Layla

I’ve caught him up with everything I can think of, all the way up to the second he sat down at this table. “So . . . that’s where we are,” I say.

“What’s your advice? How do we help Sable find closure?”

“You sound so sure that Sable has anything at all to do with this.” The man turns his attention to Willow. “Have you ever taken over Leeds?”

“No,” Willow says. “Only Layla.”

“I think you should try it. I’d like to see how your memories compare while inside his head.”

Willow looks at me with concern. She even looks somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of this. “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.”

“I’m fine with it.” I am fine with it. I’m fine with anything he thinks might help us out of this situation. And to be honest, I’ve been curious what it’s like. What Layla feels when it happens to her.

Willow stands up. “I won’t be inside Layla if I move into Leeds. We’ll need to tie her up again.”

There’s a nervous energy between us as we ascend the stairs to the bedroom, because we’re about to do something we’ve never done before.

Something we’ve never even thought to do.

Willow sits on the bed and looks up at me as I reach for the rope still tied around the bedpost. “Are you sure about this?”

“I have nothing to hide, Willow. It’s fine. It might even help.” I wrap the rope around her wrists and begin to tie them.

“How could it help?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But he’s like you. He isn’t like me. He knows more than both of us put together, so we just have to trust him. It’s all we have left.”

She inhales, and when she exhales, she leaves Layla’s body.

Layla just slumps against the headboard. “Not again,” she says, her voice full of defeat. “Why is this happening?” The expression on her face is an agonizing one. I force myself to look away.

“I don’t know,” I say quietly. “But I’m sorry it’s happening.” I walk to the door, and Layla is calling after me, but I can’t stay to listen to her pleas.

I lock the door behind me and head back downstairs.

“Where should I sit?” I ask the man.

He motions to the chair I’ve been sitting in this whole time. “Right there will be fine.” He reaches out his hand. “Give me your phone. I’ll record our interaction while she’s inside of you and play it back for you when it’s over.”

I slide my phone to him, and he props it up using his briefcase. He points the camera at me and presses record. I suck in a nervous rush of air.

I’m staring at the phone when I say, “I’m ready, Willow.”

I only feel it for a second.

A whoosh, like a rush of wind moving through my head. It’s as quick as the fluttering of an eyelid, but I know time has passed, because when I open my eyes, I’m still looking at my phone, but the minutes on the recording have changed. It went from just a few seconds to over three minutes. It’s like being under anesthesia for a surgery. You’re awake, and then you’re awake again, with no memory of the in-between.

“Did it already happen?” I ask, looking at the man.

He’s staring at me with narrowed eyes, as if he’s working through a difficult equation. He reaches over and hits stop on the cell phone recording.

I bring my hands up to a point against my chin, overwhelmed by the simplicity of what just happened, but also overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. It was a strange sensation, but also not entirely unfamiliar. Someone might pass it off as a dizzy spell.

I think back to all the times Willow has done this to Layla. How terrifying it must have been for Layla to be in the middle of a bite of food, and then one blink later and her plate is suddenly empty.

One second she was upstairs; the next second she was outside.

I run my palms down my face, flooded with guilt for what this has done to Layla’s mental stability. I knew this was affecting her, but now that I’ve put myself in her shoes, I feel even worse.

Not to mention, I still have her tied up like she means nothing to me. I can’t believe I’ve been letting Willow do this to Layla.

“What did Willow say?” I ask him. “I want to watch the video.”

He picks up my phone, but before he hands it to me, he says, “Do you have access to Layla’s medical records?”

I have access because I’ve been to every appointment she’s had since I’ve been with her, but I don’t know why he’d need them. “Why?”

“I’d like to see them.”

“Why?” I say again.

“Because I’d like to see them,” he repeats.

This man has given me absolutely nothing tonight. Just question after question and not a single answer. I sigh, frustrated, and then pull my laptop in front of me. It takes me a couple of minutes to log in to Layla’s medical records, and then I slide the laptop over to him. “You think you’re ever going to give us an explanation, or is this one-sided interview going to go on all night?”

The man stares intently at the computer screen as he responds. “Go get Layla for Willow so I can show you both the video.”

