“Do you think that he will marry her?” She sounded excited about the prospect.
My stomach clenched in fear. “I don’t think that is going to happen, honey. Lana needs to go to college. She needs to find herself before she can handle something like that…” I broke off, not wanting to discuss something so heavy with my six year old sister. “Go to sleep now, Lucy. You can ask Lana all about her night in the morning.” I placed a kiss on her forehead and made my escape.
It surprised me when Lana opened the front door at just after eleven. I had thought she would be out until at least after midnight. When she shut the door and leaned back against it, I knew that her mind was still on the evening out and the man she had spent it with. She had this star struck look on her face and wonder lit her eyes.
I cleared my throat to grab her attention, and she glanced over at me sitting on the sofa. A grin split her beautiful face, and it was so infectious that I couldn’t help smiling back. “So it went well?”
She practically floated over to the sofa and dropped down beside of me. She kicked off the heels she had borrowed from me and laid her feet across my lap while she leaned back with a content sigh. “I had a blast. He has this way of making everyone else but me seem insignificant. There were three girls at the restaurant trying to get him to notice them, but he kept his eyes solely on me. We talked about everything and nothing, just like we always do. Then he took me to this little park, and we just sat on the swings for forever. I didn’t want to come home, Lana, but he said he didn’t want to get me in trouble…”
The news that it was Drake being so responsible made some of my tension about them ease…just a little. It wasn’t like I was going to get over these feelings overnight. I wanted better things for Lana in life than a rock star. I wanted her to go to college, live it up a little without having to worry about anything else. I wanted her to have the things, and chances that I never got. It wasn’t me trying to live through her; it was me wanting a better life for her than what I had had at her age.
“Tomorrow he’s taking Lucy and me shopping.” She shook her head. “I told him I didn’t want anything, that all I wanted was to spend time with him, but he insisted. He wants to buy me things, Layla. How do I say no to him? I can’t…” She trailed off with a frown. “I don’t want him to think that the only reason I want to be friends with him is so that I can take advantage of the things he can give me. I just want him.”
I had no clue how to help her with that. Drake, as far as I could tell, had never been one to splurge on anything. All the pictures I had ever seen of him in tabloids had showed him in tattered old jeans and tee shirts. He never had a woman hanging off his arm, unless you counted Emmie, which I didn’t. Maybe his buying Lana things was the only way he knew how to make her see that he cared about her, but I could be wrong.
“Do what you have to do, Lana. When he tries to buy you something, insist that you don’t want it.” I grasped her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I’m happy you had a good time, sweetie. Now go shower and get to bed. We can talk in the morning.”
She hugged me tight. “He really is a good guy, Layla,” she murmured before standing. “You’ll see.”
I just smiled as I watched her walk into the bedroom. Only time would tell about Drake, but I really hoped that Lana was right.
Jesse
Emmie was much calmer after her talk with Layla. No one wanted to go into the studio on Wednesday, but she insisted. Somehow we made it through the day without losing our minds and actually got two tracks done.
I spent the day with my mind split between worrying about Emmie and how she was handling the news that she was going to have to have a C-section, and day dreaming about Layla. By the time we got home that evening I was anxious to see them both.
Emmie was getting over the distress of the new development where the baby was concerned. She and Nik had talked about it long and hard the night before and I think that Nik was more worried about it than Em was now. Poor guy had been off most of the day, missing notes, forgetting words that he had wrote himself. I felt sorry for him. If it was bothering me so bad, I could only imagine how he had to be feeling. Em was everything to him, and the baby was something that he had grown obsessed with over the summer. His happiness depended on them both.
Layla had taken off before I got home. I was beyond disappointed. I wanted to knock on her door and invite myself into the guesthouse, but decided that it was better to wait. Maybe she needed some space after the kiss the day before.
Drake disappeared every evening after dinner. I was actually jealous of the time he was spending with Lana. I wanted to have the same time with Layla! I wanted to go on long walks with her along the beach. I wanted to lie on a blanket in the grass and just watch the night sky while talking about nothing that really mattered.
Don’t get me wrong. I was happy for my buddy. Since Lana had come along, Drake had even slowed down on his drinking. He didn’t constantly have a bottle in his hand. He barely drank a beer with dinner each night. Then I would hear him in his room in the middle of the night stumbling around, hear his quiet moans while he fought his nightmares once he finally fell asleep. Just like I heard him throwing up each morning. Something that wasn’t a part of his hangover, but the result of his nightmares…
I couldn’t think about Drake’s nightmares though. They just pissed me off and made me want to punch something.
Friday night he didn’t have dinner with us. Emmie said he was going out with Lana, and I wondered if that was a good idea. But Emmie seemed thrilled about it, and I trusted her judgment on this so I didn’t say anything.
We were all still up when Drake came home. It wasn’t late, barely after eleven. I was relieved when he walked into the house. The look on his face startled me though. He was actually humming and I had never seen him smiling so freely before the entire time I’d known the guy. Even I would admit that Drake, like his brother, was a sexy fucker, but when he smiled, it shined from the inside out and made him almost beautiful.
Emmie jumped up and hugged him tight. “How was it? Did you have fun?” She sounded like a mother asking her son how his first date went. It wasn’t far off the mark. It was probably Drake’s first actual date, and she mothered us all.
He laughed and pulled her down on the end of the sectional with him. “It was just dinner, Em.”
“I don’t care. Tell me all about it.”