"You don't have to, if you don't want to."
"I want to. But if you don't want me to, I won't."
"Ahhhhhh!" Taylor throws her hands up, masking her face. "I think we're going in circles."
Talking to over FaceTime is without a doubt, the highlight of a very long week. With practices and the podcast and interviews and everything in between, he's feeling kind of wrecked, albeit in a way where he understands how incredibly lucky he is.
But it's nice to talk to someone who understands the grind can just get to you sometimes. Someone who won't think you're complaining when you tell them how exhausted you are, how filled to capacity you feel.
Taylor is the light at the end of the tunnel. When he sees her come on the call, when he hears her voice saying, "hi," with those beautiful eyes staring straight into his, even if its just over a phone screen, everything in his world falls into place. She always laughs when he tells her how much she calms him down because she tells him the same, but he reassures her that they even each other out, in the best of ways.
It's tough at times, to figure out the logistics. Not only because of their erratic schedules...the newness had them treading lightly on how private or how public they wanted to be. On one hand, neither of them wanted to hide away, on the other, the initial craze over their blooming relationship has spun into overdrive. There was a fine line between the two extremes and what they were working on was trying to find a healthy balance.
What they were in agreement about was that this was a full fledged relationship that they wanted to honor and protect it from the outside as realistically as that would look like.
He's well aware, from what she's told him, that things in her last relationship had been so private that she began to feel self conscious about even asking him to attend events with her. She'd just as soon gone by herself or with friends than to put him in a situation where he would have been terribly uncomfortable, in turn making her feel uncomfortable.
When she brought up the idea of the two of them attending a benefit together in New York during the couple of days everything aligned, it was almost hesitant, apologetic, and then immediately casual, as though if he did turn her down, it wasn't a big deal.
And in turn, he understood she had some trepidation from the past and he didn't want her to feel obligated to ask him if his presence there made her feel weird.
She was right, though. As polite and considerate as they were being about the whole situation, tap dancing around it wasn't going to bring about any kind of resolution, either.
"Listen," he leans forward in his desk chair, "I meant what I said---I want to be there. I also want you to be comfortable."
Taylor takes a moment, he can see the wheels turning. "I want you there."
He can't help but break into a wide smile, even though he knows for a fact he must look goofy as fuck.
"Yeah?"
"Yes. Yeah. I really fucking do."
She's giddy and he's so happy that she's happy it's all he can do not to break into a ridiculous dance.
They'd known ahead of time that he couldn't go to The Grove premiere because of practice, so the pressure was off the table with that. She'd texted him pictures, though, and he'd sent flowers.
"So, what are you planning on wearing? I still can't get over how gorgeous you were in the pictures you sent me. You always are, though."
He must've told her how beautiful she looked for the LA premiere at least a thousand times, but he figures one more can't hurt.
