"I can't do another one right now." Layla could already feel the heat from the alcohol filling her from the toes up.
"We can take them to the table and wait a few." Amelia patted her arm as if she was proud of Layla for getting this far.
"Hey...Brody's not here, is he? I don't see him with everyone else." Layla tried and failed to keep her voice casual. She hated that she asked about the school's football coach and fellow teacher, but she needed to know if she should add a few bricks to the wall she'd erected inside herself to keep unwanted emotions out.
"No. He rarely comes, and I can't say we miss him all that much. You shouldn't worry about him, anyway." Amelia lowered her voice, her tone taking on that sympathetic quality Layla so despised. "Everyone knows he's full of shit. His sister dying doesn't change that."
Layla could feel Jace's eyes on her. After all this time, people still gauged her reaction at the slightest mention of her past, as if they expected her to crumble into a million, tear-stained pieces.
She never crumbled. Not when it happened. Not now.
Layla threw Jace a smile that felt a little reckless. "I guess I'm doing another shot."
What Amelia said was true, but it also wasn't. Brody wasn't always an asshole to her. They'd been very close once. He was her best friend's big brother. She'd followed him around with a school girl crush and stars in her eyes, and he'd humored her, pulling her hair and telling her if only she were three years older, she'd be perfect.
Then the house burned down--her life burned down--while his sister and their other friends slept in the basement. Trapped.
All because Marissa and Brody's parents were out of town and Brody had gone out instead of staying home to keep an eye on them like he was supposed to, and because Layla's friends had chosen that night to act stupid in the way that only teenagers could.
The only reason Layla got out was because she didn't want to be part of the cheap vodka and cigarettes, so she'd left her friends in the basement and decided to sleep on the couch.
The smoke woke her up, choked her out of her restless sleep. She crawled to the back door, coughing and sobbing as the tar-thick air burned her throat and scalded her eyes, the crackling and snapping of of the flames minutes away from becoming her funeral pyre.
Marissa had made it to the top of the basement stairs before she passed out from the smoke, and Layla had dragged her outside, not willing to believe that things like this happened in real life.
Not to people like her. Marissa survived for a few days--seventy-eight hours, sixteen minutes to be precise--but the burns were too extensive, the damage from the smoke too crippling.
Brody blamed Layla. She should have stopped them from smoking. She should have called him when it got out of hand.
She agreed.
As the song on the jukebox wrapped up--some country song about killing someone's abusive husband and living happily ever after--Amelia tilted her head, her mouth quirking up in a smile that was half-mysterious, half-drunk. "This was my pick. Which means the next one's mine, too. I wonder if you've heard it?"
"Oh?"
The sound of a piano intro barely cut through the noise of the room, but once her ears caught it, she couldn't hear anything else. No. She hadn't heard this song...until a few days ago.
Since then she must have listened to it fifty times. It was her favorite of the group precisely because of this. The strange melody which fell somewhere between exotic and familiar, simultaneously minimalistic and sweeping, the technical complexity which painted an illusion of utter simplicity.
Layla was unable to resist being sucked into the sound, even with Amelia and Jace watching her. The odd-metered and slightly dissonant sound still managed to convey a delicacy thanks to the fingers she knew all too well.
She could picture Derek playing it. Sitting there with his hair a mess and his eyes full of intent. The only thing sexier was when he turned those eyes to her, made her the focus of all that burning intent.
And he had.
The sound of the guitar, bass, and drums joined the piano--no, melted into the piano, it was that seamless--turning the feel of it from delicate to hard in a way that shouldn't have made sense, but once you heard it, you knew it couldn't be any other way.
Layla gripped her empty glass and tried to subdue the flush of remembrance that flooded her body to mix with the burn of the alcohol. "I think I will have another one. Now, please. And a shot of that stuff that goes in it to take back to the table, too."
"It's true isn't it? I can tell by the look on your face. You met him? Did you really tell him where to shove it?" Amelia scooted her stool closer.
Jace raised his eyebrows, his gaze darting between the two women. Poor guy clearly had no clue. And Layla would prefer to keep it that way.
"I'll have just one more," Amelia said to him. "A girl's gotta know her limits. You can still put it on Layla's tab, though." She rested one elbow on the counter, cradling her chin in her hand. "Spill it. What's he like? Is he really that handsome or is it some sort of celebrity glamor?"
"I thought we were cursing penises tonight." The first drink had already taken ahold of her, and her words came out like she was whining about not getting her way.
"The night is young. Tell me about Mr. Rockstar."
"Do I have to?"
"Yes, you have to." Amelia spoke to Ed over her shoulder. "Tell her she has to, Ed."
Ed sipped his beer and watched the game.
"I didn't know you were such a fan," Layla said.
Amelia shrugged. "It's more the excitement of our very own Ms. M telling a bad-ass rocker to shove it where the sun don't shine. Did you really do that?"
Ed spoke without taking his eyes off the T.V., his normal grumble laced with amusement. "Oh, she told him alright. Poor guy can probably still feel her foot up his ass."
Of course. The man who doled out words like they were diamonds just had to choose this moment to share the wealth.
"Poor guy? He deserved it, and you know it," Layla snapped.
Ed nodded, his eyes never leaving the baseball game. "He did, and he's sorry. It ain't healthy to hold a grudge. Still not sure about those pants, though."
"What in the hell are you all talking about?" Jace said.
"The shots, Red." Amelia pushed her empty glass in his direction. "Don't forget the shots."
"Not until you tell me what's going on."
"Denying service to a paying customer? Fine, but I can't believe you haven't heard. Have you been intentionally ignoring gossip all week? We're talking about Derek Taylor, of the band Morphium." Amelia jerked a thumb at the jukebox. "The guy currently playing the keyboard."
"Piano," Layla corrected.
Amelia arched her brows. "Okay...piano."
"Is that who Ed was talking about? He just described him as a 'hotshot in red pants.' I had no idea...Morphium is in Maybe?" Jace finally, thankfully began to pour the shots.
"No. Just Derek." Layla regretted speaking as soon as the words left her mouth.
She tried to focus on the liquor flowing from the bottle in Jace's hand instead of the way Amelia and Jace's eyes seemed to laser in on her forehead. It shouldn't take this long to pour a woman a drink, for fuck's sake.
"Oooooh. Just Derek. You say that like you know him personally."
If Amelia scooted any closer to the edge of her stool, she was going to fall on the floor. Maybe Layla needed to rethink this "friend" thing. Friends were too nosy.
"I heard he gave you a ride home from school the other day. And I heard the two of you were seen out back of Holstein's last night. Sounds like Ed's not the only one who doesn't hold a grudge."
Better to confirm things her way than let the town turn it into something else, telephone game-style. "He came to school to apologize and my car broke down. So he gave me a ride home. Last night he needed to use a piano for a few minutes. That's why he was at Bertie's."
"And?" Amelia waggled her eyebrows.
"And nothing. He's only passing through."
"But why?"
"Nothing better to do, I guess."
Jace finished filling the pint glasses. One for Layla, one for Amelia, as ordered. Layla grabbed one, dropped the shot in, and downed it. Amelia watched with saucer-wide eyes and Jace's mouth hung open as she reached for the lone shot and made it disappear before she'd even taken a breath.
Layla wiped her mouth with the back of her hand in a way that would have made Bertie proud. Her stomach briefly rebelled against the amount of liquid that had just been forced into it, but she forced it into submission. She erupted into laughter at the matching shocked expressions greeting her.
Wow. Amelia was right. She loved these drinks. She felt better already.