You think it’s real easy, I bet, to explain to someone like Emily—Emily!
Who thinks people are fair and good and forgiving and flexible—that my fucking parents blame that same best friend for the fire that killed a girl they thought of as a daughter?
That they probably blame me a little, too, just for sticking by you? ”
“Mikey.”
“No!” Michael said, slicing an arm through the air, drawing a line as real and sharp and uncrossable as Griffin had ever seen.
“You don’t judge me for this. You don’t.
You, never leaving your house. Never getting out there again, in all these years.
And even if you did—” Michael broke off, something dawning on him now.
“Even now that you have—you still haven’t said, have you?
You didn’t tell Layla? You didn’t break up the best feeling you’ve had in forever to say, Let me tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me? ”
He didn’t know how Michael was managing to make this a searing indictment—not when telling Layla would have been disastrous for this wedding, for Michael and Emily.
But damn if he didn’t succeed.
Damn if Griffin didn’t feel like the worst, most dishonest person in the world.
He shook his head. A minute movement. Barely an admission, and Michael’s expression shifted into something Griffin hadn’t ever seen on his friend’s face.
A curl of his lips like a sneer, even though his eyes were wet.
Griffin thought of Sara Beth, of Michael’s grief.
Of all the days Michael sat by Griffin’s hospital bed, never once blaming him for what happened. Clinging to the person he had left.
You should have been looking at me like this all along, Griffin thought.
You should have never let me be your best man.
And maybe, for once, Michael thought it, too. Because before he turned to go, he pointed a warning finger at Griffin and spoke, even though his voice shook.
“I’ll keep your secret, Griffin,” he said. “And you’ll keep on keeping mine.”