Time and Space

No one in Layla’s world knew I existed.

She’d set that pattern long ago, back when we were sophomores in high school.

“Cameron, you know your dad would have a fit. No one would understand us. Besides, isn’t it kind of exciting …” she asked, grazing her nails down my bare back. “ … to have something that’s just ours? Our dirty little secret.”

She was right about my dad, of course. He was a very strict Southern Baptist preacher and Layla was the embodiment of nearly every vice he ardently tried to stamp out of my life. And she was also right in saying that no one would understand us. We could not have been more opposite. I was the stereotypical nerd—president of the student council, teacher’s pet, on track to be valedictorian.

Layla—Layla was something else entirely. Exotically beautiful, tattooed with long black hair streaked with crimson … she smoked, drank, cursed, sang lead in a rock band and treated school as an inconvenience she was forced to endure just enough to keep her mother out of truancy court.

We had 3rd period English class together, though I doubted she realized that. She spent her time—when she actually made it to class—in the back, whispering and socializing with the swarm of people who always surrounded her, while I dutifully sat up front, as expected. I was sure she didn’t know I existed, though I was acutely aware of her presence.

Our teacher made us do a report on something we felt passionate about. My mom was a geologist, and I’d inherited my love of rocks from her. I brought in samples and found myself getting into my presentation.

“This is chalcanthite. It’s composed of hydrous copper sulfate,” I said, holding up a small glass box containing a translucent cornflower blue stone. “It’s beautiful, but it can be deadly. This sample has been coated with mineral oil and lacquer to keep moisture from breaking it down. It’s soluble in water and can be toxic due to the copper. It occurs naturally in Chile, and in Utah, Nevada and Tennessee.”

As I continued my presentation, I was startled to glance up and see Layla watching me. When one of her friends giggled and said something, she shushed them. Her gaze was as blue and unnerving as the chalcanthite. I felt my face heat and I managed to stumble through the rest of my presentation, which was the last one of the day.

“The rest of you be ready tomorrow,” Mrs. Tonkin said.

I got hung up after school that day, doing some drudge work for the BETA club that no one else wanted to do. By the time I got to leave, it was pouring rain. I didn’t have a jacket with me, so I raced for my Altima, which was one of only three cars left in the parking lot. As I put the car in drive, I saw her. I wouldn’t have recognized her if not for her red Audioslave hoodie. Layla sat hunched over in the bus shelter, shivering against the cold February wind and smoking a cigarette.

To this day, I don’t know how I ever found the nerve, but I pulled up and rolled down my window.

“Hey, you need a ride?”

She looked at me, then recognition dawned. “Hey, it’s the geologist,” she said. “Sure. Thanks.”

Dropping her cigarette on the concrete, she ground it out with the heel of her boot and climbed into the car. She smelled like honeysuckle and Marlboro Reds and I was so nervous I forgot to put the car back in drive before I hit the gas. It made a loud VROOM noise and she laughed.

“It’s been a long day,” I muttered, feeling my face flame.

“I hear ya,” she said, and leaned back in the seat. “I’m Layla.”

“Cameron.”

“Cameron,” she repeated in that husky voice of hers. “I like it.”

My ears and cheeks were on fire. I was so flustered I forgot to ask her where we were going until she chuckled again and said, “I live that way, Cam,” and pointed in the opposite direction.

“I was just going to get some gas first,” I lied, and gestured to the station just up ahead.

I had half a tank but if she noticed, she didn’t say anything. She just smiled.

The rain blew sideways, soaking me as I pumped gas I didn’t really need. I gave up after pumping ten dollars worth and stumbled inside before I realized I hadn’t asked her if she wanted anything. I’d seen her carrying a Dr. Pepper to class sometimes, so I brought her one of them.

“Thank you!” she said. “My favorite.”

She gave me directions to her house and said, “My mom’s kind of a mess. She was supposed to pick me up, but I guess she forgot again.”

The section of town she lived in was rundown and considered dangerous. It made me sad that someone as vibrant and lovely as her had to live in such a hopeless place.

“I liked your presentation,” she said, and for a moment I wondered if she was making fun of me.

“It’s a dumb hobby, I know. I just—”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “Don’t downplay something you feel passionate about. Your eyes kinda lit up while you were talking about it, and I thought that was really cool. We all need something like that.”

“What’s that for you?” I asked. “What do you feel passionate about?”

She smiled. “Songwriting. Playing guitar. Just music in general, I guess. I thought about doing a song for my presentation, but I haven’t finished it yet.”