I gladly push back from the table. I walk up the stairs, wondering what the video is going to show. And why does he need Willow in Layla’s body to play it back to me?

I think Willow needs to stay out of Layla from this point forward.

There’s not really a reason to take over anymore. We’ve told the man everything. Layla has been through enough.

Part of me wants to untie her and let her leave so she’ll be put out of her misery, but the room is quiet when I open the door. Willow has already taken over Layla again.

It’s probably for the best. I feel too guilty to face Layla right now.

“It isn’t right—what we’ve been doing to Layla,” I say. I untie the knots and loosen the rope.

Willow just nods in agreement. When I’ve released her hands, she wipes at her eyes, and I notice for the first time she’s crying.

“What’s wrong? What did you find out?”

“I don’t know what any of it meant,” she whispers, her voice catching in her throat.

Then she’s off the bed and past me and out the bedroom door. She’s walking with urgency in her steps. I rush down the stairs behind her, and when I get to the kitchen, she grabs my phone from the man. She shoves it into my hands like she doesn’t want another second to pass without me seeing the video.

My hand is shaking, so I lay my phone on the table as the video begins to play.

I see myself on the screen, and right when I say, “I’m ready, Willow,”

on camera, there’s an instant change in me. My posture stiffens. My eyes open. I look down at my shirt and then hear the man’s voice when he says,

“Willow?”

My head nods up and down.

It’s so strange . . . seeing myself do things I don’t remember doing.

I turn the volume all the way up on my phone so I can hear the conversation he had with Willow while she was inside my head.

“What do you feel?” the man asks Willow.

“Worried.”

“Don’t be,” the man says. “I just want to clear up a few things. I need you to try and see everything from Leeds’s point of view right now. Can you see his thoughts? His memories?”

Willow nods.

“I want you to go back to the day Leeds and Layla were shot. Do you have that memory?”

“Yes.”

“You can see that day from his point of view?”

“This feels wrong,” Willow says. “I shouldn’t be in him. It feels different. I only want to use Layla.”

“Give it one more minute. I just have a few questions,” the man says.

“What did Leeds feel when he heard the gun?”

“He was . . . scared.”

“And what did Sable feel?”

Willow doesn’t speak through me for several seconds. She’s silent.

Then, “I don’t know. I can’t find that memory.”

“Do you have another memory of that moment?”

“No. Just the memory Leeds has. I remember what happened before he heard the gunshot, but not during.”

“What happened before?”

“He was in his bedroom with Layla, packing for a trip.”

“What about after that? What’s the next memory you have that doesn’t belong to Leeds?”

“There isn’t one after that. All these memories belong to Leeds.”

“Okay,” the man says. “Almost done. Let’s back up. Go back to the night Leeds and Layla met here.”

“Okay,” Willow says. “I have that memory.”

“What did Leeds feel the first time he looked at Layla?”

She blows out a steady breath. Then she laughs. “He thought I was a terrible dancer.”

“Okay. Good. You can leave him now,” the man says.

In the video, my eyes flick open and I’m staring directly at the camera again. Then the video ends.

I lock the screen on my phone and fall back into my seat. “You asked like three questions,” I say, waving my hand toward my phone. “How did that even help?”

The man is still staring at my laptop. Willow is pacing the kitchen behind me, biting her fingernails again.

This entire thing seems pointless. I’m ready to call it quits and get Layla out of here when the man looks up at Willow and says, “Why did you say he thought you were a terrible dancer?”

She looks from him to me. “Because that’s what he felt in that moment.”

“But you didn’t say Layla was a terrible dancer,” he says. “You specifically said, ‘He thought I was a terrible dancer.’ You referred to yourself as Layla when you were in Leeds’s head.”

“Oh,” she says, her voice a faint whisper. “I don’t know. I can’t explain that.”

The man motions toward her chair. “Sit down.”

Willow sits.

“According to Layla’s medical records, they had to resuscitate her after she was shot. Once before paramedics got her into the ambulance. And again at the hospital.”

“That’s right,” I say. “Like I told you, it was touch and go for an entire week.”

