almost | taylor swift au

chapter 4

Taylor's fingers hover over the strings of her guitar as she sits in her hotel room, reflecting on the night that she has had with Jett. She doesn't think she'll ever forget that feeling, in his arms on the High Line, looking out at the city stretched in front of her. The chill of the wind and the snow didn't even matter. Between the alcohol and the magic that she found with Jett, she could barely feel the cold.

After popping a couple of painkillers, the headache that she woke up with subsided enough that the quiet strumming of her strings doesn't bother her. She wasn't that drunk- she remembers every exhilarating detail of the night that she had. She doesn't think that Jett will be able to say the same.

Good, she thinks. Then he really definitely won't be able to remember what I said to him...

She blushes still when she thinks of it. She can't believe that she got so caught up in the moment. That she told Jett that she loves him, and thought that he'd say it back.

She thinks she'll be perfectly content if she can go for the entire rest of her life without ever acknowledging that moment again.

She tries so hard not to feel inferior to Jett. He really does treat her like the adult that she knows she is... but in the back of her brain, she feels so inexperienced when she's around him. Saying what she did so quickly... it probably just made her look like even more of a child than she already is. It isn't that she didn't mean it, though.

She's found herself falling so fast and so hard for Jett. It's something that petrifies her. She knows that it isn't something that anyone would approve of... not her parents, not her friends. He's the stereotypical bad boy. Most nights, he's getting drunk, high, or both. Hell, he snuck her onto the High Line last night. That was illegal. Never in her life has she broken the law in that way... the most rebellious thing she'd ever done was jay walking, or drinking at parties before she was 21.

With Jett.

Almost every time that she drank underage was with Jett.

Sure, everyone does it. She knows that. But her whole life, she's been so careful. So afraid of making a misstep, and falling. She didn't want everyone to ever see her falter; she was too afraid of getting in trouble.

Why is it, exactly, that Jett seems to have changed that part of her? She feels so alive, when they're sneaking around and doing things they aren't supposed to be doing. With every moment that they steal, she feels like she is falling deeper and deeper into a hole that will be hard to claw her way out of. So maybe she won't ever have to do that.

Those are the feelings that she writes about, as her fingers move swiftly over the strings of her acoustic guitar. The more that she thinks, the more the words just seem to flow out of her. She strums the chords in a steady pattern, singing the melody over the top, putting into words just what she's been feeling lately.

And I'd be smart to walk away,
But you're quicksand.
This slope is treacherous,
This path is reckless,
This slope is treacherous,
And I, I, I like it

This one, she thinks. This is the one that Jett will finally listen to. When I tell him I've written a song about him, he'll be too intrigued to not.

Once she finishes the song, she smiles to herself. She knows that he said that he didn't want to hear it until after Irving Plaza, but she's just so excited. With shaking hands, she grabs her guitar case and walks down the hallway to his room, knocking on his door.

"Tay," he says, opening the door, "I wasn't expecting you."

Even though it's already the middle of the afternoon, Jett looks as though he's just woken up. He's wearing a faded tee shirt and sweat pants. He's got dark circles under his eyes, surely the result of being out so late last night. His hair is messy and quite honestly, he doesn't look too thrilled that she's here.