false god

chapter 9

This coupon is good for
ONE SESSION OF ORAL
can you be a very cunnilingus and talk dirty to me?

The train back home for Thanksgiving left at 9 AM, long before Travis woke up. She lingered in his doorway for a couple of moments, watching him sleep as she tried to decide if she should say goodbye.

In the end, she felt strange watching him for longer and taped a note to his door.

If she had her choice, she wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving. Christmas, perhaps, but only for half of the time. She felt Thanksgiving was a useless amount of time anyway and had tried her best to get out of it. She was pretty sure Travis was hitching a ride with Patrick as an honorary Mahomes family member. Taylor had met Patrick's dad this past September on apartment move-in day and found him one of the most lovely and kind parents she'd ever met.

She had found, in her heart, she sort of wished she was his daughter.

Her own parents were...complicated.

There was her father, who she loved, but was sort of a doormat. Or maybe he just didn't want to give the effort anymore, Taylor could almost understand that. She'd always gotten along with him best, two peas in a pod as he used to say. Still, it had felt like a long time she'd really had a good conversation with him, their last long talk being over this summer where he seemed distracted and a little out of it.

Her mother was a whole can of crazy. Imagine a very overprotective mother and then multiply it times five hundred, and one may touch the tip of the iceberg of who Andrea Swift was. It was perfection or nothing, and very often, Taylor fell closer to the 'nothing' side.

Then there was her brother. She loved her brother, but Austin could be dramatic and a little unhinged even at the best of times. They used to get along great, until high school. It was like a flip was switched and suddenly Austin became this strange person.

There were also Taylor's cousins; The twins, Clara and James. Janes was alright- the average football star that sort of peaked early, but he was nice enough. Clara was a mystery.

Or, she had been. No, scratch that, Clara was still Clara (and yes, she was best described with an adjective of herself), and maybe Taylor had just gotten more used to her, or maybe Clara wasn't picking on Taylor as much anymore. Taylor wasn't sure. She was still strange, but they were friends now. Not best friends, but...well...

She'd gotten far better since their high school years, in which family relations aside, she sort of made Taylor's freshman year hell. Then, she met her boyfriend and things started getting better. Taylor wouldn't go as far to claim she was a decent human being, but her family was even more fucked up than Taylor's, and that was saying something. Perhaps that's why they drew a treaty all those years ago; Taylor couldn't exactly recall. They held a tenuous friendship now, one that seemed to only get better with distance, as they texted every week or so. One that also was helped by Aaron, the unmoving bridge of kindness between the two of them.

She admitted that, in all, it was little to complain about. She knew that there were people like Gigi, that while her parents were rich, were also lowkey maybe criminals who hated each other's guts. Or Patrick's parents, who were separated but still living in the same house (weird, but whatever). Or Travis's family that was...well, something entirely broken in a way different than Taylor's.

So maybe, in a lot of ways, Taylor had no right to complain.

But that didn't mean she wasn't going to try to grouch about it to anyone who would listen.

Thanksgiving Dinner ended up being just as bad as Taylor thought it would be, thank you very much. It was just a lot of the same fights rehashed, and in some ways, preparing for an even bigger fight at Christmas. It felt so predictable Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.