Layla

“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 was gonna say rich and empty, but I don’t think you’re rich, or you wouldn’t be playing for that band.”

I would tell her I’m not poor, but admitting that I play for the band willingly and not out of necessity is kind of embarrassing, so I’d rather not say anything at all.

“If you’re destined to be poor, it’s better to be the happy kind of poor,” she adds.

She’s right. I kiss her neck, then her breast. Then my mouth is resting against hers again. “I think I’m glad I met you.”

She pulls back a little, then smiles up at me. “You think? Or you are?”

“I am. I am very glad I met you.”

She trails her fingers over my mouth. “I’m very glad I met you.”

We kiss some more, and it’s full of lazy anticipation, as if we know we have all night and there’s no rush. But I already put on the condom, and she’s already guiding me into her.

I still take my time with her. So much time.

Minutes feel like they matter more when they’re spent with her.She’s on her stomach, and I’m trailing unworthy fingers up the smooth curve of her spine.

I reach the base of her neck and then sweep my fingers into her hair and begin caressing the back of her head.

“I’d kill for a taco right now,” she says.

I’ve never wanted inside a girl’s mind more than I want inside Layla’s. Her mind doesn’t work like other minds work. There’s no filter between her brain and her mouth, and there’s no conscience telling her she should feel bad for whatever it is she might have said. She just says things unapologetically and without any remorse. Even when her words sting.

I didn’t know brutal honesty was sexy until tonight.

I told her a few minutes ago she was the best sex I ever had. I expected her to return the compliment, but she just smiled and said, “We always think that when we’re in it. But then someone new comes along, and we forget how good we thought it was before, and the cycle starts all over again.”

I laughed. I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. And then I thought about what she had said, and she was right. I lost my virginity at fifteen. I thought it was the best thing I would ever experience. But then Victoria Jared came along when I was seventeen, and she was the best sex I’d ever had. And then Sarah Kisner, and the girl who snuck into my dorm freshman year, and two or three after that, and then Sable. Each time, the aftermath made me think that was as good as it would get. But maybe they were all equally as good as the one before.

None of them compare to Layla. I’m certain of that. As certain as I was all the times before Layla.