“I know you don’t want to think about work, but this house is huge. There are so many potential backdrops for photos. Just give me two hours with the camera, and then I’ll leave you alone about it until Wednesday.”
“Why Wednesday?”
“That’s when we leave.”
Her voice is delicate, but those words feel dense and unintentionally harsh. We’ll be leaving Willow here alone in just a matter of days. I don’t really want to go until Willow is ready to find answers, because for some reason, I need answers. I don’t feel like I’ll be able to function out in the real world unless I can somehow make sense of everything that’s happened in this house.
I take a seat across from Layla. “What do you think about staying a little longer?”
Her shoulders drop a little. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I’m getting a lot of songwriting done. I can probably finish the album here if I have a little more time.”
“I haven’t heard the piano once.”
“I haven’t needed it. I’ve been writing lyrics,” I lie.
She sighs and drops her phone to the table. “Not to be mean, but it’s boring here, Leeds. I’m going stir crazy. And the boredom is making me tired. I feel exhausted every day. It’s like all I do is sleep.”
I know that exhaustion is my fault, but I still don’t let up. “What if we compromise?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Depends on the compromise.”
“I’ll give you three hours today to pose me however you want for however many pictures you want to take. And you give me three more days to work on my album.”
She seems attracted to that compromise. “I can even pose you in the rain?”
I nod.
A smile manages to break through her hangover. “Deal.” She leans across the table and kisses me. “You won’t regret this.”
She’s wrong. I already regret it. I’ve regretted almost every decision I’ve made at her expense since we got here.
Yet . . . I’ve done nothing to stop myself.
Layla maybe got four hours of sleep last night. Combine that with a three-hour photo shoot, a hangover, and very little food today, and I have no idea how she held out until eight o’clock before going upstairs to crash.
It’s almost ten now, and there’s been no sign of Willow. I’ve tried asking her if she’s here, but she hasn’t responded. Not even with the laptop.
I’ve spent the last hour working out new lyrics. If I’m going to lie to Layla and tell her music is what’s keeping me in this house, I at least need to create said music.
I started writing a song about two weeks ago called “No Vacancy,” so I’ve spent most of my time tonight reworking the lyrics.
It’s been storming for four hours now. The forecast extended the rain to a third day, which concerns me. Layla seems content when she gets her pool days, but I don’t know what mood three days of being stuck inside this house will put her in.
“What are you doing?”
I jump so violently my chair scoots back two feet. I grab at my chest and blow out a breath when I see Willow standing in the doorway. I didn’t hear her walking down the stairs because of the thunder, so my reaction to her unexpected appearance makes her laugh.
“You look like you just saw a ghost,” she says with a wink. She walks straight to the refrigerator. “Seriously, Leeds. Your girlfriend has an eating disorder. I’m worried about her.” She grabs a plate of leftovers from the dinner I cooked earlier. Stuffed baked potatoes and Caesar salad. Layla only ate the salad, so I saved the baked potato for Willow.
I close out my document and then shut my laptop. Willow puts the plate in the microwave and then turns around to face me. “What was today all about? With the pictures, and the uncharacteristically vain photos?”
The entire time Layla was forcing me to pose today, I wondered where Willow was. If she was watching or not. I was hoping she wasn’t.
“Nothing.” I don’t want to talk about the compromise I made with Layla, and I especially don’t want to talk about the embarrassing fact that every time Layla posts a shirtless selfie of me, I get twice as many downloads on my music.
“Are you like a model or something?” Willow’s voice is playful, but I still don’t feel like talking about it. I’d almost rather her dive into Layla’s thoughts just so I don’t have to explain it to her.
“There’s this thing . . . social media.”
“I know what social media is,” she says.
“Of course you do. Anyway. Layla is working to monetize my platform.”
“So you’re an influencer?”
I lean back in my seat, perplexed. “How do you even know what that is?”
“I watch TV. I know a lot of things. Are you famous?”
“No.”
“But you want to be?” The microwave timer goes off. Willow grabs her plate and walks over to the table.
“Layla is hoping my music career takes off, so I humor her. Gives her something to focus on.”
“What if she’s right? What if you become famous?” Willow says.
“That’s my fear.”
She waves her fork in the air after taking a bite. “Is that how you can afford to stay here? Money from social media?”
“No. I only have three songs out. But I have money. An inheritance.”
I expect her to make a comment about that, but Willow just eyes me curiously for a moment. “Are you just playing aloof, or do you really not want the music career to work out?”
“I’m undecided. I love writing music and I want people to hear it, but I don’t know that I’m cut out for all that comes with it.”
“You have the look.”
“I definitely don’t want to get famous because of how I look.”
“What if you aren’t as talented as you think you are, though? What if the only reason you have followers is because you’re hot?”
I laugh at her bluntness. “You think I’m hot?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’ve seen a mirror before.” She gestures toward my phone. “I want to hear one of your songs. Play the one you played for Layla at the piano the night you met her. I think it’s called ‘I Stopped.’”
