Another potential lyric.

The man in front of me is attempting to shove his oversize suitcase into the overhead bin, so I take the pause in the movement of the line and type a tweaked version of that sentence into my notes. I keep running back to the starting line because I don’t want to be finished with you.

Layla’s recovery has been a lot more intense than my own. It was touch and go for an entire week. Once she was stable, it was still four weeks before she was discharged.

I blame myself daily for not being more careful. For not fearing Sable’s instability all those months before, when she refused to stop contacting me.

I blame myself for ever thinking it was a good idea to put Layla’s face out there while not expecting some sort of repercussions. I mean, it’s the fucking internet. I should have known better. Every post has some sort of repercussion.

We desperately need this trip. We need the privacy. A break from the outside world. I just want to go back to how it all was in the beginning. Just the two of us, locked up in a bedroom, having the best and most random conversations between rounds of sweaty sex.

I shove Layla’s carry-on into the overhead bin. We’re in seats 4A and 4B, the last row in first class. Layla takes the window seat. She’s been unusually quiet, which means she’s probably feeling anxious.

I haven’t told her where we’re going yet. I wanted it to be a surprise, but the unknown might be feeding her anxiety. I hadn’t really thought about that until this moment.

I sit down and fasten my seat belt while she closes the window shade. “Any guesses where we’re headed?”

“I know we’re flying to Nebraska,” she says. “I don’t even know what’s in Nebraska.”

“We’re not actually staying in Nebraska. It’s the closest airport to where we’re going, though.”

That should be a hint, but she doesn’t seem to catch on to it. She grabs one of the small water bottles from between our seats and opens it. “I hope it’s relaxing. I don’t know that I’m in the mood for adventure.”

I try not to laugh at the thought of that. What does she expect? That I would sign her up for rock climbing or river rafting after she’s been in physical therapy for the past six months?

She’s been through so much and I know I’ve been extremely overprotective, but we’ve slowly been easing back into our old routine. No one can bounce back from something like that and immediately fall back into being their chipper, happy selves, so there’s still some ground to cover, but I’m confident our rhythm will come back with time.

Layla pulls her phone out of her purse before shoving the purse beneath the seat in front of her. “We need to post a picture of you on the plane,” she says, lifting her phone.

I smile, but she shakes her head, indicating she doesn’t want me to smile. I stop smiling. She snaps a picture of me and then opens it in an editing app.

It’s hard not being a little bitter at the idea of fame after what happened to us. Layla never would have been injured if it weren’t for social media.

She finishes editing the picture and holds it up for me to approve. I always approve them. I don’t really care what she posts, to be honest. I nod when I see the picture, but then I groan when I see the hashtags. #Singer #Musician #LeedsGabriel #Model

“Model? Really, Layla? Am I trying to make it as a musician or an influencer?”

“You can’t be the former nowadays without also being the latter.” She posts the picture with the hashtags.

“They used to say MTV was the death of the ugly musician,” I mutter. “Not even close. Instagram is the new grim reaper.”

“It’s a good thing you look like you do, then,” Layla says. She kisses me and then puts her phone back into her purse.

I turn my cell on airplane mode and drop it into the back pocket of the seat in front of me, dreading the inevitable pictures Layla will force me to take before my head hits the pillow tonight. I know I should be more grateful to her for wanting me to succeed. It just all feels dirty now. Our story made a few headlines and circulated in the Nashville scene, so it gave me a small bump in sales and a huge bump in followers—I’m over ten thousand now. But I can’t help but feel like I’m capitalizing off her injuries.

I feel like a sellout who never really had anything to sell out.

The plane begins to taxi, and Layla starts twisting the hem of her dress nervously. She’s already downed both bottles of our water.

The attack changed a lot of things about her. It changed both of us.

A lot was taken from her because of me. Months of her life. Her confidence. Her security. She was left with anxiety, dependency issues, night terrors, panic attacks, memory loss. The carefree and confident girl I fell in love with no longer sits next to me. Instead, I sit next to a girl who seems like she’s fighting not to crawl out of the skin she’s in.

It’s like all her resilience is buried beneath layers of scar tissue now.

Maybe that’s why I’ve let her basically take over as my manager while she recovers. I do what she says because my career is the only thing that seems to give her a sense of purpose. Keeps her mind off everything that’s happened.

And maybe that’s how she deals with it—by turning the one thing that caused all of this into a positive thing. Every aspect of our lives other than my career has suffered. Layla says it’s good we have that small sliver of positivity to hold on to. I don’t want to deprive her of that, but I kind of miss the days when she didn’t take my career as seriously. I miss it when she encouraged me to quit the band in order to preserve my own happiness. I miss how she used to pull my guitar out of my hands so she could crawl on top of me. I miss it when she didn’t care about what was posted to my Instagram page.

But mostly, I miss just being myself around her. Lately, I feel like I’ve been inching away from the person I was so that I can become the person she now needs.

“Is the seat belt sign off yet?” she asks. Her face is buried in the sleeve of my shirt. She’s gripping my hand. Honestly, I hadn’t even realized we’d taken off. It’s like I live inside my own head now more than I live in reality.

“Not yet.”

She must be extremely nervous right now if she can’t even lift her eyes to look for herself. I bring my hand to the side of her head and press my lips into her hair. She tries to hide it, but anxiety is not an invisible thing. I can see it in the way she holds herself. In the way her hands twist at her dress. In the way her jaw hardens. I can even see it in the way her eyes dart around when we’re in public, as if she’s waiting for someone to come around the corner and attack.

When a ding indicates the seat belt signs are off and it’s safe to move around the cabin, she finally separates herself from me. Her eyes flitter nervously around the cabin as she takes a mental note of her surroundings. She lifts the shade and gazes out the window at the clouds, absentmindedly bringing her hand up to the scar on the side of her head. She’s always touching it. Sometimes I wonder what she thinks about when she touches it. She has no memory of that night. Only what I’ve told her, but she rarely asks about it. She never asks about it, actually.

Her knee is bouncing up and down. She shifts in her seat and then glances back into coach. Her eyes are wide, like she’s on the edge of a panic attack.