Layla

by Colleen Hoover

I don’t know, so I just shake my head and hope it’s a long story so I can hear her talk more than she has. I could listen to her voice all night.

I didn’t know another person could make me feel this good without some sort of substance running through my body.

I’m not sure there’s another woman on this planet who could make me want to stare at her without blinking until my eyes dry up,

still take my time with her. So much time. Minutes feel like they matter more when they’re spent with her.

Most people are predictable. Every word and action from Layla is like being handed a gift-wrapped surprise.

I try to drag out the moment because I know how one-night stands work. I’ve had my fair share of them. I’ve snuck out of a lot of beds, but I don’t want to sneak out of this one.

I just don’t want to live where I grew up. I want to experience the entire spectrum. City, country, condo, cabin in the woods . . .”

That was several weeks ago, and even though I still feel dead inside while I’m on that stage, Layla keeps all the other parts of me alive.

I didn’t find a single thing about her annoying. In fact, the thought of being alone sounded more dreadful than being with her.

I’m playing songs for her, or writing songs, or thinking about songs. I feel like my music has a purpose now that she’s into it.

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.

There’s no better feeling than being loved for who you are rather than for what you’re worth.

Concern might be the only difference between liking someone and loving someone.

Her anger slips into my skin with the ease of a sharpened scalpel. It mixes with the guilt I feel for keeping her here, but Layla’s anger and my guilt combined still lack the capability to breach my conscience.

I dreamt that swallowing a piece of her hair tethered us together somehow, eliminating any fear that we might someday grow apart because of everything that happened.

I have this notion that if I take us back to the starting line, we’ll never cross the finish line. Another potential lyric.

I keep running back to the starting line because I don’t want to be finished with you.

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.

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.

I asked her what the anxiety felt like. She said, “It’s like a shiver running through my blood.”

Up until that point, I had always assumed anxiety was just a heightened sense of worry. But she explained it was an actual physical feeling. She feels it running through her body like tiny waves of electric shocks.

I can’t be the Band-Aid for her wounds. I need to be what helps them heal.

Right now, the grounds look to be in limbo, waiting for spring to bring back all the life that was murdered by winter.

I was blind but now I see. That’s how Layla made me feel. It was like someone let all the air back into my life when I had no idea I was even suffocating.

It’s like I’ve lived my entire life in shallow waters, but in the last few weeks, I’ve sunk all the way to the Challenger Deep.

I’d feel nothing if you punched me in the heart I’d feel even less if you stabbed me with a knife But I didn’t fall out of love with you I fell out of love with life

Nothing excites me anymore, it seems. Not even writing music. It feels like I’m opening wounds I’ve been trying to heal.

I’m just . . . nothing. I’m thoughts. Feelings. But they’re not really attached to anything tangible.

Knowing there’s more to this life than meets the eye makes everything around me feel insignificant. My career feels insignificant. My love for Layla feels like it matters less to the timeline of my life than it did two days ago.

It’s like someone took a pair of craft scissors and cut slivers of her life out of her mind, leaving them in scraps on the table.

“I love you, Layla. That love doesn’t fluctuate with numbers on a scale.”

There’s definitely some deceit going on here—I’m fully aware of that. But it’s hard to know where to draw the line when the lines aren’t even in the same world.

came here so Layla and I could regain our footing, but I have a feeling our worlds are going to grow further apart the longer we stay here. I’m becoming too fascinated with the world we aren’t in, and that’s going to affect us.

My mind is everywhere but here, and I can tell in her eyes that she feels it’s somehow a reflection of how I feel about her.

Maybe this house is messing with my head. Unraveling the threads of my morals.

“Your voice is haunting,” she says.

It’s like whiplash, going from Layla, who feels so heavy, to Willow, who’s like a gust of wind.

“Maybe her feelings for you are stronger than her anxiety. She does feel a lot for you.”

“You’re the one who wrote this song. I’m no lonelier than you.”

She’s the victim in all of this. She was the victim six months ago, and she’s the victim now, even though she’s unaware of it. The only thing Layla did wrong is fall in love with me.

Falling in love with her was weightless, like air was breezing through my bones. Falling out of love is fucking heavy, like my lungs are carved from iron.

I hate that I’ve upset her. I don’t want her to be upset, but I don’t know how else to deal with this. She’s a ghost who doesn’t want help. I’m a guy who doesn’t want to leave her. We’re communicating through a girl we have no right to be using like we have been.

But with Willow, her sadness is unreachable, even from this proximity. I can’t soothe the loneliness she feels in her world. I can’t tell her it’ll be okay, because I don’t know that it will be.

I never thought I’d feel more for someone than I felt that night. But right now . . . I’m feeling everything I can feel in this world, coupled with everything I could feel in Willow’s world.

I don’t know why I’m kissing her like someone might steal this moment from us.

I’ve never had so many emotions run through me during a single kiss before, but I run through every feeling my body and mind are capable of until the one I want the least consumes me the most. I ache everywhere, but it’s the most prominent in my chest. It hurts so much I’m forced to pull away from her and suck in air because I feel like my heart is being strangled.

We fell in love here. I thought this place meant something to us.”

I try to keep a solid expression on my face, but the bigger her smile gets, the smaller I feel.

“You get us both in your world, but I don’t get you at all in mine.”