Taylor x Travis: In Every Life

don't do this, i love you

Travis' POV

"Reservation for Swift." I told the hostesss, who nodded and tapped on her IPad.

"Follow me." She smiled, leading me through the restaurant. "You'll be that booth there." She motioned to one in the corner. I nodded and murmured thanks as I sat down, staring at the empty space across from me. Of course Taylor was late. She was chronically late to everything, and I was glad for the few minutes I'd have alone. She'd been acting funny for a day or two, and I was nervous as to what she wanted to meet for dinner for.

Taylor and I went back eighteen years, right back to when we were little five-year-olds stuck in the same class. We'd been inseparable ever since, always just best friends. But I'd fallen in love with her almost five years ago, and it killed me that I knew she didn't feel the same. Just as I'd started to work up my confidence to tell her three years ago, she'd started dating someone, so I'd shut my mouth. I'd decided to wait until she was single again, but she never had been.

"Hey!" Taylor's voice snapped me out of my thoughts and I looked up to see her sliding into the booth, shaking the snow out of her hair. "Cold out there huh?" She wrinkled her nose at me as she shrugged out of her jacket.

"You'll blow away if you're not careful." I said automatically, like I always did when it was windy. Taylor rolled her eyes at me, sick of the fact that I always made fun of her being so much shorter than me. "You're early for you."

"Oh yeah, well, Joe dropped me off." Taylor sighed, running her hand through her hair. "He's going out of town for a work trip and was coming this way so I figured I'd get a ride home with you if that's okay?"

"Course." I murmured as she fluffed her damp hair out. God, I hated that I had to love her from a distance. She was so damn beautiful, so sweet, so perfect, so out of my reach. "So what's up?" I asked after a moment. "Why'd you want to have dinner?"

"Because I missed you silly!" Taylor rolled her eyes again. "Am I not allowed to want to see my best friend? You've been so busy for weeks with work and all we've barely talked." She was keeping something from me, I could tell. I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to figure out what it was, but I couldn't read her like I usually did.

I decided to drop it for now. Maybe she was just waiting until later to tell me whatever it was. It didn't seem to be bad news, but she was a little fidgety throughout dinner, which meant she was nervous. I asked a few probing questions, but nothing she said gave any indication as to what was going on. Eventually, when our plates had been cleared away, Taylor leaned forwards, resting her arms on the table as her hair spilled down over her shoulders.

"Okay." She bit her lip. "There was a reason I wanted to see you."

"I know." I told her, and she sighed. "It's okay T, you know you can tell me anything." 

"I know I can." She mumbled. God, whatever it was, maybe it was bad news. I couldn't tell. "I just, don't want this to change anything between us." Her eyes searched mine and I swallowed as I nodded. "Umm...Joe, he...he asked me to marry him."

I blinked at her, sure I'd heard wrong. But Taylor pressed her lips together, lifting a hand and extracting a necklace she'd been wearing under her turtleneck sweater. She let the chain fall against her chest, and my eyes drifted to the delicate gold ring that hung there. An engagement ring.

My first thought was that Joe was an idiot. Gold? Taylor only ever wore silver.

My second was that everything was crashing down.

No, she couldn't marry him. She just couldn't. But I knew what it meant that she was telling me with the ring around her neck. She'd already said yes. I knew she had. She'd only work it around her neck so she could pick the right time to tell me, so that I wouldn't know as soon as I saw it on her hand.