It Had to Be You, Georgia Clark [phonics reader TXT] 📗

Layla looked confused. “Ha ha?”

“It’s not a joke.”

“I think I’d have picked, like, Jesse Williams. Dude’s fine.” Layla sipped her wine, bored of the bad joke.

“I’m not making it up. We met at a wedding back in May. He was a guest. We hit it off. It’s been on the down-low but now—”

“Zia—”

“He’s my boyfriend, and I want you to meet him and—”

“Zia, whoa!” Layla put down the cup, her expression transforming into real concern. An old tenderness emerged, the one born in the aftermath of the Logan breakup and court case. “You sound like you really believe this.”

At a loss at what else to do, Zia got out her phone. Layla watched her unlock it, and tap open her photos. They still didn’t take any couple pictures, but the other night they’d drunk a lot of cabernet and made a mess in the kitchen. Zia had tipsily snapped Clay covered in pasta sauce, laughing hysterically. She showed the only picture she had of Clay to her sister. “See? That’s his kitchen.”

Layla peered at the photo. “You get this off the internet?”

Zia exhaled, frustrated, pointing at the picture. “That’s my tote bag. Sis, I’m telling the truth.”

Layla’s face started to go slack. Her eyes flicked from the picture to Zia, back and forth. “You’re dating Clay Russo. For real?”

“Yes.”

“Swear on Abuelita’s grave. Swear on my kids’ lives.”

Zia looked her right in the eye. “I swear. He’s my boyfriend, but we’re still not public. Which sucks, actually, because—”

Her sister started to cry.

“Layla!” Zia scooted closer, alarmed. Of all the reactions she expected, this wasn’t one of them. It must be the shock. Zia rubbed her back as her sister began weeping. “Layla, honey.”

“Gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios.” Her sister was rocking back and forth. She was laughing. “I prayed. I prayed for this.”

“For me getting a boyfriend?”

“No.” Layla’s laugh was a little manic. “Oh, Zia. This fixes everything.”

Zia’s skin cooled. “Fixes what?”

“Zia.” Her sister wiped her nose with her sweatshirt sleeve. She looked ecstatic. “A few months ago, my insurance stopped covering my Humira. Do you know what that is?”

“The medication for your arthritis?”

“That’s right. So now it costs, like, five freaking grand. Every two weeks.”

Zia gasped. The bill she’d seen in the trash. It wasn’t for Mateo. It was for Layla. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, honey.” Layla kissed her sister’s hands. “You already give us so much. And you don’t have an extra five grand. But now…”

“Now?”

Layla’s eyes were fever bright. “C’mon, Zia. Ten thousand a month is nothing to guys like that. Nothing.”

Zia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I can’t ask Clay for money, Layla. I’ll help you as much as I can, I’ll pick up extra shifts, but—”

“Look at that kitchen!” Layla erupted, pointing at Zia’s phone. “That place costs a million bucks!”

Try ten million. Zia’s heart was racing. She shook her head, trying to get ahold of the situation. “How much do you need?”

Layla licked her lips. “Like, fifty grand? To pay off my credit cards and make it through this year.”

Panic coursed through Zia’s chest. She pictured asking Clay for fifty grand. Hey babe, so I told my sister about us, and she was wondering if there was any way— Zia shut her eyes, mortified. “It’s just, he has a thing about being used, and—”

“He has a thing about being used?”

“Layla, I can’t ask Clay to give me fifty thousand dollars! Do you have any idea how insane that is?”

“Then, ‘borrow’ a leather jacket and I’ll put it on eBay. I know what those things can cost, I read about it in—”

Zia shot to her feet. “You’re unbelievable.”

“No, you’re unbelievable.” Layla was on her feet, too. “That you’d choose some rich boy over your own family.”

The guilt trip hit Zia hard. “I’m not choosing him over you! I just can’t ask him for money!”

“I’m in pain. Every day!”

“Layla, Clay isn’t a free ATM!”

“Why the hell not?” Her sister was wild-eyed. “I can’t believe this is an argument. You’re so selfish, Zia. You’ve always gotten everything, and I get nothing.”

“I can’t listen to this.” Zia grabbed her bag and stormed for the front door, tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, off you go,” Layla taunted her. “Run away like you always do. You don’t care about anybody but yourself.”

Zia shut the front door with a bang, tears rising up in her like a geyser, ready to blow.

63

When Savannah was eleven, she was obsessed with a book series called the Sweetwater Girls. They told the story of three sisters: the spirited, ambitious Hope (aged fourteen, brunette); impulsive troublemaker Faith (fifteen, redhead); and bookish, beautiful Grace (sixteen, blonde), who lived in the geographically ambiguous lakeside town of Sweetwater. The books revolved around the girls’ love lives and friendships and school dramas, stuffed with cliffhangers and emotion, and racy enough to feel illicit. Savannah had her first orgasm after Grace let local bad boy Chase Daniels touch her breast (the eldest sister had bumped her head and experienced a complete personality change; this dangerous medical phenomenon would be reversed after Grace bumped her head again). There was no greater thrill than opening the pages of, say, #23 Hope for Class President or #107 Grace’s Two Loves, and losing herself in the perpetually sunny world of Sweetwater and its three beautiful sisters. For over a year, it was a singular focus, a fiction addiction of the highest order. When Savannah grew out of the series, she never again found a passion as wholly consuming, pleasurable, and engrossing as the Sweetwater Girls.

Until she kissed Honey.

Honey and Savannah didn’t leave Savannah’s bedroom for one hundred years. At least, that’s how it felt. Cool Leonie referred to it as love soup: the sensation of being completely submerged in another person. Savannah was in the soup, and it was delicious.

It wasn’t until Savannah kissed a girl that she realized how much she needed—craved—softness. Softness of skin, of lips, of hair, of voice. How much she’d been trying to