“So she flatlined?”

I nod.

The man shoots me an inquisitive look. “You said Layla has been different since the attack. Memory loss, personality changes . . . can you think of anything else about her that’s different now than from before the injury?”

“Everything,” I say. “It affected her a lot.”

“Are there things about Willow that remind you of Layla?”

I look at Willow, then look back at the man. “Of course. She’s in Layla’s body when we communicate, so there are lots of similarities.”

He directs his attention toward Willow. “How did it feel taking over Leeds’s body?”

“Strange,” she says.

“Does it feel strange when you possess Layla’s body?”

She nods. “Yes, but . . . in a different way.”

“How are they different?” he asks.

“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I didn’t feel like I belonged in Leeds’s body. It felt foreign. Hard to control. Hard to remain in his head.”

“But you don’t feel that way when you’re in Layla’s body?”

“No.”

“You feel like it’s easier to possess Layla’s body?”

Willow nods. The man leans toward her. “Does it feel . . . familiar?”

Willow’s eyes cut to mine for a brief moment; then she looks back at the man and nods. “Yes. That’s a good way to describe it.”

The man shakes his head with a look of complete disbelief on his face.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Anything like what?” I ask. I’m confused by his line of questioning.

“Your situation is very unique.”

“How so?”

“I knew it was possible, but I’ve never actually seen it myself.”

I want to strangle the words out of him. “Can you please just tell us what’s going on?”

He nods. “Yes. Yes, of course.” It’s the most expressive he’s been tonight. He stands up and walks around to the side of the kitchen table, leaning against it, looking at both of us intently. “Death from bullet wounds is usually the result of excessive blood loss, so it probably took Sable several minutes to die after you shot her. And in that same time frame, Layla also flatlined. There were two souls in the same room that left two bodies at the same time. Which means when Layla’s body was revived by paramedics, there’s a strong possibility that the wrong soul entered that body.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?” I ask. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“Bear with me,” he says. He nudges his head toward Willow. “When Willow is inside of Layla, she can remember things from both Sable’s and Layla’s points of view. But when she was inside you, she could only remember things from yours and Layla’s points of view. Sable’s memories didn’t move with her into your body.” He pushes away from the table and begins pacing the kitchen. “The reason it’s hard for your girlfriend to remember things isn’t because of memory loss. It’s because they aren’t her memories. She has to search for them, and even then, she can only pull up a memory when it’s prompted. The only logical explanation for this would be that the soul who has been walking around inside Layla’s body since the night of the shooting is not Layla.”

Logical? He thinks telling me that Layla isn’t really Layla is a logical explanation?

It was a feat for me to come to terms with there being an afterlife. But this is beyond the capabilities of my imagination. This is absurd.

Ridiculous. Unfathomable. “If Sable is Layla, then where is Layla?” I ask.

He points at Willow. “She’s right there.”

I look at Willow, too confused—or maybe too scared—to accept what this delusional man is trying to spoon-feed us. I rest my elbows on the table and press my palms against my forehead. I try to slow down my thoughts.

“What would make this possible?” I ask. “Why would Sable’s soul choose Layla’s body rather than her own?”

The man shrugs, and I’m not sure I like that shrug. I would much prefer him to be absolute in his responses. “Maybe it’s not so much where her soul belonged in that moment, but where it wished it belonged. Sable obviously wanted what Layla had, or she wouldn’t have done what she did.

Perhaps what we desire can sometimes be so strong it overpowers our fate.”

I press my palms against the sides of my head in an attempt to extract every ounce of rationality from the depths of my brain. I need every last drop if I want to be able to digest this absurdity.

This is a concept I can’t immediately grasp, but if I’ve learned anything since coming here, it’s that entertaining the unfathomable often leads to believing the unfathomable.

I press my palms onto the table and lean back in my chair. “If this is true, wouldn’t Willow have memories when she isn’t inside someone else’s head? Willow doesn’t remember anything at all.”

“Memories fade quickly in the afterlife, especially when you don’t have a body and a brain to attach them to. You just have feelings, but you can’t connect them to anything. It’s why they’re called lost souls.”

