4 (jaylor) gleaming twilight and an infinite afterglow

chapter seventeen.

Taylor had gone to bed after they'd tidied up the house, mostly because she wanted to read whatever Karlie had said to her in that letter. It had been bothering her all day. Thea had gone to bed quickly, as she was exhausted after an exciting day. Of course she was - she'd been awake at the crack of dawn, and she'd been non stop ever since then. Joe had told her that he would be a little late coming to bed because he had o make a phonecall... Taylor had smiled, kissing him on the head and brushing his hair out of his face. Perhaps if her mind wasn't so occupied by what was contained within the pages of that letter, she'd ask him about it. Perhaps, if she wasn't so worried about what words would be in those pages, she would have noticed that he also was stuck in his head.

She climbed into bed, her fingers brushing over the paper. She didn't know if she could bring herself to read it. What was Karlie going to say? Would she be trying, once again, to create the friendship that they'd lost? Taylor's hands were shaking. She didn't want to look at it, at Karlie's beautiful curly handwriting that she'd grown to love so much.
Even reading her name on the front was too much. This was all too much. She pulled the duvet over herself, still fully clothed and makeup still on. Meredith came and settled on her lap - she figured that Benjamin was probably with Thea, they were inseparable. Olivia was running down the hall, every so often Taylor would see her shadow run past her doorway.
She closed her eyes, tying her hair up and out of her face. Karlie's words had hurt her before, and she didn't want to feel that hurt again. Maybe, they could find peace together. Perhaps that was what the letter was going to say. Taylor sighed because there was only one way to find out.

Taylor,

It's been a while... hasn't it? I mean, of course, it has. Look at Thea! From what I've seen, she is beautiful. I don't know what I want to say, words were never my thing. They were always yours. But I'll try.

I'm sorry that things ended up like this. I'm sorry. I don't know why I spent so long trying to defend myself, why I spent so long trying to place the blame on your shoulders. Because it was never your fault. It took a while, but I finally see it. I'm sorry that it took me so long to realise that - but late is better than never, I guess.

I'm sorry that I wasn't there for you... not completely. If I could just... turn back time and do things differently, believe me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. There's no one else out there like you, trust me, I tried to find a friendship like we had. I tried so fucking hard to find something that burned as bright as ours did. But I couldn't find it. There's nothing out there like what we had.

There have been so many big things happen that I always thought you'd be a part of... I always thought you'd be there for - and that's my fault, I know - and instead, we've been oceans apart. I always thought that it would be you standing beside me as I said 'I do' to the man I love, I always thought that it would be you who would help me to prepare a gender reveal party for my child. I always thought it would be you. Always. I thought that I'd be there for you, too. But I wasn't.

I wasn't fucking there for you in the way that I should have been - I did something that was the worst thing a friend could do, and I'll never be able to show you how sorry I am. I know that things can never be the same after what I did, but you'll never know how it felt when I saw that yellow box arrive - tied with that beautiful gold ribbon. I'll never forget taking it inside, and knowing that it was from you. I knew that it was from you the moment that I saw the little painting you'd done on one of the sides of the box. I didn't need to see your name. I just knew. Sometimes you just know these things. I burst out crying - because I didn't deserve anything from you. Not after what I did. But you just proved to me, again, that someone like you... that when you find someone like you, someone who brightens every room and fills it with hope, you never, ever let them go.