Livre: One Shots

[3] and we run!

All she can think about is running back to the East Coast as fast as her legs will carry her and losing herself in a city she's still adjusting to. She wants familiarity. She wants home but, she knows that she won't find it there. Not at the moment anyway.

They're in Whole Foods, and jet lag is threatening to consume her in a way it hasn't in a long time. Selena's next to her, and they have plans to bake later and dissect the dissolution of her bearding relationship with Adam, but it's not as appealing as it seemed last night on the plane when she first called.

"I think I'm gonna fly to New York tonight," Taylor says, as they come to a stop in front of a wall of flour. Coconut flour. Almond flour. Gluten-free flour. Too many choices. Too much. There's nothing she wants more than to run out of this store empty handed, through the inevitable crowd of fans and into the safety of a black Range Rover. Into the quiet.

"Hmm?" Selena hums, preoccupied with the selection in front of her. Taylor rubs her eyes and tries to ignore the stares they're getting as she waits for her to process.

"I just want to hide for about 25 years. Like, hit a reset button. Hibernate for a bit," Taylor says.

Selena turns to face her, face open and a little tired. "Is that what you need?" she asks, grabbing a bag of almond flour.

Taylor can't even think about baking right now. She shrugs. "I don't know what I need. I don't know what I want. I just want to stop giving so much of myself away every time things fall apart. I can't keep doing this."

Selena whispers back, "Okay. Just, you should call me, if it feels like too much. Talking to me isn't giving anything away. I know almost everything to your relationship."

She rests her chin on Selena's shoulder as they make their way through the self checkout. She's sure there will be pictures of this everywhere tomorrow. She cares so much she thinks she's crossed the threshold into not caring at all. When you're Taylor Swift, everything requires damage control.

During her night with Selena, she leaves. She just can't handle it.

-/-

The plane ride from Los Angeles to New York is stupidly long. Taylor knows this, intimately even, but it's irritating anyway. She tries to sleep for most of it, but her brain just won't shut off. She's contemplated leaving for an island or buying one. She could do it. Just so she has some place to really get away. New York seemed like a good idea when she was in LA, but now that she's in the air, it doesn't feel like enough.

She knows how to navigate messy break ups. She's been there, done that. She doesn't know what to do with this, though. While this wasn't the first bearding relationship she's had, it's the first time with Karlie in the picture. She tried so hard. Tried to make it effortless and fun, tried to please the papers and the paparazzi and the rumors without going insane. Those two years alone had changed her but she didn't know if she was ready to be criticized like she has been in the past. She couldn't take it. Not again.

Taylor looks down at her nails. She's picked one of her cuticles bloody, and she hadn't even realized. At least her manicure isn't chipped, yet.

Maybe she thought she'd suffered enough. It doesn't work that way, she knows. But she'd hoped. Adam blew up his end of the contract and now things were going to get though something as complex as this. Why did it have to end that way? The contract was supposed to end peacefully, no drama. After what seems like eternity, Taylor arrives in New York and arrives home.

But it doesn't feel like home.

Their apartment is dark and empty, and Taylor stumbles right into bed. For all that she couldn't sleep on the plane, now she's exhausted. Her phone lights up, and it's so dark in her room that it's momentarily blinding. It's in the feel of the cold sheets against her skin that she realizes that Karlie won't be here. She isn't in New York and the refuge that Taylor had pictured in her mind come shattering down with the reality of her situation.