Miss Americana & The Chiefs Tight End

Midnights Become My Afternoons

Hedonic happiness can be described as subjective. It involves positive emotions, and at peak moments of joy, hedonic happiness is felt. However, this type of happiness is also characteristically short-term. Think of it this way: happiness when hedonic is simply pleasure, not a true feeling of purpose.

While Taylor, a constant over thinker, has struggled with this idea on and off for years, it seems to have really hit her hard on this particular night. As she lies in her lonely bed staring at the ceiling of her 5-star hotel in Kansas City, she can't help but dwell on what kind of happiness it is that she's feeling right now.

Earlier that night, she played her second night at Arrowhead Stadium. It was magical. The whole weekend was magical, really. Speak Now (Taylor's Version) had just come out the day prior, and she'd treated both shows as a release party for the much anticipated re-record. The crowds were amazing and wild. The guests were fun. It was pure bliss. But she couldn't help but wonder if that was all that it was: bliss.

As July had now come around seemingly out of nowhere, she couldn't seem to shake the daunting reality that the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour would be coming to an end in just under a month now. She truly loves to be touring, loves her fans to death, and while she would be following up with international dates in months to come, she knew that after Mexico, there would be a roughly two and a half month period where she wouldn't get that adrenaline high every weekend.

She'd so easily fallen into a schedule that she loved over the past few months. She would perform her heart out all weekend, and spend a few days recovering and getting back her energy and voice, write whenever she felt inclined to do so and spend some time in the recording studio, maybe go out with friends once or twice a week if she felt up to it, fly to a new city, and repeat. It was amazing. She enjoyed working, and she also enjoyed the fact that she did it so much that she wouldn't really have too much time to think.

That's not to say that she didn't think at all, but it is to say that if her thoughts ever went into a more negative space, she was usually exhausted enough that she could will herself to sleep. She wasn't forced to lay awake at night pondering on every aspect of life that she may find to be unsatisfactory, and she was grateful for this sense of peace.

In the back of her mind, she knew she just didn't want to think about it. About him. She knew.

At 33, Taylor was far from the naive teenager and young adult that she used to be when she got her heartbroken so many times. However, one thing that never changed about her was the fact that she loved with everything she had in her. When she was with someone, she truly gave them her all. This was especially true with Joe.

It was a reasonable thing for her to feel slightly hung up on. She was with him for six and a half years after all. She had planned a life with him. But evidently, her plans and his didn't seem to align in the end.

She didn't hate him. She knew he wasn't a bad person. Was he insecure at times? Most definitely. Did he sometimes let that insecurity manifest itself in controlling ways? Yes, and that wasn't right, but it didn't make him a bad person.

She'd been hurt at the end of the previous year when she really started to get the sense that he didn't want what she wanted, at least not with her. He didn't seem interested in marriage or children or buying a house together or anything. Ultimately, that's why she'd made the choice to leave him. It wasn't really that she felt trapped by his need for excessive privacy. She'd gotten used to that. Even if she didn't much like it, she was willing to sacrifice some of her own preferences for him. But, when she realized that she'd grown and wanted to take things further, and that he had no such interests, she knew it was time.

It wasn't even necessarily the fact that she missed Joe specifically, as much as she just missed having someone. She'd felt freer since leaving him, and since their breakup was right before tour started, she was able to throw herself into her work as a distraction. But now as she thought about the fact that her distraction wouldn't last much longer, she found herself empty over the fact that she wouldn't have someone in her corner to come home to once this was all over.

She wasn't even exactly sure what she wanted, though. She wasn't sure if she could handle anything new. Sure, she'd had a short fling with Matty, but that was just another distraction, one that she would like to just pretend never happened, in fact. She wasn't sure what she wanted, but she knew it wasn't that.

She just couldn't stop wondering what she would do without the performance high she was used to getting each weekend now. She was worried about having too much time alone with her thoughts. Things could get dark in those instances, and she wasn't sure how it would be without anyone to talk her out of it.

She didn't know why this was all hitting her now. After all, she was physically exhausted after her second show in Kansas City earlier that night. Or the previous night, really, as it was now past midnight and early morning hours were creeping up. She wanted to sleep, but she just couldn't. It was torture.

Her mind was truly her own worst enemy. Normally in times as desperate as these, she was at least feeling inspired to write through what she was feeling, but right now the thought of writing more lyrics about loneliness just seemed fucking depressing.

She tossed in bed, the movement of her rolling over causing her phone to light up the dark room. She saw two iMessage notifications, which was surprising to her as it was almost 4am at this point. A sigh left her lips when she realized she'd received the texts over four hours ago. She must have been so wrapped up in her self-destructive thoughts that she hadn't even noticed.

When she unlocked her phone and saw that the person who'd texted her was Tree Paine, her publicist, she felt her stomach drop before she could even read the texts. While Tree sometimes texted her with good news, more often than not what she had to share wasn't pleasant. Taylor couldn't deal with bad news right now.

One of the texts was an image, which only furthered her anxiety. She didn't know if maybe something leaked, or if she'd been paparazzi'd somewhere she hadn't wanted to be or- she stopped herself and opened the image without another thought. There was no reason to overthink what the picture could be when she could just look and find out for herself.

She was surprised to see a picture of a friendship bracelet with a string of seemingly random numbers on it. It was a handmade bracelet, clearly, and whoever had made it used sparkly metallic beads from every color of her albums. It was cute, but Taylor couldn't help but wonder why Tree would have sent her a picture of a random friendship bracelet, presumably from her concert earlier, and what the numbers on it could have meant.

With a curious eyebrow raised, she backed out of the picture screen to read the text Tree had sent along with the image:

Hey, Taylor. I know it's late and I hope you're already asleep but I wanted to tell you about this now because it's unimportant enough that if I don't, I run the risk of forgetting to later. I don't know if you've heard of Travis Kelce or not, but he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. He tried to get backstage to meet you tonight, but I told him that you weren't seeing anyone at the moment because you seemed a little bit out of it. He seemed fairly disappointed, so I told him I could deliver a message to you, and he gave me this bracelet and told me to give it to you. He said that it has his number on it. Take that as you will, but it had obvious implications. He seemed like a sweet guy, otherwise I wouldn't have passed this all on to you, but obviously feel free to disregard it if you'd like. I'm not sure where you're at right now in terms of anything in this area, but I figured I'd let you know about all this. Have a good night.

notes:
Think of this as a little prologue ;) I hope you enjoyed!