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I gave up everything for her. Everything that mattered to me is gone. I kept my end of the bargain. I put her first. So why can’t she do the same? Why can’t she love me back?
Last time Hadley left, it took me two days to notice she was gone. I’m not proud of it. In fact, I’m downright ashamed that I never noticed her absence. My sole focus was the collection of poems I was working on. I had a deadline and I didn’t see anything beyond that. I can’t remember if I ate or even moved from my desk, although of course I must have.
Does he feel the absence of his mom? I want to pick him up and hug him, tell him I’ll always love him, no matter what. Just don’t leave me.
Somehow I’ve failed again. She’s gone, and Nicky is left motherless.
A hunger rises in me, a wrong, dirty, angry kind of hunger. It just wants to take and take and take, because I’m tired of feeling like this, like I have no control over my life.
Caleb doesn’t know me. He has no idea what’s going on in my life. I derive a certain satisfaction from that. “Yeah,” I say instead, and leave it at that.
“God, is that what you think? Is that what you think happened? You forced me?” A sharp gust of air and I can almost hear him cracking his knuckles like he does when he’s agitated. “Layla, I knew it was pot. I knew what I was doing. I wanted it to happen, okay?” “You-You wanted to have sex with me?” “Yes.” “Wh-Why?” “Because…Because I wanted to know what it would feel like.”
This time his sigh is resigned. “I wanted to see how sex would feel like…with a girl.” I remain silent at his declaration. Things seem even more tangled now. “I’m gay, Layla.” “No you’re not,” I blurt out. “I am.”
“I thought…no, I knew that if I was going to fall in love with a girl, it would be you, Lay. You were everything to me. My best friend. My go-to person. I knew you were in love with me and I thought if I could just push all those weird feelings away, I’d fall for you. I thought if I just…touched you, I could, maybe, fall in love.” “But you didn’t.” “No,” he whispers.
“So it failed, your experiment,” I mutter, talking to myself. “It was an experiment for you, sleeping with me.”
Caleb can’t be gay. I love him—loved him. Whatever. I pictured our wedding, our honeymoon in Paris, our babies: one violet-eyed boy and a green-eyed girl. I pictured him making love to me countless times. Even though our first time was a fucking disaster, I knew we’d improve with age, like wine or…or some kind of alcohol I can’t think of right now. How can he be gay?
Thomas is at his desk but he looks up as I enter. He doesn’t appear surprised to see me here, as if he knew I’d come. This makes me even more sure he’s the thief.
So, if you’ll just give me my notebook, I’ll be on my way.” Something flashes across his face that I don’t understand, and he shifts in his chair again.
I slap my hand over my mouth in mortification and walk backward. For every inch I move away, he gains two. He is advancing on me, blocking out the meager light and the view of the snow through the windows.
His eyes lift and I can’t draw in a breath. If I thought he needed me to read the poem for some bizarre reason only he’s privy to, then I was wrong. That wasn’t need. That wasn’t…anything. This is need. This. The flush of his cheeks. The clench of his jaw. The flare of his nostrils dragging in a bucketful of air as though his lungs are starved. He is starved for me.
I’ve never been looked at this way before, never been someone’s blazing focus of attention. My body, my very soul pressures me to move my hand from on top of his. Oh God, I’m going to let him do this, aren’t I? I’m going to let him unbutton my coat.
He is focused on my belly button ring and then it happens. He touches me, but only with his pinkie. It hooks through the ring and pulls. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Do you…not like it?” “No. I fucking love it.”
Thomas licks his lips and gulps in a shuddering breath. He needs me. And that makes me need him more.
“See, if you don’t want me to pick up my phone, then don’t call me on my phone.”
We’re not just friends.” “Is that right?” “Mm-hmm.” I nod and open my mouth to say…something, but it doesn’t matter what because I’m struck by a revelation, an epiphany. “We’re soul mates.” I can’t breathe, and at the same time, I feel light as a balloon. “Excuse me?” “Yes.” My eyes widen as everything slides into place. “That’s it. We’re soul mates.” “I… You… What?”
“Why aren’t you home, Thomas?” “Because it’s not home when she’s not in it,” he admits quietly.
And I’m struck by another epiphany. I don’t know what he is to me, but I know what I am to him. He needs me. He needs to exert his power over me because his love has made him powerless. He needs me begging because his love has made him a beggar himself. The lust he feels for me comes from the love he feels for her.
Because I’m a girl who’s not supposed to be the love of someone’s life, not with my selfishness. I was meant to live in the shadows and secrets. I can be Thomas’ secret, for a little while, at least—until I absorb all of his pain and set him free.
He’s looking at me like I’m something…precious but irritating. Like I confuse the fuck out of him. Like he can’t believe I’m talking about his wife while clinging to him naked, rubbing my core against his stomach like a slut. “She will. She loved you once, and she’ll love you again. You can’t fall out of love. You just can’t.” Love has to be enough.
