Page 43 of Layla

“Where’d you go?” John asks, his voice soft, and I shake my head.

“Just thinking about Haylee. How amazing she is at what she does.”

“She’s your best friend.”

I nod, feeling the slightest twinge of sadness. Haylee is my best friend, but I’m not hers. That would be James, who she’s known forever, practically her brother. I know she loves me, of course. We’re about as close as it’s possible to be. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have the kind of closeness she has with James myself. Hell, what would it be like to have the kind of closeness that she has with Lennon? Sometimes I think that I’ll never know and that always sends a vaguely sick feeling coursing through me.

“Anyhow,” I say, clearing my throat. I need to get this back on safe ground. I don’t like the way that John is looking at me, all close and intense like he can read my mind. “They needed a drummer badly and I was pretty decent so we started to play together. And then we met Dylan and that was kind of it.”

“Where does Lance come in?”

I roll my eyes. “The label brought him in after we signed. They said keyboard would help round us out, give us some depth, but we all know they just wanted him in the group because he’s pretty.”

John laughs. “He’s the eye candy.”

“Damn straight. A rock band cannot be successful without female support and God knows Dylan and James weren’t going to make them toss their panties on stage.”

He’s still chuckling. “I didn’t realize that female support was so important.”

I fix him with a stern stare. “That’s because our bullshit patriarchal society shits all over everything that girls love. We belittle anything that’s stereotypically female and completely ignore the fact that teenage girls are responsible for such a huge amount of pop culture throughout history. Look at the Beatles! They used to be criticized as a girl thing, too, you know. And now they’re completely legendary.”

I look over and see John leaning back against the cushions, his hands behind his head, grinning at me. “What?”

He shakes his head. “I like it when you rant.”

I burst out laughing. “I think you’re the first person who’s ever said that to me. Everyone else runs and hides when I get going.”

“Takes a lot more than that to get me to run and hide.”

I grin. “Big tough Marine.”

He groans. “Again, not a Marine. A Navy Seal. Totally different.”

I shrug, just because I know it will piss him off. “Sounds about the same to me.” Then I grab his beer from the table, take a long sip, and turn the movie back on, John chuckling softly at my side.