EIGHTEEN
Layla
The Christmas lights were white and blinked in and out, casting flickering shadows across the dark wood floors. On the surface, the room, the others surrounding it, were lit up in festive, calm decorations, welcoming as though the entire house waited for the next three days to zip by. It promised laughter and love and the sense of warmth from a family that would fill the home, like they had every year before this one, with the sweet sentiment and peace only a happy home at Christmas could.
Layla could smell her mother’s homemade chocolate fudge cookies still warming on the marble countertops in the kitchen and she thought, if she closed her eyes, focused, she could still hear her mother’s sweet, out of tune hum of “O Holy Night.” But her focus was fractured, ripped from her consciousness by the sound of crying and the low groans of disappointment.
“I thought I raised you to be smart, son.”
“I didn’t know… Layla… she…”
“They’re both so irresponsible. Really. What will everyone say?”
“Caroline, really… that’s what you’re worried about?”
“No, Meara, please, don’t cry again.”
Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Shit… not a good choice of words.
She could only stare at them, all of them. Her parents, Donovan’s, people who were once friends. Two families that had spent years together during the holidays, on vacations. Friendships that had been destroyed by betrayal and now, likely further splintered by Layla’s forgetfulness. Three days of skipping pills when she was stressed about her classes, about what happened after the spring, about Mollie or any of her other friends finding out she’d been sneaking into Donovan’s bed every night. Three. Damn. Days. And her whole life, Donovan’s, was changed forever.
Two hours of these disappointed, desperate conversations and none of them were any closer to knowing what to do. Donovan had taken her father’s shouting like a champ but he’d barely looked at her since her father pointed to the sofa and made them both stay put like they were naughty children.
If it hadn’t been for Declan, Layla wasn’t sure if her father wouldn’t have beaten Donovan senseless. “Coach, please.” Her father had tried pushing Declan off of him, but the Irishman stood firm. “Maybe it’s not my place to say it, but you throttling one of your squad mates may not be best solution to this shite.”
Declan made her father see reason. He’d calmed him, he’d even patted Layla’s back, assuring a worried Layla that this wouldn’t be the worst day of her life. “It’ll be right again, Layla, love. Don’t you fret. It’ll be grand soon, just you wait.”
He’d understood, she knew. How often had Layla heard Declan speak about his mother like she was a saint and not a woman who’d taken another woman’s husband to her bed? Declan had been the result of that recklessness. She knew he sympathized with her.
Layla wished he was here now. She wished Mollie was. She’d expected her best friend to tell her what a careless dumbass she’d been, but that wasn’t Mollie’s way. Layla’s best friend had even disregarded whatever it was she’d wanted to talk to her about that night, telling her to “deal with this shit and we’ll talk later.” And then, before she and Declan took off, likely to fill in Autumn and Sayo on the train wreck the night had been, Mollie stopped Layla before she slipped into her father’s car.
“I love you, honey. To the Tardis and back.”
And Layla knew that was an immeasurable well of love. A bit geeky, possibly juvenile but it meant that Mollie’s love for her was grander than the world, bigger than any worlds beyond reckoning. The small endearment helped and Layla clung to it as her father screamed at her all the way back to their home with Donovan sitting there numb in the backseat.
Layla tried remembering Mollie’s words, and Declan’s as her parents fussed and cried, arguing about what would have to be done about her and Donovan’s “situation.” They all acted like she wasn’t there at all. She was invisible on that leather couch, a tiny spec of nothing amid the large furniture and the threatening, screaming adults who thought deciding her future was in any way their place.
“I don’t know what’s to be done.” Mrs. Donley’s pinched face tightened, made her look older, sterner than she already did, especially when she glared at Layla like she was a lowly tart. Idly, Layla wondered why people tended to blame the woman for an unplanned pregnancy. Why was it always a woman’s fault alone? As though somehow she’d siphoned the semen from an unaware man like an evil succubus, stealthily rendering a man utterly defenseless with her evil female wiles. And the “poor man” was helpless really, because of course he was just “being a man.”
Utter bullshit, she thought.
Layla knew that if Donovan’s mother took more than a second to think about her son and her husband she’d remember how they both were. That hornball gene had to come from someone.
“What do you expect, Caroline? This isn’t the fifties. We won’t send her off to some place until it’s all done and over. Really.” Her mother hadn’t said much, had only cried for the first hour but now, she stood up, got right in Mrs. Donley’s face looking fearless, her bobbed white blonde hair moving like a halo around her as she glared at Donovan’s tiny mother.
“Meara, this entire situation cannot be brushed under the rug,” Mrs. Donley said, looking up at Layla’s mother as though her nonsense was at all logical.
