All I Wanted: A Joshayley Fanfic

Chapter 14 - Build Your Fences

*HAYLEY'S POV*

We'd started the next part of the Europe tour and had arrived in Prague when it began to get really bad.

We spent the morning sightseeing and exploring the city; looking around all the tourist attractions, checking out the architecture (I was really interested by that kind of thing) and several specialist bakeries (which was more Jeremy's style). We turned up in the early afternoon at the arena we would be performing in the next day. We were doing a sound check, fixing a couple of mistakes that we'd made the night before.

"Okay guys, we're going to have a five minute break while we just fix the lighting here," one of the tech guys shouted from backstage as Jeremy played the last bar of Ain't It Fun, which was about half-way through our setlist.

I placed my microphone (traditionally wrapped in orange tape) back on the stand and hopped off the stage, grabbing my hoodie from where I had tossed it on front row of seats. I slipped it on and then jumped back onto the stage, sitting down on the Paramore box and taking a breather. I took a sip of water from my bottle and placed it back on the floor, pulling out my phone from the pocket.

"Rad baseline, Jerm," Taylor commented, taking his guitar strap off and laying down the instrument on the rack.

"Take 'em to church!" I joked, slightly out of breath from rehearsing.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that people had found out about Josh and I. It had started around a week ago - a steady stream of comments on every platform of social media I had; friends, fans and strangers remarking on the rumours that Hayley Williams and Josh Farro had made up. I guess someone had seen us out together, and the stories had started to circulate, spreading like wildfire. At least they don't know about the rest of it, I had consoled myself. They only know that we're friends again. They haven't found out about... Well, not yet, anyway.

Up until then, it had been manageable. I'd been coping. But at that moment, when I opened twitter on my iPhone and began to scroll through my feed, I realised something had changed. It was turning from a continuos flow to an all-out deluge. I went on Instagram, and it was the same. It was bombarding me from all sides.

That was when I saw the photos.

It was Josh and I walking out of the arcade, hand in hand. The comments ranged from, 'So glad they're talking again!' to, 'He was such a prick. What's she doing with him?' to, 'Hmm. Now I get why Chad got dumped...', to downright abuse, with lots of expletives. People had already been saying these things, but the release of solid evidence in the form of pictures, rather than just relying on word of mouth, had added fuel to their flames. It was inescapable. I felt like someone was holding a huge magnifying glass to my personal life, analysing it, satirising it. Like every little thing I had tried so desperately to keep to myself had just exploded out. Nothing was secret anymore. It was completely horrible.

Stop being so selfish, I scolded myself. You're not the only person this has happened to. And it's not like everyone in the world is talking about it. You're not that famous. It's not like anybody really cares, anyway. They just like something to gossip about.

Social media really can be a breeding ground for negativity. Somehow, sitting behind a computer or tablet screen seems to give kids some big old fake balls. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered with it. Taylor had been talking abut deactivating his twitter account for months.

I should have been grateful, really, that whoever had snapped these shots hadn't seen us around a minute earlier, when we had been kissing by the entrance. At the moment, those comments were merely speculations. No one had anything concrete. It's okay, I tried to tell myself. They haven't found out about all of it. It's okay. It didn't help, though.