I had just turned onto her street when Layla muttered, “Oh, shit. He’s there.”

I glanced at the banged up blue pickup sitting in the drive of the ramshackle house, then looked at her.

“Keep driving,” she said, then offered, “My mom’s shitty boyfriend. I really thought she’d ditched him this time. I’ll give you some gas money, but please drive me somewhere else. I don’t care where.”

I took her to the old graveyard beside the church where my father preached and pulled behind the old weeping willow tree so no one would see us there.

“No one comes here,” I said. “No one has even been buried in this part since the early 1900s. They ran out of room and started burying people in the big cemetery across the street.”

“Well, Cam,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s a little early in the day to be going to a makeout spot, isn’t it?”

If I thought my face was hot before, it was flaming now. “I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

“I’m just teasing,” she said. “We’re gonna have to loosen you up a little.”

She pulled out a mini bottle of Captain Morgan and poured it into the Dr. Pepper. Then she swirled it around and handed it to me.

I’d lived a sheltered life, had never drunk anything before, but I took it from her. I was already intoxicated with the mere thought of being alone here with her, of my lips touching something that had touched hers.

The alcohol made the already spicy taste of the soft drink almost aggressive. She said, “You don’t drink much, do you?” and I could’ve denied it, but my coughing and sputtering would’ve made a liar out of me.

But she was looking at me with some kind of tender amusement, not derision, so I drank another sip before passing the bottle back to her.

“Tell me about your song,” I said, and her smile widened to a grin. “Okay,” she said. “It’s about this girl, who is reacting to her lover telling her he needs space. I have a couple of verses down, but there’s something about the chorus I don’t like.”

She pulled a notepad out of her purse and read me some of her lyrics.

I loved you to the moon and back

Now I’m falling like a star

Now, out there in the distance, my world spins away

And there’s nothing I can do to save it

Because baby, you needed space.

I loved the way her face scrunched in concentration as she tapped her pencil, and I loved the way her blue eyes lit up even the gloomy afternoon when she figured out the words she wanted.

“Sing it to me,” I begged, and she did.

I closed my eyes, listening to the emotion in her raspy voice and when she was done, I told her it was beautiful.

Her unsure eyes searched my face, judging my sincerity, and then she kissed me.

Her soft lips pressed against mine, and the tip of her tongue teased them open. From that moment, I was lost, loving her to the moon and falling with her stars.

Layla didn’t believe in monogamy, and she made it clear to me from the start not to expect anything more from this than sex. As soon as she could, she intended to leave this town and never look back. But I think I got to her in some ways. We didn’t just share our bodies that summer. We shared our hopes and our fears, our pasts and dreams … I just never could tell her that losing her was my biggest fear, and my most fevered dreams were all about her.

The trouble all started when Billy Jacobs moved to town during the middle of our junior year. Unlike me, he was an instant fit with Layla’s crowd. Tall and handsome, strong and musically talented, he was like the male equivalent of Layla herself. How could I be mad at her for being attracted to him. It hurt me to see them laughing and kissing in the hall, but sometimes she still came to me, or sent me a 3 a.m. text to come pick her up.

“I love you, Cameron,” she said on that last night, as she lay in my arms and brushed the hair from my forehead. “But I have to get out of here. Billy knows this drummer, and he’s got connections … I think we could be something big.”

I wanted to beg her to stay, but in her eyes I saw that same need for my approval that I’d seen that first afternoon together. This was her dream, and it always had been. Who was I to stand in her way?

“Billy better take care of you,” I said. “And I better hear you on my radio soon.”

And I did. In a shockingly quick amount of time, Layla and her band scored a record deal. They were playing small venues out west, but then out of the blue one day, she texted that they’d scored the opening slot on a major tour. Then her song, Space, became a number one hit. Soon, everyone knew her name.

I did my best to get past her. I graduated college, got a job teaching geology and married a hospice nurse. We had two children, a boy and a girl and a big, fancy house on the right end of town. But every time I closed my eyes, I thought of her. Sometimes, I’d take the long way home just to listen to her in my car. My marriage was a happy one, but we’d never experienced the passion I’d shared with Layla.

Then one day, I heard that her band, Long Shot Seven, was playing at the university where I taught. Against my better judgment and any sane thought I had, I used my title to procure two tickets for the show. They were good seats, up close. At the last minute, Stacy had to work, so I attended the concert alone. I had to admit, I felt a little relieved. Although part of me wanted to see if Layla would have any reaction to seeing me with my arms around someone else, another part was glad because I wasn’t sure I could control how I’d react when I saw her again, and that wasn’t fair to Stacy.

