Forever Layla: A Time Travel Romance (12 page)

Layla stepped closer and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. Even with it being a quick kiss, I felt the bolt run through me like always happened when we kissed. “See you when you get back.”

After I dropped Layla at work, I drove over to Michael’s bungalow style house by the train tracks. I took the cinderblock steps two at a time and knocked on the door, sending black paint chips flittering down to the porch.

Michael yanked the door open. “You’re late.” He bent down and grabbed his guitar and wrapped the strap over his neck. “I asked Deana Thompson to meet me by the big rock down by the water tower. She said she would if I wrote her a song. I told her I would have her one by this morning.”

I pulled the house door shut behind him. “I thought she and Jason Martin were together.”

“That’s history as of yesterday. I saw her out with her friends last night at the Bantam Chef. She was putting money in the jukebox while I was beating your score on Street Fighter. Anyway
, she and I got to talking about music. She’s all into Pearl Jam. I told her Head Trauma was just as good as Pearl Jam. I followed her out to her car, playfully arguing that fact, and ended up making out a little in her car before her friends came out, and she had to leave. I got her number and called her when I got home and told her that I wrote her a song.”

I shook my head as I asked, “That fast, you wrote her a song?”
    “Pfft… no. It’s that piece of crap thing Travis made up”

We stopped at my truck while I unlocked it. “The one where he rhymed pansies with panties?” I snickered as I remembered t
he day Travis played it for us.

“Yeah, I had to come up with something original that sounded like a love song
. Besides I figure as long as I do that thing with my eyes that makes the girls go wild, she won’t notice what a load it is.”

“Good luck with that.”
We got in the truck, and I closed the door. “Listen, plans have changed, and I can’t stay at the party. Can you find a ride back?”

“What? Why?”

I backed up and pulled into the street. "Mom found out Layla’s been living at the old office. She flipped and kicked her out and told me to dump her or find a new place to live.”

“Oh
, man. What are you gonna do?”

“I’m packing and looking through this
.” I lifted the newspaper. “To find us an apartment.”

“You mean you’re moving in with a girl before I do? Man! How in this universe has this happened?”

“It’s the next step, and I’m not ending it with Layla just because of my mom. I’m a man now, and she’s got to accept that.”

Michael looked my way, “Get a house instead of an apartment. We can throw house parties there. Charge a cover and the band can play.”

“Sure.” I rolled my eyes at him.

“It’s a great idea. You’ll get your cut plus venue rental
, and you can use that toward rent.”

“That could actually work.”

I pulled in behind the water tower where all the other cars were parked. Michael grabbed his guitar and opened the door. “Happy house hunting.”

“Yeah and good luck with the panty song.”

“Getting lucky and panties are my specialty.”

“Whatever
, man.”

He slammed the door and I drove off. I stopped at the grocery store and asked the manager for some boxes. I took what they had and
got a few more at the dollar store before heading to the old office. I carried them in and looked around, trying to decide where to start first.

Bathroom
. The lotions and shampoo smelled a little like Layla, but they were missing the essence she added. I closed my eyes and thought of her. This was it. We were moving in together. I gulped as I considered what that would mean. It wasn’t how I was raised. How would Mom tell Grammy Taylor about this? I could just hear it: “Little David’s now shacking up with some grown woman.”

It wasn’t like other people didn’t live together first before they got married. It was
getting to be the norm actually. But to the older folks and the people of standing, it was still considered trashy. I loaded up the boxes and took them to the truck. I didn’t want Mom coming back and finding anything there at the old office that didn’t belong.

I got it all in the truck in about an hour
, then headed to the Bantam Chef, and went in with my newspaper. After I bought a large Cheerwine, I sat in a booth scanning the classifieds. I started circling ones that sounded promising. It soon occurred to me that we would need more than an apartment. We’d need furniture and pots and pans and all kinds of things. I sat back and took a deep breath. Maybe Mom was right. I shook the thought out of my head.

Time to grow up.

I got up with my newspaper and drove down to the bank to check my balance. I really wasn’t a big spender and made pretty good money from the band’s gigs along with all my years of tutoring and Grammy Taylor’s birthday and Christmas money.

I thought again about Grammy. We were always close. When Papa died, I sp
ent that whole summer at her house. I’d been so worried that she’d be lonely. We played cards and she cooked for me. I’d helped her out in Papa’s garden that he’d planted that spring but never got to harvest. I thought about how I would introduce Layla to Grammy. Grammy was a church lady. I wanted her to love Layla when she met her, but I knew she wouldn’t—if things went the way they were going. More than anything, I wanted Layla accepted by Grammy and, hopefully, eventually, Mom and Dad, but this would put a scarlet A on her in their eyes.

I withdrew quite a large chunk of money and got back in my truck. I pulled out the classifieds again, but this time looking for used things we would need. That’s when I glanced up and my eyes fell on the jewelry store across the street. I got out of the truck and looked both ways before crossing the street.

I said out loud. “Time to be a grown up.”

*

I picked Layla up for lunch, and we went through a drive-thru down the street. Layla pulled the newspaper from her purse and flipped the pages to one with lots of highlighter marks. “I think I’ve found a few potential ones that I’ve circled. I called about two of them already. We can go after I get off work.”

I nodded. “Sounds good. I’ve been looking too
, and I think I’ve found something, if you want to go take a look right now.”

“Sure.”

