I miss you, I'm sorry - Taylor Swift x OC

(4) Difficult

2008

[Difficult by Gracie Abrams]

It turns out that the final hurrah thrown by some guy who would never get over his high school glory days was terribly boring. People were drinking, dancing. The radio was blasting I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry and that alone was enough to make Kate break her promise to herself where she said she wouldn't drink.

There were a few bottles of vodka on the counter in the kitchen and she thanked the girl voluntarily stationed to pour shots. It went down with a burn and she went back to where Audrey had been before she wandered away.

Unfortunately, Audrey was no longer grinding up against some guy by the staircase and Katie could only sigh. She went into the front yard to try and get some air. People walked past her into the party and out, the stone veranda was fairly large, and she took a seat on the right corner of it that faced the road. The music wasn't as loud outside as it was inside, most likely because the neighbours would call the cops if it was.

Katie had been lost in her mind as the words 'the taste of her cherry chapstick' played behind her. She was so tired of that fucking song, mostly because someone had gone ahead and taped the lyrics to her locker when it was released. She was thankful that she was done with school, and now that she was seeing the faces of her former peers, it didn't take long for her to realize she wouldn't miss any of them.

Not Jenna Calvin who had told everyone in school that she was into girls (spoiler! Jenna Calvin would come out as a lesbian in five years). Not Allen Watson who had probably spiked her drink at the last party because he thought it was funny and was the reason she spent two days feeling like she was going to die (he ended up in jail for assault later on in life). She wouldn't miss the cheerleaders who gossiped about her in the cafeteria when they walked by, or the school counsellor who heard the rumours and called her parents to offer brochures to places that could 'fix' her.

That was the worst way for her parents to find out that sometimes she pictured a girl in her bed instead of a boy. Maybe she would've told them a decade later once she was married to some guy who wasn't her type, had a kid or two already. But no, Jenna Calvin had to blab to her friends and by then it was everywhere, the Coulson's phone rang for a week with concerned parents who wanted to know how Margaret and James were going to 'correct her troubled ways' and keep her away from their 'impressionable' almost adult children.

It wasn't all that bad though, because James had started hanging up on the ignorant people and Margaret had thrown a newspaper at one woman who had the audacity to actually come to their door to try and bring Katherine Jesus. They didn't see anything wrong with it, chalked it up to Katie's usual ways of ignoring society's expectations and made sure her therapist was informed of what was happening so they could talk about it during her next appointment.

That was when Kara really started to distance herself, she saw how bad things had gotten for Katie and told her that she didn't want to go down if she could help it. She started hanging out with Abigail from her English class and eventually Taylor a little bit, too.

She was reliving those hurtful moments when someone tripped going up the stairs, stopping her from completely spiralling as his ass landed next to her, "Woah, you okay?"

"Uh-huh," he groaned as he pushed himself off the ground. Katie saw his face when he turned himself around, deciding to swallow the embarrassment and sit down for a second while he recovered from having the wind knocked out of himself during the fall.