That Girl's the One I Love (3 page)

“Hello? Arran? Is that you?”

“How’s my girl? I miss you already.”

She fought not to beg him to come back. She wanted his arms around her again, that security she’d felt with him in the early dawn just before she’d fallen asleep. “I miss you, too. Did you find your guy? The one who called you?”

“This is it, Leyla! They want our music. We’ve got a contract, we’ve got an agent—but I’ve got to go to L.A. tomorrow, to get everything signed. I’m so sorry.”

She swallowed hard, wanting to encourage him, even though her gut was pushing words up through her throat, begging him not to go. She thought she’d choke on them. “Don’t be sorry, Arran. This is your dream.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

She tried not to let her disappointment come through. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know where I am.”

“I’ll…I’ll call you.” His turn to sound tentative and unsure.

“I’ll be waiting. Good luck, babe. Or should I say, break a leg?”

He finally laughed. “Don’t say that! I probably will.” A long pause. “Take care of yourself till we see each other again, all right? Promise me.”

He was still being ridiculous. She’d be fine. She was always fine. Her mind wandered back to their night together. Sometimes she was better than fine. “I…promise, Arran.”

The noise level wherever he was went up till she could hardly hear him. “They’re calling for us. I’ve got to go. I...I love you, Leyla.”

Her lips worked to form words, her heart a little stunned at the deep sincerity she heard in his voice. She struggled, but nothing came out. She heard the connection close. “I love you, too,” she whispered, to no one.

****

Over the next few months, they both tried. The nature of this long-distance relationship challenged them both. Only a three-hour difference, but when he was finished with his day, it was the early hours of the morning for her. He wouldn’t call, saying he couldn’t interrupt her sleep. Conversely, when she was available in the morning before work, it was too early for him. Cutting that first album seemed to take forever, and all she had to hold were the memories of one night.

He warned her he was about broke, but the night she called his phone number and found it disconnected, it felt like a cold knife in her chest. He sent her postcards from up and down the California coast, but without a return address where she could reply. She even contacted the organizers of the Bele Chere Festival, to see if they had a number for one of the other guys in the band, but they only had the number Arran had given her.

As time passed, she wondered if she was setting herself up for a painful fall, the longer she held onto this hope they’d ever reunite. Arran had an exciting new life, and she had her hand-to-mouth existence at the chain restaurant. Maybe, if she was lucky, she’d move up to assistant manager. Wow. Didn’t seem like much of a goal, even if it might be more easily reached than that of a rock-and-roll musician.

After one particularly lonely stretch of ten days with nothing more from him, a vague thought to track down his neglectful parents crossed her mind.
Now that’s desperation, folks.
Surely those were the last people he’d tell of his whereabouts.

The patience of her friends, too, wore thin. She’d shared the story of the encounter with Arran—well, the public-appropriate parts of it—with her best friend, Jane. At first Jane had been wildly jealous of Leyla’s success, but the longer she went without hearing from him, the more Jane’s enthusiasm faded.

One night near the fountain area of the restaurant, when Leyla was feeling particularly moony and sad, Jane grabbed her arm and looked her in the eye. “Come on, Leyla. Why are you holding on to this?”

Leyla studied her pudgy pal, a few strands of nondescript brown hair trailing down into her eyes despite an army of bobby pins. Jane hadn’t had a date in three years. Was she just complaining so she could seriously buzzkill Leyla’s hopes?

“Why wouldn’t I hold on to this? He said he didn’t want to lose me. We were… Oh, Lord, it was amazing, Janie. When we—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Eleven on a scale of ten, fancy fantasy video, clothes floating off your bodies, fires lit. Yeah. You told me.” Jane’s brown eyes flickered in her direction. “You keep believing it if you want to. You’ll miss out on other opportunities.”

Leyla frowned. “What other opportunities?”

Jane cocked her head in the direction of Tim Grange, one of the new managers who’d just transferred in. “He’s had his eye on you.”