“I thought you didn’t look at her memories.”
“I try not to. That one’s hard to avoid, though. It’s front and center in her head.”
I like that Layla prefers that memory. It’s one of my favorites too.
I open the music app and hit play on the song for Willow. But then I open my laptop and focus on it in an attempt to ignore the fact that she’s listening to my music.
I hate listening to my own music. I try to busy myself with emails while she listens to each of the three songs intently. When they all finish playing, she scoots my phone back to me across the table.
“Your voice is haunting,” she says.
“Is haunting good or bad coming from a ghost?”
She grins. “I guess it could be either.” She’s in a good mood. She’s almost always in a good mood, even when she’s upset with me for almost drugging my girlfriend or for continuously insisting she should find out why she’s here. It’s like whiplash, going from Layla, who feels so heavy, to Willow, who’s like a gust of wind.
“Can you feel Layla’s anxiety when you’re inside of her?” I ask her.
“I don’t feel it right now. That’s probably because she isn’t alert—nothing to be anxious about.”
“But you can feel her love. And her sadness. You’ve said that before.”
Willow nods. “Maybe her feelings for you are stronger than her anxiety. She does feel a lot for you.”
That’s good to know. “Does she think I’m going to propose to her?”
“Are you?”
“Probably.”
Willow takes a sip of water. Swallows. She stares down at her plate for a moment in thought, and I can tell she’s trying to sift through Layla’s feelings. “She hopes you’re going to propose, but I don’t think she’s expecti
ng it this soon.”
“What kind of ring does she want?”
“Does it matter? You already bought it. You keep it upstairs in your shoe like an idiot.” She knows about the engagement ring? “Girls can sniff those things out like a bloodhound. She’ll find it if you don’t hide it better.”
“So you’ve seen the ring? Do you think she’ll like it?”
Willow smiles. “I have a feeling she’ll like any ring you give her, even if it’s plastic. She loves you more than . . .” Her voice fades before she finishes her sentence.
“More than what?”
Willow shakes her head, her eyes suddenly growing more serious. “Never mind. I shouldn’t be sharing her thoughts with you. It feels wrong.”
Willow finishes her food, but I can’t help but wonder what the sudden change in her demeanor was about. What was she about to say?
She clears off the table and walks to the kitchen entry. She looks over her shoulder at me. “Come play me a song, Leeds.”
I hesitate, because I don’t know that I want to. I like the memory of playing a song for Layla in the Grand Room. I’m not sure I want to create that memory with anyone else. It feels like a betrayal.
Willow has already gone into the Grand Room. She’s waiting in there for me. I hesitate for another few seconds, but then I ultimately leave the kitchen and walk across the hallway.
I pause in the doorway to the Grand Room because Willow is lowering the lid to the grand piano. Then she proceeds to climb up on top of it. She sprawls out across the piano on her stomach, stretching her arms out over it. She sees me eyeing her with perplexity. She smiles gently and says, “I want to feel the sound. I never get to feel things without a body. It’s nice.”
As much as I want to preserve my memory of this room with Layla, I feel equally bad not playing a song for Willow. She doesn’t get to interact with people outside of me. That has to be lonely.
I reluctantly take a seat at the piano bench. “What do you want me to play?”
“Play the one you were writing earlier, on your laptop.”
“I thought you weren’t in there when I was on my laptop. I tried to talk to you.”
She lifts her cheek off the piano. “I didn’t want you to stop writing, so I pretended I wasn’t there.”
I thought she might have been in there. I don’t know how. Sometimes it’s like I can feel her in the room with me, but I don’t know if that’s because I know she’s in this house or if she really does have a presence.
Willow lays her cheek against the varnished wood again, patiently waiting.
I look down at the piano keys and try to remember how the song begins. “I haven’t finished writing it yet.”
“Play what you have, then.”
I start fingering the keys, and when I look back up at her, she’s closed her eyes. “This one is called ‘No Vacancy,’” I say quietly. Then I sing it for her.
I showed up rich while feeling poor
I didn’t knock but they opened the door
Throwing stones, they pierce my eye
Leave tiny cracks all down my spine
We were royalty without a throne
Our castle didn’t feel like home
Echoes of “I love you” in the halls
Our words absorbed into the walls
I checked us in so we couldn’t leave
Thought maybe time would make me believe
If I took us back to the starting line
We’d never cross the finish line
My hands may not be red
But my heart, it feels the bleed
If my soul had a neon sign
It would read No Vacancy
If my soul had a neon sign
It would read No Vacancy
When I’m finished playing all the parts of the song I’ve written, I look up from the piano. Her eyes are still closed.
She remains pressed against the piano, like she doesn’t want the feeling to end. She seems sad . . . sort of regretful. It makes me wonder if she’ll miss this when we leave. She’ll be alone with no one here to talk to at night, no one here to play music for her, no one here to give her something to do to pass her time while she just floats around in nothing.
She finally opens her eyes, but she doesn’t move.
