Chapter 7
...ALMOST
Layla didn’t talk to me most of that Tuesday. She wasn’t at lunch, so I didn’t see her until English class. I slipped into my desk behind her and gave a tug to her hair. “Hey. You got a pencil I could borrow?”
She scrounged around in her humongous purse and came up with one as I looked on, amazed. “What the hell do you have in there?”
“Everything.”
I didn’t doubt it. The bag was huge—and full—and I could only assume she carried around her every last worldly possession in the thing on a daily basis.
I shook my head and snickered, “We’re still on for today, right?”
She nodded silently, which was weird. It was almost like she was avoiding talking to me, which wasn’t our style.
It wasn’t until after the final bell that she started acting like her old self again. I’d dumped my stuff in my locker and grabbed my English notebook before heading outside. There was a swarm of kids out front but I was able to spot Layla pretty easily.
Waiting for me.
I cut through the throng of people and met her at the top step. “Hey, Lay. You ready?”
Her eyes lit up causing an ache to zap straight through my chest. To make matters worse, she aimed a dazzling grin at me to answer, “Yep.”
As we started walking away, I put my hand at the small of her back to usher her through the crowd. Even after we made it into the open air, I purposely waited an extra few steps before dropping my hand.
Fine, you caught me. I was trying to claim her. I wanted people to see us together. Sue me.
Once we got to my Bronco, I unlocked her door and helped her up into my truck.
Jesus. She was in my truck. Again.
Be cool, you idiot.
I started the engine as the radio kicked on at full blast, blaring some bullshit boy band into my ears. “Jesus!” I said, turning down the volume. “What the hell is this crap?”
“Not a New Kids on the Block fan?” Layla asked, barely able to contain her glee as she sang a few oh oh oh oh ohs of “The Right Stuff.”
“Yeah, no.”
She giggled as I popped a cassette into the deck, causing “Paradise City” to boom throughout the cabin. Much better.
The day had been a scorcher, so I was anxious to get out of my stuffy school clothes. I loosened my tie over my head and unbuttoned my Oxford, allowing my skin to breathe through the cotton T-shirt underneath. I went to check my hair in the rearview mirror, and as I leaned over the center console, my bare arm pressed against Layla’s. I pretended not to notice that we were skin to skin, and had to make a conscious effort not to slide my hand up her thigh to see what she was wearing underneath that skirt.
I was hot before, but I was sweating bullets now.
Layla must have seen my face go white. “Not a Guns N’ Roses fan either?” she asked.
“No, I like them just fine. It’s just... It’s hot out today.”
“Yeah, I know.”
We shared a knowing pause as our eyes met in mutual understanding. Hell, maybe she was feeling as worked up as me. Or maybe she was just looking to cool off. I put the truck in gear in an attempt to get some air circulating through the space.
I needed it.
Before we even made our way out of the parking lot, I noticed her knees bouncing up and down as she picked at a buckle on her pocketbook. I thought I was nervous, but Layla was over there practically bouncing out of her skin. “Damn, you’re fidgety.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you’ve stopped bopping around once since you got in my truck.”
She immediately diverted her attention toward her purse, rummaging through it with abandon. “I was just, um, looking for some gum. Here it is! Want a slice?”
“Slice?”
“Yeah. It’s Juicy Fruit.” She held up a piece and waved it at me. “See? It’s a slice. Want one?”
The girl just cracked me up. “Yeah, sure.”
I gotta say, it helped to have something to chomp out my anxieties, allowing me to concentrate on the bigger picture: Fact was, it was a gorgeous, sunny day outside. The wind was whipping through my hair, cooling off my heated skin. I had Guns blaring on the radio... and a beautiful girl riding shotgun, tapping her toes to the beat.
Life was good.
As I pulled in front of her house and cut the engine, I turned to find Layla looking at me curiously. “I just realized I never told you where I lived. How did you know this was my house?”
Fact was, I’d done some recon earlier in the day. “Rymer gave me the address. I knew right where it was. I actually run through this neighborhood sometimes.” I checked out the beige split-level with its burgundy front door and black shutters. It didn’t necessarily look familiar even though I must have run by the place a half a dozen times by then.
“Oh yeah?” she teased, hopping out of my truck. “I may have to alert the neighborhood watch. They don’t appreciate riff raff roaming around their streets.”
I met her on the sidewalk, busting, “Yeah, just try it, dummy.”
She smacked my arm for that, then jumped up to grab a leaf off the tree at the curb. She immediately looked embarrassed, and I didn’t understand why. I mean, it’s not like her skirt flew up or anything.
“Sorry. Superstition,” she explained.
“You do that often?” I asked. “Maul trees in your spare time?”
“Just that one,” she laughed out uncomfortably. “Every single day, actually!”
I had some weird habits of my own, so it’s not like I could judge her for hers. So, I didn’t bother saying anything about it as she led me into the house. She dumped her purse onto a bench by the front door, then we both ditched our shoes underneath it. She grabbed her notebook and led me half a flight upstairs to her kitchen, directing me to sit at the wooden table.
