6. Layla
LAYLA
“Here.”
A bottle of Michelob Ultra appears in my line of sight, breaking into my view of the raging bonfire before me and barreling through all my thoughts.
Cruz Weston is here.
In town.
In Magnolia Ridge.
And so is Briggs.
It’s going to be World War III.
Mindlessly plucking the well-needed beer from Fallon’s grasp, I bring it to my lips and begin to chug.
“It’s gonna be fine,” my best friend assures me, settling up next to me on the thick log that’s always acted as a makeshift chair.
We’ve been having bonfires like this every fourth Saturday of the month since high school. The folks that are still here, we still carry on the tradition to talk crap, getting away from the gossip in town, and talk about our own, and chill from the long month we just endured.
For me, it’s been the longest twenty-some-odd hours I’ve ever endured.
“Don’t be fillin’ her head with lies,” I hear Zoe lightly chide, bumping into my body as one of her legs comes over the tree’s dead trunk. “It’s going to be a civil war in this place.”
Close enough.
Zoe, another one of my best friends, nurses her own beer in her hands and stares off into the open flames. “I think we should bunker in and wait it out.”
Fallon scoffs. “Wait it out? When this is the only excitement we get in our lives?”
“You really need to get off the farm more, girl,” Zoe drones. “Because with Maebell and Agnes runnin’ the show, we get more chatter than we bargained for.”
“I thought you’d be happy about that over Mrs. Hale.”
“Ha!” Zoe takes another long swig of her beer, smacking her lips when she says, “I swear to God if that woman comes into my office one more time with Mrs. Dalton claiming that a house is painted the wrong color for the time period or the town’s clock is thirty seconds off, I might drown myself in Willowmere’s Pond. ”
“Dramatic.”
“You deal with her.”
“She is a pain in the ass,” I chime in, nursing another sip of my beer. “She once told me I was usin’ the wrong flour for my muffins. I thought flour was flour. Mrs. Hale said it didn’t have enough bran.”
“Didn’t have enough, what now?” Fallon asks, sounding just as confused as I was, because who cares?
“It’s wheat,” Zoe says. “And she’s out of her mind.”
“Does she ever talk about Tucker?”
Fallon’s question has me craning my head over to look at Zoe since she first sat down. Her golden blonde hair is thrown up into a messy bun. She doesn’t return my stare, still looking into the fire and avoiding.
She avoids any talk about Tucker, as I do and have done with Briggs. If there is one thing Zoe and I have in common, it is that we both fell in love with two men born in Magnolia Ridge.
And her reason has a name, too, and it’s Thaddeus Delacroix, the town’s, now, mayor.
“If she does,” Zoe finally says. “I’ve already drowned her out of my head.”
I lean into her body in silent comfort, cuddling up to her warm black sweatshirt, which wasn’t like her before.
Zoe was Magnolia Ridge’s Southern belle in droves.
Her mother prim and propered her to be the best example of Southern hospitality the South has ever seen.
From volunteering to having herself perfectly thrown together all the time, Zoe was someone you aspired to be if you wanted to be a lovely Southern belle.
That wasn’t me.
I was the church girl. I volunteered and organized food drives and bake sales to raise money for the church’s new water heater or whatever else it needed.
Zoe and I ran into each other quite a bit, but her mother always tried to put Zoe out in the center of everything.
Now, she hides away in a dusty office, the town’s archivist, and she’s wasting away.
The Zoe Ridgeway I used to know loved life; she smiled, and she danced until her little feet couldn’t anymore.
But, now, she is no longer the grace of a Magnolia lady—as her mother used to call her—but someone who keeps to herself and out of the spotlight in Magnolia Ridge altogether.
It was a scandal, let me tell you.
“Wanna trade?” I ask her in all seriousness. “You take Briggs and Cruz, and I’ll take Mrs. Hale?”
“Hell no,” she immediately drawls. “Cruz Weston is a tool bag with not enough tools in his chest to be a real one, so absolutely not. And Briggs…” She exhales heavily and finally looks over at me. “Girl…are you gonna put that man out of his misery or what?”
My brows crash together. “What do you mean if I’m going to put him out of his misery? He’s done nothing but drag me along with his screwed-up emotional rollercoaster.”
“You’ve always liked Brigg’s screwed-up emotional rollercoaster. You’re the only one who could fully get to him. That’s a superpower.”
“I’ve told him a hundred times I’m done.”
“You’ve got to sound like you mean it,” Fallon criticizes with this annoying amusement to her tone that I want to snuff out. “You’re just as obsessed as he is.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” Zoe agrees. “You never told us what he did. Like…you completely shut down.”
My whole face lifts because, honestly, the nerve. “You mean like you did?”
She scowls at me. “You know my story. I only cried about it for three months.”
