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Taylor can’t really remember her life without Karlie as it turns out.
She didn’t notice it happening, it just did. Creeping in on her and all of a sudden the feeling was everywhere – present in all aspects of her life.
She just can’t remember ever being without her. Karlie fits right into her life, loving her slots easily into her routine, and it’s like she filled up a space in her life that Taylor wasn’t even aware of before she met her.
But it’s not like it was in the beginning anymore. It’s something entirely else. Back then, Taylor had been almost mad that she didn’t meet Karlie earlier, that she couldn’t share her life with her for longer.
It’s different now. She doesn’t know what to think about it.
In most of the moments she hold dearest to her heart, Karlie is there.
Either right in the centre - the middle of her universe - holding her hand, or slightly blurry in her periphery. But still, she’s there. She’s always able to find Karlie somewhere in her memories, a glimmer of light no matter how bright it is.
Even before 2014, even before November the previous year. Even where she wasn’t then, Taylor feels like Karlie should have been.
Her first Grammy and thousands of miles and half a world away, Karlie is opening shows in Paris.
Her third album and so many more awards that she won by herself and she doesn’t know what is coming and who she will meet but throughout the heartbreak and her feelings for someone she can’t be with, Taylor looks unafraid into the future.
Karlie tells her the same thing one night, later on. They are in her flat, looking at pictures of versions of them the other person has never met and Karlie says she wishes they had known each other back then too.
“This is attractive to you?” Taylor laughs, a picture of her backstage at an event she can’t recall and looks up from her laptop. Karlie’s expression sobers her up.
“I would’ve just liked to be there and hold your hand. I am sorry I couldn’t.”
“Do it now?”
The gentlest of kisses against her skin while Karlie is intertwining their hands.
And after that, Karlie was truly part of everything, right there by her side, never once letting go.
It’s 2014, spring, and she is 25 and New York welcomes her with open arms. Karlie shows her all her favourite spots and after California and Karlie’s lips on her own, she knows that this isn’t an isolated case.
And it isn’t. They sleep in the same cabin and Taylor tangles her fingers in short hair. Since the beginning of this year, Karlie has been trying to convince her to move to the east coast instead of a different continent, and somehow she does. She, for a moment, fears that if Karlie gets any closer she won’t ever be able to let go off her ever again but maybe she doesn’t want to.
It’s summer and she lives a mile away from Karlie until they sleep in the same room every night all of a sudden and no one cares that it is Karlie’s hand she is holding on the street. For now. It won’t stay this way of course, they will start caring about this more than most things. They will start wondering what it means that Karlie leaves her apartment in the mornings now, covered up by showing an interviewer the guest bedroom in which Karlie has never once spent the night but is called hers anyway. They will start looking into everything they are doing and all their interactions and it will drown them both but for now, she lives in a new city and they blend right into the image of the Girl Squad the media gets. She has a new life and she gets a new cat and they choose her name together. Karlie calls them their very own girl gang. She still holds Karlie’s hand on the street then.
It’s 2016 and Taylor is 27 and it’s the worst summer of her life – maybe the worst year of her life, and Karlie is there. Neither of them can do anything about this yet, that will come later but they are both right here. Karlie’s album, the one just for her, gets scrapped – for now, Jack says. And they write a new one in the span of the next twelve months. It has a new name and a different style and the songs she worked so hard on, she will have to leave behind, but if not the music, the love she felt stayed. Taylor is still hoping for a chance to let the world hear – how good it was before, but that will come later too.
It’s 2018 and everything has changed. A post on Instagram congratulating her, to be deleted later, and all of it os different. They spend her birthday together and even as she’s living it, Taylor knows that this is the last time. She knows that there won’t be another one. This is it. She doesn’t know what will happen, that she’s the one that will give them the last push but they have been drifting towards this for a while and after October, their cracks are painfully obvious. And then, when she is standing on the causeway and the only thing next to her is water and it’s too narrow to turn around, she’ll realise that she can’t go back, She can’t turn around, can only move forward and she can’t ever return to this. Not this feeling and not her birthday. But they are not there yet, she isn’t. Taylor can’t even see the wet grounds at this point, can only see Karlie’s and it won’t last but she had hoped it would. Karlie is sitting right in front of her and she is drinking her tea, her eyes shining even in the low light of the city at this hour and Taylor knows this is over and she has never been more in love with Karlie. She never considered that not being enough.
