Cornelia Street - Jaylor one-shots

Honorary doctorate

-taylors pov- 

Today is a big day and I'm really excited. I've wanted one of these for so long but I'm finally getting an honorary doctorate from NYU. It's a huge honor that the bord of trusties have decided that I deserve something like this, and then that out of the three honorees they want me to hold the speech.

So because of this I have hardly slept last night, I've just had so many nerves that I couldn't shut my mind of. What I have been doing instead is doing laundry and baking cookies. If I'm not working on songs at night when I can't sleep, I do household chores or bake whatever I feel like. 

Its 4am and joe is due to be here any second now. He is flying in from LA because he is there to do promo for his new show, conversations with friends, but he has a small pocket of time that he can be here for this. Of course I would have understood if he couldn't be here, but I'm happy that he had some time to come support me. We are good like that, doing everything we can to be there to support one another, but sometimes work get in the way. 

He is only here for today and then leaving in the evening to go back to la. Then he is leaving for the Cannes film festival to promote his upcoming film. This means that we won't see each other much right now, I wish I could go with him, but I have work to do in new york. 

The door to the new York apartment opens and there my handsome fiancé is standing with a big smile on his face. As soon as he comes in, he opens his arms and I run into his embrace. "hi love" he says and nuzzle his head into my hair, and I have my arms wrapped around his neck. "hi babe. God I've missed you. I know it haven't been that long, but God I missed you anyway" I mumble. 

After the pandemic we are finding it harder to be apart because we know how well we do when we can be together. First, we were together in LA for the first part of lockdown, and then we were together in London, so we spent so much uninterrupted time together. After that when he went back to work, we figured that I should just come with him, so I spent a lot of time in Dublin, Belfast and Croatia while he was filming conversations with friends last year. 

"What are you doing awake? Its early. You don't have to be in the hair and makeup chair before 8am" he says and take my hand as we walk over to the couch. "I couldn't sleep. I maybe got like an hour or something" I confess and snuggle into his arms. 

"Well, Since we are both awake, we should take advantage of some time alone then. I have missed cradling you in my arms love" he says, and I pull away enough so I can softly kiss him. The taste of his lips is just like I remember it, I love feeling his pressed against mine. 

"my parents are asleep, and Austin is asleep so it's just us awake. So I agree, I want to spend all the time i can with you" I say and burrow my head in the crock of his neck. My parents, Austin, and publicist is coming to the graduation, but also joes' brother Patrick. Patrick goes to NYU now, he started in the fall so we get to see him when we visit here. It's so strange because when I meet him, he was so young, but now he is in his freshman year of college. I've practically watched him grow up as I've been with joe for the past five and a half year. 

"are you nervous for your speech" he says, and I nod "yes I'm nervous that it's going to be boring or that I mess up. I've added jokes because I know how boring these speeches can be. Not to mention that I don't want to make it all about me, I want it to leave the students with some sort of wisdom. But at the same time, I'm not giving unsolicited advice because I know how much I hate that" 

Speeches like this is supposed to be giving advice, but I don't want to do that as I know how much that has bugged me over the years. These people are graduating from a highly respected college, they don't need me to tell them what to do with their lives. But I will try to give some "life hacks" as I call them about things that have helped me.