He walked past me toward the tractor. “Come on, now show me what’s wrong with the engine.”
I shouldn’t, I thought, standing still, unable to move. Dylan…that article…even Joan had said stay away. My gut was screaming stay away, now.
And I had to listen to my gut.
“Annie?” he asked. “You coming?”
“No,” I said. “I’m taking the day off. I can’t…”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I can see that. I’ll see what I can do about getting your tractor fixed.”
And then he was gone and I…Christ, I was in ruins.
There was no chance of my going to the strip club that night. All I could do was lie in bed, eat chocolate chips by the handful, and look at that picture of Dylan in a tux. I could just see a slice of his chin, pink skin with a shadow of darker scruff. But the chest beneath that white shirt with the small black buttons looked wide. Solid.
The fact that Dylan went to parties in tuxes was mind-blowing in about a million different ways.
He goes to parties in tuxes and I go to parties in double-wides.
But he sent me that picture and that seemed…like something. Like…trust. I didn’t know. I didn’t have any kind of context for this fucked-up relationship. All I had were a million questions.
Starting with who the hell was Dylan?
When the phone rang, I was dozing but I woke up in a heartbeat, reaching for the phone.
“Layla?” Oh that voice, that eager jump in my heart, in my body at the sound of it.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
I smiled at his familiar opener. “Why do you always ask that?”
“Because that’s the only thing that matters. Did I wake you up?”
“Not really. What about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t get to the strip club.”
“I guessed. Too hung over?”
“I feel like part of my soul is dying.”
He laughed. “You’ll get over it. Was that your first hangover?”
“No, actually.” I shifted on the bed, pushing the chocolate chips away. Who needed chocolate when I had him on the other line? “I got very drunk at a wedding when I was a kid. While everyone was dancing I drank all the half-full glasses on the table. Amaretto stone sours were big.”
“You barf?”
“Big time. What about you?”
“I don’t drink much anymore,” he said. “I used to.”
“When you were wild?”
“When I was the wildest. Too many mornings with my head in a toilet.”
“Now you’re a man who goes to parties in tuxes.”
He was silent for a minute. “I guess so.”
The silence was thick. Telling. He did not want to talk about this. But I didn’t really care.
“What do you do? Like for a job?”
“Something kind of stupid that people pay me a lot of money for.”
“What—”
“Look, Layla, I told you I’d never lie to you. And I won’t, but I can’t tell you this.”
“Are you a spy?” I tried to joke. “Is that it? You’d tell me but then you’d have to kill me?”
“I’d tell you and…shit would change.”
“Because you’re rich?”
“Because a lot of things, Layla. A lot of weird, shitty things that I really don’t want to talk about.”
It’s not like I didn’t understand; there were things that if I were to tell him would blow everything apart.
“Okay,” I said.
“Did you see Ben today?”
“He’s fixing something for me.”
“Jesus Christ, Layla! What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I’m convinced. I didn’t help him. I walked away.”
“Good.”
I put my head in my hands.
“But…he made me cornbread, Dylan.” How does a guy kill two men and make cornbread?
He sighed. “Just because someone can be cruel doesn’t mean they are incapable of kindness.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. The words were out before I could stop them. I didn’t want to talk about Hoyt. I didn’t want to even think about him. His cruelty had left no room for kindness. And the basic decency he’d shown, combined with his calculation, had, in my lowest moments, convinced me he’d been kind. And it had been so easy for him, so easy, because I’d been so starved, so impossibly void of kindness.
I’d been a fool. An easy mark.
Dylan was silent for a long time. “Who hurt you, Layla?”
I stared up at the pocked ceiling of this trailer I’d claimed as my own and the words, the real words—my husband, my husband hurt me—didn’t come. But it’s not like Hoyt was the only one who’d hurt me. My mom had unknowingly spent years tenderizing me for Hoyt. Teaching me to be small and to be scared.