Chapter Twenty-Eight
He knew she would come.
He could tell himself that he wasn’t waiting for her, that he was only taking a little time to breathe through the reality of what he’d done, and then he would get up and move. A silicone patch would be good, staying limber would be good, because he felt a bad night coming on.
But he knew he wouldn’t do any of that.
Not until she came.
So he sat on the small couch, more uncomfortable than he could have conceived of, his back curved, his left leg stretched as long as he could manage.
He thought of Michael sitting right here.
Only yesterday. Stalling on going to the museum, floating on a brief balloon of confidence about Emily that Griffin had let the air out of.
Now, he had done more than let the air out.
He had basically shot his best friend out of the sky.
When the knock finally came, he stood slowly, creaking and screaming and shivering on the inside, waiting for his left leg to get right beneath him.
He thought of how familiar this was: being on one side of the door, knowing she was on the other.
He thought of how his mind was racing and his heart was pounding.
Déjà vu.
He thought of the big difference.
He thought of how—unlike that morning—this time, it was something he said.
“Griff?”
Her voice was muffled through the door, but he still tried to read something from it. Griff was a good sign, but he couldn’t tell anything else. Whether what he’d said to Emily was something she already knew. Whether she knew more than that by now.
It didn’t matter. He was going to tell her himself; he’d already decided that.
He just needed to tell the person who most deserved—most needed—to know, first.
He opened the door.
She looked beautiful. The shirt she’d been wearing the night he first kissed her, the skin of her neck and chest showing, no adornment except for the perfume he knew she was wearing.
Her hair was down, curled softly; her makeup light and lovely, her lips done with something that made them berry pink and full.
When he had come to her room that first morning, she’d been so disheveled—mascara in the crescent moons beneath her eyes, her hair a wild tangle, her hotel robe haphazardly belted.
Beautiful, both ways.
“Hi,” she said, and he didn’t bother replying. He stepped back from the door, holding it open for her as she crossed the threshold. He should’ve used the time to think of exactly how to start this.
But he also probably should’ve known by now that she would: that she was calm in a crisis, efficient in her movements, good at asking good questions and giving necessary information.
She went straight to the terrible couch and sat. It seemed the perfect size for her. She looked up at him and said, “Michael and Emily left the open house.”
He stood, still near the door, his hands shoved in his pockets. He nodded.
“Rosie’s handling it,” she added. “She said she’d distract everyone for as long as she could.”
Another nod. He had been distantly aware of Rosie standing there, when he’d gone to Emily, but only distantly. He did not want to see anyone else when he did it, for fear of losing his nerve. Not Michael, not Fitz or Paula, not even Layla. Especially not Layla, maybe.
He kept his gaze tight. At one point, making his way across what felt like an endless room, he’d thought: I’m moving like a monster. I’m moving like I’m stalking prey.
“Can you tell me what you said to her?”
It was a few seconds before he could make himself move. He did not go to the bed, because sitting on that bed, right now, in Layla’s presence, when he was about to tell her this, felt sacrilegious. Like watching a church burn.
So he went to the weird little desk. Took off his hat, tossed it on top of the hotel-branded notepad. Pulled out the chair, turned it toward her. Then he sat, comforted somewhat by the hard, unforgiving surface beneath him. An upholding surface, if not a comfortable one.
He looked straight at her.
“I told her that she needed to ask Michael about Sara Beth.”
She didn’t speak right away, but he could see her mind working. Deciding what to say, what to ask next, like a good doctor does. With difficult patients, patients with multiple injuries—patients like him—you sometimes had to be strategic.
“That’s your friend from high school,” Layla said. “Who also died in the fire?”
He tipped his head down. A yes.
“Emily knew that,” she said. “She knew there had been a fire, and that someone close to you both died.”
“She was Michael’s girlfriend,” Griffin said abruptly, cracking open the gates.
“Since ninth grade, his girlfriend. It’s not really the right word.
He was going to propose to her. They would’ve—” He broke off, back then and right now colliding in his mind, two unfulfilled futures for Michael. Him involved in both.
