It was a hot summer's day in LA as Taylor lay out by the pool, taking a break from rehearsals for her last few shows in California, and she was sipping on a mojito and reading a book.
The last few days she'd felt better. Better about everything.
Maybe it was the West Coast sun, maybe it was being on tour with her best friends, and maybe it had just been long enough that she had had time to recover from everything that had transpired earlier on in the year.
She was in her single girl era for the first time in a long time, and she was enjoying it more than she thought she would.
This being said, there was someone who kept popping into her head, and it wasn't her ex boyfriend of six years.
In fact it was a certain broad shouldered football player that she couldn't stop thinking about ever since that show in Kansas City, when she found out he wanted to meet her.
She'd been shamelessly stalking him on social media, watching clips of him hosting SNL, looking at photos of him with his nieces, finding compilations of him dancing on the field.
He had unwittingly turned into her secret crush.
Well, secret to the world.
Her close friends knew of course.
So when Este Haim, who was sunbathing beside her, let out a gasp, turned to Taylor and said:
"You'll never guess who just talked about giving you his number on his podcast!"
Taylor somehow already knew who it was.
"Travis Kelce?"
Este lifted her sunglasses and smiled at her.
"How the fuck did you know that?"
Taylor shrugged shyly.
"Just a lucky guess, I don't know."
Este sat up on her sun lounger and tapped through her phone before passing it to Taylor.
She was faced with an article on a news account, with a video attached.
She clicked play on the video and her mouth grew into a smile as she watched Travis talk with his brother.
He was talking about his KC show at the Eras Tour, and how disappointed he was that he didn't get to meet her because he wanted to give her a friendship bracelet with his number on.
And suddenly it clicked in Taylor's brain.
That was exactly what happened, he'd been asking Tree to meet her, and said he wanted to give her something.
She'd thought maybe flowers or something, but a friendship bracelet?? With his number on it??
He certainly knew the way to her heart.
And then to publicly declare to the whole world on a podcast that he wanted to ask her out? She didn't think any man had ever been so loud about wanting to date her. Ever.
It was so incredibly hot to see a man want her like that.
"Isn't that so hot Tay?"
Danielle said from the sun lounger on the other side.
Someone was a mindreader.
Taylor nodded, her smile growing wider, replaying the video again, watching him smile as he talked about her.
She couldn't quite believe it. The crush that she'd had for the past few weeks was actually reciprocated? How had that happened?
She heard Tree's words of encouragement in her head telling her that she was Taylor fucking Swift, the most gorgeous woman on the planet, and suddenly all coyness was gone and all confidence had returned.
