I Said No

Chapter twenty eight

It's starting to get dark out, but I don't want to go in yet. I want to feel the cool breeze on my face. I need to clear my mind for a while. I feel myself going crazy in my little studio all alone. I need to breathe, close my eyes and envision a better future, a life full of love and triumph. I need a life full of love and triumph.

I hear my phone ring, it's Layla.

"Hey, you," I answer.

"Hi, can you talk?" She asks with urgency in her voice.

"Of course. Always," I reassure her.

"Something happened to me." I can hear the pain in her voice.

"Are you ok?" I immediately ask.

"No. I'm not ok. Something happened to me!" she says with extra emphasis on each word.

I am worried. What can this be? Is she in trouble? She's been hurt before. She's always been so strong.

I think back to when I met her. Independent, a fighter, inspirational. She was unhappy in her home in high school and moved out. She found a home to stay in and got a job to support herself. She was the first of my friends to get a job.

She had her first love that she helped through everything. She helped him with his school work, ensuring he could play sports and eventually graduate. She helped him when they moved to Portland together. They were engaged, she was going to art school, and she worked so hard. Full day of school, full shift of work. She supported them. He would stay home and play video games and she worked her ass off to keep the household going and to better herself with an education.

I got a call one day that he had cheated on her and that she needed me. I drove up that weekend and sat in their studio apartment that she had paid the rent for, on their bed that she told me they had 'made love in one last time before he left,' and held my best friend while she cried and told me the whole story. How she had never been someone to look through a phone, but she had this tingling urge to check his and once she had, she saw the truth—he was sleeping with her friend, Taylor.

The plot thickened when she went back to visit her parents. His mother's home was just across the way and within seeing distance from their's. Layla could see Taylor's car parked where he was then living. She was always there. Layla would look out her old bedroom window to her friend and ex-fiancé constantly together. A reminder of the pain each time.

She has obviously gotten past that hurdle with Taylor. I don't know how she did it. She is so accepting of other people's flaws and so forgiving.

I think this event changed Layla. She became a whirlwind. She built a wall around herself and would never let the world hurt her like it had at her young age of 19. She became the life of the party and didn't give a damn what anyone else thought about her. She would no longer live for any man, but instead live for herself.

I could never have forgiven Taylor, but Layla has proven time and time again that she would love the world and all of its inhabitants. Maybe not bring them as close to her heart again, but she would love them all.

"What is it? What happened to you?" I ask.

"I went to a party last night with Caren and I got too drunk, but we had a bed picked out to sleep in. So I was going in to go to bed and she was having sex with Tyson, you know Lacey's ex, but I was so tired and didn't feel good at all so I just got in bed anyway, on the side, and tried to go to sleep," she spews out in one long breath.

"Ok, then what happened?" I quickly respond.

"Well, I was just laying there. Trying to go to sleep and they kept going while I was in the bed with them."

"They didn't care that you were in bed with them? I'm sorry." I couldn't imagine someone continuing to have sex while I was sick in bed with them.

"No! But that's not all. While I was laying there, trying to sleep, Tyson touched me," she pauses, "He started touching me while he was having sex with Caren."

"Oh no. And what did you do?"

"I just pretended to be asleep and he eventually stopped," she whispers. I can hear muffled cries on the other end of the line.

"I am so sorry. He had no right to touch you." I don't know what to say. Nothing in the world could have been said to me to take that pain away. "I am so sorry Layla. I love you. You are strong. You are independent. You are beautiful. You are amazing. I am so sorry this happened to you."

She once hinted that something like this had happened before. At a camping trip with friends, too much alcohol and she felt like she had been taken advantage of by a boy who had also been there. I don't know the full story, she never told me. But I do know that pain. I know the pain of someone touching you when you don't want to be touched.

"I love you too. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you later." She says as she hangs up the phone.

"You will get through this. You will overcome this pain. You can do it," I say with my phone still raised to my ear. "You will get through this," I repeat. She's not there anymore, but I hope she feels me with her. We can get through this. We will overcome this pain. We can do it.

***Author's Note***

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