If You Were Church, I’d Get On My Knees
Got a few more fake friends
And it’s getting hard to know what’s real
And if death is the last appointment
Then we’re all just sitting in the waiting room
I am just a human trying to avoid my certain doom
Carolina Bailey is coming apart at the seams, pitching myself for leads in other people’s dreams
Delanie Jones Is everything okay, sweetie?
It was cowardly, but Carolina deleted the entire post. It seemed that for weeks, all she had posted on her Facebook were vague lyrics that she related to, and people were clearly starting to notice that she was turning into a walking AIM away message.
Of course, all the wrong people were noticing. She knew it was too much to expect Taylor to take note of lyrics to songs he probably didn’t know by bands he didn’t like and actually understand what she meant by sharing them. It was all too subtle and shady, but it was the most she was capable of sharing, the closest she could get to telling anyone how she really felt. She hadn’t worked on any writing of her own in weeks, either; all she could do was echo other people’s words.
It shouldn’t have bothered her so much that Taylor seemed oblivious, and yet it did.
As the days and weeks passed, Carolina had begun to detect a pattern. Although he always answered when she texted, and the conversations went on for a while, they never talked about anything real. Anything that mattered. And Taylor never texted her first.
If she expressed that thought to Laura, she knew what sort of response she would get. But it wasn’t petty; Carolina was sure of it. It was a sign that Taylor was only humoring her, that he did not share her constant urge to talk to him, to be near him.
That he simply did not think of her the way she did him.
Of course, feeling that way didn’t stop her from tuning in to his Skype session. She was ashamed to admit that they were the highlight off her days—if she could ignore all the comments in the chat, all the desperate girls talking about how cute he was and making overtly sexual comments. But listening to his music, occasionally getting to interact with him—it all made it worthwhile. Maybe he didn’t text her first, but he constantly talked to her and shared moments with her right in those calls, for everyone to see. Maybe that meant more, and she was reading too much into the way he texted.
“Okay,” Taylor said, clearing his throat. “So, I put up a kind of a poll on LJ earlier. Not really a poll. Umm, I asked you guys to ask me some questions, and then I would answer them in between songs tonight. So, here we go first. First question is from possibly my only male fan, somebody named matthew2000. And Matt—can I call you Matt?—wants to know what is the craziest groupie story I have?”
Taylor stared at the screen for a moment, seeming to contemplate his next move. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, he fell back into his stage persona; Carolina could practically see it wash over him like a wave.
“So, the last time I went on tour, I was at this bar after the show. Kind of an after party sort of deal, some of the other guys in the band were there too. And there was this girl, who was so drunk. Like, probably didn’t remember anything the next day, absolutely blackout drunk. It was just embarrassing and awkward to watch, and like… I try to be discrete about things like that. So when she starts throwing herself at me, I just… it was not happening.”
The story was vague enough, but Carolina was certain he was talking about Holland. Someone in the chat asked if he ever hooked up with groupies or if it was just her.
Taylor read the question out loud, then replied, “Oh, I wasn’t opposed to hooking up with someone that night. Just not her.”
While Carolina could hear the obvious implication that she was groupie—it was easy to ignore that. He had wanted her that night too, although he hadn’t acted like it at all. Her impression of him hadn’t been wrong. He was genuine; not this fake player he pretended to be. She had seen genuine interest in her as a person, even though he hadn’t flirted, and she had been correct about it.
Maybe she shouldn’t have felt vindicated, but she did. And a little bit cheap.
For the rest of the mini-concert, if you could call it that, Carolina was floating. It was easy to ignore the audience and focus only on what Taylor said, as though he were speaking just to her. Maybe she doubted him too much. Maybe she worried too much. It was just a matter of time before things worked out the way she wanted.
And if they didn’t… well, she was trying her best not to think about that.
There were numerous requests to play the new song, and she tried her best to ignore those, too. Taylor didn’t.
Carolina tried to stick it out; she really did. She made it through half the first verse before she found that she couldn’t breathe. She jumped out of her chair and practically sprinted to the kitchen, where she could no longer hear Taylor singing the song that was and wasn’t about her and made this strange and awful pain settle into her chest every time.
It was sheer dumb luck that he was just finishing the song when she walked back into her office, the final notes fading out as she sat back down. Someone asked what the song was about and what a lucky, special girl it must be.
