Sweeter than Fiction: A Taylor Swift Fic

Chapter 12: Might Not Be the Golden One

I sat at the table of a sidewalk café in Paris, and took the last bite of my éclair (the dessert to the croissant I’d just eaten, because if you can’t eat two pastries in a row for breakfast in Paris, where can you?). I wiped my hands on my cloth serviette, and then picked up a pen to finish off my postcard to Hailee: I miss you — this was way more fun with you last year. Amour amour amour T. On our recent roadtrip to San Diego a Paris reunion seemed like a great idea, and it was until she’d had to do last minute re-shoots for Barely Lethal. No one else could take the trip on such short notice, so it was either Paris alone or Paris not at all. I was tempted to cancel, to join in with the dancers on their trip to Lake Como, but I felt stubborn: Paris wasn’t only for lovers, and shying away from a solo trip to the City of Love felt too much like defeat.  

Yesterday as my taxi took me to my hotel, and I caught sight of the sparkling Seine, L’Arc de Triomphe, and of course the Eiffel Tower, I’d felt the familiar adrenaline rush that comes from being in a new place and it seemed like it would be just fine. I’d enjoy the couture, the culture and the croissants.

But this morning, when I woke up alone in my giant hotel bed, the day so gray it seemed like the sun hadn’t even bothered to come up, the pangs of sadness I’d been feeling lately drifted in, heavy and gloomy as the clouds outside. Most days (most hours, most minutes even) my life was a dream come true. But having achieved that dream, it made me crazy sometimes that I hadn’t come any closer to achieving my other dream: the one that led to only happy love songs. I couldn’t really accomplish that dream by knocking on doors (“Hi, I’m Taylor. I really want to be the love of your life.” Errr, somehow not as charming as my 11-year-old self at Music Row.) I’d got myself out of bed, dressed in my best attempt at Parisian style, including a jaunty little scarf tied round my throat, and tried to smile in the mirror. But I felt … tied together with a smile, I guess.

I hadn’t thought of that song in a while, and certainly my inspiration, a friend with an eating disorder, was nothing like what I was going through now, but as I walked along the Seine, jacket collar turned up against the cold, the lyrics came back unbidden:

Hold on, baby, you're losing it
The water's high, you're jumping into it
And letting go... and no one knows

I’d come to this café and tried to bury my blues in pastry and postcards, but it wasn’t working. There were couples everywhere, holding hands, snapping photos. Like it was Valentine’s Day come a week early. I decided to keep moving.

I stuck to the river so I wouldn’t get lost, and tried to enjoy the sights, to savour the Paris-ness of it all, but it felt a little … hollow.

Then I saw a bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, and decided to go inside. A new book could make for a good distraction. When I entered the front room there were books on every conceivable surface: arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves, piled high on tables, stacked on stepladders. The few walls without bookshelves were hung with old photos of famous writers, posters of book covers, handwritten letters and random paintings. The place seemed fit to burst, and as I wove through the store’s many rooms, I found things crammed into every nook and cranny: old theatre seats, typewriters, even a piano with a sign that said Please play the piano. I smiled — a real smile. This seemed like my kind of place.

I saw a black cat dart up a set of stairs (definitely my kind of place) and decided to follow it. As I reached the top of the stairs I scanned this whole new level and saw a message hand-painted above a doorway: Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise. I liked that — angels in disguise. On this floor the books were older, all used, it seemed. “Are these for sale?” I asked a kercheifed woman beside me.

“No,” she replied, “these are just for enjoying.”

I ran my fingers along the old spines, searching for something that might catch my interest, traveling room to room. In one I found a small single bed, where my black cat had curled up to rest. In another, a young man sat at a typewriter, furiously working in a makeshift carrel carved out of this labyrinth of books. Dishes clattered in a kitchen down the hall. Did people live here?

I walked into another room, where, beneath a loft bed closed in by a curtain, there was a mirror covered in photos, letters and messages, each expressing their love for the bookstore, how it had been an inspiration or a place of refuge. Many of the notes were in languages I couldn’t read, but I got the idea. “It’s called the Mirror of Love,” whispered a girl to her friend behind me.

The Mirror of Love. I caught my reflection between pieces of paper, my face flushed and warm in the cozy yellow light. One note caught my attention: “You are loved."

It was like getting a note back form the universe: I’d coded those very words in the lyrics of “Tied Together,” and now they’d showed up again just when I needed them. From an angel in disguise. I snapped a picture and was about to post it to Instagram, when I realized this was something I wanted to keep all to myself. My very own secret message.  

The black cat padded over and wound itself around my calves. Even solo, Paris was the City of Love: you just had to know where to look for it.

***

Next week Taylor is headed back to Fundon for lucky chapter 13, the grand finale of Sweeter Than Fiction! We’ve had such a great time writing this fic with you, so this time we’re going to let you choose: What should Taylor get up to in London? Leave your comments below and we’ll pick one suggestion as a starting point for our last chapter!