Chapter 51
“ F ancy seeing you out here again, huh?”
I only had to sigh as I took a sip of my gin and soda next to Layla. She looked dressed to the ten, as I expected, her dress as seductive as the first time that I had taken her out to the dive bar and gotten handsy underneath the table.
“Well, my life is going to shit, how about yours?” I said with a laugh and a shrug.
“That bad, huh?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, which was not a cliche in this case and a literal true statement. “Things with the old man are… well, on the rocks.”
“As they always are, no?” Layla said, wearing a smile.
“You must have something else going on that brought you out here. You wouldn’t have acted this way over just a normal bad day.
I mean, let’s face it. I know you don’t want to be around me, but you find yourself pulled back when times get bad.
We might as well figure out why, right?”
I swallowed my drink very slowly as I tried to digest how direct Layla was.
I guess it was kind of obvious how I only went to her when times were rough, but still…
this was shocking in its directness toward me.
I hadn’t anticipated that Layla would articulate such feelings before the moment of truth, especially since she had so well hidden everything during my dalliance with her uncle.
“You know I haven’t forgotten what happened between us, right?
” I said. “I’m trying to give this a second chance because I realize now that you were manipulated and probably abused by your uncle to some degree, but I can’t just pretend that you were a puppet on strings. You made the decision to go along.”
“True,” Layla said, though she did not seem nearly as fazed as she would have in the days and weeks before. “But what is ‘this’ that you are giving a second chance?”
Boy, we’re really getting right to the point, huh? No beating around the bush here.
“If I knew, do you think I’d be going back and forth like I am?” I said.
I was beginning to feel the same thing that I had felt the last time I was with Layla—a degree of anxiety that was growing by the moment.
This was so surreal, especially since as soon as I had left Layla’s and gone to Claire’s I was as smooth as a sea on a sunny day.
I could do no wrong when I pleasured Claire, even as she begged me to go faster.
But here, with Layla?
I felt like that goddamn twelve year old all the time.
“I suppose the best way to do it is to just say it out loud, what my thoughts are,” I said.
I took a second to collect myself and then thought, Fuck it.
Go. “I think you’re a sweet person who got pushed to a spot where she had to do something she didn’t want to.
I still find you physically attractive and very arousing.
It goes without saying that the sex that we had was some of the best sex I’ve ever had.
It goes without saying that, well, I still like you to a degree. ”
I gulped. Layla showed no particular reaction to what I said, which was… mildly and weirdly disappointing?
“However, as I said before, you did do those things to me and you did shatter my trust. My entire life has seen nothing but heartbreak at the end of the line when it comes to women unless I first shut it off. I am a little…”
I swallowed.
“Concerned that this would be the same thing. Also, and this is the whole reason I’m out here before we got into a deep conversation, my life is kind of in a place of purgatory right now.
On the one hand, the business Morgan and I launched is doing very well.
On the other hand, a billionaire wants to ruin us.
And, here’s the single core reason for why I’m here…
I think Morgan is moving away from me and to his father. ”
“Oh.”
Layla hadn’t changed expression much, but when she saw how much that hurt me, I could see how much she reacted in turn.
Her smile, which bordered on cocky and daring just moments before, had vanished entirely, replaced by a kind of empathy only possible with the worst news.
Her body language, shifted back in her seat, letting me come to her, had brought her forward.
And what she said had gone from leading to deflated.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can afford to lose some things. I can afford to lose Edwin Hunt. I could afford to lose my job at Burnson Investments. Honestly, I could probably afford to lose MCH, although it would take me some time to rebound from that. But losing Morgan…”
Morgan was the closest thing I had to a lifelong stable other in my world.
He was my brother, but he was also my best friend.
From the day I was adopted, he had taken care to treat me as both a brother and a best friend.
He never, ever mocked the fact that I was adopted, and he always picked me up when I fell.
From Sarah to the girl in front of me, his efforts after those breakups always made me feel better.