“It’s actually not about a girl at all,” Taylor replied, a curious smirk on his face. “It’s about my favorite drug. You all know how much I love meth, right?”
Carolina couldn’t stop herself from typing a long line of laughing faces into the chat box. She couldn’t believe he would dare make that joke public, especially when Delanie was watching. He was revealing far too much about what he thought of the two of them, and Carolina couldn’t believe it, but she certainly wasn’t upset by it.
“I’m just kidding guys. Or am I?” Taylor laughed. “Okay, I think we’ll just do one more song and then we’ll call it a night. How about something nice and mellow? Be My Own?”
Carolina sighed. She knew he had premiered that song during the last tour, just days after meeting her. She also knew—now—that it was about his ex. She didn’t know if it was the one Mia had called Chloe or not. She didn’t really want to know.
Being in his fandom was such an emotional roller coaster, she really didn’t know how she was going to survive it. How much longer could it last? She was on the edge of something and she still wasn’t entirely sure what.
When the concert ended, she decided to check her email. She hadn’t checked her author email in far too long, but without a new book in a few months, the emails had died down, anyway. Her personal email was even more of a barren dessert, except for one solitary new message. It was from an address she didn’t recognize. An invitation.
It took her only a moment to figure out that the email had come from Yulia, Mia’s roommate. Carolina supposed she hadn’t realized it would be necessary to send wedding shower invitations out so early—the wedding itself wasn’t for almost half a year, and the shower was apparently scheduled for a month and a half away. Still, she supposed that gave the girls who lived farther away time to plan how they would get there.
As for Carolina, she was just happy to have another reason to go back to Los Angeles, one that didn’t seem like a stretch. It had been months she had seen Taylor, and she knew that was the real reason why her emotions were so up and down. Once she saw him again, got to be near him again, she would know that everything between them was going to be okay. That he felt what she felt.
As if on cue, her phone rang. She saw that it was Laura calling, and that didn’t surprise her at all.
“Hey,” Carolina said as she answered. “I guess you got the invitation, too?”
“I did. I was thinking I might crash with you and we could drive down together? I don’t know. It seems like flights to San Jose are usually cheaper. Sorry, that was super presumptuous to just assume.”
“I don’t know,” Carolina replied. “I’ll have to look at my work schedule and figure out when I can leave and everything. But I’ll let you know, and we’ll see how that works around what’s going to be cheaper for you.”
“Are you going to ask Taylor to hang out?”
Carolina gave a soft sigh. “I mean… I was thinking about it. It would be really weird to be there and not see him. Then again, I’m sure we’ll see Zac. So it would just be really weird not to see Taylor, too. So maybe I don’t even need to ask him; he’ll just be around.”
“Well, I don’t know, but I can ask Mia or Yulia for more details on the whole plan. Then we can figure out what the likelihood of seeing Taylor is,” Laura replied.
“But do you think I should try to make plans with just him?”
“I think it will be difficult,” Laura said. “I also think you probably need to talk to Mia about this at some point. She knows him. I don’t. She can give you so much more insight into what he’s thinking and what you should do. And maybe she can even talk to him. I don’t know—she probably wouldn’t do that. But I still think it would be a good idea to talk to her.”
Carolina leaned back in her chair. “You know, I’ve been considering that. I just don’t really know how to approach it with her. It’s awkward, you know? I feel like I’ve been so dishonest with her and I don’t know how to fix that now.”
“You haven’t. It’s not like she asked you and you lied or anything.”
Carolina sighed. “You mean like I did with Emelia and Delanie.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say it, but yeah. Speaking of, did you hear his comment about meth?”
“I did, but I think my head was still spinning from his groupie story.”
Laura let out a short chuckle. “I know! He must have been stoned tonight or something. Telling so many stories, sharing an inside joke. And the groupie thing—I mean, you really missed your chance that first night.”
“I guess I did,” Carolina replied, then shook her head even though Laura could not see it. “I don’t know. I feel like things would have gone very differently if it had started then, and I’m not sure it would have been a good thing. Then again, things are a mess right now, the way his fandom is. I just… I really want to ask him to get together. It’s so different when we’re alone.”
“He can let his guard down,” Laura remarked.
“Yeah, I guess so. And so can I. It’s just different. I miss it.”
Laura laughed softly. “You really have it bad, you know?”
“Oh, trust me, I know.”
And she did. There were few things she was certain of anymore, but her feelings for Taylor were never in doubt.