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Re-recording breakup songs was easier than she expected. Those relationships were done, long since gone and mourned.
Making the All Too Well short film had involved digging into long-buried memories; good and bad. But it didn’t hurt anymore.
Re-recording love songs? The songs she’d written while hopelessly, agonizingly head over heels in love, songs written by a fearful girl that still couldn’t help but hope, couldn’t stop herself from falling deeper and deeper into love?
They burned .
Every sweet declaration was acid in her throat, every pronoun pierced her heart with the pain of what if?
If she’d released the right words all those years ago, would she be here? Would the words of her former self still sting to remember?
If she hadn’t been so afraid, would she be going back to an empty house?
The press thinks she’s in Missouri right now, for once, no one’s looking. So she takes the ‘five minute break’ offered to her, slips on glasses and a cap and leaves.
She doesn’t know where she’s going, just that she needs to be anywhere but that studio. Anywhere other than a stifling room with Jack, who knows too much to not recognize the wavering in her tone. Anywhere other than staring at music that stares right back with accusing eyes.
Leaving may have been a worse idea.
New York is loud, that’s simply a fact, it’s part of what had drawn her to it almost a decade ago. Normally, the constant noise is comfortable, dulling the voices in her head, the external stimuli blocking the internal conflict.
Today, they seem to have joined forces.
The city and her mind are screaming in unison. Chanting memories of a name no amount of time can erase.
There’s a warm buzz in her veins, millions of tiny magnets tugging her against the woman to her left.
“Babe, I know you’re a lightweight, but please tell me you’re not so wasted you can’t sit up straight after a few drinks.”
She’s not; but the alcohol’s only partially to blame for her drunken state. There’s something stronger brewing, flushing her cheeks, stuttering her words.
Karlie feels it too. She must do; Karlie doesn’t trip, but she could hardly walk straight all night, dancing clumsily around the club as if she’d downed a whole bottle.
“So…” feigning nonchalance - failing terribly - as she leans back. “I’ve started renting this new place.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And where might this mysterious new place of yours be?”
The wind is gently tossing her hair about, tickling her cheeks as she keeps walking - it’s autopilot at this point, she couldn’t stop moving if she tried.
There’s a dull ache in her neck from being bent down, but she keeps it frozen in place. It’s not a posture driven by the anxiety of being seen, like it normally would be. It’s driven by a paralyzing fear of what she will see. Of who she will see.
New York City billboards are not conducive to healing, she’s found.
(But avoiding the billboards never took away the pain either, time’s the only thing that can truly heal a wound this deep)
(Deep down she knows that time isn’t working either)
Air nips at her face, the icy cold stinging as it tints her skin pink. She tugs her coat tighter around her, tries to ignore the fact that it fits too well. Like a glove , Blake had cheerfully exclaimed when they’d picked it out.
It feels wrong.
Head lolling on her shoulders she gazes wistfully out the window. There’s a misty rainfall, dusting the fiery leaves below.
Autumn is a gentle season in her mind, and this morning is the epitome of gentleness.
A soft creak of the floorboards, followed by a muffled curse.
“That’s a new one.”
“I thought I’d gotten all of them mapped in my head by now.” She turns away from the street, holding her arms out for her lover.
“That’s okay. We’ve got time.”
A soft kiss to her forehead, nose and lips. A moment of peace, and then…
“Is that my jacket?”
She shrugs, pulling it closer around her shoulders. “Maybe.”
Karlie grins, “Is wearing your own clothes really that inferior to stealing mine?”
“This fits better.”
“No it doesn’t you goose. I’m four inches taller than you.” Pout, bat her eyes.
“Three inches.”
“Okay, three inches. Either way baby, there’s no way it fits better.”
“It does.”
Something about the knowledge of who it belongs to, the lingering perfume on the collar, the way she can almost feel the warmth from when it was last worn; it bends the physical reality.
“It does.”
Her phone’s buzzing incessantly in her pocket. Has she really been gone that long? She wouldn’t know if she had, too deep in the whirlpool of her mind to be aware of the world around her.
Jack must be worried. She could see it in his face the moment she’d said what songs they were doing today. He’s worried it will break her.
It won’t, it can’t . Taylor Swift doesn’t break. Taylor Swift cannot be broken by her own music, cannot fall apart over a relationship that - to the majority of the world - never happened.
(Ignore the fact that it already broke Taylor long ago)
She mutes the call and keeps walking.
She hasn’t moved since she got back from the studio half an hour ago.
They were supposed to be finishing a couple of songs for 1989, but she couldn’t do it.
Every lyric she could come up with, every melody, every description, it was all just KarlieKarlieKarlieKarlieKarlie.
Max had teased her about how head over heels she already was.
She didn’t have a defense.
He was right.
And that terrifies her.
She’s been in this situation before. Hopelessly infatuated with a partner that wasn’t equally enthralled.