Even though I was close, with the lights or whatever, she didn’t see me until mid-way through her set. I saw recognition light her face and then she smiled. Even with Billy right beside her, still as cool and good-looking as ever, she kept looking at me.

After the show, I purposely took my time heading out. A feeling of electric anticipation hung in the air. Somehow I knew I was about to see her again, Billy be damned.

I was right. As I made my way toward the door, a burly man touched my arm and passed me a note written on pink stationary. It simply read, The graveyard, 2 a.m.? and had a cellphone number scrolled beneath it.

Immediately, I texted back, See you then.

I had no idea how I was going to pull it off. Stacy was at work and I was expected to pick the kids up at my parents house after the show. But fate was on my side. I purposely took my time getting out of the parking lot, so when I called my mother and told her traffic was awful and I’d be a little longer, she told me to just let the kids spend the night and she’d take them to school in the morning.

I went home, showered, changed clothes, talked to Stacy, then I waited. The drive to the graveyard was only forty minutes from my house, but I gave myself an hour. I tried to tell myself that we would just talk, that it was merely two old friends catching up, but in my heart, I knew I’d take any risk to have her in my arms again.

I got there early and fished my own bottle from beneath the seat. Something banged on my window just as I turned it up and I screamed like a little girl, sloshing vodka down the front of my shirt

Layla stood outside of my car, cackling with laughter.

“I knew you’d be here early!” she yelled, grinning maniacally at me.

She was so beautiful that I didn’t pay any attention to my wet shirt. I clamored out of the car and took her in my arms, hugging her tight.

“Oh, Cam, it’s so good to see you!” she cried. “You don’t know how happy I was to see your face in the audience. How have you been?”

We sat in my car and I told her about Stacy and showed her pictures of the kids.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Look at you. It seems like a nice life.”

It was, and I should’ve been grateful, but ever since Layla had left, I’d felt like she’d taken a part of me with her. I was happy most days, but I hadn’t felt pure adrenaline, pure passion, since the day she’d left. Just being in the car with her again, breathing in the scent of her flowery perfume and Marlboro Reds, I was intoxicated, almost high.

“What about you?” I asked. “Headlining now, huh? I just saw the People magazine showing yours and Billy’s mansion.”

Her smile faltered just a bit. “Ah, you know. It’s hectic. I barely know what city I’m in half the time and I’ve spent exactly two nights in that fancy house since I bought it a year ago. One of them was when we did that magazine shoot.”

She stared out the windshield as it began to mist rain. “It’s been hard lately. I thought if I ever made all this money, everything would be easier, but I think maybe it’s worse. I take pills to help me sleep and pills to wake me up and Billy does worse than that. I think half his cut from the last album went up his nose, and lately he’s been shooting up heroin.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. Her fingers were cold, though the August night was warm.

“He’s just unpredictable on that stuff. Unpredictable was okay when we were younger, but that shit gets old.” She forced a smile. “But enough about that. I don’t want to be one of those rich assholes who complains about everything. Catch me up! Tell me about your life. You can read all about mine in the tabloids. I want to hear about you.”

We talked for hours, until the black sky lightened to indigo and she told me she had to go.

“Listen,” she said. “I have a couple of interviews in the morning, then I think Billy is going skydiving with some of his friends. Do you want to come to my hotel room for lunch? I’m staying at The Stonebrook.”

“I’d love that,” I said, even though my class schedule was full on Mondays.

“I’ll text you when I get back.”

Before she opened the door, she leaned over and gave me a long, slow kiss.

“I’ve missed you, Cam,” she said, before she ran off into the night to wherever she’d parked her car.

I made it back home and into bed just a few minutes before Stacy got home. I feigned sleep, but Stacy curled against me anyway, mumbling that I smelled like smoke. I’m ashamed to say, any thoughts of guilt I had were quickly replaced by fantasies of Layla. I drifted off thinking about the feel of her lips on mine.

A couple of hours later, I had to get up, shower and pretend to get dressed for work, though I called my boss from the driveway and told her I was sick and going to the clinic to get tested for Covid.

Then I drove to a cafe near her hotel and ordered breakfast.

She surprised me when she texted me at 9:20 and said, “He’s gone. You can come on over if you want. Room 214.”

“What about your interviews?” I asked and she never replied.

I finished my coffee and hung around for a few minutes because I didn’t want her to think I was some weirdo lurking around outside waiting for her to call, then I headed to The Stonebrook.

