Tayvis One-Shots

just don't understand

Taylor's POV

It starts with a meeting. Another meeting where I'm talked over, brushed aside, made to feel like I don't belong in the very room I built.

I sit at the long conference table, my hands folded tightly in my lap, nails pressing into my skin to keep from shaking. Around me, voices overlap, loud and careless, as if I'm not even there. As if I don't have thoughts, ideas, a voice of my own.

"...I think we should go in a different direction."

"...Something more commercial."

"...This doesn't feel like you, Taylor."

I blink. My throat tightens. The words feel like knives, slicing through every ounce of certainty I had walking into this room. This doesn't feel like me?

I wrote every lyric. I poured every aching, raw part of myself into these songs. And they're telling me—grown men in suits who don't even know what key my heartbreak sounds like—that this isn't me?

I try to speak. I really do. I sit up straighter, clear my throat, force my voice to be steady. "I actually feel really strongly about this—"

But someone else starts talking over me.

Again.

I could disappear, and no one would notice.

I feel the burn behind my eyes, the familiar sting of frustration and helplessness, but I swallow it down. I can't break here. I can't let them see how much this gets to me.

So I just sit there. Silently. A passenger in my own career, watching as they discuss me like I'm an abstract concept instead of a person with a pulse and a voice that refuses to be silenced.

By the time the meeting ends, I'm trembling. I don't even wait to say goodbye—I just grab my bag and walk out, my heels clicking against the polished floors with more force than necessary.

My phone buzzes in my hand. A text from Tree.

How did it go?

I don't answer. I can't. If I try to put it into words, I'll break down right here in the hallway.

The car ride home is a blur. I sit stiffly in the backseat, staring out the window, replaying every moment, every interruption, every dismissal. It loops in my head, over and over, until I feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of it.

By the time I get home, my whole body is tight with frustration. With exhaustion. With something that feels dangerously close to rage.

----------

I slam the door harder than I mean to. The sound echoes through the house, sharp and final, and I don't care. My chest is heaving, my pulse hammering against my ribs. I feel like I'm burning from the inside out, like my skin is too tight, like I need to scream or break something or run until my legs give out.

But instead, I stand in the middle of our living room, fists clenched at my sides, shaking.

Travis looks up from the couch, confusion flickering across his face. He sets his phone down, brows furrowing. "Tay?" His voice is calm, careful, and it only makes me angrier. "What's wrong?"

I shake my head because I don't even know where to start. If I open my mouth, I might explode. Every awful thing that happened today, every humiliation, every weight pressing down on my shoulders, it's all bottled up so tight inside me that I think I might shatter.

"Nothing," I spit out, and it's a lie, an obvious one. My voice is sharp enough to cut, and I can see the way his shoulders tense.

"Tay, come on." He stands, taking a few steps toward me, his hands reaching for mine, but I pull back. I don't want to be touched. I don't want to be soothed. I want him to understand, and I don't think he does.