1 (jaylor) wisteria hearts and caged folk songs

chapter eighteen.

They sat at the piano with the snow falling softly outside until they couldn't keep their eyes open anymore. Taylor had a really good day. And she never wanted it to end. In fact, she'd decided that she never wanted this chapter of her life to end. But she knew that was inevitable.

Really good days scared her. She knew that good days meant that there would be disappointment, it raised the expectations of what she wanted her days to be like. They scared her because she knew that she wouldn't always have days like this.

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Time slipped through the hourglass far too quickly, and soon enough, December was coming to an end.
Joe and Taylor were on their way back to New York, where they'd spend a day before they'd be driven to the airport so that their holiday could begin. Taylor had lost count of how many times Joe had thanked her for his present, and how many times he'd apologised that his gift was nothing in comparison. Each time, she'd kissed him on the lips, and told him that she didn't care. That she loved her bracelet to pieces.
"Besides. You deserve it for putting up with me for this long - I'm surprised that you haven't been scared away yet." Taylor said on the plane as he thanked her again.
"It's not possible." Joe kissed her hand. "It's all worth it. There is nothing you could tell me that would scare me away."
She still couldn't understand how on earth she'd had the privilege to meet him. She didn't know how she'd deserved this. And she'd realised that if she had to go through all of it, all over again to get to where she was right now, she'd do it all in a heartbeat. She'd put up with it all again. She'd dance with Adam at the Met, she'd suffer through every cold night and she'd sit in that pink velvet chair every day if it meant that she'd end up with Joe.

Joe's apartment already felt like home. When they arrived home, Joe wrapped his arms around Taylor.
"I can't get those lyrics of your song out of my head. They've been living in there rent-free." He laughed.
"I could play it again - but I want you to play the piano. You're so much better at it than I am." She took his hand, and they disappeared into the music. "That's how I imagined it," she admitted.
She hadn't had any bad thoughts in two days. That, she was proud of. It had always seem like an impossible feat, yet here she was. She'd never gone that long. There were no thoughts telling her to harm herself, to starve herself, or that she didn't deserve Joe. Instead, a little voice started telling her that maybe she did deserve someone like him. And that voice scared her. Because she'd never heard herself say that maybe, just maybe, she did deserve all of these good things. Maybe she'd been through enough already.

She wanted to tell Joe that maybe once they'd been in London, they could come back to America and go home to her Rhode Island home. She wanted to show him the art that she'd accumulated over her years of living there. But it also gave them more privacy than the two of them had ever experienced. Although, she really hoped that their trip to the lakes would be quiet. She'd booked everything under the name Becky, and had never given away any of her details. She hoped that perhaps if she wore a hat and a scarf, people wouldn't recognise her. She'd booked a random private jet that could be anyone's, so that people didn't see her jet and know that she was in Europe.
She was so excited. This was going to be a holiday. God, she couldn't even remember the last time she'd had a holiday. She was telling anyone related to her management that they were only to text her in an emergency. Taylor had brought another phone for the occasion, and it had arrived in Joe's apartment this morning. She spent half the day setting it up, and texting people that she wanted to hear from. Her friends, minus Karlie, and her family. Other people were told to only message if there was an emergency. She knew, that knowing her bad luck, that was likely to happen.

Her and Joe had taken several different selfies over the Christmas period, and she laughed when she saw one of them.
"Look at this one!" She laughed, showing it to Joe.
"How did I even make that face?" He laughed in reply. He tried making it again, and Taylor fell forward laughing.
"Not even close!" She looked over at him, the fire glowing in his eyes, and gave him a smile. "I love you so much."
Joe leaned over and kissed her. It was a feeling that she didn't ever think she'd recover from. It still felt as special as the first time that she'd touched his lips.
"I love you most." Joe whispered in between kissing her. "You are singlehandedly the best thing that has ever happened to me, Taylor. And I'll never get tired of telling you that."
"I'll never get tired of hearing it," she admitted. "I really hope that the trip is going to be nice..." Doubt was creeping in. She'd ruined the hike, with all of the drama with Karlie...
Karlie. It still felt like a dagger in her heart. Still felt like Karlie had stabbed her herself, twisting the blade in further. She bit her lip.
"You're better off without her, Taylor." Joe cupped her cheeks.
"How did you know I was thinking about her?" She asked him, as she tried to keep her tears at bay.
"Your lip was trembling... and your eyes do this thing when you're thinking of her. It's hard to describe - and the way that I would describe it to you is very dramatic. But it's kind of like you can see it in your eyes, you know? Like your eyes are glass and you're watching a sad movie about love and regret, about pain and betrayal." Joe sighed. "It's going to come back to get her. It might not be today, and it might not be tomorrow, but it will."
"My eyes really do that? Ew." Taylor closed her eyes. "I just can't believe it. And I'm sorry that you have to keep hearing about it, but I really can't believe that she would betray me like that."
"You don't have to apologise, love. Your feelings are so valid and it's okay that you can't stop thinking about her. She was a huge part of your life at one stage, so of course it's going to fucking hurt. And it's probably going to be something that you remember forever."