“I don’t need complications, Janie. I just need to be a little more patient.” She noticed Tim watching her from across the kitchen and bit her lip. “I’ll be fine.”

The days at work passed, bills arrived and got paid, her car developed a terminal engine condition and died. Nothing came from Arran. Had she made a mistake?

What did she have to go on, really, other than the night of Bele Chere?

It hadn’t been just a night, just another rendezvous.
That
she believed with her whole being. Her heart felt the connection with Arran, felt it strong and hard and real. Neither of them had been fooling around, she was sure. Those feelings were true.

So it wasn’t a matter of emotion or attachment.

Bad timing.

Fate.

Destiny.

Whatever it was, it had separated them, as sure as the miles and mindsets between them.

Her lonely life continued in shades of gray. As distraction, she went back to writing poetry. Bad poetry, maybe, but it let her release some of that pain, choosing the right words, imagining that she could write anything as strong as Arran’s songs. While she wrote, she listened to the radio for some proof that the gamble had been worth it, that she hadn’t lost him for nothing.

It took six months, but at last Copper Moon hit the airwaves, climbing fast up the iTunes rock chart with their original song “Glamour Girl” about a small-town girl who didn’t make the big time but was found all prettied up in an alley, dead. The plaintive tune echoed in her head, even as she wondered who the girl might be, or if she was even real.

Arran Lake was featured on the American Top 40 interview show, and she listened over and over to the podcast, hearing the little Southern twang in his voice, the softening of his tone when he talked about his music. When the interview host asked him if he had a message for his fans, Arran replied, “Sure, Ryan. I want to send my love out to that one special lady back home. Sorry I had to leave, and hope to see you again real soon.”

Though the host prodded him to give the lucky lady’s name, he refused. Leyla convinced herself he meant her. Jane told her she was an idiot.

“Really? ‘That one special lady’? What a great way to say to all the ladies in all the towns he traveled through that he was thinking of them, right? Gets him right off the hook.”

A sad chill ran through Leyla. She’d thought he meant her, but sure, he could have been referring to someone else. If he meant her, why hadn’t he used her name?

Maybe he
was
playing games, after all.

The reality she had to live with was that he didn’t call her, or contact her, or even show up unannounced on her doorstep. Trying not to feel desperate, she found the address for his recording company and sent a letter to him, hoping someone would pass it on. What she got back was a publicity photo with a stamped autograph. Holding that smiling face in her hands, she searched out the familiar sparkle in his eyes and hoped like hell he hadn’t sent it. Surely he’d at least have signed it himself. Must have come from some clerical minion in charge of publicity.

Or maybe he really had forgotten her.

After months of determined dreaming, her faith wavered. She let Jane’s nitpicking sway her. When Tim asked her for a movie-and-dinner date, she held out for a couple of weeks, then finally said yes.

His interest gave her something to hold on to, and she let him extract her from the lonely nights with her radio as companion. He liked to take her out, both of them dressed in their fanciest clothes, to places he could barely afford, just so they could be seen by people he wanted to impress. She found the outings entertaining—who wouldn’t like to be wined and dined at the best places? And Tim was nice enough. He tried hard. He cared about her. So, though she never connected with him the way she had with Arran, when he asked her to marry him, she actually considered it.

She hadn’t heard from Arran for almost four months. He had two songs on the charts; he had to be able to afford a phone, or a stamp, even, by then. Despite what he’d said to her, she had to realize that what she was clinging to was a fantasy. Like she’d thought all along, real people never got that chance, the one in all the books and movies, the chance to be with a soulmate. If there even was such a thing. How long did she intend to be an idiot?

So she did say yes. She married Tim Grange in a small ceremony at his family’s church, with a few of her friends and a lot more of his high-class companions there. Their first dance at the reception was to Copper Moon’s “That Girl’s the One I Love.” Only she understood the irony.

Those friends Tim cultivated got him a transfer to Pittsburgh, a step up to head manager level at a restaurant there. Bored by sitting around the house every day, Leyla worked at his new restaurant for a while, but he seemed agitated that people thought he couldn’t afford to take care of his wife, so she quit after a few months. More bored than ever, she went back to school to study creative writing, taking that inventive spark she and Arran had shared and polishing it up.