I drove a bit and then down a wooded road to an area of the mill village, where folks had started renovating. “I found out about this place today from my dad’s friend who owns the jewelry store. His mom just passed away. The furniture is old but he says he had a lady come clean each week for her as the cancer got worse, so the place is clean, just outdated. The house beside it is empty right now and there’s a wooded lot on the other side.”

I pulled up to the house and opened the truck before running around to open for Layla. She had finally gotten used to that and waited for me.

“Don’t we need a key?”

I pulled one from my pocket and dangled it in front of her. We walked up on the
porch. It was wide with a swing to the left. I opened the door and set our bagged lunch on a small table.

Layla stepped in and looked around. “Oh… my. The furnishings are so retro.”

“I know. Maybe we can replace some of it when we have more money.”

She spun to face me, “Why would we replace any of it?”

“So you like it?”

“I love it.”

She rushed over to the gold curtains hanging from the dark rods above the living room window, before moving to the large bookshelf and pulling a book down and flipping through. She was so busy looking around the room, it took her a moment to notice I was down on one knee. When she did, her face turned from glowing to shock. “What are you doing?”

She stared at me and said nothing. In that moment
, I was rethinking the whole thing as my palms began to sweat, and I swallowed hard, trying to come up with the answer that would end all the awkwardness. No words came, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little black box. “I’m asking you to marry me. I don’t want to try us out and see how it goes. I don’t want to explain to my grandma why I’m shacking up with an older woman and convince her just how wonderful you are. I don’t want to just move in with you. I want to start the rest of our lives together. I want to introduce you as my wife. So will you…will you marry me?”

Layla’s lip trembled a bit as she began to nod frantically. “Yes, I will marry you.”

The air rushed from my lungs in relief. I took her hand and placed the ring on her finger, before standing and taking her in my arms for a long kiss. She ended it and then leaned her head on my shoulder, and I just held her. Then I heard her sniffle.

“Are you changing your mind?” I pushed her away so I could look at
the face. Her blue eyes were liquid.

“No, I’m thinking about all that is ahead of us
, and how glad I am to be here with you right now.”

“We need to get a marriage license. There is a twenty-four hour waiting period but no blood test or anything. I
already called the courthouse. The waiting period isn’t a real waiting period even. You apply today and pick the license up tomorrow.”

“I’ll talk to Drake and see if I can work it out to have an extended lunch tomorrow and go get one.”

“If you call him and ask for more time today, we can be man and wife as early as tomorrow.”

“Let’s not go that fast.”

I brought our food to the kitchen table, and we sat down to eat, but Layla just picked at hers.

“Are you sure you are okay?”

“Yeah, just thinking. I can’t really eat when I’m nervous.

We cleared up our lunch and started walking around the house. We stepped into one of the bedrooms. Layla and I both stared at the bed.

“Is this the room you want us to use tonight? I can bring all your things in here and then go get mine from my house.”

Layla turned to face me. “I thought you didn’t want to shack up first?”

I gulped. “I don’t. I mean. We are going to be married before the end of the week so I figured it would be okay.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want you to be mad at me, but I made my grandmother some promises. Just like you don’t want to shame your grandma, I don’t either. She told me over and over how she wanted me to do life different from the way she and my mother did. She made me promise her that I would get married first before I gave myself body and soul to a man. I really want to keep that promise.”

“Okay. I can probably crash at Michael’s place.”

She sighed. “Good. I’m sorry if I disappointed you.”

I stepped closer and took her in my arms. “You said yes to marrying me. I can wait on the other.”

I took her
back to work and then got busy moving her things into the mill house. I put all her groceries in the kitchen and unloaded them. I looked in the cabinets and cleaned out the old groceries that were still in there. The cabinets were very clean, but I wiped them out a bit before adding our things. I opened another cabinet and found a row of cookbooks and had an idea. I’d cook dinner for us. I’d never cooked anything more than a bowl of instant oatmeal in the microwave, but, hey, I could read, right?

I grabbed a stack
and sat down at the table with the books in front of me. The first book was a
Southern Living
cookbook. I started flipping through it. I put it down and found one called
Good Cooking with Chesnee First Baptist
. I found a recipe that looked good. Grandma Rose’s Spiced Pork Roast. It sounded simple enough. I grabbed my notebook and tore out a sheet of paper and wrote down all the ingredients and headed for the door. It was time to do grownup things.

I picked up Layla in front of her office and worked hard to hold the grin inside. “How was work?”

“It was busy, really busy. Drake is trying to find a new person to help out now that the business is really growing.”

“Did you ask him about time to go get the marriage license?”

“I didn’t get a chance to.”

“What? I thought you were excited.” I felt the excitement over the dinner I’d cooked leave as doubts about our future moved in.

“He was swamped when I got back from lunch with a guy who got mad at somebody over at Watson’s and wanted to transfer everything to us today.”

“And you couldn’t find two minutes to mention you were engaged and needed time to go get the marriage license?”

“No, I couldn’t find two minutes to pee until I locked up for the day. The phone kept ringing for quotes, and the guy Drake was dealing with had a number of rental properties, as well as the guy’s actual house, boat, autos, and an RV he wanted moved over to us today. It’s a huge amount of business and the guy was super impatient. I doubt anyone at Watson’s did anything wrong. More likely they didn’t jump as fast as the guy thought they should when he called. I got the vibe he can’t be pleased. Anyway, Drake left to go take pictures of all the properties and autos and didn’t come back. I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

“So that’s it. You were just too busy to mention it. You didn’t get cold feet?”