Michael turned to face me. “End what?”
“This joke where the hot girl is into me and then flips out. Ha ha. It was funny. Now send her home.”
Michael glanced at the girl and then shook his head. “David, I don’t know that girl.”
“What about her friend who dropped her off and his plan to talk to you later?” I felt one eyebrow rise, as I asked further, “And how did she know who we were?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of her crazy talk, or her boyfriend likes garage bands.”
“Then why did she flip out on me?”
“The hot girl’s a few donuts short of a dozen.” He twirled his finger by his temple. “Insane in the membrane. I mean, why else would she be into you instead of me?”
I balled my hand into a fist and punched him as hard as I could in the shoulder. “You’re stupid. And this joke has gone on long enough.”
Michael jumped to the side and laughed.
With a frown, I walked back to where Layla sat in the sand and bent down to her. “Listen, you did a great job of freaking me out. I’m sure Michael is thrilled. I don’t get it, but I’m sure I will laugh and laugh about this night one day.”
She turned to face me, her eyes full of tears. “What are you talking about?”
“Michael set this all up as a joke, right?”
“I wish it were a joke.” She swallowed and rubbed her eyes. Either she was a really good actress or her tears were real.
A tinge of sympathy softened my tone with her. “I’m not sure what all this is about, but is there anyone I can call to come get you?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll just call a cab.” She glanced around in the sand and then back at me. “Shoot, I left my purse back at…” Then another look came over her, like she was realizing something else. “Even if I had it, who would I call? My credit cards wouldn’t work here.” She stared into space and then back at me. Her face contorted in anger as she jumped up and shoved me into the sand on my butt. “You did this to me!” She stood over me with her finger pointed at my face. “I don’t care what you thought. I am not her. I am not Layla.”
She grabbed her shoes and raced down the beach, kicking sand up behind her as she went. The guys stared after her while I stood.
Michael walked over to me. “Told you she was crazy. We gotta get back and finish our set.”
I watched her run until she was too far down the beach for me to see.
Layla
EACH DEEP BREATH I SUCKED made my lungs burn like fire, but I kept running. Broken shells mixed with the sand cut the bottoms of my feet and yet I kept going. This wasn’t happening. It was darker since I’d moved down the beach, away from the hotels, but I couldn’t concentrate on that. My mind was a jumbled mess. The waves crashed hard to my left, and the sea foam crackled like breakfast cereal in milk. A wave stretched its wet tongue and lapped at my hurting feet. I stepped in a hole in the sand, and my foot twisted. I dropped my shoes and put my hands out to brace my fall and grunted as my body made contact with the prickly shells.
I flipped over and grabbed my shoes and held them overhead as the sound of another wave alerted me that it was approaching. I bolted up. I’d just had my hair done for the trip. The hair and the shoes were gifts to myself from my bonus. I stood, but my legs buckled. I made it to my feet. I wasn’t sure how far I had run, but it must have been farther than my normal cardio workout. The skin on my knees burned from the impact with the broken shells as I limped up to dry soft sand near the marsh grass and took a seat.
I hugged my knees and stared out into the darkness. The white foam glowed in the moonlight. This couldn’t really be happening. This was a nightmare. It wasn’t real. I closed my eyes and tried to take control of it, like my grandma taught me to do when my dreams became frightening. She told me to realize it was just a dream and that I was in charge of it. When I’d had enough, I could take to the sky and fly away. I sat there thinking, this is just a dream. Time to fly away. But nothing happened. I’d tried it the night she died, praying it was just a bad dream, but it wasn’t. I might not be able to fly away from all my troubles, but I never let circumstances control me. I rubbed at my legs. They stung and I could feel trickles of blood.
The first tear pushed its way down my cheek, against my will. I swatted it away angrily. I wasn’t a crier, not since I was a child and realized it didn’t fix anything. No one ever came to the rescue. Crying got you teased and wasted time. I let my mind race in every direction that could possibly fix this, but it all came back blank. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do to fix this. I glanced up to the sky, “I guess this is a good time to ask You for help. It’s been a while. If you will just get me out of this, I won’t ask you for another thing. I promise.”
David
I RAN THE SOUNDBOARD UNTIL the guys finished, but spent the whole time looking over my shoulder to see if she’d come back. There was an eeriness about meeting the girl. Sort of like Déjà vu but not… since I’d never met the girl before. It was almost like the feelings I got when I needed one of my notebooks. Sort of a supernatural tingle in the soul. Like a message meant just for me had arrived, and I had to capture it before it left.
I grabbed my notebook—I always kept one with me—and wrote it down:
Layla April 3, 1994 Knew about Cheerwine. Either a joke or I attract crazy chicks.
I tucked my notebook under my arm and started cleaning up my soundboard area. Everything had to go in the storage closet that the motel let us use. The drums, microphones, soundboard, and speakers went in there. Michael, Mark and Travis kept their guitars with them in their motel rooms.