Donovan’s father sat on the brick hearth of the fireplace, the back of his neck reddening from the heat, or maybe the idea that his family was facing another scandal. He looked older than his wife, with deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and he could barely look at the women, certainly not at Layla.
Layla’s own father simply stood in the back of the room, shoulders stiff, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out of the large bay window and into the dark Cavanagh night.
“Mom…”
“Sweetie, please. Just let me think for a second,” her mother said, barely glancing at her.
“Mom…”
“Layla, you’ve done enough. Listen to your mother and let us figure this out.” Maybe Mrs. Donley thought she was being helpful, that Layla was some simple twelve year who’d come home with a case of lice and not an actual, fully alive human person growing in her belly.
“I just think…”
“Layla… just… wait…” It was the first time Donovan had looked directly at her in over two hours and that is what he had to say?
Tired of them all, of the shouting and the passive aggressive attitudes, Layla stood, trying to make herself seem taller, stretch her shoulders, her neck to get at least one of them to look her way. “All of you shut the hell up.”
“Layla…”
Whatever clipped reprimand her mother was going to say ended when Layla picked up her crystal snow globe from the coffee table and smashed it to the floor.
“I said shut up!”
She could feel their eyes, those disappointed, heavy stares that absorbed Layla’s fury, her frustration and Layla could almost hear the rude things they thought, the regret, the names they were calling her to themselves. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter that she’d destroyed her mother’s holiday peace. She didn’t care that Mrs. Donley hid behind her husband as though Layla would become even more violent or that her father turned from the window, expression still furious, a cool calm that Layla knew was only the storm stirring before it raged out of hand and destroyed everything in its wake.
Her father’s expression reminded her of the first spanking she’d gotten, years ago, the one that made her father feel so guilty that he swore he’d never do it again. But Layla wasn’t the wicked eight year old she’d been when she stole a Hershey bar from the church bazaar because her mother told her she couldn’t have it. She was a woman. She was a woman who’d made a stupid mistake, who’d been careless, but she was nearing twenty-four. Legally, there was nothing any of them could force her into and they knew it.
“I messed up.” She looked at Donovan. She was angry that his silence, his confusion made it seem like he expected them to take care of this for him. “I did something very stupid that I should have never done.” She hoped that glare conveyed her anger, that it showed Donovan that she didn’t respect him, that she wished she’d never once held a civil word in her mouth for him. “It’s a mistake I’m going to have to pay for the rest of my life. But I am not some stupid kid.” When her father snorted, laughed, disgusted under his breath like he thought she was simple, Layla felt a little piece of herself disappear. Suddenly she was the same small girl who’d sit on her father’s lap and listen to every word of every story he told her about Cavanagh and their people who’d built the town. But she wouldn’t cry, not in front of him, not now. Not when he looked at her like he didn’t know who she was.
“Think what you want, all of you. I don’t care. I’m not going to stand around here listening while everyone tries to decide my life for me.”
“Layla.” Donovan approached but she stepped back, grabbed her jacket and her bag from the back of the couch, then darted out of the room.
“Don’t even think about it, Donley.” She said this over her shoulder, as she moved toward the kitchen. “I told you to stay away from me. I told you I didn’t like you.”
Donovan stepped in front of her, tried to block her path out of the house and she noticed the twitch of anger filling his face. She could read him with her eyes closed. That temper surfaced and he didn’t think, she knew he didn’t, not after he growled, after he spat out, “For someone who didn’t like me, you sure gave it up any damn time I wanted it” and then seemed to immediately regret it. He stepped forward, reached for her when the shocked breath moved past her lips. “Wait… I’m sorry…”
But she wouldn’t hear it, him, she wouldn’t stop, not even when she heard her father telling Mr. Donley his son would have to man up, marry Layla like any decent man would do, not when her own mother started crying, sobbing her name as she moved through the kitchen toward the garage. She was down the long driveway, near the curb and at her car, had the door open when Donovan finally caught up to her.
“You can’t run from this. Layla, please…”
She pushed him, not wanting his hands anywhere near her. “What do you want, Donley? It’s obvious you don’t want this… this…” she waved over her stomach, “the responsibility of this.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m… shit, I’m an asshole.” He moved his fingers through his hair as though he couldn’t think of what to do with himself. “I’m also fucking scared out of my mind. And I just thought maybe my parents could…”
“Your parents? Yours? Really? In what world are your parents the beacons of responsibility?”
He came closer looking angry, looking like he wanted to shake her but held back, stretched his head back, staring up at the dark sky. “This entire situation is so fucked up.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” When he didn’t speak, she went for her car again, but he was right there, focused on her, blocking the door so she couldn’t get in. “What do you want from me?” she said, so tired, frustrated that he was trying to keep her from leaving. “What? What is it exactly that you want to do?”