Layla opened the door, wearing a black silk robe and sporting a swollen eye that was almost the same color.

“Layla!” I gasped. “What happened?”

She was trying to light a cigarette, but her hands were shaking. I took the lighter from her and sparked it. She took a deep drag and a tear streaked down her cheek.

“He caught me sneaking back in last night. It’s fine. I just wish he wouldn’t hit my face. Had to tell the fucking interviewer I thought I had Covid.”

The thought of him hitting her—hurting her—enraged me. And it made me sick to think it had happened because she was meeting me.

“Layla, you have to leave him.”

She sat on the bed, flicking an ash into a coffee cup on the nightstand. Then she took another drag and stamped it out. “It’s not that easy, Cam. The band, the contracts … he and I are tied together. And he’s not like this all the time. It’s the heroin. I’ve got to get him off that shit.”

She gave me a pained smile and said, “Come here. It was worth it to see you again. I’ve missed you.”

With that, she untied her robe and lay back on the bed, exposing her pale, naked, glorious body. She didn’t have to ask me twice. Making love to her this time was maybe even better than it had been when we were younger. Back then, I never thought about the end, and now, I knew that every time I touched her, every time I kissed her, it might be for the last time.

I reveled in her—every touch, every taste—until she regretfully rolled away from me to check the time.

“I guess you’d better go,” she said. “He’ll be back soon.”

“Go with me,” I pleaded. “Let’s run away. We can be happy together, Layla. I know we can.”

“Cam, you have a family,” she said. “You have kids.”

“I don’t care,” I blurted, and as horrible as it was, it was true. I loved my kids, I loved my spouse, but I loved Layla more.

“Please,” I begged. “All my life, I’ve done what I’m supposed to do, but I can never have the one thing that I want most, the one person who makes me feel everything.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and tears leaked down her cheeks. “Cam, you and I, we live in different worlds. It would never work.”

“You don’t know that,” I insisted. “Layla, don’t leave me again.”

But she did, and it was two years before I heard from her again.

I was walking to my 1 p.m. lecture when I got the text. It read simply, I’m leaving him. Can you come get me?

243 Winston Lane

Madison, Al

I didn’t recognize the address, but I didn’t pause, didn’t think twice. I ran to her.

All the way there, my mind raced. Layla was a superstar. She could call anyone to come get her, but she’d called me. That had to mean something. Maybe she was ready to give us a try. Maybe she really did love me, too.

When I was about eight minutes away, I got another text.

Don’t come. He’s here and crazy. High. I’ll call you when I get away.

I stared at the text, then decided I was going anyway. I wasn’t going to let him hurt her anymore. I wasn’t going to let him change her mind. The address led me from the highway, down a winding country road, and finally, to a gravel one. I met absolutely nothing or no one during the last three miles in.

When I reached the cabin, Layla and Billy were in the yard, playing tug-of-war with a black suitcase. They both looked up when I came tearing down the drive.

“Who the fuck are you?” Billy asked, when I bailed out of the car.

The sight of them—both of them—shocked me. They were both so gaunt. Hollow-eyed. The sleeve of Layla’s blouse had been ripped off and hung around her wrist. I saw the track marks on her arm.

Layla let go of the suitcase and moved to stand between us.

“This is Cameron. We all went to school together, remember?”

Billy didn’t remember. He looked at me blankly over her shoulder.

“Billy, I’m gonna go now,” she said, holding her hands up. “You need to get help, and I do, too. We’re bad for each other. It can’t go on like this.”

Though I couldn’t see her face, I could tell she was crying by her voice and the way her shoulders shook. Billy started to cry, too.

“Don’t leave me!” he begged. “Layla, I love you. Please stay. I’ll do anything! I’ll go to rehab.”

“I can’t,” she said, backing toward me. “I need some space.”

His face crumpled, and she took another step back.

“If we’re over, then I’m over,” he said. “Goodbye, Layla.”

Then he turned and ran into the house.

“Billy!” she screamed, almost doubling over with the effort.

“Layla, don’t!” I said. “He’s just manipulating you. He’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

She turned to me, her still beautiful face tight with agony. “Cam, I can’t leave him. I love him. I’m sorry I called you out here. I’m so, so sorry.”

Then she started toward the house.

Something broke in me then. All the years of loving her so much and never being good enough. I would give up my whole world for her, and she was leaving me, yet again, for this junkie?

I don’t know where the shovel came from, or even remember picking it up. I just remember swinging.

