The Lucky One (2) - Taylor Swift

3

It was half past five in the morning when the alarm on Grace's phone went off the next day. She had not slept all that well, different place, different sheets and smells kept her up. At one point, her niece down the hall woke up and screamed for her parents which led to more noises and things to make sleep hard to come by.

She was jet-lagged, nervous about her very first day of work ever and very much scared that she wouldn't be able to handle the day.

She got up and walked towards the bathroom only to see Michael already showered and dressed, trying to put his contacts in, "Morning."

"Hi," Grace croaked groggily. She did not want to be awake, "I forgot you're blind."

"Contacts are a wonderful thing," he hummed, "You'll be ready to leave in an hour? We can stop and get coffee on the way in."

"Coffee. Yes, coffee."

When they got to the little office where Michael stored construction equipment in an outbuilding and had a small room with files and a desktop computer next to the phone, Grace realized that it was nothing like she had expected it would be.

"So, the phone's pretty simple. Write down their name, number and the reason they are calling if someone calls. I'll give them a call back— don't be shy about telling them it's your first day if you don't know something. Computer has instructions for you with the other stuff, I took care of that yesterday. You can give me a call if you've got anything else come up, main focus for today is getting payroll going for the end of the month," Michael powered on the computer after setting his backpack down.

He gave her a quick run through as other headlights started to beam out in the dirt parking lot. She nodded as the door swung open, "Well, hello there!"

Grace and Michael's eyes both looked at the carpenter who had come in to drop off his parole paperwork for Michael to sign. Michael had made a habit of trying to save everyone, alcoholics, ex-convicts, he saw the good in everyone he possibly could.

"Alan, this is my sister. Grace, this is Alan, he's terribly annoying," Michael teased as he accepted the forms.

"I didn't know you had a sister," Alan took a seat in the small red chair across from Grace's new desk and leaned his elbow against it.

"I do and she's working here now. She's in charge of your paycheque so be nice," Michael glanced at him, "She's also gay and out of your league so stop looking at her like that."

"My girlfriend is Taylor Swift," she whispered proudly. She was allowed to say that because the media had splashed it everywhere. Taylor was out. It wasn't necessarily her choice, she knew the consequences when she drove onto that block, but she had made it clear she didn't want to keep secrets.

Privacy was fine, secrets were hard.

"Oh, really?! Mine too, yeah, took her out to dinner the other night. I think her next album's going to be about me," Alan scoffed with a small laugh.

"They really don't know who we are?" Grace smiled, she liked that.

"They don't care, I think about half the town has made the connection. A British accent is hard to miss," Michael finished splashing his signature across the page, "There you go, man. We'll head out in five, I want Grace to meet the rest of the guys first."

Grace met the rest of Michael's crew and had to dodge flirts from about half of them until Michael shot that down quickly once again. He was not going to tolerate that sort of behaviour and Grace wouldn't have either if she wasn't worried about them liking her.

She had never worried about people liking her in her life until suddenly she felt like she needed the validation of her co-workers to fulfill some sort of void within herself. Coworkers were a whole new area of life she wanted to do right by.