My palms were all sweaty and I was too keyed up to take a seat just yet. “Hey where’s your bathroom?”
“Up the stairs, first door on the right.”
Yeah, I had to take a piss, but I had an ulterior motive for gaining entrance to her bathroom. I was more on a mission to suss out the source of her scent, and started with the bottle of shampoo on the ledge of the tub. I gave it a good whiff, but it didn’t give me the same high. It was close, though. Just not exactly right. I moved on to the decorative soaps in a little glass dish on the counter. A quick sniff proved a no go. There was a basket next to the soap dish filled with gels and hairsprays and stuff, the contents of which furthered my scientific research. No luck there either.
Maybe it was her perfume.
I snuck down the hall and slipped into her bedroom. The bed was made, her comforter a replica of Monet’s Water Lilies. Framed posters of The Outsiders, Sixteen Candles, and the 1978 Yankees hung on her walls; a few Nagel prints and some shirtless Soloflex guys decorated the spaces in between. What little wallpaper I could see was a pattern of tiny pink and purple flowers against a background of white, no doubt a remnant from her younger, more innocent years.
On her white dresser was a collection of glass bottles and various girly things, a perfectly aligned row of artfully arranged knickknacks. Everything in that room was exactly where it was supposed to be. No dirty clothes on the floor or sports equipment stacked on every surface like in mine.
I’d just set my sights on her bottle of perfume when Layla appeared in my peripheral vision. “What are you doing?”
I barely glanced over my shoulder to answer, “Just checking out your room. It’s the best way to get to know someone, don’t you think?”
She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame, raising an eyebrow at me. “Sure. Or, you know, you could just ask them stuff.”
I chuckled as I picked up the perfume bottle, gave a quick squirt into the air, and took a sniff. It smelled good, but kind of flowery. Definitely not the source of her piña colada scent. “Nice.”
I rifled through a dish of change, coming up with a guitar pick. Damn. A chick who played guitar? That was kind of hot.
“Yours?” I asked, expectantly.
My Lita Ford fantasies were squelched, however, when she explained, “No. My cousin’s.”
Moving on, I ran my hand over a carved box. “This is pretty awesome. It looks old.”
“It is,” she answered. “It was my mother’s.”
There was a catch in her voice, making me think her use of the past tense carried excessive weight. “Was?”
“She died a few years ago.”
Shit. “I’m sorry.”
Layla tried to seem unaffected as she shrugged, “It was a long time ago.”
I couldn’t even imagine what losing a parent must be like. I wasn’t best buddies with my father or anything, but I still wouldn’t want him dead, for godsakes. And even the mere thought of losing my mother was just too depressing to bear.
She bit her lip and stared down at her feet, prompting me to change the subject.
The mirror over her dresser had a line of photos running around the perimeter: Layla and Lisa mugging for the camera. Layla and her brother in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Layla and Cooper with their arms around each other.
I didn’t like that one too much.
But my good humor returned once I got to the picture of a young Layla on a Big Wheel, dressed in a white karate uniform and wearing an American flag as a cape. I couldn’t contain my chuckling as I asked, “Is that you?”
She stepped behind me to peek over my shoulder. Just the slightest brush of her arm against my back was like an electric shock, the scent of her an all-consuming drug. “Yep. That’s me all right. I was pretty obsessed with Evel Knievel back in those days.”
My chuckling tuned into full-on laughter. “That’s hysterical.”
“What can I say?” she laughed back. “I was a bit of a tomboy growing up.”
I met her face in the mirror, trying to picture that gorgeous girl as a disheveled ruffian. “No way. I’m not buying it.”
I couldn’t discern the look on her face. Edgy? Skeptical?
My eyes diverted from hers to land on a snowglobe. I reached over to grab it, then flopped down onto her bed in order to put some distance between us. I gave the thing a good shake before resting it on my chest to watch the snowstorm.
“Make yourself at home.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t impose,” I teased, grinning as I held up the globe.
Her smile was serene as she offered delicately, “It makes music, you know.”
She breached the few steps separating us and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Her warm hand wrapped around mine as she turned the globe on its side to wind up the base. I gave it another good shake and watched the snow storm to the tune of “New York, New York.”
I started to wonder what the hell I was doing. I was kind of crazy about this girl, we had the house to ourselves, and we were on her bed for godsakes.
Something had to give, and soon.
“She didn’t die.”
Layla’s comment startled me out of my musing. “What?”
“My mother,” she explained. “I lied. She didn’t die, she moved away. When I was twelve.”
“Oh.” I had no idea what to say. I got the impression there was more to the story than a simple divorce situation, based on how uncomfortable Layla was while discussing it. And the fact that her mother had moved “away” made me think it was somewhere very far from here. “I’m guessing you don’t get to see her much.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I lied about it. You just caught me off guard, I guess, and I didn’t know how to talk about it without... I don’t know. I never had to tell anyone about it before, you know?”
Her mother left and she never talked about it? With anyone? “What do you mean?”
“Everyone around here already knew the whole story. At least they thought they did. I never had to explain it before.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Small town.”