I feel my chest constrict when we make eye contact, because again, I just want to comfort her. But not because I’m mistaking this urge for some wandering remnant of how I feel for Layla—but because I want to comfort her.
Willow.
“I’m sorry you’re so lonely,” I whisper.
She smiles, but it’s such a sad smile. “You’re the one who wrote this song. I’m no lonelier than you.”
Silence slowly descends over the room, wrapping us tightly in its grip.
But I don’t say anything to break it. I soak it up. I soak her up. No one else ever will, and that makes me sad for her.
“She’s really in love with you,” Willow says.
I don’t know why she says that. Does she sometimes feel Layla’s urges to touch and kiss me, the same way I feel the urge to touch and kiss Layla? When she’s inside of Layla, is it as confusing to her as it is to me?
“Her body is really tired tonight. I should let her sleep.” Willow sits up on the piano. “You coming to bed?”
I want to.
Which is exactly why I shouldn’t.
I swallow the yes that’s stuck in my throat and look down at the piano keys. I place my fingers on them. “You go ahead.”
She stares at me a moment, but I don’t look at her. I begin playing the song over again, and when I do, she leaves the room. After she walks upstairs and I hear the bedroom door close, I stop the song. I lower my head to the piano.
What am I doing?
And why do I not want to stop?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke up determined to give Layla all my focus today. Maybe it was guilt. It wasn’t hard to give her all my focus. She was by my side most of the day because the weather outside left us with little else to do.
It’s almost midnight and Layla still hasn’t fallen asleep.
That might be because of the storm. She doesn’t like the idea of being in the middle of tornado alley during a thunderstorm, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather. There aren’t any tornado warnings . . . just lots of lightning and rain. And thunder that makes her tense up every time it shakes the house.
I normally find this kind of weather relaxing, but right now I’m just irritated with it because it’s keeping Layla awake.
She’s lying on the couch with me in the Grand Room, scrolling through her social media posts. Her feet are in my lap. I’m trying to finish reading the book I started six months ago—the one about the game show host who claimed to be a spy—but my eyes are just scanning the screen. I’m not soaking up any of the words because I can’t stop thinking about Willow. Layla did agree to give me a few more days in the house, but we’ll still eventually have to leave.
Willow will be alone.
It’s not like I can just come visit her—this place is in the middle of nowhere. It involves a flight, a rental car, hours of driving. It’s an entire day of travel.
I’m going to have to put an offer in on the house if I want to help her find answers eventually. Even if Layla doesn’t want to live here, I would hate for someone else to buy it. I could hire someone else to run the place—turn it back into a bed and breakfast so Willow wouldn’t be lonely. There would be a constant revolving door of strangers. She might enjoy that more than sitting alone in an empty house.
And if I owned this place, it would give me an excuse to come back occasionally. To visit Willow without Layla growing suspicious.
Is that emotional cheating?
Willow is a ghost. It’s not like she could come between me and Layla.
But I guess she has in a way.
Willow and I have grown comfortable with one another . . . to the point that I’m starting to prefer her
company over Layla’s. I’m not proud of that. Layla means so much to me, but I’m fascinated—obsessed, even—with the idea that this life isn’t the only one that matters. One would think that would make me feel like this life matters even more, but I’ve felt myself growing distant from this world. I’m being pulled into Willow’s, or maybe she’s being pulled into mine. Either way, we don’t belong in each other’s worlds, but now that we’ve found an easy way to combine them, it makes me disinterested in everything else around me.
That’s not Layla’s fault. There’s nothing Layla has done wrong. She’s the victim in all of this. She was the victim six months ago, and she’s the victim now, even though she’s unaware of it. The only thing Layla did wrong is fall in love with me.
I thought this trip was going to make things better for her. Maybe that would have worked out had I not discovered Willow’s existence in this house. Now I’ve done nothing but allow my fascination with whatever Willow is to drive an even bigger wedge between me and every other aspect of my life.
Layla seems unaware of any of it, though. She may think things are just fine between us. But that’s only because she doesn’t remember the details, and how great it was between us before I essentially became her caretaker.
Not that I would have made any other choice. But regardless of the love behind caring for her, or the good intentions—recovery still takes its toll, not only on the person recovering, but on everyone around them.
“What are you reading?” Layla asks.
I look over at her, and she’s dropped her cell phone to her chest. Her head is tilted and her hair is spread out over the pillow beneath her. She’s barely wearing anything—a silky see-through top that doesn’t even cover her navel. A matching pair of cream-colored panties. I set my phone down on the arm of the couch and wrap my hand around Layla’s ankle. I drag it slowly up to her knee. “Still trying to finish that same book.”
“What book?”
“The one about the game show host who thinks he’s an assassin.”
She shakes her head a little. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
I start to say, “I told you about it,” but then I remember that was one of the last conversations we had before she got shot. She has no memory of that entire day, or the week that followed. No memory of our conversations that day leading up to the moment she got shot. Sometimes I fill in the holes for her, but I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’d feel bad for bringing up something that could trigger her anxiety.
Layla Page 16