Even while she filled her days with new experiences at the university, Tim wasn’t happy. “What is it costing us for you to spend your days with all those young guys, hmm?” he would ask. “Are you having nooners in the student lounge?” and, “How can books cost so much?”

She tolerated the complaints for the first three weeks of the term; then she finally snapped. “What do you want from me, Tim? I thought we would be partners here. I tried to help you at work, but you didn’t want me there. You didn’t want me to waitress at any other restaurant. I don’t have a lot of training to do anything else.” She rubbed her forehead, trying to stave off the headache that would inevitably follow their fights. “So I’m at school, trying to learn something so I can contribute to our household. Is that asking too much?”

“Yeah? And what about the men?” he asked, arms crossed.

Nope, the headache was definitely coming. “What about them? They’re students. They study. I study. We all study. None of them does my homework for me.” She gestured to the laptop on the table and the papers and notes lying all around it.

Tim snorted. “Writing stories. Why didn’t you at least take accounting, or
something
useful?”

She took a deep breath and counted to ten. He’d taken her away from home, he’d dumped her in this frozen land, and he worked eighty hours a week. She was entitled to have this one good thing in her life. “Thanks for your input,” she said.

“You’d better not be fooling around,” he said. “Jane told me you like to hop into bed with guys you think’ll be famous some day.”

That statement stunned her into silence. First, because she couldn’t believe Jane would have betrayed her confidence in that way. Second, because…well, because.
What I loved about Arran was his down-to-earth reality. Nothing about his fame. If anything, his fame is what ruined any chance for us.

She choked over the words. “Don’t worry, Tim. There’s no one else.”

Late for work, he let it drop. She became even more isolated, worried he’d think an association with anyone was something more than it should be. Not that she had many friends. Her soft North Carolina drawl let her neighbors know she didn’t really “belong” in Steelers’ territory.

Tim worked long hours at the restaurant, too tired when he got home to be much of a husband to her. They hardly had time together to go out to all those fancy clubs he kept telling her about.

She was left on her own. A lot.

To compensate for those lonely nights, she sought out stations on the radio that played Arran’s songs, and she bought his music, listening to it when she was alone. She wasn’t unfaithful to her husband, but more than one night when he worked till the wee hours of the morning Leyla fell asleep thinking of that night in Asheville when she’d met the man she dreamed of, and lived that dream, just for a day.

Tim, however, wasn’t so dedicated to their marriage. She should have known; that’s what all the magazines said. A spouse who constantly accuses the other of infidelity often did so because they knew they were cheating themselves. One evening he showed up with one of the girls from the restaurant, a stacked redhead still wearing her uniform, a dribble of salad dressing down the front of her apron. “Ley, we need to talk.”

Leyla looked from Tim to the young woman, trying to remember her name. Ashton, Ashley, Ashtray, something like that. The way she snapped her gum, like she had so many better things to do, clued Leyla about the subject of this little “talk.”

Tim’s failure to meet her gaze told her something else; that it was Ash’s idea to end his marriage, not his. He didn’t even have the courage to admit his own failure. Leyla bit her lip, keeping her disappointment at his failure, and her own, trapped inside. Let him say it. Let him let her off the hook.

He stumbled over the words, looked at her with brown eyes full of frustration. “It’s just not working,” he finally said. “I’m…I’m moving out.”

Shouldn’t she feel more than this? She searched her heart but found she didn’t even sense relief. Just…nothing. Tim was right. It was time. “Don’t bother,” she said. “I don’t need a house this big. Just give me a week to get my things together.”

Even as she spoke, she noticed Ash looking around the living room with an acquisitive air.
Yeah, and when he’s tired of you and “working late” every night, do you really believe he won’t do the same to you, honey?

But she wasn’t her sister’s keeper. Leyla had enough to do just to look out for herself.