“Oh.”
The song had ended by that time and an uneasy silence filled the space between us. I forced myself to look up and meet her eyes, but she was apparently fascinated by the scrunchy stretched around her wrist. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really. Is that okay?”
“It’s your life, Layla.”
She glanced up just then, and the grateful look she aimed in my direction shredded me. I swallowed hard, staring into her eyes, neither one of us willing to be the first to look away. She licked her lips and my gaze dropped to her luscious mouth.
I’ve been here before. I could always tell when a girl wanted to kiss me, and the look on Layla’s face was inviting me to do just that. All I’d have to do is sit up and pull her mouth to mine...
But something stopped me. As bad as my lips wanted to kiss her, my brain wouldn’t allow me to go through with it. Maybe it was the way her eyes were staring right through me. The way my heart was hammering out of my chest.
I never thought twice about it with other girls, but the thing was, Layla wasn’t just another girl. Something was different with her. Something that told me everything would change the first second our lips met. Not just everything between us, but everything in my life. At seventeen, I didn’t quite know exactly what that entailed, but I did know it was a little scary and overwhelming to think about.
So I didn’t do it.
To break the moment, I bounded off the bed and returned the snowglobe to her dresser. “Hey, I’m starving. Whaddya got to eat around here?”
She was still sitting in the spot where I had left her, and I watched her posture deflate a bit before she shot me a look over her shoulder. “You want snacks or like, food food?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but after leaving her high and dry, I wasn’t about to make her cook some five course meal for me or something. “Snacks are fine.”
Layla led me back down to the kitchen, and I flopped down at the table where a can of Coke was waiting for me.
She scanned the pantry as she asked, “So, what are you in the mood for? Crunchy or chewy?”
“Crunchy,” I answered.
“Sweet or salty?”
I snickered. “Salty.”
She turned from the pantry and held up two bags of chips. “Ruffles or Doritos?”
“Doritos always win. Hey, do you have Cool Ranch?”
“Nope. Sorry. Are they good? I’ve never even tried them.”
“Blasphemy!” I shouted. Never had Cool Ranch? What kind of a girl was I dealing with, here? “Are you kidding? They’re awesome.”
She put her hands on her hips and busted my chops. “Well, gee, Trip, I could run to the store for you...”
“I’ll take the regular Doritos, wiseass.”
She tossed them at me before sitting down at the table, and then I held my drink out to hers in a toast. “To cheese-flavored corn chips and even cheesier homework assignments.” Layla groaned in agony as I laughed, “Wow, yeah, sorry, that was pretty bad.”
“So,” Layla asked, cracking her Coke. “How should we approach this?”
I smirked and answered, “Oh, I have some ideas.”
“Well, spill ‘em, Wilmington,” she said, smiling back.
I was really digging this new level to our relationship. I mean, maybe we were originally thrown together because of social politics, but the more we hung out, the more it felt like it was by choice. She was starting to get my sense of humor, and had no problem bantering back like a champ. I was starting to really like this girl, even beyond the fact that I would’ve given my left nut to see what she looked like naked.
I leaned across the kitchen table and asked, “We’re supposed to give an oral report, right?”
Layla eyed me warily. “Yeah, so...?”
“So, Mason is expecting us to get up there and read off a piece of paper or something, right?”
She crossed her arms and answered, “That’s normally how one gives a report, yes.”
“Yeah, but we’re supposed to do a visual, too.” Her eyes tightened, trying to deduce where I was going with this. I lounged back in my chair, waggled my eyebrows, and dropped the bomb. “I think we should make a movie.”
“A movie.”
“Yep,” I answered, tossing her a smirk. “I’m going to make you a star, Miss Warren.”
Her eyes went wide as her jaw dropped. “Wait. You want me to act?”
It was hard not to chuckle at her reaction. “It’ll be fun.”
“I am not a public speaker.”
I waved her off. “You won’t need to be. It will just be the two of us while we’re filming. Do you have a video camera?”
“No, do you?”
“No.”
“Hmmm...” she replied absently, squinting at the air in front of my face. “I’m sure I’m going to regret telling you this, but I think I know where we can get one.”
“Awesome. Then I’ll leave that part up to you, sugarpop.”
I swear I saw her blush at that. Damn. It was so much fun to provoke a reaction out of her. I had to go for it.
I lowered my lids suggestively, bit my lip, and leaned in to slither, “Hey, whaddya think about going a little porny with it? Juliet Does Verona. We could make it really hot.”
I was only teasing, but my comment flustered her way more than I intended. “Trip?” she squeaked out, before clearing her throat. “Have you even looked up the scene we were assigned?”
“No. Why?”
“Act three, scene three.”
“So?”
“So, unless we rewrite Shakespeare to make it so Romeo gets it on with the nurse, I don’t see how we’re going to be able to make it ‘hot.’”
Baby, if you only knew. “Sweetheart, I make everything hot.”
Layla stared at me blankly for a beat, trying to gauge whether or not I was serious.
But then my lip twitched and she busted out laughing.