If he left, my name would feel too apt for my life. Everything would truly feel up to chance. I could never have anything stable, because the appearance of stability was just that. An appearance. I would no longer believe in the structural reality of stability.
“Losing Morgan would suck a lot,” I said.
I was surprised to find that I could not say anything more beyond that. Usually, when I was speechless, it was because a girl blew my mind or I was so fucking furious that I just reacted with anger and rage.
But grief? Sadness? Those were not emotions that made me silent. This was… this was very different.
“I don’t think you will,” Layla said. “At least, not in the long-term.”
“I hope so,” I said, although I was happy to hear someone give their two cents in my favor, even if they had absolutely nothing to base it on other than an outsider’s opinion.
“I just think your brother recognizes what’s happening with your father,” she continued. “He realizes that Edwin Hunt is being terrible. He may want to stick with him, but Morgan’s not an idiot.”
“Sometimes,” I said with a weak smile.
Layla just laughed. The bartender came by and Layla ordered us another round. The pause in conversation gave us each a chance to reset.
“I guess I really do only invite you out when my life is stressful, huh?”
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” she said. “I know you. You probably have a bounty of girls you can run to instead of me. I’m the one you come to for emotional support.”
Well… no, not really.
In times like these, when I knew a girl was saying something to pry some sort of information out of me, I had found that silence was the best policy. It unnerved the person enough into changing the subject or talking so much that they gave me something safe to say.
Problem was, Layla was not like most girls.
“Do you?”
I laughed.
“That’s a hell of a question to ask your former lover,” I said.
“I know,” Layla said. “But you also made a promise to me. I don’t believe you’ve kept it, and I’m not mad at you for it after what happened. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t forgotten that you believed in us enough to make that promise.”
Promise me you’ll love me no matter what happens.
The words came to mind as quickly as she had dropped the hint of them. She had followed that up with sex and tears, a combination that no girl who wasn’t a sociopath would ever fake.
I had tried to dismiss those words in the aftermath of what had happened, but now that the aftermath to the aftermath had happened… well, shit was a little bit different now, wasn’t it? And if I meant what I said, that would have included honesty, no matter how uncomfortable, right?
“You really want to know,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Alright,” I said.
Answering this question had never gone well for me. Never.
And yet here was Layla, dragging the truth out of me. Well, a man owned up to the truth, and I was prepared for the truth to splinter us back apart.
“I am seeing one girl but it is nothing serious,” I said. “She has adamantly expressed she is not looking for anything long term. I care about her as a friend because of some things she is going through, but we will likely never be together.”
Layla nodded for a few seconds. I just drank as slowly and calmly as I could for the situation, which was to say not too well.
“Anyone else?”
Sarah. But she’s not even here…
“No,” I said. “Sure, I might be on dating apps and such, but I’m not seeing anyone else besides that one girl.”
I almost slipped up and said I wasn’t talking to anyone, but that would have been a lie. I still had to wonder how Layla would react when she found out Sarah Hill was back around.
For that matter, I didn’t know why I felt like Layla had to know about Sarah. She’d dragged the idea of Claire out of me in a moment of weakness, but she wasn’t going to get much more out of me.
“And you?”
I said it reflexively but regretted it immediately.
Which, I suppose, showed the feelings I had for Layla were indeed real.
“Nope,” Layla said. “After what I did to you, I felt I had fucked up so bad I didn’t need to be seeing anyone else. I decided to put myself on dating timeout for three months.”
“Dating timeout?” I said, desperate for a moment of levity. “Does that mean you have to get a chalkboard and write out ‘I will not make bad dating mistakes’ Simpsons style?”
“Hah, it should,” Layla said. “But seriously. No. I just needed to do some reflection. I let myself go with my uncle’s plan too easily and used my body to take advantage of you. That was horrible.”
“So how have you changed, if at all?”
I hated that I added the “if at all” but Layla didn’t seem to mind.