LEGENDS | taylor swift

five.

THE COLLINS RESIDENCE
121 READE STREET, NEW YORK

The months of summertime had fully abandoned the streets of New York City when Emma returned in early October. She'd remained in Atlanta for the better portion of filming, only making weekend trips out to LA when she was urgently needed for meetings with her publicist and manager — even if her public appearances stopped, the articles never would, and each new headline that assumed she'd fallen off the wagon or miraculously conceived a child with only herself in the picture stripped away ounces of dignity she'd never get back. For the most part, her months had been peaceful if not a little lonesome, but now that she had been back in New York for a couple of weeks and reintroduced to the nightly soundtrack of car alarms and screeching breaks, she remembered just how isolating the city could be. Everywhere she went darkness lingered like the plague.

Her days consisted of the same meticulously perfected routine, and while it was utterly brain-numbing to have every minute of her day planned out with absolutely no differentiation, there was no place more protected than the interior of her apartment and Emma valued her privacy more than an impulsive trip to the store for cookie dough. She really wanted cookies. She'd wanted cookies for days and yet the crippling anxiety of being seen weighed her down to her couch like an anchor. She could've asked Parker before she sent him home to his apartment, but sending her bodyguard out on personal errands felt like a step too close to delusion. She'd rather die than become the type of 'celebrity' that couldn't even lace their own sneaker.

The feeling of lonesomeness that infected her heart was bittersweet, the only indication that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't feel like she had to hide anymore sometime soon. Months ago, she would've rejoiced at the permanent state of silence that echoed off the walls of her apartment, she would've thrived each time she walked past the never lively guest bedrooms, pranced weightlessly through the abandoned halls that had only ever seen the faces of her security team. Months ago, she had still been grieving the new reality she lived in, but now she grieved the social life that had died with her mother.

In a desperate attempt to fill the apartment with sound, Emma had turned on one of her favorite movies, a film that had always brought lightness over her heavy heart, but even Sophie and Donna couldn't bring a smile to her lips as they frolicked around a breathtaking island that she'd always wanted to visit. It had been three weeks since she'd seen anyone other than Parker, and he only ever stopped by when she went out for a morning run and stopped by the local farmers market to analyze bouquets of flowers like a critic on her way back home. She wasn't sure when her life had become so boring, but at twenty-one years old she lived like a societal recluse. She wouldn't say her life had ended when she was seventeen years old, that would be admitting that the one thing her mother was terrified of had happened, but she couldn't lie and say she'd felt alive since then.

When her phone buzzed on the arm of the couch, just inches away from where her body was curled up beneath a fluffy throw blanket, Emma sighed softly as she recognized the name attached to the notification; just another reminder of what she had let fall apart.

Zealand
think i'm going to be in nyc new years week
for a shoot. did you ever end up renting that
apartment on franklin street?

Zealand Foster had been Emma's very best friend since she'd moved to a small town in Hawaii when she was ten years old. They'd been inseparable throughout their childhoods and early teenage years, practically siblings if you overlooked their contrasting features, but when Emma started booking more work out in Hollywood and was gone for more months out of the year than she was home, Zealand remained in the small public high school that she hadn't even ever stepped foot in. They made it work, that was practically their slogan at the time, but it came with its challenges like any long distance relationship did. Emma would go home to visit during the months between projects, and Zealand would fly out to stay with her in Los Angeles during his allotted summer breaks. Eventually they'd created a small circle of friends that had made anything fun, but it all fell apart when Elizabeth Collins died. Emma wasn't proud of the way she had practically ghosted everyone she loved following the tragedy; including her co-star Cassidy, which definitely made filming awkward, but it had been the only way a terrified seventeen year old with no immediate family had known how to cope at the time.