again | taylor swift au

chapter 6

Taylor sits in an office chair in the studio, spinning in circles as her legs are draped over one armrest and she leans against the other. She's in the room today with Liza, a producer who she's been working with a lot lately. They've just finished up the demo they were working on, and they've got the studio booked for another two hours.

"Do you have anything else you want to work on?" Liza asks. "Or do you just want to spin around in that chair for two more hours?" She raises her eyebrows at Taylor, who sheepishly stops herself by placing her hand on the table beside her.

"Sorry."

"It's alright, it's been a long day. Just... if we are going to be here, we should focus. You're paying for the studio time."

"Right..." Taylor sighs. She's not the one who handles the transaction directly, that's Anthony. So it's easy for her to forget that the hours in the studio are coming out of her own pocket.

"So..." Liza says, looking at Taylor, "anything?"

"Right, songs..." She opens up her journal and starts to flip through the pages. She's written a lot; there's no doubt about that. It's just a question of what she's written is worthy of getting a demo.

Pages and pages filled with words she wrote from her heart... she skips past one page in particular. She doesn't want to record that one. Not yet... but pages and pages, and she can't find one she's more proud of. No matter how raw the feelings are... it's good.

So, Taylor lets out a sigh and hands her journal to Liza, open to a page scribbled with lyrics for the one song she didn't want to record today.

"I wrote this one the other day... well, that's not entirely true. I wrote some of it when I was eighteen... but I revisited it a few days ago. Some emotions kind of... resurfaced, in a weird way."

She doesn't want to talk about it. She would be happiest if Liza would just put her in the recording booth and let her do her thing. But she knows that's not Liza's style. She knows Liza wants to know the full story, wants to make sure to draw real and authentic emotions out of Taylor before recording the song.

"And what triggered those emotions?"

There it is...

Taylor fidgets anxiously with her fingers. "I wrote this song about my high school boyfriend... and um, he died a few days ago."

Liza's hazel-colored eyes widen. Taylor can tell she wishes maybe she hadn't asked.

"I'm sorry Tay. That's... not the sort of answer I'd have expected from reading the lyrics to this song."

"No, no, I know... it's been weird. I haven't talked to him since he went off to join the military after high school. My mom just called me a little bit ago and told me... I went back to my journal from that year and found what I wrote about him, right before we broke up. It was the first chorus, ironically enough. I'd wanted to finish the song, but I was just... well, I knew we were going to break up, but that didn't mean that I was okay. It really broke me. I just couldn't write about it. And by the time I'd healed, I didn't have much interest in channeling those feelings again. But when he passed away, I was thinking about what my mom had said to me at the time, about how if we were really  meant to be, then we'd find a way back together. It reminded me of what I'd written, about two people finding each other under difficult circumstances, and the rest of the song just sort of... flowed out of me."

Liza gives a sad smile. "That's a really touching story."

"I just..." Taylor takes a deep breath, trying to fight off tears, "I hope that he was happy, you know? It's hard to imagine. When someone dies that way, killed in the military, you sort of know they were probably in pain. But I hope that he had a life he loved, in a weird way. No matter how many challenges it may have presented him, I hope he had things that brought him joy too."