Girls Never Go Out of Style - A Kaylor Fanfic

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The days passed, growing shorter and cooler, as the weather descended into Fall. Taylor and Karlie settled into a routine of meeting between classes, passing notes, and spending their weekends going to the diner or the movies or sneaking off to the park after all the kids had long since gone home.

But Taylor wasn't satisfied.

"This is dumb. It's getting too cold to sneak around like this," she said, pulling her plaid coat more tightly around her shoulders. "Why don't you come over to my house?"

Karlie's eyes widened in surprise. "What about your parents?"

Taylor fidgeted uncomfortably, remembering the night that Karlie and her parents had met so unexpectedly. When she had gotten home from the movies, she had expected a big confrontation, or at least some kind of questioning. But they had only asked her if she had a good time. Now, when Andrea or Scott saw Karlie for the few minutes she was at the front door, picking Taylor up for an outing that they didn't know was a date, they were distant, but they stopped short of actual rudeness.

Taylor thought that they were too preoccupied with the idea of her and Charles to worry too much about Karlie. Charles had become an almost inescapable presence in her own home. Andrea mentioned him at every opportunity. Scott took up golfing with Jim Preston on the weekends and brought home stories about Charles's exploits and successes. It wasn't enough that he was everywhere at school, too, saying hello to her in the hallway, hovering in her periphery with his cadre of teammates. Now he was everywhere. At least she had evaded these not-so-tacit hints. For now.

But she didn't want to tell Karlie any of this. She knew that Karlie had a bad history with Charles. She knew that he was rude to her, like the guys in the diner that one day. She didn't want to upset Karlie by mentioning him, or by letting on just how much her parents wanted to get them together.

"They've been calm lately," Taylor said instead.

"Really? They haven't had the big 'What are you doing hanging around with that lesbian?' conversation with you yet?"

"They don't know you're a lesbian," Taylor protested.

Karlie gave her a sassy, disbelieving look. "Yeah. Sure they don't."

"Come on," Taylor insisted. "Come over on Monday. After school. We'll do our homework together. They can't complain if we're doing homework, can they?"

She snuggled against Karlie's shoulder for emphasis, making her eyes and big, blue, and adorable as possible. Karlie knew that kittenish look. She knew that she was powerless against it. But she still wasn't fully convinced.

"What's making you so brave all of a sudden?" she asked.

"I don't know," Taylor said. "We've gone this long without anyone knowing. We're good at this secret keeping stuff. Surely we can pull off being just friends around my parents, right?"

Karlie was still skeptical, but the idea of being able to hang out with Taylor at her house instead of freezing her butt off on an increasingly cold piece of playground equipment had its appeal.

"I don't know," she said.

"Come on, Karlie. Monday. Please? I'll bake cookies if you say yes."

Taylor was clinging to her arm. She had entered full kitten mode again.

Karlie sighed. "Okay," she said. "I'll do it."

On Monday afternoon Karlie waited for Taylor in her car. She had skipped her last class, had sat out in the parking lot smoking cigarette after cigarette, her nerves shot. Taylor was being optimistic, but Karlie had her doubts. Just because the Swifts hadn't been openly hostile to the two of them, that didn't mean that everything was okay. Karlie's home life was good, but she still had enough experience being hated to know that much.