She thinks Karlie knows it too. Held her tighter in bed this morning, kissed her a full thirteen times in between singing happy birthday, and insisted on spending the day in bed. She thinks it might be why Karlie is looking at her like this now. Cross-legged and starry-eyed and they both know it is coming to an end. They forget all about that again though and Taylor thinks that maybe she was wrong. That this is only the beginning, that they will get their birthday parties, that finally being honest will fix them. She couldn’t foresee that just that falling through would end them once and for all.
It’s 2019, so early into the year and she might be the happiest she has ever been. Listing things in a studio with Brendon, ideas she has written down for the video, things she loves and she has no idea that this will be the closest she comes to saying what she meant to tell the world. Taylor has no idea because there is nothing wrong yet and she is hopeful – right until the tune gets so quiet she can barely hear it and whatever is in her soul definitely doesn’t have feathers anymore. In that moment, they are laughing about La La Land and theatre and country western boots and cats and she has never felt more free. But six months later, by the time summer has its grip on the city once more, it will fail and she will drop and drop. And it will ask everything of her to climb back up again.
It’s 2019 and she’s 29 and Taylor didn’t think something could ever be as bad as them trying to destroy her career but life has a way of proving to her that it can always get worse. Everything is gone and the most important decision of her life called off and out of her hands. This time, the people in her life don’t all just forgive her for pushing them away. Karlie doesn’t forgive her. She’s on her knees begging for Taylor to not do this – because we can do this, but she did anyway. She used to be good at tuning everyone else out. But that was back when she didn’t listen, could separate their opinions and her own thoughts. Back when everything but Karlie’s whispering was white noise. And she could turn it into that until she couldn’t. Until it became so loud that she couldn’t even hear Karlie anymore.
Her love for Karlie has always been bigger, the call to be by her side has always been stronger than her fear but she’s not sure it is this time. There isn’t anything bigger than this. Than this loss.
In the past she has always thought that the act of waiting for something to happen is often better than the actual experience itself but that isn’t the case this time. This is apart from writing and singing to be her career, the thing she wanted most in the world and it would be ironic that achieving her first want and preserving what she has built will keep her from having this, if it didn’t hurt this much. This time she knew that actually getting what she was waiting for and working towards, would be better than the actual process.
It’s August and Karlie is 27. She releases a new album, her dreams are destroyed, and Karlie isn’t there and she knows that at least one of these things is her fault. The endless night she had just escaped starts all over again.
Taylor tries to continue, to go on somehow. To do what she always does.
She wakes up alone. She walks down the stairs. She feeds the cats. She makes two cups of coffee because she still forgets that Karlie isn’t here anymore, isn’t at the gym or sleeping in upstairs. She forgets that she has no idea where Karlie is right now. The mugs stay untouched on her kitchen counter. She starts to hate coffee and mornings and then everything else too.
The only shape her grief has ever taken is refusal. It’s the exact same this time. Nothing ever comes from the months that were spent preparing this and the only proof that this was real in the first place are the pages in her journal filled with different ways to tell everyone and pinks, purples, and blues all over her Instagram and album artwork.
Through everything, she has loved Karlie, as if it’s engrained into the very essence of her being, as if her love for her and bone deep comfort are the things they would find if they were to cut open her chest – no matter how much they’d hate it. That they couldn’t stop this, couldn’t make her not love anymore.
Taylor is not supposed to want Karlie back by her side anymore and she is not supposed to think of calling her about mundane things anymore either but she does anyway. But then again, she also wasn’t supposed to lose the love of her life because of her career. Her instincts are still the same. And it gets harder the more simple the things become. At some point between resisting to sent Karlie a text when she is drunk and in bed and so incredible sad, and moving on, Taylor only fell in love more.
She doesn’t know just how she will do this but she perseveres. She always does – somehow. Taylor can’t not keep going. She doesn’t know what would happen to her otherwise.
It’s Karlie who ends up calling her.
It starts like this: “I’ve heard the album,” through a crackling land line because she can’t handle having her phone right now.
It ends up with them on the same sofa.
It’s the dumbest thing either of them has done in years, apart from what happened upstate maybe, but it’s also the decision that comes the easiest to her. Letting Karlie in and loving her.
There’s something between them, still. Taylor thinks they will never truly be able to get rid of that. A connection that transcends the present moment, something everlasting, so inescapable and second nature that it’s pointless to even try fighting it. They will always choose each other, even if it’s futureless, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes.
After all, their reunions are just as inevitable as the sun rising again.