isn't it? [taylor swift]

chapter 73

Georgie had been hiding something from them.

Taylor had been the one to notice it first, back at Azul and Riven's wedding before she had finally mentioned it to Leia the night after they'd performed together in Mexico City. A slip of the tongue, a blush that didn't match the champagne, a phone angled just a little too quickly out of sight.

Now, back in New York, squeezed into Taylor's living room with takeout cartons spread across the coffee table, Georgie looked cornered.

"You're both staring at me like I'm on trial," she said, stabbing a chopstick into her noodles.

"You are on trial," Taylor countered, lounging against the arm of the sofa. Her hoodie was baggy, sleeves pulled down over her hands, but Leia caught the faint glint of the chain around her neck every time she shifted. The necklace with her ring. Leia's had slipped beneath the collar of her T-shirt too. Their secret, quietly resting against their skin while the world outside speculated on every move they made.

Georgie huffed. "Fine. But you have to promise not to freak out."

Taylor tilted her head, eyes narrowing like a cat about to pounce. "Those words always make me freak out."

Georgie picked at her lower lip, a nervous tic Leia recognized from childhood, when secrets ranged from purloined cookies to rigged Monopoly games. Now she was older but not taller; her knees were tucked up so her toes barely grazed the hardwood floor, socked in a pair of mismatched stripes. She levelled her gaze at Taylor, then at Leia, and drew a steadying breath.

"Taylor, please don't hate me."

Leia blinked, clenching her jaw - Georgie was her sister but there was an overbearing overprotective feeling as Georgie looked towards Taylor, half-preparing for whatever she was about to say to make her fiancée upset.

"It's...I'm seeing someone." 

Leia, who had been expecting some catastrophic news - a leak to the press or something even worse - sat back hard into the cushions. 

"Oh my god. You're dating someone? That's it?" 

"Dating someone," Taylor repeated slowly, like she was testing the words for hidden traps. Her tone wasn't celebratory. It was wary, like Georgie had just pulled the pin out of a grenade and set it on the coffee table between them.

Leia tilted her head, trying to read her sister's expression. Georgie was wringing her chopsticks so tightly that one finally splintered, a sharp crack breaking the air. Her eyes went first to Taylor, then to Leia, like she wasn't sure which of them was safer ground.

"Kind of," Georgie mumbled.

Leia narrowed her eyes. "Kind of? That's not a thing. Either you're dating someone or you're not."

Taylor leaned forward now, hoodie sleeves slouched over her hands, every nerve in her body tightening. Leia knew that look. Knew exactly what Taylor's brain was already doing - cycling through names from the past like a deck of cards she wished she could burn.

"Georgie," Taylor said carefully, "if this is about someone we already know... if this is about someone who hurt Leia, or me-" She stopped herself, words catching sharp in her throat. Her jaw clenched. "Just... tell me it's not one of them."

Leia felt something twist in her chest, an instinctive flash of protectiveness. She could think of a list of people that Taylor could be referring to, and since Georgie had already said she thought Taylor was going to hate her, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to assume.

Georgie's face flickered with panic. 

"No! God, no. It's not like that." She shook her head furiously, hair falling into her eyes. "I swear. He's... he's really sweet. It's nothing like that."