The guys had gone across the street to a twenty-four-hour pancake house. I was about to join them, but had to double check that everything was locked up. Good thing since one of the mics and a speaker were still out by the pool. Those guys were the artists, and I was the responsible one. I grabbed it and was heading to the storage closet when I glanced up and saw her.
I froze and blinked, trying to get her into focus. Then I remembered my glasses were in my pocket. I reached in and placed them back on my nose. No wonder I’d spent the last part of the night squinting at the switches. She was disheveled. The wind had tangled and matted her hair, but it only made her more appealing in the way messy hair did in a guy’s mind. “Um…hey.”
“Hey.” She wiped her red eyes and sniffed before pushing her hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have any money. I don’t even have my driver’s license with me.” She shrugged. “I’m stuck and I don’t know anyone to ask for help…except you.”
I finished walking the mic to the closet and shut it and checked the lock as I spoke to her. “Sure. What do you need?”
She shook her head. “Just a place to stay for now. I’m still not convinced my ride has really dumped me off here. He might come back. Maybe he had issues with his…transportation, and I made the wrong assumption. Or this could be some kind of test. I don’t know. But I’ll pay you back when this is all over, I promise. I take care of myself. I always have.”
A beautiful woman was asking to stay with me. There was still the chance that this was a trick because I seriously doubted she was as crazy as Michael suggested. Trick or not, I’d help her. “Yeah, sure. I’m headed over to the pancake house to join up with the guys. You hungry?”
She swallowed. “I hate to put you out more.”
“Guys buy ladies dinner all the time. No sweat.”
She smiled. “But I promise I will pay you back. I don’t earn my spaghetti dinners. I pay for them myself.”
I frowned as I tried to understand what she meant. “No problem. Pay me when you can.” I motioned for her to follow me and took my notebook out from under my arm.
She grinned. “One of your notebooks?”
I held the black college-ruled spiral notebook up and half grinned. “Yeah, it’s for my ideas.”
“Right becau
se you’re like Philo T. Farnsworth.”
I stopped and faced her. “What?”
She nodded. “You know…Philo T. Farnsworth. The inventor of the television.”
I froze again and swallowed. Michael knew a lot about me, but our conversations centered on music and girls. He didn’t know about things like who Philo T. Farnsworth was. “Yes, I know who he is.” I thought about the guys across the street. I didn’t imagine a single one of them would recognize the name. They could hardly pass a class without my help.
“Philo would have visions of the things he was to invent. The calculations would run through his head, almost explaining themselves to him. He was fourteen when he got the vision for how the television would work. He wrote it out at school that day, almost immediately, taking up two chalkboards trying to explain it to his teacher and class.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Goosebumps prickled along the back of my neck, just like the first time I ever heard about his story at science camp. I felt an instant kinship with him.
Her dark eyes warmed as she looked at me. “You’re like Philo. You’re going to invent things.”
Her stare pierced mine, like she could see into me and knew all my secrets, even the ones I wasn’t privy to yet. “You’re wrong. I’m going to be a nice boring dentist.”
She smiled as she shook her head. “No, you won’t”
“How do you know these things about me? My drink was easy. That Michael knows. The visions—I don’t share with anyone.”
Layla grinned, but it was a sad grin. “I just know things.”
“People don’t just know things like that about people they’ve just met.”
“Maybe I do.”
“It isn’t logical.”
“Not everything in life is built on pure logic.”
“Yes, it is.”
She shook her head. “No. Sorry, but there’s a whole realm of the unseen, and I think on some level we all know it exists. Some call it God, assuming it is something bigger than they are and seek to worship it. Others assume it’s all smaller than them and try to conquer it through scientific study. But we all know something unseen is there, and we know we need to find it. Because when we do, we will know the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
“Why we are here?”
I stared into her eyes. I didn’t know what to say. The whole thing with her was becoming a puzzle. The more she said or did, the less I had figured out. My stomach growled loud enough for her to hear. Nothing was making sense, and I was getting hungry. I shook my head and placed my hand on the small of her back to push her ahead of me toward the exit of the pool area. “Are you a philosophy student?”
“Nope.”
“Psychology then?” I was trying to get some kind of read off her.
“Never went to college, not really.”
“What does not really mean?”
“I took a certification course at a community college to become an insurance agent. I work in the lower end of the office right now, but I’m working my way up.”
My eyes widened as I thought of what my mom would think. She had certain ideas about who was suitable for me to date. Community college certification was not what she had in mind. She planned on grandchildren who qualified to be members of Mensa.
I opened the door and motioned for Layla to enter first.
She stopped and looked at the door and then at me holding it. She cocked her head and smiled. “Thank you.”
We walked into the pancake house, and I found the guys at a large table looking at menus while talking to the waitress.
“You were supposed to wait for me.” I pulled up another chair from a table beside them for Layla.
“We got hungry.”
Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “She came back?”
“She came back.” I nodded and turned my attention to the menu, hoping he’d drop it.
