Page 26 of Omega
“How?”
“In any way it could be,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “Momma never really said so right out loud in so many words, but I’m pretty sure I’m a rape-baby. She always seemed to…resent me, I guess. She didn’t beat me or nothing, but she…sometimes I felt like she hated me. Like she couldn’t even bear to look at me. I mean, maybe my father was just a colossal dick and I remind her of him. It could be that. God knows I’m nothing like her, that’s for damn sure. My mom, she’s this tiny, skinny, quiet little Italian woman. She’s an immigrant, actually. Came over when she was…twelve or thirteen, I think. I’m like her in that neither of us likes to talk about ourselves. So I don’t know much about her past. She came over with her folks, I think, but I never met them, so I don’t know if they died or she ran away, or they moved back to Italy. I just don’t know. She had no education. Spoke really poor English. She was a hard worker, though. Gotta give her that. I’m like her in that way too, I guess. She had me, didn’t abort me. Maybe she couldn’t afford to, I don’t know. But she kept me, and I was always fed, always had clothes to wear. Hand-me-downs and shit from Value Village or whatever, Salvation Army, but I wasn’t naked or hungry.”
I traced an abstract pattern in the sand. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
She laughed again. “You got that right. Things weren’t too bad until I was…eight? Nine? It was just me and Mom, doing what we had to do, getting by. And then she met Mario. Yeah, legit, his name was Mario, and he was old school New York Italian, hair slicked back, shiny shoes and windbreakers, like something from fuckingGoodfellas. IhatedMario. But he took care of Mom, and I think he loved her, in his own sort of way. They never got married, but they were together for a long time. He knocked her up, and suddenly I had this little half-brother who they both seemed to like a whole hell of a lot better than me. And again, I gotta say Mario never did anything bad to me. Never beat me or molested me or anything. But once the baby arrived it was as if I was not even there. They just focused on Vic. Like he was all that mattered. By nine years old, I was basically on my own. Got myself to school, took care of my own lunches, got myself home. Got myself dinner and breakfast usually, too, because Mom and Mario would take Vic and leave, go to breakfast, go to dinner, go away somewhere for the weekend and just leave me to fend for myself. They just didn’t care. I took care of myself, no big deal.” She dug her heels into the wet sand, pausing for breath. “Here comes the other ‘but’. Only, it’s more of an ‘and then…’”
“Shit.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Vic got leukemia when I was seventeen. Mom and Mario…they just checked out. When Vic got sick, it was…it happened so fast. Like, one day he was fine, the next he was in the pediatric oncology ward, bald, tubes in his nose…and then he was dead. Like, within months. He didn’t stand a chance, the little shit.” She sniffled. “He was a good kid. Weird and gumpy and annoying, but sweet. I liked him. He’d come in to my room while I was doing homework and just pester me for hours. ‘Layla what’s this, and why that, and what are you doing, and do you have a boyfriend…’” She shrugged, and I saw a tear drop from her face to the sand. “I was messed up when he died, and Mom was just…wrecked. It ruined her. Mario too. They just…checked out. Stopped caring. Mom started drinking, Mario was gone all the time, started coming home hammered, smelling like the strip club, they started fighting. It got nasty. That last year of high school was just raw, unmitigated hell. I was on my own for real by then. I’d been working since I was fourteen. Had my own car by the time I got my license. I was still living with them because they refused to emancipate me. I tried when I was sixteen, and they were just like ‘fuck you, no.’”
“Layla, Jesus.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is. So then—yeah, it’s not over yet—then Mario gets drunk at the strip club one night and tries to drive home, slams his Cadillac into the back end of a semi, kills himself and injures two others. Mom was a fucking mess, of course, so I had to set up the funeral for a stepfather who barely spoke to me, a stepfather who when I asked for a ride to the doctor so I could get birth control at fourteen was like ‘take the bus, you little slut’, and kept drinking. That was fun. So anyway, a few weeks after the funeral, Mom took a bottle of Ambien with a bottle of One-Fifty-One. Easy way out, I guess. I found her. I got home from graduation to this godawful smell. So then—hip-hip-hooray! I got to arrange yetanotherfuneral, the third in less than six months, because guess who took care of Vic’s funeral when Mom and Mario were too wasted to do it themselves?” She sucked in a deep breath and held it, let it out with a shudder, shook her head as if to clear away the memories. “So, yeah. There you go. Layla’s Shitty Upbringing, the abridged version.”
“That was the abridged version?” I asked.
She laughed, a low chuckle rife with dark humor. “You don’t raise yourself in the worst part of Highland Park as a mixed-race girl without getting into some shit, Key.”
“Goddamn, Layla.” I felt like I should say something understanding or supportive or compassionate, but I just…had nothing.