Willow says nothing during all of this. She just listens, which isn’t hard to do because the man keeps talking, filling my head with way more information than I can keep up with.

“We call them spares,” he says. “They’re like souls who no longer have a body, but the soul isn’t quite dead, so they aren’t considered traditional ghosts. It’s very rare that the circumstances are right for something like this to occur, but it’s not unheard of. Two souls leave two bodies at once in the same room. Only one of the bodies is revived. The wrong soul attaches to the revived body, and the right soul becomes stuck, with nowhere to go.”

Willow places her palms on the table. She speaks for the first time with a curious tilt of her head. “If this is true . . . and I’m Layla . . . how and why did I end up stuck here in this house?”

“When a soul leaves a body, but refuses to move on, it usually ends up in a place that meant something to them during life. This place has no meaning to Sable. But it has a lot of meaning to you. That’s why your soul came here after it was displaced, because it’s the only place you knew Leeds might find you.”

He thinks Layla’s soul got displaced? It’s such a simple term to explain something so monumental. But no matter how simple or monumental this may be, I’ve never wanted to believe something more, while also hoping to hell it’s not true. “You’re wrong,” I say firmly. “I would have known if Layla wasn’t Layla.”

“You did know,” the man says adamantly. “It’s why you started falling out of love with Layla after her surgery. Because she wasn’t the Layla you fell in love with when you met her.”

I push back from the table. I walk across the kitchen, wanting to punch something. Throw something. I’ve been through enough already. I don’t need someone showing up here and fucking with my head even more.

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter. “What are the chances that souls could be switched?” I don’t know if I’m asking Willow, the man, or myself.

“Stranger things have happened. You said yourself you didn’t believe in ghosts before you returned here, but look at you now,” the man says.

“Ghosts are one thing. But this? This is something you’d see in a movie.”

“Leeds,” Willow says. Her voice is calm. Quiet.

I spin around and look at her.

Really look at her.

Part of me wants to believe this guy because that would explain this inexplicable pull I feel toward Willow. Even when I thought she might be Sable.

It would also explain why Layla has seemed like a completely different person since the accident.

But if he’s right, and Willow is Layla, that means . . .

I shake my head.

It would mean Layla is dead.

It would mean it’s Layla who has been stuck in this house alone.

I grip the counter, my knees weak. I try to think of a way to disprove his theory. Or prove it. I don’t even know which theory I want to be true at this point.

“I need more proof,” I say to him.

The man motions toward my seat, so I walk across the kitchen and return to the table. I take a sip of water, my pulse pounding in my throat.

“Do you know the full extent of Layla’s memory loss since the accident?” the man asks.

I try to think back to what she could remember, but I don’t have a lot to go on. She doesn’t like to talk about that night, and I avoid talking too much about the past because I don’t like to remind her of her loss of memory. I shake my head. “No. I’ve never quizzed her about it because I feel bad. But there have been things I’ve noticed that she forgot. Like on the flight here when I mentioned the name of the bed and breakfast, it was like she had no memory of it until I reminded her.”

“If Sable’s soul took over Layla’s body, she would have difficulty accessing Layla’s memories right away, because they aren’t hers. They’re there—in her brain—but they wouldn’t be so easy to get to when her spirit didn’t actually experience those memories.”

Willow speaks up. “But wouldn’t Layla know she was Sable? Sable’s memories are also there, in her head. When she woke up from surgery, she would have known she was in the wrong body, right?”

“Not necessarily,” he says. “Like you said, when you were in her head, her memories were confusing. That could be because when a person dies, they don’t normally take their entire identities with them.”

I’m watching Willow as she takes in what he’s saying. She looks just as confused and as skeptical as I feel.

“There’s a possibility that when she woke up from surgery, she might have felt displaced. Confused. Even looking in the mirror might be confusing for her, because maybe she doesn’t feel attached to the reflection looking back at her. All of this confusion, which was blamed on amnesia, is probably what’s been fueling her anxiety and panic attacks.” The man taps his fingers on the table in thought for a moment. I stare at his fingers, waiting for him to offer up more proof. He pauses his hand and locks eyes with Willow. “If you are Layla, you would have memories of the two of you that Sable wouldn’t be able to access right away.” He turns to me this time.