“Don’t ask me what I want because I don’t know.” He jerked angrily away from the door, growling, head turning as though he needed something to punch or kick or throttle. He found the large box of discarded wrapping paper and the large black trash back inside it and kicked it all until rubbish and mess littered the curb and fell onto the street and released a loud, piercing growl that made Layla flinch. “I know what I do want. I want freedom. I want to enjoy my life while I’m this age. I want no responsibilities and I want the chance not to fuck up everything in my life like every other dumbass stupid enough to knock up some girl.”
She didn’t like how much that hurt her. She didn’t like feeling like someone Donovan had accidently fallen into bed with, like all the years, the months of them together, of them fighting against whatever they felt, what they both tried not to feel, was pedestrian, like it didn’t matter at all.
Donovan must have seen something in her face, something that brought him back from the brink. She tried keeping the hurt from her expression, tried to push back the sting of his words, but Donovan stood in front of her, those beautiful blue eyes shining, desperate as he tentatively held her arms. “Layla, this isn’t us. We aren’t ready for this shit.”
God how she wanted out of her body. She wanted to fly into the sky, forget who she was, what she would soon be. Layla wanted Donovan’s hands away from her body. Actually, she wanted them all over her but she knew that wasn’t possible, not now, probably not ever. Instead, she scrubbed her face as though inside her skin was a tingling itch that could never be abated.
“I know that. You don’t think I know that?” She fell back to what she knew; hating him, insulting him, deflecting her pain, her hurt so he could not wound her further. The anger, the shame, it all swirled inside her, collecting into a rage that sought one target alone. Him, that beautiful, insulting man in front of her. “But we can’t ignore it. We can’t play like it’s going to go away and for your information, you selfish asshole, men aren’t the poor victims when they knock up some girl. They get off easy. You’ll get off easy. You think I want to bring your kid into this world… proof that I actually had sex with you?”
“You weren’t complaining when your legs were straight in the air.”
“Yeah?” she screamed, pushing him back, slapping against his chest when he tried to calm her. “Well I will be now and for the rest of my freaking life thanks to you and your super sperm!”
“If I’d ever thought for one second this could happen I would have never asked… fuck!”
“Don’t act like this is something you didn’t think couldn’t happen, Donovan. It’s Biology 101. I screwed up. It wasn’t on purpose. Trust me, I don’t want to be tied to you.”
His laugh was bitter, harsh. “Obviously.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“God, Layla,” head back, gaze up at the stars as though his frustration, the truth should be obvious. Then Donovan glared at her. “One time… just one of me being gentle, with me not fucking you, of me loving you, and you run scared. I know you think I’m trash. I know you think you’re better than me so I’m fucking sorry that I have sullied your perfect body with my DNA.”
His words stopped her, actually made her step back so she could watch his face, try to see the lie there, that mask of honesty she knew Donovan wasn’t capable of hiding. But it wasn’t there. He wasn’t lying, he wasn’t hiding behind sarcasm or deflecting how he felt. Layla’s shock dimmed some of that fury warming her chest and his confession, that open expression on his face stunned her enough that her tightly constructed guard slipped. “You said it didn’t mean anything to you. You said nothing had changed.”
“I fucking lied!” She closed her eyes, blocking out the wet gleam in his eyes, the surprise that softened his features when he seemed to realize it was the first time he’d been entirely honest with her.
But it didn’t take away the hurt she had felt when she had asked what that last time had meant to him. To her, it had been more than overwhelming. It had meant more than she had been willing to admit, that night in his bedroom. That night, Donovan had touched her like no one had before. He’d been open. He’d been real, and Layla had only wanted more of that from him. But she’d been so afraid to admit it to herself, that she wanted all of what Donovan could give her. Yet when she thought that he might want the same, when she asked if he had, he had disappointed her yet again. He had taken it all back. And now he was telling her he had been lying?
Would he ever stop?
She wouldn’t wait around to find out.
Layla could feel her fingertips tingle. She felt the hollow reach of her disappointment, her desperation to be away from him rise up, move her legs backward, throw her into her car without a backwards look, uncaring that he threw himself after her.
“Where are you going?” She managed to slam her door shut, to turn the ignition and shift the gear into reverse and wouldn’t look at Donovan as he slapped his hand against her window. “Layla, stop. Where are you going?”
But she didn’t know, she only knew she needed to get away from him, away from her parents, from all the craziness, and as she drove down the street, speeding, unable to catch her breath, she only managed a glance into her rearview mirror, telling herself that wasn’t Donovan running after her car. That wasn’t him screaming her name, desperate for her to take him with her.