Dilemma

Dilemma

“Will you marry me?” This was the one little question that made me pack my things and move all the way out to my family’s old lake house miles away. I know Jayden was expecting a “yes” from me, I was too, but somehow my legs moved faster than my mouth. The worst part of that moment was the tear I saw roll down his eyes before I turned around and left him, one knee down at the beach. The reality of that question was a serious wake up call for me. I had been hiding under the illusion of a promising life that I built on a lie. Now I am standing by the lake, with the wind in my hair, wondering how I let this happen. How did I let myself fall in love and drag Jayden into this life? I remember how he would always say to me “Layla, I love you” and I guess I believed him. 

It was a month after the darkest moment of my life that I met Jayden. A month after the night I woke up at the lake house with blood stains all over my body. Jayden had stopped me on my way out of a coffee shop and asked if he could walk me to wherever I was going. From that day, it became long talks at night, walks on the beach, dinner dates under the moonlight and a year later, a proposal? The funny part of this is Jayden never realised that I had always been looking over my shoulders for a long time. Even the day he met me, I was running from my past, running from the shadowy figure that has been following me since that night at the lake house. I felt safer allowing him to walk me home and somehow his presence kept me safe for a long time. Well, safe until the break in at our new house last month.

Standing here now by the lake, I remember that night like it was just yesterday. Imani, my best friend, and I had been planning for weeks to have a “bestie staycation” at my parent’s lake house. “We are going to have the most boogie holiday with a charcuterie board and glasses of wine by the fireplace”, she laughed. She always made me laugh and I couldn’t say no to her even though I hated being at the lake house. There are many memories here that I am not too fond of, I guess those bad memories keep stacking up. 

We had arrived at the lake house early in the morning on the 3rd of July, just so we could clean up and prepare for our “boogie holiday”. By night time, we had the whole thing set up and got caught up having random girl-gossip over some glasses of wine by the fireplace. I can still remember how her curly hair bounced off her head as she laughed so hard. We ate and danced and sang karaoke to pass the time. Eventually, we fell asleep on the couch while waiting to watch the fireworks. 

I can still recall the sound of my neck cracking as I stood up from the floor, stretching myself to ease the growing pain in my neck. The sounds of fireworks going off in the distance had woke me up.  I had intended to get up and wake Imani, but she was not where I had left her on the couch. What do I even mean by “left her”? I was on that same couch too!  How did I end up on the floor? I think what is more vivid in my memory is the color of the blood I saw that night that got my heart racing. The blood made a trail that led me to the kitchen. That was when I saw my best friend, lying in a pool of her own blood. It was at that moment that I felt the knife in my hand. The scream that escaped my mouth in that instance is still loud enough for me to hear as though someone was standing right beside me now and screaming into my ear. I remember the big thud the knife made as it hit the wall on the other end of the kitchen. I crashed to my knees right beside Imani’s lifeless body, shaking her to wake up with tears streaming down my eyes as I begged and shouted at her to ‘please, get up’. At that moment, I just could not phantom that she might be dead and that it was probably my fault.

After all that happened that night, after all I had done, somehow I have managed to ‘bag’ a proposal. I want to blame this relationship with Jayden on luck, luck that I was able to get away and start a new life in a small town, somewhere no one would expect a city girl like me to ever go. Now, I am not so sure anymore. What seemed like luck to me, what seemed like my escape now looks more like my punishment. My life is now a sad plot to remind me of what I did and what I would lose if I told Jayden the truth. Would he leave me if I told him everything? Regardless, I cannot say yes without telling him this secret, I would only be dragging him deeper into this mess and lie that is my life. He deserves better.

So then, where do I start from if I wanted to tell Jayden the truth? Do I start from the fact that my name is not actually Layla? Do I tell him that I met him while running away from something I did a year ago? Do I tell him that the break in at our house last month was not just a burglar trying to get in but someone trying to get me? Or maybe I should just start from the very beginning, the real reason I ran away. Maybe I should start by telling him that I think I killed my best friend and then buried her body at a lake house and have been hiding under his love this whole time. Now that I put it this way, I think he is definitely going to leave me.