“Are there other memories you’ve noticed Layla struggle with besides the name of this bed and breakfast?”

I think back on everything that could be a clue. Things that have been missing from Layla’s memory over the last six months that I blamed on her memory loss. I pull up recent things that are fresh in my mind.

I turn and look at Willow. “What’s the deadliest time of day?”

“Eleven in the morning,” Willow says instantly.

I stiffen at that answer.

Last week when I brought that up, Layla acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. But Willow also could have heard that conversation in the kitchen, so it doesn’t really help prove much.

“Fuck.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to think of something else that seemed to have escaped Layla’s memory recently. Something Willow wouldn’t have heard.

I think about a conversation that happened in the Grand Room last week. I mentioned a book I had been reading, but Layla had no idea what I was talking about. Then I changed the subject and never mentioned the title of the book, so Willow shouldn’t know it. “What . . . what book was I reading the night I was supposed to leave for—”

Willow cuts me off. “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It was about a game show host who claimed he was an assassin.” Layla couldn’t remember either of those things last week. “You told me you read e-books because paperbacks take up too much space in your luggage.”

I immediately turn and look at Willow after she says that.

All the pieces of the puzzle feel like they’re beginning to lock into place, and I don’t know if I want to fall to the floor in agony or wrap my arms around her. But before I do either . . . I have one more question.

“If you’re Layla . . . you would know this.” My voice is fearful.

Hopeful. “What was your first impression of me?”

She blows out a shaky breath. “You looked like you were dying inside.”

I can’t move. This is too much. “Holy shit.”

She leans forward and grips her forehead. “Leeds. All these memories of you and Layla meeting here. The kiss in the pool, the song you played for her . . . is that me? Are these my memories?”

I can’t say anything. I just watch her as she grapples with the same realization I’m grappling with.

I think back on the last several months of my life, and how I felt like so much changed in Layla. It’s like she became a different person after that surgery.

She did.

She was a completely different person. Her entire personality changed; the way I felt about her changed. And now that I’m looking back on it, there are even similarities between the Layla who woke up from the surgery and the Sable I dated. Sable had bulimia. Layla became obsessed with her weight after surgery. Sable was obsessed with social media, and . . . me.

Layla became obsessed with building my platform. Sable suffered from a number of mental illnesses, and the more days that passed after Layla’s surgery, it seemed like Layla was starting to suffer from those same mental illnesses. And the day we arrived here, I knew it was Layla who punched that mirror. I didn’t understand why she’d do it, but I knew she did it.

When Layla woke up from that surgery, she was not the same girl I fell in love with.

But all the things I loved about Layla in those first couple of months of knowing her are the exact same ones I started to notice in Willow. Her personality, her mood, her playfulness, the familiarity in the way she kissed, her strange and random facts. I used to tell Layla she was like a morbid version of Wikipedia.

That’s also one of the things I recognized and liked about Willow.

That triggers another memory that should have been an obvious clue.

“On the bed, upstairs,” I say to Willow. “The night you were watching Ghost. I said, ‘You are so strange.’ But I also said that to you when I first met you. Because . . . I was fascinated by you and enamored with you, and then when I met Willow, she felt so familiar, and . . .”

I can’t finish my sentence because it feels like the cinder block that has been weighing down on my chest has just lifted.

I no longer feel like I’m falling out of love with Layla, because I’ve been falling in love with her this whole time in Willow.

Layla is Willow, and now that I’m looking at her, I have no idea how I didn’t see it before tonight.

I take her face in my hands. “It is you. This whole time I’ve been falling back in love with you. The same girl I fell in love with the moment I saw you dancing like an idiot on the grass in the backyard.”

She laughs at the memory—a memory she owns. A memory we share together. A memory that doesn’t belong to Sable.

A tear rolls down her cheek, and I wipe it away and pull her to me.

She wraps her arms around me. I had no idea how much I missed her until this very second. But I’ve missed her so much. I missed what we shared in the first two months we were together. I’ve missed her since the night she was shot.