I don’t know whom I’m trying to convince, him or me.. Thomas can’t ever stop loving Hadley, and I can’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone would willingly not love this man. It’s incomprehensible to me. It makes me hurt.
He wasn’t in his office because he knew I’d come. He knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from him. He wasn’t there because he was trying to…yeah, save me. Me. No one has ever done that for me before. I’ve never been that important to anyone.
“And that’s another thing I’m going to remind you of—that I’m not Caleb.”
“This is what happens when you do something I specifically told you not to. This is what happens when you strut in here in your short skirt and purple fucking coat and give me those big, violet eyes.”
Thomas focuses on me. “Goodbyes aren’t my forte, but I won’t leave you like a coward either.”
“Just…go, Layla. Just go. Leave. I… It fucking hurts me to hurt you, but I’ll do it. I’ll keep doing it because that’s just who I am, so you need to cut your losses and move on.” Like Hadley, I add silently. The love of his life, for whom he’s given up the very thing that defines him—his words.
Right here, in the confines of his car, I hear my innocence shatter. Whatever I’ve believed in is gone. Apparently, love isn’t enough.
And right here, I decide I’ll never leave Thomas. I’ll never abandon ...
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Before I turn the knob, I face Thomas. “You know I want you. I’m the crazy girl who lets you fuck her however you want. You can see it in my eyes. That’s what you said, isn’t it? It’s in your eyes. You can play with me. You can play with my body because you know how much I get off on it. I’m an open book to you.” I take a deep breath and unlock the door. “But I can read you too. It took me a little while. It took a lot of staying awake at night, thinking about you and yeah, stalking you, but I finally figured it out. You’re suffocating yourself, hoping to breathe life into your relationship,
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I don’t want to go back, because where I came from, there is no Layla.
Layla Robinson is fucking scary, and I don’t know what to do with that.
There’s relief. I don’t have to tell her about Layla right now. I can hold her. I want to hold her. Selfishly, I take the out she gives me. “Yes.” “I missed you…” she whispers. I nod but the reciprocating words won’t come out.
A few days ago, when everything was perfect, Nicky said his first words. Lay-la. Yeah, that’s what he said. He looked right at me with Thomas’ eyes, gave me a drooling chortle, lifted his pudgy hand in the air, calling me to him, and said, “Lay…la.”
“Do you want me to kick their asses for you?” He laughs, an indulgent look in his eyes. “God, I missed you.” He swallows, growing serious. “So much.” “Yeah,” I admit on a broken whisper.
I gave him everything, but he wanted nothing from me.
I’m the girl sleeping with your husband. Me. I’m the one who fell in love with him, who dreams about him, who will probably keep dreaming about him for the rest of her life. So, you can kill me if you want to. In fact, I’d advise that myself.
“You’re good with him,” she says in her classic, melodic voice. “What?” I squeak. In comparison, I’m a hyena with broken vocal cords. “With Nicholas. You’re good with him.”
This is the woman who left her seven-month-old baby alone and went away. This is the woman who left Thomas. I want to shake her, shout at her. In this moment, I’m so fucking jealous, so angry. She has everything that I want and she doesn’t even care.
“My family is dying because you love me,” he says matter-of-factly, and I go speechless at the inferno bursting through his red-rimmed eyes.
I’m flying. Falling—literally. My body is bounding down the stairs and as I hit the ground, all I think about is how fucking sorry I am, how fucking right it is that I’m going to die now because my love is so toxic.
“You fell down the stairs. It’s because of him, isn’t it? Do you remember that?” Words scrape my throat as they struggle to come out. “N-No. He didn’t do anything. It was me. I was g-going after him.” And this is right on so many levels. Caleb’s face hardens even more before going slack. “It’s not your fault.”
Turns out, my love is cannibalistic. Turns out, I don’t deserve to love anyone, much less have that love reciprocated.
It’s still surreal that she is here, that my son is alive, that we are a family, again.
My mind goes to the piece of paper tucked in my pocket—her poem from long ago. The poem she wrote for me, in another lifetime maybe. I carry it everywhere with me. I carry her everywhere with me, like a forgotten penny in my wallet. Most days I don’t even clap my eyes on it, but it’s there, safely buried.
“You fell in love. I’d never begrudge you that.” Love. I fell in love with Layla Robinson. In the frenzy of the last few months, I never got the chance to tell Hadley myself. She heard the rumors though. She heard why I quit my job, why we moved back to New York, other than for her and Nicky’s treatment. I had an affair with my student.
It’s true that I ended up falling in love with her, but I never confessed this to Hadley. It feels foreign to hear it from my wife’s mouth. It feels…like relief. I haven’t felt it in a long, long time.
