Now that Layla was thirty-five, her former girl-next-door cuteness had morphed into a delicate, fresh-faced elegance that caused her to be routinely carded for alcohol. Her face had matured in a way that allowed the delicateness to be replaced with a classic, more refined appearance. She had been using liberal amounts of sunscreen from an early age, and as a result she looked like a woman who took damn good care of herself.
She’d also settled on a look and a style that was all her own. She’d cut her hair in a shoulder-grazing bob and she leaned into the strawberry tones by adding more of them. At school, she often wore glasses instead of her contacts, and she owned several pairs, treating them as an accessory. When she wasn’t at school, she often played up her eyes with mascara and winged her eyeliner simply because she liked the way it looked. Maybe someone who knew about such things would say she was trying to figure out who she was by way of choosing a persona. And maybe that was true. But all Layla knew was that she enjoyed being whoever she wanted to be with no one to please but herself.
The newlywed won the big prize on Wheel of Fortune. Layla drained the last of her can of Coke and then she burped, loudly. Norton looked at her like, You are my kind of person. Then she laughed and thought about how far she’d come and that maybe she had lots of things to be happy about.
chapter 25
Layla
The first thing Layla saw when she opened her eyes on the morning of December 31 was Norton’s face approximately six inches from her own. He’d been asleep in his dog bed on the floor when she’d shut off the lights and crawled under the covers, but he’d clearly had a change of heart about his sleeping preferences at some point. Either that, or he just had to pee and wanted her to wake up. She’d been sending pictures of Norton to Sasha and Josh at least once a day, so she grabbed her phone and snapped a quick picture, holding the phone above her and keeping the angle wide enough to show that Norton was practically sharing her pillow. She thought about adding a caption that said WE WOKE UP LIKE THIS but decided it was dumb. What if Josh thought she was trying to say she looked pretty first thing in the morning, without makeup? She did look good first thing in the morning, but that was beside the point. She cropped herself out of the picture, didn’t include a caption but did include a smiley face, and sent it with a text that said, I think your dog prefers my pillow.
Layla let Norton out in the backyard and started the coffee. Her phone pinged an hour later and the text from Josh said, I’m not at all surprised.
She spent the remainder of the morning lounging on the couch with Norton. Her phone rang around noon, and the caller ID showed that it was coming from the guitar shop. “Hello,” she said.
“Hey, it’s Brian. I got your number from our customer database. I was wondering if you were busy tonight. I have a proposition for you.”
“What might that be?” she answered in a cautious tone. She’d hear him out and then politely decline. Maybe Brian and his fiancée had a friend who needed a date to round out their foursome, and now that Layla had revealed her marital status and availability, he’d thought of her. Layla had already turned down several invitations for New Year’s Eve because she didn’t feel like third-wheeling her married friends’ evenings and she was even less enthusiastic about a blind date. She’d planned to stay home and sit on the couch with takeout, some wine, and Norton.
“I have a friend,” he said. Here it comes, she thought. “He was supposed to play at a bar tonight, but he ate something sketchy and is down for the count with a severe case of food poisoning.”
Wait a minute. This didn’t sound like a setup. It sounded like a gig.
“And he asked you to fill in for him?”
“Yep. And I’m asking you to sit in with me. Jeannie and I had plans to go to dinner and then join a group of our friends to listen to him play. He knew I was coming tonight and he’s in dire straits because the owner is pissed about losing his New Year’s Eve entertainment. Jeannie said she didn’t care if I was sitting at the table or up on the stage as long as we were together. You interested?”
She felt it then, like a Pavlovian response, the urge to perform. To hear the applause. See the smiles on the faces of the crowd.
“Maybe,” she said. “What kind of music?”
“Covers. Maybe not quite as rockin’ as you might prefer, but pretty close to the songs we played together at the shop. I can text you my friend’s set list.”
“Yeah, send it over.”
“Let me know if there’s anything you can’t play or don’t know the lyrics to.”
“I’ll take a look and get back to you within the hour.”
“That’d be great. My friend is shitting himself right about now. In more ways than one.”
But his friend didn’t need to worry, because Layla sent a text to Brian twenty minutes later that said I’m in.
* * *
Before she left the house, she leaned down to talk to Norton. “I’m heading out for the evening. I know you’re going to miss me, but if you take a nap maybe the time will go by faster. Then I’ll come home, and you can sleep in my bed tonight.”
At the bar, Brian introduced Layla to Jeannie and the rest of their friends who’d come to watch. They claimed the reserved table in front, and after the introductions had been made they gathered around it with their drinks waiting for the set to start.
“Did you invite anyone tonight?” Brian asked. “I mean, I gave you so much notice.”
Layla laughed. “No. I’d already planned an exciting evening of sitting on the couch and turned everyone’s invitations down weeks ago. They all have plans tonight. It’s fine.” Who the crowd was made up of was far less important to her than the simple fact that after all these years, there was a crowd to play for at all.
“You nervous?” he asked.
“Nope.” Performing exhilarated her, and she could count on one hand the number of times she’d ever been nervous. And she had hours of recent basement-studio practice under her belt. She was more than ready to unleash it.