“And she wrote several hate letters about it, too,” Fallon quips. “My favorite was—”
“Shut up,” Zoe and I both chime in at the same time.
“I can’t wait for you to meet a guy that’s as equally as a pain in the ass as you,” Zoe gripes at Fallon. “And, no, dating Dodger doesn’t count. He was nothing but sweet and accommodating—”
“He was too nice,” she cuts in. “My God, saying anything bad about anyone in this town made me feel like he was going to arrest me for obstruction of something.”
“You act as though you run a cocaine ring at the farm,” I drawl.
Fallon wiggles her body as if I don’t know her well enough to be confident that she doesn’t. “Maybe I do.”
“You wish,” Zoe mutters. “You get zero excitement out there.”
“Drama-free zone,” she replies almost proudly, but she only fuels gossip in town because she’ll go a few days without it, and it just riles Maebelle and Agnes up. “Besides, you two have enough for all three of us combined. It’s wild.”
“Be happy to give you some,” I say honestly. “We’d be more than willin’ to share.”
“Hard pass.”
“Then I’m going to leave an open bottle of wine in your car and call Dodger to come pick you up so you can be the talk of the town for once.”
“Layla…” I hear Zoe mutter just as Fallon lets out a huge bark of laughter.
“Please do,” Fallon quips. “I’d happily be of service to keep the spotlight off you and Briggs Kerrigan for a while.”
“Stop sayin’ his full name like that,” I grind out. “It’s stupid.”
Zoe nudges my arm, but before I can turn my head to glance over at her, Fallon says, “That’s his name, isn’t it? Or should I start callin’ him by his nickname?”
“Dumbass?”
“I mean, he might be a dumbass,” my soon-to-be ex-best friend mentions. “And I hope, for your sake, of course, that he’s insane in the bedroom. He might be stupid, but that man is a hot piece of ass.”
I don’t even get to respond to that because, first of all, it’s none of her business. And, second, Zoe’s sharp little elbow plows into my ribcage, and I wince in pain.
“Ouch,” I croak out, snapping my neck in her direction to find her staring off somewhere. “What the hell, Zo?”
“Cruz Weston is on his—”
“Layla Melrose, if you ain’t still the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. My God, woman, just put me out of my misery and marry me already.”
Slowly, I turn my head at that Southern drawl that always sounds like a jab and discover exactly what I didn’t want to run into so early since hearing the news that he was coming home.
Sandy blond hair, hollowed cheeks, and piercing blue eyes, Cruz Weston looks down at me with equal parts amusement and fake awe.
He’s nursing a beer in one hand, but the other is currently in a hard cast with red wrapping around it.
He even looks like he has signatures on the damn thing.
“Oh, shit,” Fallon pipes in, which is quickly going to turn bad in two seconds. “Golly, Cruz, what happened to your arm?”
She knows damn well what occurred with it because Zoe told her the tea quicker tonight than a damn melting ice cream cone on a hot summer day.
And Fallon, she loves getting under Cruz’s skin, always has.
It’s a pastime of theirs, really. While the women in this town fawn and treat Cruz like a lost king, she’s quick to remind him he’s still the eighteen-year-old asshole he always was.
And that this group doesn’t give a crap that he’s a professional MLB player.
In fact, we think he and his team suck.
“Just Briggs actin’ like the crazed lunatic he is,” Cruz remarks vaguely. “We had a misunderstandin’ and he seems to think that Layla and I can’t be friends.”
“You ain’t friends,” Zoe retorts with a bit of bite to her voice. “Didn’t you date her to make him mad?”
“No,” he quickly recants. “I mean…Layla asked me if I could pretend to be her boyfriend so her Uncle Ben wouldn’t get suspicious about where she was goin’ and who she was with, but…I didn’t go outta my way.”
I mean, he’s not entirely wrong.
It was my idea.
“I think you did when you kept kissin’ her in public.”
“Had to keep it real to be believable, wouldn’t you say, Zoe? It wasn’t meant to make anyone upset.”
“Sure you weren’t,” Fallon drawls. “Why, you’re just a good ole country boy with zero brains in your head. I mean, all you know how to throw is a tiny ball, right, Cruz?”
“That makes me millions,” Cruz drops since he can’t help himself and his ego. “How’s that farm goin’, Fal? You still barely makin’ it by?”
She goes to stand—I swear, my bestie isn’t above smacking the crap out of him—before I mom-arm her to chill.
Fallon’s family farm has definitely had its ups and downs. She runs it, day and night, and even though she is drama-free from gossip, she has not been drama-free when it comes to the bank.
“Cruz,” I lightly chide. “I know you didn’t come over here to bother my friends. That didn’t work out for you the last time.”
His blue eyes skate back over to me, and he holds them blankly.
Regardless, I know he still remembers.