It caught her in the side of the head, hitting her so hard that it sent vibrations all the way up my arms. She staggered, and I hit her again. This blow landed right on the back of her head and she crumpled like a rag doll.

I stood there in shock, looking at her laying there, blood pouring from beneath the fan of her unbrushed hair. So many thoughts rushed through my mind. What would Stacy and the kids think? My father? All of their lives, ruined, because I wanted the one thing that I could never have. I thought of Layla, and her beautiful eyes and her throaty laugh and I hated her for what I had become.

Then something crashed inside and I remembered Billy. Some switch flipped inside me, and I went into survival mode. This wasn’t my fault, it was theirs. Hefting the shovel, I went inside the cabin.

Billy lay on the couch, needle in his arm. I thought for a moment he was already dead, but then he opened his eyes.

“Where’s Layla?” he breathed.

I set down the shovel. “Gone.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “She left me?”

His voice was slurring now, his breathing becoming more shallow. I could barely see his pupils. His hand fluttered toward the coffee table and he gasped, “Narcan. Get it for me. Took too much. Can’t … breathe.”

I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw the bottle of Narcan nasal spray that was used to treat heroin overdoses. I picked it up and slipped it in my pocket.

I wish I could say I got some satisfaction in watching Billy die, but in the end, he was her victim as much as I was. I found some kitchen gloves and wiped my prints from the shovel and then made sure I left one of his on the handle before I dropped the shovel onto the rug beside him.

The red of her blood against the white rug made me queasy, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I was childishly afraid of walking back outside. Of looking at what I had done.

I still had the kitchen gloves on. I was taking those with me. Stacy liked true crime, and we’d watched a show where the police had lifted prints from the inside of a glove before.

The amount of blood pooling around Layla was shocking. She lay on her side, blue eyes staring sightlessly at the cabin. I knelt to brush a strand of long, dark hair from her face.

Her eyes darted to me and she made a gurgling sound.

My heart pounded. Maybe I should get help! I couldn’t be blamed for Billy’s death, not if I got rid of the Narcan. And maybe she wouldn’t even remember that I was the one who hit her. Head injuries were weird. I could say that Billy had done it and she was like this when I arrived.

But before I could make up my mind, Layla made a gasping, squelchy sound and tiny blood bubbles popped from her nose.

Then she was gone.

Her cell phone poked from her back pocket. I used her thumb to open it and went to her texts. She didn’t even have my name stored in her phone, and it only had the last two texts she’d sent. I didn’t delete them, because I felt like it supported the scene I’d tried to set. Then I looked through her gallery. Almost all the pictures were of her and Billy. I hated the way she looked at him. Some part of her cared for me, but she had loved him. I smashed that phone to bits.

I hated leaving her there like that, but I had no choice. I had to be careful now.

Taking the long way home, I tossed both the Narcan bottle and gloves in a gas station garbage can. Then I stopped at a Wal-mart I never went to and bought four new tires in a different brand, with cash, just in case.

When I got close to the university, I sent her number a text back from my phone.

Sorry, I think you have the wrong number. Do you need help?

If the police checked to see where my cell phone pinged, I’d have some explaining to do, but I didn’t think it would get that far. I signed myself up for some annoying insurance quotes that night and got dozens of calls the next day. Then I went to a new provider, got a new phone and new number, putting some distance between myself and my old number. They could still get the records, of course, but that would make it harder.

Methodically, I moved through all the scenarios in my head, though I didn’t think I’d get caught.

In Layla’s world, I didn’t exist.

The loss of her didn’t really hit me until a week later, when someone found the bodies. The news said the police were investigating it as a possible murder/suicide. Another report called them the latest members of the 27 Club, the old urban legend about all the famous singers who’d died before their 28th birthdays. I had no idea there were so many: Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix … dozens of them. It was wild.

Somehow, I think Layla would have liked that.

“That sucks,” Stacy said. “I liked her voice. Isn’t she from here?”

I shrugged as I put my dishes in the sink. “Yeah, but we never really ran in the same crowd.”

Then I got in the shower and let the spray muffle my sobs. When Stacy asked about my red eyes, I said I’d gotten shampoo in them.

Later, I sat in my father’s church listening to him preach—the dutiful daughter with her perfect teaching job, her perfect husband, and her two perfect kids—and my heart still grieved for the faithless, forbidden lover I’d had at age 16.

Stacy took my hand in his big, warm one, and squeezed it. Oh, how I wished I could love him as much as I loved her!

But I would be okay. We would be okay. All I needed was a little time.

And some space.