Page 45 of For the Love of Layla

I wish he’d just fucking end it already.

Maybe I should beat him to it.

Layla Age Eighteen

I stumble into the front door, making it smack against the wall loudly. I cringe as my eyes dart towards the old clock that hangs in the kitchen. 3 a.m., grandpa should be asleep. My head swims as I quietly shut it behind me, fighting the effects of the weed and alcohol as I trudge towards the refrigerator.

Just a little snack.

I groan as a jar of pickles slips from my hands, shattering on the linoleum floor at my feet.

Fuckfuckfuck.

“Layla, where have you been?”

I freeze, letting the refrigerator door slowly shut as it reveals the face I want to see least at the moment. My grandpa stands in the archway, his brawny arms crossed against his chest. He looks so… disappointed.

“Before you lie, I can smell the booze and pot from here.” His tone is chipped, but not angry. Even after all these years, I expect each mistake no matter the severity to be met with explosive rage. It never is, not anymore. Only love and understanding, but still my heart hammers in my chest. I don’t respond as I squat, picking up the broken shards of glass. I relate more to these shattered pieces than I did with any of the kids at my school. A gasp leaves my throat as I unfurl my fingers, I hadn’t even realized I fisted my hand.

Shit…

“Layla…” grandpa’s concerned voice washes over me just before his arms find mine. He kneels on the floor, his knees popping as he goes. Pulling me into another warm hug. I don’t know why I’m like this. So…destructive. He’s been so kind to me, shown me nothing but love since the day I arrived with nowhere else to go. No one left but him.

He’s endlessly patient, and I don’t deserve it.

“Please, don’t send me back to Fairview.” I whisper.

“Child, I never wanted to send you there. The hospital said-”

I cut him off, “I know. It was for the best.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up. I have something I want to tell you.” He says as he slowly stands, tugging me up on wobbly knees as he directs me towards the small dining room table in the kitchen. I try to fight the bubble of anxiety in my chest. All the work I’ve put in getting fucked out of my mind is erased as it pops to the surface. I’ve always been like this…scared and nervous about everything. I know logically it was a good thing to be sent somewhere I could get help, but that didn’t make it feel any better being there. All the eyes on me all the time, I felt so exposed. It was my fault, after what I did…I couldn’t keep it together. They said I had a nervous breakdown, tried to kill myself.

It didn’t matter how many times I tried to tell them I didn’t want to die. I suppose since I couldn’t provide a better explanation for running out into the woods with no shoes in the middle of the night screaming like a crazy person and getting lost for nineteen hours, they just kinda went with that story. I wasn’t any calmer when the search party found me huddled underneath a tree. That’s when my fear of the dark got… unreasonable.

What’s one more thing to be endlessly anxious about?

I watch tentatively as his strong, calloused hands clean the deep cut on my much softer and smaller ones, the smell of rubbing alcohol only slightly masking the smell of his aftershave. A scent I’ve come to associate with a calmness only this man in this house has ever instilled in me. He takes a deep breath, it’s strange to see him looking so heavy. His light hearted personality is one of the few things keeping my head above water.

“Your grandmother, she struggled. Struggled like no one I had ever seen before. I watched that woman fight the same demons for twelve years. Her daddy, like yours, was a slave to the bottle. He did things so…sickening to her, some of them still make me lie awake at night.” I look up briefly, meeting his somber eyes before he pulls them from me, continuing to wrap my hand in the gauze bed gotten from the hallway closet. “Of all things he did I think the most damaging, the cruelest was to pass along his predisposition for addiction. The first taste of alcohol she got…it took hold of her. I watched her fight it for years, especially when she got pregnant with your father.” My hands start to tremble, my heart constricting painfully. He just holds on tighter, tighter than I ever could.

I don’t want to hear this.

“I never thought I would forgive her when I caught her eight months pregnant with that damn bottle in her hand. She loved him, loved him so much. Loved us both, Layla, in a way I will never understand.” I scoff as anger prickles inside my chest, my self-control diminished by the alcohol. “She loved him so much she tried to drown him in alcohol before he was born.” He ignores my comment, making me clench my fists painfully. My cut screaming against the gauze.

Why are you always so understanding, so fucking patient with me? I’m not…I don’t…deserve you. I deserved him, and I let him die. I let your son die.

“Fetal alcohol syndrome is a scary thing, but we got through it. She fought through treatment when they tried to take him from us. We fought together, hand in hand, and every time she would slip I would hold those shaking hands until she came back to us. God, all things considered she was an excellent mother. She loved that little boy with every fiber of what made her a human being.”

Stop it.

“She loved us both so much, she had convinced herself our only chance at happiness was without her in it.” His voice breaks, shattering my heart in an instant, wiping the bitterness from my soul. “Your dad was only six when she took her own life, don’t think he ever forgave her for it. It wasn’t until he was thirteen, I got a glimpse of how deep that familiar demon had rooted in him. Boy never had a chance.”

I don’t want to feel sorry for him. Please stop.

I stand abruptly from the stool, “He died in a pool of his own vomit just like he deserved!” My breath starts to come in heavily until the pants dissolve into sobs, making my chest heave. The wounded look on his face hurts, but not nearly as much as the understanding…the pity. He stands slowly, a habit he took up shortly after I came to live with him. Must’ve gotten tired of watching me flinch every time he reached for the TV remote.

Shame fills me as I walk to him, resting my throbbing head on his chest, “I’m sorry.”

---