It makes her vulnerable.
She can’t do this again.
She only realizes what she’s doing when she’s halfway out the door, bags in hand.
There’s a second of rational thought, quickly swallowed up by the urge to run.
The door closing behind her is just enough to wake Karlie from her position dozing on the couch.
She’s walking in circles. She hasn’t looked at a street sign since she left the studio but she knows exactly where her feet have taken her. She knows what she’s circling.
“Baby, I’m in this,” voice slightly distorted as it calls from the phone balanced on her thigh, but not enough to stop her from hearing the raw desperation in it. “I am in this, all the way. And- and we can talk through everything that’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours. I know we haven’t talked about this properly, but we can, and we will and I promise to kiss away all of those anxieties you’ve got going on, but first you need to come home .”
“Please, come home.”
Her fringe is getting tangled against her forehead, each strand of hair feeling like knives against her skin.
“See, baby, you get it.” A glowing smile. Sunshine. “When Vogue asks you to cut your hair, you do it.” Hand fluffing the new bangs. “Remind me to thank them for somehow making your face even cuter.”
The line between memory and reality is blurring.
Somewhere behind her a chair is scraping across the ground as someone stands up.
“Here.” Chair pulled out, Karlie’s standing. “Swap with me.”
“What?”
“Those dummies are gonna have to go somewhere else for their money shot today. Switch with me.”
Wind chimes, the sound of a door closing echoing in her mind.
Is the door closing now, or nine years ago? She doesn’t know anymore.
Paparazzi don’t have any kind of volume control, it seems. Some days she’s fine with the yelling, the flashes, the shutters, the eyes.
Today is not one of those days.
And she can’t even hold her girlfriends hand.
So she’ll tell Tree later it was an accident. She didn’t mean to.
But when she reaches the door frame, she briefly rests her hand over Karlies.
The past is everywhere in this goddamn city.
She can’t get away from it.
The press thinks she’s in Missouri.
Maybe it would be easier if she was.
But no, because that’s where she met Karlie’s family for the first time, where the twins had playfully chased her through the halls demanding gossip, where she’d sat at family dinners and daydreamed about proposals and rings and gowns and-
Her brain goes quiet for a moment as she turns into the street.
She finally looks up, even though she doesn’t need to. She knows every inch of this street like the back of her hand. It’s the place of her past self’s daydreams and her present day nightmares.
Walking slowly now. Each step taken with caution, as if the ground might shatter beneath her, as if her presence might taint this once sacred place.
It looks mostly the same. The years have changed it some, but not enough that the memories wouldn’t slot right into place here.
She can’t decide if it would hurt more or less if they tore the whole place down.
(She thinks, maybe, that nothing can really hurt more than she already does)
Halfway down the street, her feet stop cooperating. Instead, they turn her to face the place that had called her down here.
It’s cold. Freezing, really. New York City at two thirty am is nothing to play about.
But there’s a hand in hers and a body warm against her side as she’s pulled down the path.
“Karlie, why are we doing this?”
“Because we live here, silly. We deserve to walk outside, where we live, at least once without getting yelled at by Tree.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s daylight somewhere sweet girl. And we are walking, outside, together. And nothing bad is happening.”
“Because no one else is insane enough to do this.”
She’s not really mad, and Karlie knows it. Can tell from the soft smile and laughter in her tone.
“Well, you love this insane person, so what does that say about you, huh?”
“Love made me crazy, I guess.” A grin, and a cold nose nuzzled against her cheek.
“Sure did, pretty girl.”
She sighs in relief as they reach the end and turn around.
“Good, we did it, we walked the street, time to go back to bed where it is warm .”
She’s yanked back into strong arms, a pout directed at her.
“But we’re not done yet.”
“Kar, you made your point. We walked from the apartment to the end of the street, that’s what you wanted. Can we please go back inside now?”
“No, we haven’t walked all the way yet.”
“Karlie-”
“We are going to walk this street together, all the way. From one end, to the other. Otherwise we’re not really walking it. All the way or no way, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah?” Hands clasped in one another, sides pressed together as they look out at the path in front of them.
“I hope you know I’d never walk this stupid street without you.”
“First of all, don’t call our street stupid.” A kiss pressed to the back of her hand, cheeky smile peeking out over the knuckles. “And second, you’ll never have to, baby. You and me, forever.”
She. Can’t. Move.
She’s stuck in the middle of this goddamn street.
The past is grabbing at her, trying to pull her back into the warmth of the memories that were once so comforting.
A voice echoes in her head: “From one end, to the other. Otherwise we’re not really walking it.”
The world seems to turn back on as she snaps back into it.
If Taylor Swift was seen spiraling in the middle of her old street, she’d never hear the end of it.
One way or another, she has to leave.
She turns around and calls her driver.