“They would’ve gotten married,” he finally said. “They definitely would have gotten married.”
“Why didn’t Michael tell her?”
A bad question, he thought. A rare miss. You could only really ever ask a patient to explain themselves: their own pain, their own side effects.
“It’s hard to talk about,” he answered. For himself. But probably for Michael, too.
He could tell that answer was unsatisfying for her—that there was a part of her that was angry at Michael, wanting answers from Michael for what he had done or not done when it came to Emily.
But Griffin could not answer for Michael.
He wouldn’t even try. He had spoken enough for Michael tonight, one sentence said to Emily that would probably lose him his best friend, and he could not bring himself to say more about whatever Michael’s motivations were. Whatever his demons and fears were.
His own were enough.
“She was my friend, too,” he said, loath to give Layla enough time to formulate another question.
He wanted it over with. “Sara Beth. When Michael met her, we were fourteen years old. Of course I was a little prick about it at first, ragging on him for how he mooned over her. Rushed off after classes so he could wait outside of whatever room she was in, bought her a carnation for every class period on the Valentine’s Day fundraiser.
I was jealous, I can admit it. Because before that, it’d been me and Michael, for a lot of years. He’s…” He trailed off, inhaled.
“Your family,” Layla finished for him, and he blew out his breath. Of course she would get that.
“But Sara Beth, she didn’t have any time for me being like that.
She was like me. Only lived with her mom, not much money, spent a lot of time alone growing up.
Her mom was…I guess you’d say, a little more troubled than mine.
So she was going to make her own family, and if I was a part of Michael’s, then I was a part of hers. She was like that.”
Scrappy, he had called her once: eleventh grade, homecoming photos, Paula holding the phone, Fitz looking typically frustrated. Posture, Fitz’d snapped at Michael, and she’d called back to him immediately.
I don’t want him looking like he has a stick up his butt in this picture, Sarge!
“Fitz and Paula really loved her. She could say things to them—Fitz especially—that no one else could get away with. She was good for them. They were a happier family with Sara Beth. Like they needed her. Like she completed them.”
He watched Layla close when he said this, knowing it would probably hit her forcefully, given her own history. And it was hard not to think now of Sara Beth, still alive. It was hard not to think of what she and Layla would make of each other.
Don’t, he scolded himself. Don’t think about things that can’t happen. Focus on the things that did.
“Fitz and Paula got married young. Fitz was nineteen, Paula eighteen. So that was…it was almost like they thought Michael waited too long to ask her. They probably would’ve liked it if Michael and Sara Beth got married before he went off to the Air Force Academy, and she could live with them while he was there. ”
Layla did not like that. He could tell by the way she shifted on the couch.
“But Sara Beth wouldn’t have said yes to a proposal then.
She didn’t have any insecurities about Michael.
About whether they’d make it. She was going to work, go to community college part-time, save up money.
She knew when he came back, her life would be a little more tied to his.
Five years of active duty after he graduated, that was his commitment.
She would eventually be moving wherever, to be a part of that. They had time.”
It hurt to say that part. He felt it, a slicing shock along his left side that made him jerk in his chair, Layla startling in response, half standing from the couch immediately.
He held up a hand. “I’m okay.”
But his own time was running out, he could feel it: ten minutes, maybe twenty, until he would have to get up and move. Until this got bad enough that he probably wouldn’t be able to say much at all for a while.
“You know I went to Rensselaer for school. Pretty lucky, it not being too far from where we grew up, and I had a good scholarship. My first year, I had a housing waiver so I could live at home with my mom, offset the cost a bit. But then, you know. I got more into it. More involved. Sophomore year, I was already in the lab working on the project that eventually turned into…”
He trailed off, flicked his wrist, sort of at the room he sat in, huge with a view, a drop in the bucket, really, nothing he couldn’t afford.
He cleared his throat, ashamed. One lucky break after another, that’s what Rensselaer had been: the right school, the right mentor, the right game of pretend in his mind, the right time.
A fucking fluke, really, and then another one, the worst fluke of all.
That he’d lived, and Sara Beth hadn’t.