till forever falls apart | Taylor Swift

02

She was supposed to be preparing for her latest album's world tour. In just a few months, she was supposed to be performing all of her best hits on stage for thousands of fans, if not millions who would probably be watching the live show through videos posted online by other fans or a lucky professionally shot live concert. This year, it was supposed to be in London.

But now, the only thing keeping Taylor busy was Netflix. The only cardio she was getting was not from jumping around a stage but from moving from her couch, to her fridge, and back to her bed in her Los Angeles home, with one or all three of her cats occasionally following her.

She didn't even have the motivation to sit at her piano and play a note or two. Sometimes, she picked up her guitar but she found that she only felt like playing riffs she had already long memorised and could play with her eyes closed, and only sang songs with little effort.

That night, her brother had sent a link to a video on the family group chat with a message tagging her specifically and saying, "this is you and your cats," and for once, with nothing better to do, she decided to indulge him and click on the link.

It instantly redirected her to the TikTok app which she had downloaded once earlier that year at her manager's request to post some kind of promotional video which was supposed to help out or something. She wasn't sure, but she had done as she was told and had never opened the app back again. Until that night.

The video that Austin had sent her turned out to be pretty cute. It was just about a guy showing off his cat as a parent shows off their actual human babies. She would never say this to actual parents but honestly, cats were a lot cuter.

Naturally, she double tapped on her screen to like the video and went to reply to her brother with a series of emojis that would convey playful anger but instead her finger allowed the screen to scroll onto the next video on her feed, which... also happened to be about a cat. This one was going crazy, jumping from one piece of furniture to another. She let out a laugh out loud, liked the video, and scrolled onto the next.

She had long forgotten to respond to her brother and fallen down a rabbit hole of one video after another, scrolling all through TikTok for hours. She hadn't realised how late it had gotten until her cat Benjamin had meowed and started rubbing his head against her leg. With a little frown, she checked the time and realised that it was already four o'clock in the morning. Her brother had sent that video at around one in the morning.

She had been scrolling through a never ending loop of videos for three whole hours...

No wonder people were obsessed with this app.

Benji meowed again, so she got up, stretched her limbs, and followed him all around the apartment until he stopped in the kitchen. He jumped up on the counter and looked at her expectantly, his tail twirling around her hand.

With a little laugh, Taylor rolled her eyes at his mischievousness and went to grab the small bag of treats, hoping the other two cats wouldn't hear her. She had no such luck, of course.

Soon enough, it was a cat feast in there and she was giving each one of them a chicken flavoured treat.

Giving them each a nice scratch behind their ears, she stretched her limbs again and trudged upstairs to her bedroom. She went to the bathroom first to freshen up and brush her teeth and then slipped under her sheets, keeping just her reading lamp on.

Surprisingly, she wasn't all that tired.

Maybe she could watch just another video or two...

The first video that had appeared on her screen when she had refreshed the page was one of a girl playing the acoustic guitar. She raised her eyebrows, noticing that the video had just been posted a mere ten minutes ago.