“Are you going to introduce us to the Clapton hater?” Joey asked.
Layla turned to face me, her eyebrows coming together. “What’s he talking about?”
“The way you freaked out during the Eric Clapton song.”
“I don’t even know who that is?” She shook her head.
The guys pushed away from the table. A couple of them slapped the table top in all of the guffawing. “What planet are you from to not know who Eric Clapton is?”
She shook her head. “Never heard of him.”
Michael leaned in. “Then why did you run off when he called you Layla?”
She swallowed and glanced at me before answering. “I just thought he meant something else and was upset when I realized that my ride had left me with no way back. I freaked out…okay? That’s all.”
“Leave her alone, guys.”
The waitress came and took our orders. “Are these all on one ticket or separate?”
“She and I are on a ticket. The rest are separate.”
Layla ordered water and a Greek salad, and I got a burger with the works.
“So where are you from, Layla?” Michael called out from the other side of the guys.
“California.”
“Why in the world would you take a ride with a guy from California to Myrtle Beach? You have beaches there.”
“No, I flew to South Carolina for a business conference and dropped in on a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, and he brought me here… and left me.” She glared at me again, the way she had on the beach.
“Sounds like a jerk.”
She eyed me as I said it. “Really, he isn’t. None of this is like him at all.”
“Why don’t you just let us drive you to the airport? Did you fly in at Columbia or Charleston?”
“I flew into Myrtle Beach.”
I shook my head and started playing with the dessert advertisement on the table. Michael should have given her a better story because there was no airport in Myrtle Beach. Ha, caught him. Again I said, “Why don’t you just let us drive you to the Myrtle Beach airport then, so you can fly back home?”
“Because…things are different now, and I can’t get into it. I’m hoping there’s been a mistake, and he will come back for me.”
“And until then?” Michael asked.
There was a fear in her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“She’ll stay with me.” I answered for her. “Until he comes back or she can make other arrangements.”
“Where’s she going to stay? In our bathtub?” Michael laughed.
I hadn’t thought of that, but then I did think of something and grinned. “No. Remember we made a pact?” Ha, his joke could come back and bite him in the rear.
Michael’s expression was blank at first as he looked at me. Then he realized what I was saying. “No, this doesn’t count.”
My smile widened as I put my arm around Layla. “Oh, yes it does. You said if either of us picked up a girl, the other would stay with the band for the night.” I raised a single eyebrow. “It was your idea.”
“Yeah, but I was supposed to be the one who had a girl stay with me.”
I only shrugged and glanced over at Layla. She bit her lip and took a sip of her water.
*
WE WALKED BACK TO THE motel. I opened the door for Layla, but Michael scooted by me instead.
“You’re sharing a room with the other guys, remember?”
He turned to face me and gave me a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I remember. Just let me grab a few things.”
We’d just arrived that afternoon, so all he had to do was grab his bag and guitar case and come right back out. He mumbled something unintelligible as he made his way to the guys’ room. I motioned Layla in and closed the door. I leaned my back against it and looked at her. She turned to face me with a half-hearted grin that didn’t reach her eyes. I swallowed and ran my fingers through my hair like I did when I was nervous and then pushed my glasses back on my nose.
I let out a breath and summed up the situation. I was alone in a motel ro
om with a beautiful woman for the very first time in my life. I gulped and looked at the two beds, then back at her. I knew nothing would happen, so I worked hard to get my thoughts in check so my breathing could follow.
“Inhaler.”
“Right.” I took a puff and got my mind in order. Then I made my way to the mini fridge and got out a Cheerwine. “Want one?”
She shook her head, so I turned to face the wall and threw my head back for a big gulp. The guys had the room with something stronger in the fridge. I got up my courage and turned back around. “Listen, I’m not going to try anything–I promise. I would have agreed to stay with the guys too, but Michael wouldn’t have gone for that so I pulled the pact card on him. I knew he couldn’t say anything since it was his idea.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “I understand.”
“Why don’t you go through my bag and see what might fit you to sleep in, and you can shower first.”
“Okay.” She nodded, looked through my bag, and pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of boxers and headed for the bathroom.
I went ahead and brushed my teeth while I waited and then looked around the room and realized she would need a toothbrush. I left and walked down to the front desk to see if they had any. When I got back to the room, she was hanging her black dress on the hanging rack. I had to stop where I was and swallow. I got a view of her backside, and her toned and tanned legs were the first place my eyes went. My boxers looked much better on her than on me. She turned to face me, and I remembered to breathe, and that women prefer eye contact. I swallowed hard and looked into her face.
It was just as lovely with the makeup washed away. She was finger combing her hair that looked darker when wet.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Ummm…I…ummm…” I was trying to form words. I held the toothbrush out. “I got you a toothbrush.”
She smiled and made her way to me. “Thank you.” She took it from me and backed away. “I tried not to use all the hot water.”
Forever Layla: A Time Travel Romance Page 2
