In Between the Rights and the Wrongs
I hide behind these words
But I’m coming out
I wish I kept them behind my tongue
I hide behind these words
But I’m coming out
Put your hand between
An aching head and an aching world
We’ll make them so jealous
We’ll make them hate us
An aching head and an aching world
We’ll make them so jealous
We’ll make them so jealous
The next morning, Emilia opted to sleep in while Laura and Carolina went out to do some more sight-seeing. She assured them that she wasn’t as upset as she had been the night before, but that she simply needed to sleep off the rest of the migraine. Carolina wasn’t so sure about leaving her, but Laura—who had known her longer—convinced Carolina that it would be fine.
On their own, the two decided to go to the beach for the day. Carolina still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea, but at least with Laura she didn’t feel as put on the spot as she was sure she would have with Taylor. Neither had brought a bathing suit, so they walked up and down the boardwalk, going in and out of shops and snacking on food from street vendors.
They were trying on silly pairs of sunglasses when two very blonde girls walked up to them. Carolina recognized them from the house party the night before, but didn’t know their names. The two of them had kept to themselves, seeming too cool for anyone else there.
“Hey, weren’t you guys at Mia’s last night?” One of them asked.
“Yeah,” Laura said, giving the girl a big smile. “You’re Jesse, aren’t you? I’m Laura.”
“Carolina,” she forced out, giving a small fake smile. She noticed that neither girl was in a rush to introduce themselves.
“Will you guys be at the show tonight, too?” The one who, apparently, was Jesse, asked.
“Of course!” Laura replied.
The other girl turned her head slightly toward Jesse and held up her phone. Her voice low, but obviously designed to still be heard, she said, “We better go, he’s gonna meet us at the Griddle Cafe in like thirty.”
It was clear, from her tone of voice, just exactly who he was. Carolina stared at the girls, waiting for them to confirm or deny it. She didn’t expect an invitation to join them, since they had just met. Yet they had to realize how they sounded, making it so obvious that they had special, private plans to meet up with Taylor.
“Well, we’ll see you girls later, then,” Jesse replied, a half-smirk on her face that suggested she knew exactly what Carolina was thinking. “We’ve got plans for lunch. Later.”
Carolina and Laura just gave each other a look, but didn’t speak until the other girls had walked away.
“Well, I hope they enjoy lunch with Taylor. Must be nice,” Carolina mumbled.
Laura just shrugged. “He’s known Jesse even longer than he’s known Mia. The two of them don’t get along, by the way. I don’t really know the details. I think Jesse is even more protective of him than Mia is, but in a different way.”
Carolina nodded. Definitely in a different way. Mia was looking out for his best interests; Jesse just seemed like she had no desire to share him with anyone new. But Carolina wasn’t new, though she knew she seemed that way to everyone else. If she had just kept up with him, found a way to get together with him sooner after moving to California, then maybe she could be one of these special girls, these fans who had somehow become part of his inner circle.
She didn’t want to be jealous of those girls, and she didn’t want to dislike them, when none of them had truly done anything to hurt her. She only wanted to be on the inside like them. She wanted everyone else to see her the way Taylor seemed to see her—someone he could trust, someone who could be let in. Was that too much to ask for?
The concert was, simply put, amazing.
It all went by in a blur, despite being more than twice as long as the other two concerts that week. Seeing Taylor on stage, with a full band, and a room full of people who were there to see him was an incredible high. It reminded Carolina why she was there, why she was putting herself through all of the emotional ups and downs. It was all for the music—her feelings for Taylor as a person were secondary to the way the music made her feel.
When the show ended, Laura, Carolina and Emilia—who was feeling better after a chat with Taylor before dinner—made their way to the merch booth to see if Mia and Zac needed any help packing up before they all headed to the after party.
“Carolina!” Delanie called out, and Carolina motioned for the other two to go on. Whatever Delanie had to say to her wasn’t something she wanted to have to explain to Emilia, and in any case, she was sure neither of them wanted to talk to her anyway. They both looked very relieved, in fact, as they slipped away.
“What’s up?” Carolina asked, hoping it sounded like she actually cared.
“I had a long talk with Taylor last night after the house show. I told him what I told you—how it just really isn’t fair for him to lie to his fans and lead them on like that. He swore he doesn’t have a girlfriend, but I don’t know. Either way, he needs to be honest with us.”
“Maybe he was,” Carolina replied, shrugging.
“Well, I think I got through to him,” Delanie said.
“That’s good,” Carolina said. “I’m gonna go see if they need any help with the merch. I’ll talk to you later.”
By the time Carolina managed to get away from Delanie, Taylor himself had made his way to the merch booth. As she approached, he gave her a wide smile and stretched out his arms. She let herself practically fall into them, needing a hug from him more right then than she had even realized.
“Hey,” he said. He pulled back from the hug, and Carolina found it hard to look him in the face. The gravity of everything they had done, every side of her she had let him see, finally hit her, and she knew she was blushing. He ran a hand up and down her arm. “You’re hot.”
“Thanks,” Carolina replied with a smirk, even though she knew that wasn’t what he had meant.
He ignored her attempt at a joke. “You coming to the after party?”
