Layla

by Colleen Hoover

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood. —Elbert Hubbard

How can I have hope for a way out of this when things have gotten so out of control? I’m speaking to a detective I met online while my girlfriend is upstairs, losing her damn mind.

I stand in my designated spot on the stage and watch the girl as I play, wondering if she’s drunk or high, or if there’s a chance she’s out there dancing the way she is to poke fun at just how much this band sucks. Whatever the reason for her flailing around like a dehydrated fish, I’m thankful for it.

“Leeds wants one,” Layla says, reaching out her hand for another pill. The bride hands her another one and walks away. I don’t ask what it is. I don’t care. I want her so much I’ll be the Romeo to her Juliet and take whatever the hell kind of poison she wants to put on my tongue right now.

no matter how beautiful she was, her insecurity was the loudest thing about her.

It’s interesting how much a person’s belief system can be changed by things in this world that can’t be explained. Hell, not just my belief system, but my morals. My values. My focus. My heart.

I initially thought our meeting was organic, but I found out from Garrett that Sable ran a fan club for me that she’d started a year before we even met. I confronted her about it, and things got weird after that. I tried to break it off, but she didn’t take that very well. At first, it was just incessant phone calls. Messages. Voice mails. But then she started showing up to shows, demanding I give her another chance. Garrett and the guys started calling her Unstable Sable.

There’s no better feeling than being loved for who you are rather than for what you’re worth.

Concern might be the only difference between liking someone and loving someone.

“I’ll get it!” I yell out from the bathroom. I really don’t want Layla answering the door after I read some of those comments. Not to mention, Sable knows where I live. She’s slept in my bed. “I’ve got it!” Layla yells back. I’m picking up my shirt and pulling it back over my head when I hear a sound. It’s like a single-shot firecracker. Pop! My blood chills—as if my veins would shatter like glass if I moved. But I do move. I run. When I reach the bedroom door, I hear the sound again. Another pop! I swing open the door, and everything I know and everything I love and everything I live for is in a heap on my living room floor. There’s blood pooling beneath her shoulder. In her hair. I immediately drop to my knees and lift her head. “Layla,” I whisper, right before feeling a sting in my shoulder. Everything after that is a blur. A nightmare. Everything stops. It just stops. It just . . .

“You used to hate my sandwiches.” She shrugs. “People change,” she says between bites. “You also used to be a loving boyfriend who didn’t hold me hostage, but look at you now.”

The attack changed a lot of things about her. It changed both of us. A lot was taken from her because of me. Months of her life. Her confidence. Her security. She was left with anxiety, dependency issues, night terrors, panic attacks, memory loss. The carefree and confident girl I fell in love with no longer sits next to me. Instead, I sit next to a girl who seems like she’s fighting not to crawl out of the skin she’s in.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like, dealing with anxiety. She tried to explain it to me last week. I asked her what the anxiety felt like. She said, “It’s like a shiver running through my blood.”

Layla shakes her head. She looks from the broken mirror to all the glass in the sink. “I . . . I don’t know. I was just washing my hands, and the mirror shattered.” There’s an obvious indention in the mirror, as if someone punched it, but I can’t imagine why Layla would do that.

A burnt rag. The same rag I wiped my hands on right before running upstairs. The rag obviously caught fire, because it’s burnt to a crisp, but how did it end up in the sink? How is the water on? Who turned off the stove? Who knocked over the pan of soup?

I scroll down until I get to something on the second page I’m certain I didn’t write. It’s just five words, but it’s enough to make my blood run cold. I’m sorry I scared you.

After she covered me up, her eyes moved straight to the security camera in the Grand Room. I watch the video with a lump in my throat. Layla peers at the camera for a good fifteen seconds before moving toward it. She walks across the room with a curious expression on her face and then stops right in front of the camera. She doesn’t pick it up. She doesn’t even touch it. She just stares into it as if she wants me to see her.

At approximately 4:29 in the morning, the camera view changes abruptly, and then the video goes black. I pause the video and look at the security camera perched on one of the bookshelves. It’s pointed toward the wall now.

The app shows me standing up from the piano. Stretching. I keep my eyes on the footage of the piano. As soon as I reach out for the door handle, middle C on the piano is pressed by nothing. The key just . . . played itself.

But after the book, and now this—this is a full-on conversation with . . . nothing. No one is here but me, so that only leaves one explanation. Ghosts are real. And this one’s name is Willow.

I think I’ve finally accepted that this house came with a spirit of some kind, but believing that spirit can take over Layla’s body is an entirely new thing to process.

I finally make eye contact with her when she pulls out the chair to sit down. It’s Layla. But it isn’t.

It’s the first time I’m not able to tell who is who. Did Willow wake up as Layla?

And if I owned this place, it would give me an excuse to come back occasionally. To visit Willow without Layla growing suspicious. Is that emotional cheating? Willow is a ghost. It’s not like she could come between me and Layla. But I guess she has in a way.

I start to say, “I told you about it,” but then I remember that was one of the last conversations we had before she got shot. She has no memory of that entire day, or the week that followed. No memory of our conversations that day leading up to the moment she got shot.

Now im curious if she was perhaps not layla at the time

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.

Ew this guy

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’m full of an immense need to find answers for why Willow is stuck in her world, because I desperately need her to get stuck in mine.

But then my blood chills . . . freezes . . . shatters like tiny shards of glass exploding inside of me. The words that just came out of Willow’s mouth are rushing through me, searching for a place to belong, but they don’t belong. Her words don’t belong in Layla’s head. I never mentioned specifics about Sable to Layla. I never told Layla that Sable had a fan club.

Is that why Willow is here? Because she’s Sable, in need of closure? If that’s the case, why would she go by a different name?

“Get. Out. Of. Layla!” Willow scrambles to her feet. “Leeds, wait. You don’t understand. It’s confusing inside her head. Nothing makes sense. That’s not my memory—it’s one of Layla’s.” She’s in front of me now, pleading.

Sable is in layla and willow is layla??

Willow is Sable, and I should have recognized that immediately.

“I’m ready, Willow.” I only feel it for a second. A whoosh, like a rush of wind moving through my head. It’s as quick as the fluttering of an eyelid, but I know time has passed, because when I open my eyes, I’m still looking at my phone, but the minutes on the recording have changed. It went from just a few seconds to over three minutes.

“Death from bullet wounds is usually the result of excessive blood loss, so it probably took Sable several minutes to die after you shot her. And in that same time frame, Layla also flatlined. There were two souls in the same room that left two bodies at the same time. Which means when Layla’s body was revived by paramedics, there’s a strong possibility that the wrong soul entered that body.”

Called it

Perhaps what we desire can sometimes be so strong it overpowers our fate.”

I no longer feel like I’m falling out of love with Layla, because I’ve been falling in love with her this whole time in Willow. Layla is Willow, and now that I’m looking at her, I have no idea how I didn’t see it before tonight.

It’s been two hours since we came upstairs to prepare for Layla’s drowning.