Peyton Bishop looked so out of place standing at the door to my shitty little apartment in Chicago, Illinois, that I laughed.
He was perfect, all six feet two inches of him, perfect from the tips of his golden blond hair all the way down to his loafers, handcrafted in Europe by designers with names that I still couldn't pronounce.
He smiled, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his neatly pressed khakis. "Ready to go?"
Leaning against the door frame, I stared at him for a while. Then I smiled and shook my head. "No." I closed the short distance that separated us and sat down on the steps, the metal warmed by the approaching dawn. "Peyton, come sit with me for a while."
He did, and we listened to the sanitation workers shouting orders at each other over the whirring of the garbage truck's gears. I sighed some, then fiddled with the small square of paper in my hands, folding it this way and that, tracing its edges against my skin.
"Did he call you?" I asked.
"He called Karla, she's-"
"I know who she is. When?"
"Four hours ago," he said. "I came as soon as I heard."
After a moment of hesitation, I offered the note to Peyton. He tapped it against his palm a few times, then unfolded it. I turned away just before he revealed the contents though, looking instead at the beat up little courtyard below us, littered with debris and dog shit.
I didn't need to see it again, the single word, hastily scrawled in Jake's handwriting: 'Sorry'.
"After everything, that's all I get- sorry. It's all gone, his clothes, his things, his guitar. Left the note and the money," I shrugged. "And me."
It had all been too much, the shock of seeing Peyton at the police station, coming home to an half empty apartment. I mean, I knew the moment I saw Peyton that Jake had gone, but to see see it with my eyes? It broke my heart and made me feel like I was a million years old.
Before I had a chance to melt down over it, I put Jake and all the baggage he had left behind in a nice little box and shut it away in the back of my heart for later. Or maybe never. How does a girl even begin to process something like this?
Peyton folded the paper back up and handed it to me. I held it for a moment longer, then flicked it over the railing. "I need to go home."
"To Texas?"
"I think Brandy'll take me in, I'll find a job. Things will be okay, anything will be better than this."
He nodded, pretended to consider. "Only problem is, I was hoping to take you home with me."
Oh, Peyton.
My muscles ached and my head pounded so I stretched and rubbed my eyes. "I can't go with you, you deserve so much better than me." I forced myself to look at him, right in the eyes. "I basically dropped you for the first pretty face that came around."
He considered, this time in earnest. "You did, but I could've stopped you. And I didn't."
I wrinkled my nose. "That's true. What the fuck, Peyton? This is all your fault."
He smiled. I did too.
"And now the two of you are basically trying to pass me around."
He shrugged. "Basically."
Old habits died hard and we were back to talking in between the lines again, making light of the situation. We both knew it was a lot more than that.
Peyton rubbed his thumb on his palm, lost in thought. "It kind of works out though. Before this, I was paralyzed by the possibility of my life making you miserable, but this? Let's get out of here, Layla, this place is a mess."
If only...
He moved to stand so I stopped him with a sharp tug to the leg of his pants. "Wait, I
have more things that I need to tell you."
Shame prevented me from looking at him so I kept my head down. His expectant gaze pricked at the top of my head, set my skin on fire.
This is it, the last time we'll ever be how we were. After I tell him, he'll never look at me the same again. Or think of me in the same way.
"I did some really bad things," I said.
Oh Peyton, why did you have to come here at all? Why couldn't I have stayed a beautiful memory for you?
But I told him. Everything about my shameful downfall.
Peyton's lips pressed into a grim line and he remained silent for a few more minutes in that way of his, eternally patient, waiting to see if I had more to say.
I didn't.
He threw his hands up in the air. "Well, that changes everything. Alright, let's get you a bus ticket back home so you can spend the rest of your life repenting this unforgivable trespass. Don't you know that a woman's virtue is the only measure of her worth? That it needs to be guarded at the risk of life and limb?"
"Stop it." Half laughing, I nudged him with my shoulder. "This is serious, Peyton, I took my clothes off for men who-"
"I know what a lap dancer does, Layla. I've paid more than my fair share."
I wrinkled my nose at him. "For real?'
