Layla

We’re supposed to check out in two days and head back to Tennessee. Layla has been cheerful about it.

I haven’t been.

I’m sitting at the piano bench, trailing my fingers up and down the keys. I’ve been internally moping all day, like a child being forced to throw away his favorite toy.

I haven’t spoken much to Willow since last night. We stayed up late watching another movie. I’ve noticed a recurring theme over the past several nights. We watch movies about ghosts, the afterlife, anything paranormal. Willow asks questions after the end of each movie, as if she’s trying to figure out which version of this world she wants to believe in. Last night we watched What Dreams May Come. It made her cry.

She didn’t ask a single question when it was over. She just rolled onto her side and looked at me sadly. I asked her what was wrong, and she said,

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Back where?” I said.

“To nothing. I like being inside of Layla. I like spending time with you.

It gets harder every time I have to leave her body.”

I didn’t know what to say because I felt the same way, so I just grabbed her hand and held it until we both fell asleep.

It’s becoming difficult at night, watching her have to leave Layla, knowing she’s just going back to a bare minimum of an existence in a huge and lonely house. And the closer we get to the day Layla and I are supposed to leave, the more sullen Willow and I have become when we spend time together.

I’m playing a low key on the piano—tapping it over and over with my finger—when one of the higher notes plays by itself. I immediately look around, but Layla is still upstairs.

Willow must be trying to get my attention.

I go to the kitchen to open my laptop, and she immediately begins typing.

I have bad news.

“What?”

Layla just found the ring.

My eyes immediately dart up toward the upstairs bedroom. “Is she digging through my things?”

Yes.

“What did she do when she found it?”

She gasped. Then she put it back and immediately texted Aspen and told her about it.

“Shit,” I say with a heavy breath.

I wasn’t ready for this. Not after I’ve spent the last two and a half weeks using Layla the way I’ve been using her. A proposal at this point would feel dishonest.

I sit down at the table and drop my head into my hands. Willow begins typing something into the document again.

She doesn’t know which day you’ll be proposing, so there’s still an element of surprise there. You shouldn’t let this upset you.

“It’s not that,” I say. “I just don’t think I’m ready, but now it’s all she’s going to be thinking about.”

If you aren’t ready, why did you bring the ring with you?

“I brought it with me because this trip . . .” I lean back in my chair.

“This trip was supposed to bring us closer together. But I feel even more distant than I did the day we arrived.”

Is that my fault?

“No. I don’t think what we’re doing has helped, but it’s not your fault.”

I didn’t know that’s why you came here. Now I feel guilty for inserting myself into the narrative. I can stop. If you want to spend these last two days with Layla . . . I can disappear, and you won’t even know I’m here.

My chest tightens at that thought. I don’t want to spend these last two days here without Willow. “That’s what I’ve been afraid you’ll do, Willow.

It isn’t at all what I want.” I close the laptop because I don’t want to continue this conversation. Not over a laptop, anyway. I need to go talk to

Layla. Gauge her mood. Maybe the ring freaked her out. Maybe she isn’t ready either. Maybe this will prompt a long-overdue conversation between us.

I go upstairs and can hear the shower running. I walk into the bathroom, and Layla is brushing her teeth. She always does this. Turns on the shower to warm up the water and then stands at the sink for ten minutes to do her nighttime routine of brushing her teeth and washing her face and plucking her eyebrows. Then she barely has enough hot water left to actually make it through a full shower.

She grins as soon as I walk into the bathroom. She spits toothpaste into the sink and then rinses. Then she walks over to me and wraps her arms around me, pressing her mouth to mine. There’s such a difference in her right now compared to the tired version of herself she’s been dragging around during the daytime. She’s definitely excited for the proposal. It’s like it breathed new life into her.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice a disturbing level of cheerful.

“Working.”

She slides her palms down my chest. “You should take a break.

Shower with me.”

I look over my shoulder like I have somewhere to be. “I took a shower this morning.”

When I look back at her, she rolls her eyes and lowers her hands to my sweatpants. “Well then, I’ll shower.” She feathers her lips across my jaw as she reaches into my pants. “After I’m done with you.”

Before I can stop her, she pushes me against the bathroom door and drops to her knees. We haven’t had sex in three days. I don’t know that I can come up with a good enough excuse to refuse a blow job without hurting her feelings.