“You don’t want to know any of that shit, though, and I don’t want to talk about it. I made it, and that’s all that counts. I made it out. I graduated high school, got a scholarship to Wayne State, fucking did something with my life. Sort of.” She glanced at me. “None of that really has anything to do with you, though. Except that before I joined you on the big yacht I was a couple semesters away from getting my degree. I had an internship set up at a law firm. I was gonna be a paralegal. I finally had an end in sight to the whole poor college girl thing. I had a plan. And then you…you, with one fucking phone call, you fucked all that up. You brought me on your stupid boat, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do. You and Roth are so in love it’s disgusting, we’re always in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from anyone who speaks English, and we’re in fucking hiding so I can’t even hit up a bar and find a dick to ride.”
“I’m sorry, Layla. I wish I knew what else to say.”
“I’m lonely, Kyrie. I’m so lonely my pussy has cobwebs. You and Roth are this perfect couple, which only makes it that much harder for me. I mean, I’d seriously just started to really get over being depressed about Eric. And then you have the gall to talk to me about family. To act like you and your rich, gorgeous, perfect boyfriend are my family. Like your fuckingbutleris my family. God. It makes me so mad, and you don’t even get it. I don’thavea family. I never have. It’s always been just me. But I love you, you’re my sister from another mister, and that won’t ever change. I’ve got your back and I always will.Always, no matter what.Youare the closest thing to family I got, but you were gone a long time, Key. You left me. You vanished with your rich boyfriend and left me to fend for myself. When Eric left me—”
“Hang on second, now. You said you broke up with him when I called you about coming with us.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I lied. He broke up with me and asked me to move out. Said he wasn’t really ‘feeling it’ anymore.” She curled the index and middle fingers of both hands to make air quotes. “He wasn’t feeling it anymore. What the fuck does that even mean? Three goddamn years, and you just stopfeeling it? He kicked me out. I came back from work one day and he’d packed all my clothes, all my shit for me.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Layla shook her head, digging her heel into the sand furiously now, making the hole bigger and bigger. “I wish. So I left. I put my shit in the back of my piece of shit ’91 Silverado and left. And I didn’t have anywhere to go, Kyrie. You were gone. I was just about broke, and I’m not exactly the type to call and hit you up for cash, you know?”
“Where did you go?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.
“NOWHERE!” She shouted. “I was fucking homeless for a month and a half! I lived in my truck and took showers at the YMCA. When you called me to come with you, the ink on my brand-new lease was still wet. If you’d called literally two weeks before, a month before things would have been different…but you didn’t. You just whirled back into my life like a goddamned tornado and whisked me off to Neverland or Oz or whatever the fuck. And now you want me to help you plan a wedding. And forwho? Who’s gonna be there? Your mom? Cal? When was the last time you talked to Cal? What about Roth’s parents? Does he even have parents? And what the hell do I know about weddings, Kyrie? Since when am I into girly touchy-feely shit like weddings and flowers and bridesmaids dresses? Jesus. I love you, but wake thefuckup! I don’t belong in your life. Not this life. Just let me go back to Detroit and live my shitty life. I’ll find a shitty boyfriend and work a shitty job, eventually I’ll probably get knocked up and have a shitty kid. I’m okay with taking my chances with this Vito or whoever he is. If he wants to roll up to the ‘D’ and come for me, let him. I’ll kick his ass. I’m from Detroit, motherfucker, I will fuck him up. You don’t even know.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was all coming from left field. How had I known Layla for over five years and not known any of this? She’d been homeless while I was floating around the world with Roth? I could have helped her. I could have done something. I could have—
I broke down into tears.
Layla, of course, wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her, and we both fell back into the sand. “Oh quit your blubbering, you little sissy. I’ll stay for your wedding and then I’ll have Harris fly me home. I bet I can get a job and an apartment in a few weeks.”
“Layla, you can’t leave. You don’t understand. Vitaly isn’t the kind of man you just ‘take your chances with.’ You don’t ‘kick his ass.’ He won’t just…it won’t be a drive-by or something. It’ll be someone showing up at your house with a drill and some duct tape, and they’ll torture you for weeks just to piss Roth off, and then they’ll kill you once they’ve had their fun. Which will probably include a lot of rape, just because they’re monsters like that.”
“So, tell me: your dear sweet billionaire fiancé knows these guys…how?”
“That’s a long story, and it’s not mine to tell. Let’s just say his background is even more colorful than yours.”
“Gotcha. Well, all I know is that I can’t live like this anymore. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t do this much longer.”
“I’m not joking about what they’ll do, Layla. Roth and Harris are working on a plan to fix things. Just be patient a little longer—”
“Kyrie. I’m going crazy. You want to have Roth buy me a new identity? Fine. Relocate me to Atlanta or New Mexico, or Tokyo or something. Fine. But I live to have my own life, Kyrie. Ihaveto.”
I sighed in defeat. I knew Layla well enough to know she wouldn’t budge on this. I may not have known the details of her past, but I was realizing I did know her. I knew her moods and I knew the shape of her walls and the color and taste and texture of her soul. Iknewher. She was my best friend, and a life that had long ago become normal for me—traveling constantly, not working a real job—just wasn’t possible for her. She would end up resenting me even more than she already did. And I could beg her all I wanted, refuse to let her go home, and she would do what she had to do anyway. When Layla made up her mind, no force on Earth could sway her.