Layla - Colleen Hoover Page 0,7

since I’ve liked a girl enough to wonder where she’s going to be the next day.

But . . . where will Layla be tomorrow?

Where was she yesterday?

Where does she call home?

Where did she grow up?

Who is her favorite person right now?

I want to know all the things. Everything.

Layla breaks our kiss. “Aspen warned me earlier tonight when she saw me staring at you. She said, ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from the musicians. They probably have chlamydia.’”

I laugh. “Did you promise her you’d stay away from me?”

“No. I said, ‘It’s fine if he has chlamydia. He probably has condoms too.’”

“I don’t have chlamydia. But I also don’t have a condom.”

She separates herself from me and stands up. “It’s okay. I have one in my room.” She turns and walks toward the door.

I grab our wet clothes and follow her out of the room and up the stairs. She doesn’t exactly invite me to her room, but I can tell she’s expecting me to follow her because she’s talking as she walks up the steps.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” she says over her shoulder. “I only have condoms because they were party favors for the bachelorette party.” She spins around, pausing on one of the steps. “I didn’t realize how much harder it would be to get laid in the real world. You don’t even have to make an effort in college, but after college . . . ugh.” She turns and begins walking up the stairs again. She opens the door to her room, and I follow her inside. “The problem with sex after college is that I hate dating. It takes too much time. You dedicate an entire evening to a person you can tell in the first five minutes is a waste of your time.”

I agree with her. I much prefer the idea of going all in. I’ve always wanted someone I could instantly click with and then just fucking drown in.

I don’t know if Layla could be that person, but it sure felt like it when we reached the bottom of the pool. That was the most intense kiss I’ve ever experienced.

Layla takes our wet clothes out of my hands and walks them to her bathroom. She tosses them into the shower, and then on her way back into her bedroom, she says, “You should quit the band.”

She has to be the most unpredictable person I’ve ever met. Even the simplest sentences catch me off guard. “Why?”

“Because you’re miserable.”

She’s right, I am. We both make our way to the bed. “What do you do for a living?” I ask her.

“I don’t have a job. I got fired last week.”

She sits down and leans against the headboard. I lie on the pillow on my side, looking up at her. My face is near her hip, and it’s both odd and sexy being this close to her thigh. I press my lips against it. “Why’d you get fired?”

“They wouldn’t let me off for Aspen’s wedding, so I didn’t show up to work.” She scoots down the bed and mirrors my position. “Your boxers are still wet. We should probably take off the rest of our clothes.”

She’s forward, but I like it.

I grab her by the waist and pull her on top of me. I place her so perfectly against me she gasps. I’m taller than her, so her face doesn’t reach mine, but I want to kiss her. She must want to kiss me, too, because she crawls up my body until our mouths connect.

There aren’t many items of clothing to remove between us as it is, so it only seems like seconds before we’re naked under the covers and almost past the point of caring about a condom. But I don’t know this girl and she doesn’t know me, so I wait for her to fumble around the dark bedroom until she finds her purse. Once she retrieves a condom and hands it to me, I reach under the covers and begin putting it on.

“I think you’re right,” I say.

“About what?”

I roll on top of her and she spreads her legs apart, fitting me between them. “I should quit the band.”

She nods in agreement. “You’d be happier playing your own music, even if you don’t make money from it.” She kisses me, but only briefly before pulling back. “Get a job you can tolerate. Release your music on the side. It’s better to be poor and fulfilled than . . . poor and empty. I