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Maureen called, too. She wanted to know exactly what had happened, and I told her. I told her everything.
“This is a real cluster,” she said.
“I know.”
“You beat up a client.”
“He deserved it.”
“You’re fucking an employee.”
I couldn’t let that one slide. “I’min love withan employee.”
“Yeah, that old story doesn’t play these days. When it’s a CEO and a junior associate, it’s scandalous, not romantic.”
“I’m in love with her, Maureen,” I repeated.
She blew out her breath noisily, making a whooshing noise down the line. “You’d better hope she feels the same way because you just handed her a lot of leverage.”
“She doesn’t want leverage. She wants me.”
“You’d better hope so.”
Maureen hung up, and then my phone stayed eerily dark and silent. Jack didn’t call. My friends didn’t call. And most deafening of all, Layla didn’t call. She didn’t answer my calls either. I even called Jack.
“Don’t ever call here again,” he said in a flat, deathly cold voice.
“Jack, I–”
But he hung up before I could finish.
“–love her.”
I was tied up for a few days, dealing with the Blake situation. My lawyer wasn’t making me feel good about my odds. Blake had filed a restraining order which somehow prevented me from going to my own fucking office since he had thus far retained his brand development team under Cross Media. It made no sense why he’d keep us, except that he knew it was making my life harder.
Finally, I came to my senses. “Fire him,” I ordered Maureen.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking sure. He attacked Layla.”
Maureen was quiet, like she’d been waiting for me to confirm that. “Is she going to testify to that, if she has to?”
“Of course she is.”
My response was knee jerk, but beneath it, the pit was widening, deepening, darkening. I couldn’t see the bottom or feel the sides anymore. I was hollowing out.WouldLayla testify for me?HadI been mistaken? Why wasn’t she returning my calls? Where the hell was she?
I went by her place at least once a day, but she was never there. At least, she never answered her door. I even slow crawled past Jack’s house, but there was no sign of her car. Then, on Friday night, six days after my world went to hell, it went away. Blake dropped the charges. He released a statement about it being a misunderstanding. He apologized to the unnamed woman who had been involved. He was going to work on himself and figure out how this could have happened.
Astounded, I called Layla again. I was so sure that now this one thing had fallen into place, the rest would too. I was as stunned when she didn’t answer as I was when I walked into that empty hotel room. I went by her place and knocked on the door until the next door neighbor came out to see who the hell couldn’t take a hint. I parked on the street across from Jack’s house and stared at the large picture window through which I could just catch a glimpse of movement when people passed through the living room.
But none of those people was ever Layla.
It was like she had never been. Like I’d made her up, and Liv and Bran and her apartment had just been part of the illusion. I worried about myself. On Saturday morning, even though I hadn’t slept more than a handful of consecutive hours in over a week, I went to see Carl.
When I pulled up with donuts and a liter of coffee, Carl looked legitimately concerned for the first time in our acquaintance.
“Man, isn’t that like, fifty cups of coffee?”