He furrowed his brows. "Are you for real?"
We blinked at each other for a while.
"I can't believe you'd think that I'd judge you for that kind of stuff when... I mean, look at me, Layla. Really look at me."
I did, but saw nothing but the same Peyton that I'd always seen.
"I'm the biggest mess on earth," he said. "I've got so much blood on my hands that it's a crime for me to walking the streets. The only reason I'm not locked up is because I have money, money I did nothing to earn, mind you, just happened to be born under some freak star."
I clucked my tongue. "Don't say that, Peyton, you only did the things you did because you loved her."
"And you only did what you did because you loved him."
If we weren't in the middle of the city, the crickets would've been deafening.
"I loved him too," said Peyton, "you don't even want to know what I did to make the Gunnar Keith thing go away."
Mmmm-ing, I picked at my toenail polish. "I never thought I was capable of doing the things I did. I never would've thought... You don't think I'm disgusting?"
He glanced at me. "I mean, your hair's as greasy as I've ever seen it, and you're all around kind of grubby, but other than that...it's just you, Layla."
Tears welled in my eyes, the relief of his words overwhelming. I cleared my throat and aimed for flippant. "Don't be rude, Peyton."
"Me? Rude? Layla, did you even thank me for coming to your rescue?" he teased.
How does a girl not smile at something like that? Being around Peyton made me feel like my old self, the Layla I liked to be. "Thank you, Peyton."
"You're welcome, Layla."
"I don't deserve you," I said.
His smile was more of a grimace. "I don't deserve me either, but what can we do. What? Why are you crying?"
So I told him about the girls at Starbucks, how different their reactions had been.
"There will always be self-righteous people who are quick to judge you. Let them. Let them gather among themselves, slap each other on their backs, toast to their morally upstanding lives. That's not a party you want to be at anyway, you know?"
Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I nodded.
"We're all works in progresses. You make your mistakes, learn from them, grow from them. Whatever you can't forget, you bury it deep and move on." He shrugged. "That's the Cliffnotes version of twelve years of very, very expensive and time consuming therapy."
"I don't know, I feel like I've changed, and I don't know if we can go back to how we were."
What I really meant was...how we'd left off.
Peyton looked off into the distance and sucked air in between his teeth. Then he clucked his tongue. "See, now you're making things awkward for yourself. I didn't come here to ask you out on a date."
That made me laugh, really laugh, for the first time in months.
And blush. What a relief it was to know that I still had it in me to blush.
He stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. "Don't overthink things. Whatever we were, whatever we are, whatever we become, I'll always be your friend first."
I nodded.
"And my life's just easier with you in it," he said.
Tears free flowing from my eyes, snot free falling from my nose, I nodded again.
He made a face. "Now you're really getting gross."
I laughed.
"So? You're eighteen tomorrow, an adult, so you decide. What's it gonna be Layla? Let the first mistake you make break you, or give yourself another chance to see what else you might be capable of?"
"One minute." I ran into the apartment and grabbed my backpack. I dumped out all the junk that had accumulated over the months and filled it with clean underwear and my daddy's flashlight.
The money, I left where I knew Mrs. Cook, the groundskeeper, would find it. She was a single mom with a gazillion kids and would put it to good use.
"Peyton! Wait for me!" I flew down the stairs.
Peyton ran from me, made me chase him all the way down the block.
Laughing, I did, my backpack bouncing off my ass in rhythm to my pumping legs. "Peyton!"
After a while, he slowed down and let me catch up. Once I was beside him, he draped his arm over my shoulders, supporting me and leaning on me at the same time. You know, like friends do.
So I did the same to him.
And as we walked toward the sunrise, he started to whistle. 'Here Comes The Sun', by the Beatles, the same song Jake had played for me on that morning, a lifetime ago, just before I'd kissed him for the first time.
Life was such a mind fuck.
I put my hand in Peyton's, wrapped my fingers around his. "Where are we going?"
He stopped whistling and thought about it. "I don't know, Layla, but we'll get there."
A/N: Please see my notes in the next chapter for more information! ^_^ Thank you for reading!