since i left: paige bueckers

7. just you

saturday september 23 2023 (one month since last chapter)
taylor's perspective

My hand shakes as I pick up the paintbrush one more and dip it into the yellow paint. My general art class assigned either two large sketches or one large painting, and it's safe to say I shouldn't have chosen the latter. The project is an abstract portrait of ourselves, which includes me awkwardly staring at a picture I took years ago and painting myself poorly. I've been in the studio for three hours already and I'm not even close to finishing. I need to stay focused, though. My airpods play instrumental music, comforting and quiet enough that I won't get distracted.

What is not comforting and definitely not quiet is whoever is blowing up my phone right now. Assuming it was Sienna, I put my phone on Do Not Disturb, but after getting messages even after that, I finally decide to check.

Should've known.

paige💕
4:15

paige
wanna hang rn
hellooo
ur snap location says ur at school but ik u don't have a class
*1 missed call
text me back when you see this

taylor
whoops sorry
i'm in the studio for my art class rn
can we hang another time

paige
how long have you been there

taylor
like 3 hours

paige
cmon that's plenty of time
you need a break
lemme come pick you up
we'll go get coffee
and then u can get right back to whatever boring landscape im sure ur painting

taylor
give me one more hour

paige
oops i already left
silly me!
see you in 10

taylor
stalker

Paige and I quickly fell back into our easy friendship. She's accountable and easy, the kind of person you want to be friends with. We were able to pick up where we left off, even if it was all of those years ago. For the most part, she's exactly the same. Me, on the other hand, I did a full 180. What happened all of those years ago, while it took me too long to process, was needed. Should she have done it? Of course not. But now that it's been so long, I see why she did. What I don't understand is why I reacted the way I did. In no world was I not going to be shocked, but I didn't have to be such an awful person about it.

It took me a solid year to realize I was the one in the wrong. I went on with my life, thinking she was the villain, refusing to see any fault in my actions. But by the time I finally did, the time had passed. She gave up trying after a month and the rumors about her and Azzi being together resurfaced, as they always do. I felt like I had been forgotten, and I had. She gained better friends, ones who she could trust to not freak out at any given moment. And by the time I came to be able to do that, she was long gone.

I don't know how Paige managed to get over it, I really don't. I don't know why she commented on my post and why she agreed to talk to me again. I don't know why she was the one who kept reaching out and I was the one who refused contact. But that's just Paige for you. Forgiving. Almost so much so, that it hurts her. Sometimes you just have to let things go. I'm just glad I wasn't one of those things.

"Picasso! Let's go." I hear Paige's ever so slightly raspy voice from the outline of the door behind me.

"You know you're buying my coffee for this, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Paige sighs and swings her keys on two of her two fingers. "I'm picking music, though."

"Absolutely not. I'm not listening to your Sexxy Red shit. That's not even music."