She’s on a high right now, assuming this trip is going to end with a proposal. She thinks we’ll spend the rest of our lives together—me and Layla against the world.

And maybe we will. I don’t even know. But she’s not really in a position in which we can discuss it because she’s taking me into her mouth, despite the fact that I’m not even hard yet. I look down at her, and even though I’m not immediately turned on by this because of the pandemonium in my head, I can’t help but think of Willow when I look at Layla.

Sometimes, when I look at Layla, I wish she were Willow. At breakfast, I catch myself wishing I were chatting with a cheerful Willow over coffee, rather than Layla complaining about her headache. During the day when I’m chatting with Willow on the computer, I spend that time wishing she could take over Layla and I could talk to her face to face.

And now . . . as Layla slides her tongue up the length of me, I kind of wish it were Willow doing this to me.

I harden at that thought.

It’s easy to pretend Layla is Willow because Layla’s face is the only one I can attribute to Willow when I think about her. I wrap my hand in Layla’s hair and watch her for a moment . . . wondering what this would feel like if it were Willow inside of Layla right now. Would Willow use her tongue like that? Would she make the same noises Layla makes?

She wraps her lips around me and takes me in as far as she can. My head falls back against the door and I groan, putting pressure on the back of her head, not wanting her to stop now.

One of her hands is moving up and down the length of me in rhythm with her mouth. Her other hand is sliding up my stomach. I grab it, squeeze it, press it to my chest as I think about Willow.

I imagine how Willow’s kiss would feel. Would it feel the same as Layla’s kiss?

Would sex with Willow feel different than sex with Layla?

Would she arch her back the same way Layla does when I push into her?

“Fuck.” I release Layla’s hand and grip the back of her head with both hands. “I’m about to finish,” I say, warning her. She always stops when I say that so she can finish with her hand.

She pulls back, breathless, and whispers, “You can finish in my mouth this time.”

There’s a glimmer in her eye as she takes me back in her mouth—an excitement—and I know this is her way of thanking me for a proposal that has yet to happen. If I wasn’t already on the brink of exploding, I’d probably put a stop to this, simply because I know where her head is at.

Everything about this moment is wrong. Layla thinks she’s pleasuring her soon-to-be fiancé while I’m pretending she’s the ghost I’ve been slowly falling for.

It’s the strangest release I’ve ever had.

I don’t even enjoy it.

My legs tremble as she keeps her mouth on me, swallowing every last bit of deception I’ve been handing her. I don’t make a noise. I just close my eyes and wait for her to stop.

When she finally releases me, I can’t even bring myself to look at her.

All I can think about are the words she said to me the first night we met, after I’d just told her she was the best sex I’d ever had. “We always think that when we’re in it. But then someone new comes along, and we forget how good we thought it was before, and the cycle starts all over again.”

Is that all Layla was to me? Part of an endless cycle of relationships?

I thought for sure she was the one. I felt it in my bones.

Now all I feel is remorse, because it wasn’t until ten seconds ago that I realized I’ve already moved on to another cycle.

I’ve moved on to Willow.

It’s Willow I want to talk to when I wake up. Willow I want to see before I close my eyes. Willow I want to spend all my time with during the day.

I prefer Willow over Layla now, in almost every way, and it’s a heavy, appalling, shameful realization.

I hear the water running in the bathroom sink. I open my eyes and Layla is brushing her teeth again. She swishes the water around in her mouth and then spits it into the sink. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and smiles with pride. “Did I leave you speechless?” she says, laughing.

I have no idea what to say. I’m sorry wouldn’t be appropriate.

“That was intense.” It’s not a lie. Intense isn’t necessarily a good thing, and I don’t want to lie to Layla anymore. It doesn’t feel good.

She saunters back over to me and tucks me back into my sweatpants.

She leans in and kisses me gently on the cheek, leaving her mouth on my skin when she says, “Go back to work. You can return the favor tomorrow night.” She backs away and takes off her shirt with a grin, and then finally gets in the shower.

The water has been running this whole time.

I walk into the bedroom and stare at our bed. The same bed I was on when I first began to fall in love with Layla.

Falling in love with her was weightless, like air was breezing through my bones.

Falling out of love is fucking heavy, like my lungs are carved from iron.

I walk over to the bed, and I drop down onto it. I don’t go back downstairs. I can’t face Willow tonight. I don’t even want to face Layla.

I just want to sleep.