I’ve had this constant hollow feeling inside me since that night, and for so long I’ve felt guilty for feeling that way. For feeling like I lost her when she was still right in front of me. I even felt guilty for the way Willow reminded me of her.

That guilt is gone now. I feel justified. Every choice I made . . . every feeling Willow filled me with . . . it was all justified, because my soul was already in love with hers. It’s why I felt an inexplicable pull to this place.

To Willow. Even when I thought Willow was Sable, I still felt that pull, and it confused me.

It all makes sense now.

I press my lips to hers and I kiss her. I kiss Layla. As soon as she kisses me back, I feel everything I used to feel when I would kiss her.

Everything I thought I’d lost. It’s right here. It’s been here all along.

I keep touching her face between kisses, amazed to finally see it. It’s why there was such a huge difference every time Willow would take over

Layla. It’s why Willow seemed more comfortable and confident in Layla’s body. It’s because it was hers all along. It never belonged to Sable. Sable has seemed uncomfortable in it since the day she woke up from surgery.

Willow is smiling through her tears when she says, “This explains why I was so relieved when you showed up here, Leeds. It was because I missed you, even though I couldn’t remember you.” She kisses me again, and I never want to let go of her.

But something tears us apart anyway. The sound of the front door slamming shut.

I look over my shoulder, and the man is no longer standing in the kitchen.

We both rush out of the kitchen and to the front door.

“Wait!” I say, running after him. He’s climbing into his truck by the time I reach him. “Where are you going?”

“You don’t really need me anymore. You found your answer.”

I shake my head. “No. No, we didn’t. You have to fix it now. Sable is still in the wrong body. Layla is still stuck in nothing.” I wave my hand toward Layla. “Switch them out.”

The man looks at me pityingly. “I find answers, but that doesn’t always mean there are solutions.”

I try to remain calm, but I want to strangle him for that response. “Are you kidding me? What are we supposed to do? There has to be a way to fix this!”

He starts the truck and closes his door. He rolls down the window and leans out of it. “Only one soul can lay claim to a body. Sure, Layla is able to slip into her old body, but it’s only temporary. Like a possession. You’ll never be able to get Sable out of Layla’s body. Not until she dies, at least.

But when that happens, they’ll both be dead.” He starts to roll up his window, but I frantically beat on the glass. He rolls it halfway down. “Look.

I’m sorry this happened to you guys. I really am. But I’m afraid you’ll just have to figure out a way to live like this until the three of you move on for good.”

I take a step back. “That’s your advice? To leave Sable tied to a bed for the rest of our lives?”

He shrugs. “Well, Sable kind of brought it on herself, if you ask me.”

He puts the truck in reverse. “Maybe you should let Sable leave, and you can stay here with Layla’s spirit.”

I’m so angry at that advice I kick the door of his truck, leaving a dent.

I kick it again. I want to scream.

The man rolls his window all the way down and leans over the door.

He sees the dent. “Now, don’t do that to Randall’s truck. He’ll be confused enough when he wakes up at work and can’t remember what happened to half his night.” He puts his cap back on and slowly begins to back out of the driveway. “A human dies every second, and they don’t always die the right way. I have a lot more people to help.” He raises a hand in the air. “I’ll keep in touch online. Sure would like to see how you two work this one out.”

He turns his truck around in the driveway.

We watch him in silence until he’s gone. Until it’s just the two of us.

He really was just here to give us answers. Nothing more and nothing less.

I’m full of a frustration that can’t be settled, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve been given clarity. It’s like the strand of hair that’s been strangling my heart finally broke loose and it’s beating that out-of-control, irregular beat again that only Layla’s presence can create.

A plink and a BOOM.

“Layla?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

I turn to her. “Nothing. I just wanted to say your name.” I pull her to me. I hold Layla for several minutes as we stand in silence in the front yard.

I’m not holding Sable or Willow or a false version of Layla.

I hold Layla.

I may not have a solution. I don’t know how I’m going to keep her in my arms forever, but for right now, I have her. And I’m making damn sure she never spends another night alone in this house again.