#haylorlove

“I saw this thing on Tumblr,” she said, sitting on the couch a few feet away and sipping her hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. I called it a Ski Lift. She called it delicious.

 “Of course you did,” I replied. I couldn’t help but chuckle. She was constantly showing me things on Tumblr – be it from fans or something that someone reblogged. It was a world for her where she could be with the people she cared about most, but also see funny things that she liked to share with me. It was, for the most part, a land away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. Even if sometimes the people on Tumblr went a little nuts. “What did you see?”

 She looked up at me and grinned, scrunching her face up in the way that makes her nose crinkle and her eyes squint. “P.O.P.D.”

 “Pardon?”

 “P.O.P.D. Perfect Ornament Placement Disorder.” She nodded once, as if this explained everything, and I continued to look at her with confusion. In my hand dangled a reindeer ornament that looked like it belonged to a random antique shop instead of on a pop star’s Christmas tree. In fact, the majority of her ornaments looked like they belonged somewhere kitchy and not in the middle of a living room that probably cost more than most peoples’ houses.

 “And what is that, exactly?” I lowered my arm, letting the ornament dangle near my knee.

 “It means that I suffer from perfectly placing Christmas tree ornaments on the tree in perfect places.” She nodded again and then smiled at me over the rim of her mug. Her redundancy was cute. “And you’re doing it wrong.” There was a twinkle of humor in her eyes, hinting that she wasn’t really upset but just poking fun at me and my horrible decorating skills. I’d play along.

 I arched an eyebrow at her and then put one of my hands on my hips. “Well, pardon me, Miss Swift. But you aren’t doing anything, as you can see. If you want them to look perfect, you should be doing it instead of just watching me do it.”

 “I’m supervising!” Taylor insisted with a huff, lowering her mug so that she could look at me more fully.

 “Supervising my ass!” I turned around and placed the reindeer ornament on an empty branch.

 “Exactly!” She giggled. I looked at her over my shoulder and her smile grew wider as I shook my ass in a little shimmy. She set the mug down on the end table and then stood, dragging the warm blanket with her across the room. “Fine, fine. I’ll help.” I kept my back turned to her and pretended to survey the tree. I could hear her picking up an ornament and then she was next to me, also looking at the tree and deciding where she might be able to place it.

 I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and was overwhelmed with the feeling I always got when I looked at Taylor. Three years ago we’d dated. Three years ago I’d fallen head over heels completely in love with her. But at the time I hadn’t known that’s what it was.

 We broke it off. For many reasons, not just the one where I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. There was too much pressure, too much hatred and vile things being said not to just me, but her and our families as well. The good stopped being strong enough. We stopped being strong enough and so we called it off. We were on good terms, incredibly good terms. But we didn’t see each other. We couldn’t. That would only fuel the flames again and then everything would just burn down around us.

 But I missed her. God, I fucking missed her. I missed her laugh and the soft scent of her hair and the way she would wink at me when she thought she did something cute. I missed the taste of her red lips and the way that they felt when they were kissed raw. I missed waking up in the morning and seeing her in my shirt. I missed being able to ask her for song writing advice. I missed <i>her</i>. Us splitting, though, was for the best, and I’d kept telling myself that.

 A couple of years passed and we kept in slight contact. She would send me her songs and ask for my input… just the ones about me, though. It was as if she were afraid that I’d tell her she couldn’t write about me. I never did. Everything she wrote was beautiful and heart breaking at the same time. She disappeared again, put out her album, and then she popped back into my life three months ago.

 I couldn’t lie and say that watching her flourish into an independent woman hadn’t made me happy. It did. Endlessly. She needed to be able to love herself the way she should. Then she could let other people love her the way they should. Then she started dating Calvin Harris and everything in me broke. It was a flood. I was so angry for weeks. He was an ass from what I’d seen and heard. Of course, I didn’t know the guy from Adam. Couldn’t say what his favorite food was. But I did know that he did some dumb things. I did, too, though. That’s no excuse. And as long as he was treating Taylor right, I was okay with it.

 But then they broke up and I heard from a few mutual friends that he hadn’t been treating her right. She stood up for herself, put some distance between the two, and then she called me. She wanted to get together and talk. She missed hanging out with me. How about coffee? So we got coffee and we talked. We talked for hours. We closed the coffee shop. Then we went back to her house and had some homemade coffee and talked even more. We caught up with each other and it was like we hadn’t ever been apart. We fell asleep on her couch.

 Now, we were decorating her Christmas tree. Her face was lit by the multicolored lights on the tree and the fire that was crackling in the fireplace. Her blonde hair framed her face in slightly tamed curls, her eyes weren’t lined with any kind of make up, her lips weren’t painted with red. She was comfortable and warm and she was just Taylor right now. Not Taylor Swift.

 I watched as she delicately placed the ornament in her hand (a very fat Santa ornament) on a higher branch. She pulled back her arm and tilted her head at the ornament, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not it belonged there. I couldn’t help but feel a little like the ornament.

 I belonged there, with her, but I was just waiting for her to see it.  Slowly, a smile crossed her face and she looked at me, her eyes sparkling in the lights.

 “What do you think?” I asked her quietly, studying the curve of her lips.