“I’ll be there if you’ll be there,” she said.
“I’m going to at least make a small appearance,” Taylor replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I think I picked the wrong boots today, and my feet are killing me. Forgot how hard a full concert was on the body.”
“Yeah, I wore the wrong heels for dancing yesterday,” Carolina remarked.
“But they looked sexy.”
Carolina stared blankly at him. “Did they? You didn’t even notice what they looked like.”
“Sure I did,” Taylor replied. “They were black and they laced up the back. Hot.”
“Wow,” Carolina said. “I guess you did notice.”
“I notice things,” Taylor said dismissively. “You girls have it so much better than guys when it comes to fashion. You get so many more options, you know?”
“Yeah, that’s true. But you do pretty well, for a guy.”
“Hey!” Laura said, popping up and giving Taylor a small hug of her own. “I meant to tell you before, but I was thinking when I come back to town in a few weeks for that convention, we can check out Griddle Café? I’ve heard really good things about it.”
“Hey, yeah, we can definitely do that,” Taylor replied.
“Carolina’s coming, too, right?” Laura said, giving Carolina a look.
“Yeah, I meant to tell you—I did get the extra time off work.” In actuality, Carolina had completely forgotten about agreeing to share a table with Laura at their publisher’s booth at some fandom convention.
“You’ll be here, too?” Taylor asked, and it didn’t pass Carolina by that he was clearly more excited about the plans now that he knew she was involved.
“Yeah, I will,” she said.
“Awesome,” he replied. “But hey, I better get my stuff loaded out. I’ll see you girls at the bar in a little while.”
After he was gone, Laura asked, “What was all of that with Delanie?”
“Oh, she says she had a talk with him last night about the whole girlfriend thing, but he’s still denying it.”
“The girlfriend thing?” Mia asked, and Carolina bit her lip. She obviously needed to work on her whispering. “Wait, is she talking about what we told her after the Hotel Café show?”
“Umm, yeah, she said you guys told her Taylor has a girlfriend,” Carolina replied, not meeting Mia’s eyes.
Mia shook her head, then laughed. “I didn’t think she really believed it. She was so drunk, she was practically throwing herself in his car. It was insane. Violet pulled her away and told her he had a girlfriend, and she kinda freaked out. We thought it was funny, so Violet just kept adding more details, but it was so obviously a lie. She kept asking me if it was true, and I was trying so hard not to laugh that I couldn’t even say anything. I didn’t realize until last night, when she apparently fucking yelled at him for like an hour, that she had believed it all. Or that she would even remember it in the morning—seriously, she was so trashed.”
“So he doesn’t have a girlfriend?” Laura asked.
“Definitely not,” Mia replied. “He texted me while we were at the club; apparently after she left my place she was just wandering around the neighborhood like a crazy person. She ran into him while he was walking Princess, and just went off on him. I had to explain the whole thing to him, too, but I guess he didn’t tell her that it was all a lie we made up.”
It was a lot of information to digest, and it made Carolina’s head spin—or maybe that was the two rum and cokes she’d had during the break between the opening act and Taylor’s set. Either way, she had a lot to think about but couldn’t make sense of any of it right then. She had thought she was being duplicitous, walking around like just another fan after everything that had happened, but that was just scratching the surface of all the lies and deception in this fandom.
Carolina wasn’t sure how much more of it she could take.
She realized belatedly that Laura and Mia were still talking and she hadn’t heard a word they had said. Laura gave her a nudge and she just stared blankly.
“Mia was just saying that Delanie was accusing Taylor of sleeping with all of his fans but her.”
Carolina could feel her eyes widen. She knew she had said too much to Delanie, given her too much reason to suspect, but she hadn’t realized the true depth of her mistakes until then. It was clear Delanie was a loose cannon, using whatever scraps of information she had to form whatever conclusions she thought would best serve her purposes. Anything could and would be used against her, Carolina realized, and it was too late to take any of it back.
“She’s even telling people I slept with him!” Mia remarked. “I would never. Of course I was a fan for years, and yeah, he may have been my favorite as a teenager, but wasn’t he everyone’s favorite back then? I’m with Zac now. We’re getting married. Taylor understands that, Zac understands that—everyone but Delanie can understand that.”
“I just can’t believe… I thought she was harmlessly crazy, you know?” Carolina said.
“I know,” Mia replied. “We all did.”
Zac walked up and clapped his hands, startling all of the girls. “Alright, we better get this stuff packed up. If we all pitch in, it shouldn’t take too long.”
As if to demonstrate his point, he hauled a plastic tub out from beneath the table and began piling it full of t-shirts. Mia gave him a nudge, and they shared a look that might as well have been an inside joke all on its own. At least Carolina could see that Mia was telling the truth about their relationship. They might have kept it somewhat secret, but Carolina could understand why, considering how Taylor’s fans could be. But just because it was a secret didn’t mean it wasn’t real. Seeing the way they interacted, Carolina didn’t understand how anyone could doubt the validity of their relationship.
Carolina wondered if the way she felt about Taylor was so obvious to anyone who saw them interact. She hoped not. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted Taylor to notice.