Reaching into one of my desk drawers, I pull out the file with her name on it. I trace the name Layla Carlysle with the tips of my fingers and wish it was her face I was touching instead of a cold piece of cardboard. I flip open the file and stare at the document right on top.
When I was released from the hospital that day, my lungs clear from all the smoke inhalation after running through the burning building, I found her room and sat by her bedside even though there was no reason for me to be there. Her broken body still under the covers, hospital equipment and discarded wrappers from gauze, syringes, and oxygen tubes scattered all over the room, everything was in the same spot from when they were working on her. No one had cleaned up the mess after they finished.
They assured me she was no longer in pain. They promised me that they did everything they could. I sat there staring at her for twelve hours, willing her to open her eyes and look at me, to make it all stop being real, but she never did. She never moved and she never woke up, and I was finally asked to leave so they could move her. It took the strength of both Gwen and Austin to drag me from that room, to tear me away from her so I could go home, get some rest, and shower the soot and Layla’s blood off of me. This never should have happened to her. She should have never walked out my door with Finn, and I should never have made her feel like she wasn’t worth it. She was everything to me. She was my heart and my soul and my reason for living and now she was gone.
I read through the document in the file three times as I remember the day I left the hospital and Layla behind. I went back to my house and tore the place apart because of the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t right that she was there in my arms one minute and gone the next. It wasn't right that I couldn’t have her when I needed her so much. I ripped curtains from windows, broke picture frames that hung on walls, and shattered half of the dishes in the kitchen, and no matter what they did, Austin and Gwen couldn’t stop me. The only thing that did was the object resting against the nightstand in my room. All of the rage and sadness drained out of me when I saw Layla’s guitar next to my bed. I thought about the soft, raspy timbre of her voice when she sat in the middle of my bed and sang me that song—one of her originals that she’d never sung for anyone before me.
I picked up the guitar and held it in my arms like she did. I awkwardly strummed my fingers over the strings before the memories of her overwhelmed me, and I angrily tossed the guitar across the room, watching it bang against the wall and fall to its side.
I was ashamed of myself and immediately regretted my actions. This was Layla’s most prized possession, and I just took out my grief on something she cherished. I crawled over to the guitar and gingerly picked it up, noticing something white hanging down behind the strings in the sound hole. The knock against the wall must have jarred something loose. Gently setting the guitar on its back on the floor in front of me, I carefully pried apart the strings and reached in with two of my fingers to pull a folded up piece of paper out from the inside of the instrument.
When I saw what it was, I closed my eyes and cried like a fucking baby in the middle of my room until Gwen finally came in to check on me. When she asked me what was wrong, besides the obvious, I soundlessly handed the letter over to her and listened to her gasp as she read it. The look on Eve’s face that day when she saw the guitar case by my front door suddenly made sense. She knew what was in that guitar. She’d known it all these years but in her foolishness, she assumed the guitar was lost in Jack’s accident. She never knew Layla had kept it hidden from her all this time.