I was never the girl people noticed unless they were deciding whether to laugh.
By sixteen, I had learned three skills that seemed necessary for surviving the world without drawing too much attention to myself:
Laughing half a second after everyone else.
Ignoring pity.
And pretending that being alone was a choice.
Then Violet sat beside me in chemistry class and ruined all of that simply by being kind on purpose.
She was the kind of pretty that made people turn toward her.
I was the kind of girl teachers sometimes skipped over.
But Violet never treated me like a project.
“You don’t see how special you are, Layla. Seriously. You make me laugh all the time.”
She said it so casually that I didn’t know what to do with it.
She stayed.
Through high school.
Through college.
Through the years when I kept waiting for her to finally realize that I was too awkward, too poor, and too much work.
She never did.
But there was one enormous difference between us.
Violet had a home to go back to.
I didn’t.
All I had was a text from my brother.
“Don’t come back here, Layla. Don’t come home acting like anybody owes you something.”
So I followed Violet to her city.
Not in a creepy way.
In a broke-twenty-five-year-old-with-no-plan way.
My apartment was tiny.
The pipes screamed every morning, the kitchen window wouldn’t shut properly, and the walls were thin enough that I knew when my neighbors were arguing.
But it was mine.
Violet showed up during my first week with groceries and a plant I managed to kill nine days later.
“You need curtains,” she told me. “Maybe a rug.”
“I need rent money, V.”
“You need a home-cooked meal. That’ll fix everything.”
That was how I met Rick.
The first Sunday Violet brought me to his estate, I stood in his dining room pretending I understood the art hanging on the walls.
I complimented the silverware beside my plate like I was about to perform surgery.
Violet leaned toward me.
“Start from the outside and go in.”
“I don’t like you right now.”
“You’d be lost without me.”
Rick looked up from his soup.
“Is there a reason you two are plotting over the cutlery?”
Violet smiled sweetly.
“Layla thinks your silver is judging her.”
Rick looked straight at me.
“They’re judging everyone, doll. Don’t take it personally.”
I laughed.
And that was the beginning.
After that, Rick talked to me.
He asked questions.
He remembered the answers.
He noticed things other people overlooked.
He noticed that I always saw the price of something before I noticed its beauty.
One afternoon, he asked me why.
“Because price decides what gets to stay beautiful,” I said.
Rick leaned back in his chair.
“That’s either wise or sad, Layla.”
“Probably both.”
He smiled slightly.
“You say hard things like you’re apologizing for them.”
I looked down at my plate.
“Habit.”
No one had ever said my name like it mattered.
Violet noticed my bond with Rick quickly.
“Grandpa likes you more than the rest of us,” she said one night.
“That’s because I say thank you when he passes the potatoes.”
“No. It’s because you argue with him.”
“Only when he’s wrong.”
She laughed.
“Exactly.”
For a while, that was all it was.
Dinner.
Conversations.
Jokes.
A friendship I never expected.
Then one night, while Violet was upstairs helping her mother, Rick said something that changed the direction of my life.
“Have you ever considered marrying for practical reasons?”
I looked up from my tea.
“As in health insurance?”
“More like security.”
I waited for the joke.
It didn’t come.
“You’re serious.”
“I am.”
I slowly set my cup down.
“Rick, are you… proposing to me?”
“Yes, Layla.”
That should have been the moment I left.
Instead, I asked the question that mattered most.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re intelligent and observant. Because you’re less impressed by money than you pretend to be.”
