She believes I’m going to be a somebody, and her belief in me is actually making me start to believe it too.

It took some twisting of my arm, but three weeks ago she finally convinced me to release a few of the songs I’ve been sitting on. She posted me playing one of them to YouTube two weeks ago, and it has almost ten thousand views already.

I hate that I like that, but it feels surprisingly good to have someone in my life who makes me feel like my art is worth consuming. Even if she’s the only one who ever consumes it, it’ll be enough for me.

Garrett will be pissed if I officially stop playing with them and go solo, but bass players aren’t all that hard to replace here in Nashville.

Layla comes with me to every show, no matter how painful they’ve been for us both. It helps that she spends the entire last song of each set re-creating her ridiculous wedding dance. At least I end the shows in a good mood now.

I love her.

I think.

No, I do. I love her.

Everything about her. Her confidence, her eccentricities, her drive, her body, her blow jobs, her spontaneity, her belief in me. I love watching her sleep. I love watching her wake up.

I’m pretty sure this is love.

It’s only five o’clock in the afternoon and I leave in two hours, and I had to drag myself out of bed to finish packing. Garrett’s Band is playing a beach festival in Miami, so Layla and I have spent all day in bed to make up for the three days we won’t see each other. This will be the first show she hasn’t gone to since I met her. There’s not enough room for passengers in the van with all the equipment, and the idea of spending three days with Garrett and the guys isn’t appealing to her. I’m not going to force her to endure that torture.

This whole day has been my favorite day with her. Neither of us turned our phones on when we woke up this morning. We kept the lights off and the curtains shut, and I had her for both breakfast and lunch.

The lamp beside my bed is on now as Layla flips through her magazine.

I open Instagram and immediately regret turning on my phone. I haven’t looked at it since I posted a picture of us last night. It was the first time I’ve ever posted a picture with a girl. We were in bed, naturally. Layla was asleep on my chest and I really liked how I felt in that moment, so I held my phone up, snapped a picture of us, and left the caption blank.

I’ve gained almost a thousand followers since meeting Layla and releasing some of my own music, but that’s still only five thousand people total. I would assume with only five thousand followers, there would be less of a reaction to the picture I posted of us. Call me naive, but I honestly didn’t think I’d get much reaction at all.

Most of the comments I’m reading are from people congratulating us, but some of the comments are from other girls who are picking Layla apart. Luckily I didn’t tag her in the photo. I’d hate for her to see what people are saying about her.

The more I read through the comments and private messages, I’m tempted to just delete my account altogether. I know if I ever get to the point of being able to pay a bill with my music, I’ll be thankful for any followers I have. But right now, it’s disturbing reading comments like, Your girlfriend looks like a slut and You’re hotter when you’re single.

The internet is fucking brutal. It makes me nervous to leave her here for three days by herself. I don’t think she’s seen the picture yet, so I don’t even bother deleting the negative comments. I just delete the photo altogether and then set my phone facedown on the nightstand.

“You sure you’re okay staying here alone?” I ask her.

She lays the magazine against her chest. “Why? Do you want me to leave?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“We met two months ago and we haven’t even come up for air yet. Surely you’re sick of me crowding your space by now.”

She has no idea how not sick of her I am.

Well, I guess she would have no way of knowing how I really feel about her since I’ve never said it out loud. I show her, but I don’t say it.

I grab her magazine and toss it on the floor, then I roll on top of her. I love the look she always gets in her eye when she knows I’m about to kiss her. It’s a gleam of anticipation. There’s nothing better than knowing this girl anticipates my mouth on hers. “Layla,” I whisper. “I am not sick of you. I’m in love with you.”

I say it casually, but it only takes two seconds for my words to register. When they do, she covers her face with both hands. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her look shy. I kiss one of the hands covering her face right before she curls them into two fists against her chin. “I’m in love with you too.”

I immediately press my mouth to hers, wanting to swallow those words. I imagine them typed out in Arial font, slowly bouncing around inside of me, ricocheting off my internal walls, endlessly twisting and rotating inside my stomach and my chest and my arms and my legs until every part of me has been touched by them.

I pull away from her, and I love that her smile is so wide. “I guess it’s settled, then,” I say. “We’re in love, you’re staying here while I’m gone, and I think this means we just officially moved in together.”

“Wow. Maybe I should let my parents know I don’t live with them anymore.”

“You haven’t been home since your sister got married. I think they’re aware.”

She wraps her arms around my neck. “This is a lot in one day. We said I love you, we moved in together . . . and we’re Instagram official now.” She says the last part like a joke, but my stomach drops knowing she saw the picture.

“You saw that?”

I can tell by the way her smile fades that she also saw the comments that accompanied the picture. “Yeah.”

“Don’t worry, I deleted it.”

“You did? I didn’t mind it.”

“Either way, I don’t think I was prepared for people I don’t even know to have an opinion about us.”

“You’re not real to them. It’s just how people are on social media.” She kisses me. “It’s your own fault for being so damn hot,” she says with a grin.

I’m relieved she doesn’t seem to be taking any of it personally. “I don’t know if I want to post pictures of us together anymore. I don’t want them to find your account and start bothering you.”

Layla laughs. “Too late for that. You follow thirty people, and I’m one of them. They already found me.”

I roll off her and sit up on the bed. “What do you mean they already found you?”

“It’s just been one girl so far,” she says. “Sonya? Sybil? I can’t remember her name.” Layla says it so nonchalantly, but I know exactly who she’s talking about.

“Sable?”

She points at me with a wink. “That’s it. Sable. I already blocked her, though.”

I haven’t heard from Sable since I blocked her number several months before meeting Layla. The fact that she’s still looking at my posts confirms my concerns about her. “What’d she say?”

“I don’t know. I had over twenty in-box messages from her when I turned on my phone this morning. I only read two of them before I told her to get a life. Then I blocked her.” Layla walks her fingers up my leg, leaning in. She grins like she finds this amusing. “Did you sleep with her?”