Layla

I like it. I miss it.

Maybe this house and this vacation really are helping us.

I kiss her this time, and I’m relieved when I do, because all the want is back inside me. I force Willow out of my mind and focus on Layla as much as I possibly can. She wrestles my shirt off me, and we’re still standing next to the bed when I unfasten her bra. She presses her body against mine, and we kiss until I can feel her becoming unbalanced, her body leaning to the right.

She gasps as I spin her around and bend her over the mattress. Her gasp is followed by a giggle, and my God, I love that sound so much. I don’t even remove her panties. I just pull them aside and then shove myself into her like I’m afraid this feeling will pass if I don’t rush it.

She moans, and it’s loud, and I don’t want her to be loud tonight. I reach around and cover her mouth with my hand as I fuck her. All the noises she makes remain stifled against the palm of my hand.

I don’t make a single noise when I come.

And then when I roll her onto her back and reach between her legs, I kiss her the whole time I’m touching her.

Willow may be in the back of my mind, but that means she’s still in my mind, and for whatever reason, I don’t want her hearing this right now.

When we’re finished, I fall on top of her, breathing heavily. Layla is running her fingernails down my back, but my eyes are closed, my face pressed into the mattress.

I should be satiated, but I’m full of impatience, even still.

I want to go downstairs and talk to Willow.

I think about that—how I brought Layla back to this place so I could focus on her, but that focus is beginning to blur.

Layla has a right to know what’s going on in this house around her. She’s ignorant of Willow’s presence. Ignorant of Willow’s use of her body at night. Ignorant of my culpability in the situation.

Yet I do nothing to change any of that.

Layla shoves against my chest until I roll onto my back. She walks to the bathroom to clean herself up. I lie on my back and stare up at the ceiling, wondering how long it’ll be before Layla goes to sleep. It’s not very late. Four margaritas would normally be enough to ensure she calls it an early night, but she slept until eleven this morning.

I can hear the shower kick on in the bathroom, and I groan. Showers wake her up even more when she’s drunk. It’s like they breathe new life into her. She’s probably going to emerge from the shower and ask to binge-watch an entire Netflix series in one go. It could be hours before she falls asleep now.

I button my jeans and walk to the dresser. I study her prescription bottles, reading the names to see which one she normally takes to help her sleep.

I open the lid to the Ambien, shake one into my hand, and then put the bottle back in the dresser.

I go downstairs to make Layla a glass of wine. Wine mixed with margaritas will make her sleepier. The sleeping pill will exacerbate that. It’s not like she doesn’t take them on her own every night anyway. I’m just accelerating the process.

I use the back of a spoon to crush the pill up on the counter. I scoop up the powder and mix it into the wineglass until it’s completely dissolved.

I turn to walk out of the kitchen, but I don’t make it far.

The glass is knocked from my grip and shatters against the kitchen floor, several feet away from me.

I look at my empty hand, and then I look at the droplets of red wine as they stain the white cabinets on their descent to the floor.

The wine is everywhere. I just stand still, completely shocked. Instantly regretful. The glass was knocked out of my hand with enough force to send it across the kitchen, and there’s only one explanation as to why that happened.

Willow saw what I was doing, and it obviously upset her.

The severity of what I was about to do finally catches up to me. I look up at the ceiling and drag my hands down my face.

What was I thinking?

I leave the kitchen and head back upstairs, embarrassed that Willow saw that. Embarrassed I would even consider slipping Layla her own medication so that she’d fall asleep faster.

My desire to speak to Willow fades immediately and is now replaced by a heaping pile of shame. I open the bedroom door just as Layla walks out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. She points at the floor near my feet. “Toss me your T-shirt.”

She catches the shirt and pulls it over her head, dropping the towel in the process. The hem of it falls to the middle of her thighs, and I take in the fact that my clothes swallow her. She’s petite and quite possibly underweight now that she barely eats; yet I was about to slip her a dosage of her sleeping medication, along with even more alcohol, not knowing how that might affect her. Especially if she would have taken her usual nightly pill along with that.

This is not who I am.

I wrap my arms around Layla, pulling her against me, silently apologizing for something I’ll never admit to almost doing. I close my eyes and press my face into her damp curls. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she says, her words muffled against my skin.

I hold her like that for a long time. Several minutes, as if it’ll somehow absolve me of my guilt.

It doesn’t. It just makes it worse.

Layla yawns against my chest and then pulls back. “I’m so tired,” she says. “I think I drank too much. I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Me too,” I say. She leaves my T-shirt on and crawls under the covers. I change out of my jeans, pulling on a pair of sweatpants. I normally sleep in boxers, but I don’t know if Willow is going to show up tonight. I want to be prepared if she does.

I wasn’t tired when I lay down with her, and even though an hour has passed since we crawled into bed, I’m still not tired. I don’t even close my eyes. I watch Layla sleep, waiting for Willow to take over, but she still hasn’t.

She could be upset with me. Or maybe she has to wait until Layla is in a deeper sleep. I don’t know. I don’t know the rules. I don’t know if there are rules.

I want to explain my actions to Willow, but I can’t do that if she doesn’t slip into Layla, and I can’t do that from up here because I need my laptop to communicate with her.

I ease myself out of bed without waking Layla, and I head downstairs to the kitchen.

I pause in the doorway, shocked by what I see. Or by what I don’t see, actually.

There isn’t a single trace left of what happened earlier. The spilled wine has been cleaned up. The shards of glass are gone. It’s as if it never happened.

I walk over to the trash can and lift the lid. Right on top of the trash are the bits of glass that were all over the floor an hour ago.

Willow cleaned up everything while I was upstairs with Layla.

I take a seat at the kitchen table, but I don’t open my laptop. I open the security app on my phone first. I skip it back and watch as the wineglass is knocked out of my hands by nothing. I fast-forward it, and approximately ten minutes after I went upstairs earlier, the video shows the lid as it slides off the trash can.

I watch in fascination as the kitchen is slowly cleaned by nothing. The wine stains disappear. The shards of glass move from the floor to the trash can. The lid eventually slides back over the top of the trash can, and all traces of the broken glass are gone.

I close out the app and lay my phone facedown on the table.