Making Me Hope and Wish
You got into my soul
Now all the walls I built around myself
Are all covered in holes
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you, get you out of my heart
When Carolina returned home, it was as though the trip to Los Angeles had been a fever dream. She knew that it had happened, and yet, the contrast between those few days and her normal life was so strong that there were times when she forgot that it had all been real and not just a figment of her wishful imagination.
For a few days, she had felt like herself again. For a few days, she had felt young again. For a few days, she had simply felt again.
She had drafted a dozen or so texts to Taylor, but could not bring herself to send a single one of them. None of them said all that she wanted to say to him. On the other hand, they all said to much; the thought of admitting to him how much she had enjoyed that night, how much more she wanted… it was all more than she could handle.
As she sat at her desk at work, trying to remember how to live her normal life, she told herself that it was only the end of her years long dry spell that had her so messed up. It was one night of great sex that was clouding her brain and making her envision a future that barely seemed possible.
Get out of my heart
Get out of my mind
Get out of my bedroom
I don’t want you tonight
You’re making me smile
You’re making me try
And you’re making me hope, and wish that we could be together
All over again
The La Selva branch was busy that day, and Carolina was glad she had brought a pair of earbuds with her. She plugged them into her computer and opened a playlist she liked that was almost loud enough to drown out the din of employees and volunteers filtering through the area where she worked. She didn’t know what they were doing, some sort of summer reading program that apparently required all the loudest people ever, but it left Carolina feeling terribly over-stimulated.
The music helped, but it also drowned out the buzzing of her phone when a text message arrived. When she glanced down at the screen and saw the new message, she jumped a little in her chair. She picked up her phone and read what it had to say, what Laura apparently could not wait to tell her.
You need to go look at Taylor’s MySpace. He posted a preview of a new song but he says it probably won’t stay up for very long. Go. Listen. Now.
Not knowing how to reply to that, Carolina simply did as she was told. She opened a new tab and navigated to Taylor’s MySpace, where he often rotated out the songs on his playlist, showing off rough drafts of new songs as they caught his attention, then deleting them once something new came along. It impressed Carolina how often he wrote new songs, but his indecisiveness also drove her crazy.
She clicked play on the new song and closed her eyes as it washed over her. She knew there was no point in trying to continue her work until after the song was finished. She needed to hear every word of whatever Taylor had been inspired to write just a week after the weekend that had changed everything for her, just a week after he had released an entire album full of songs.
You can just take a look at yourself
Maybe then you’d see you should leave me in hell
Get out of my heart
Come down from my window
Cause you’re giving me everything that I ever wanted
And it’s making me sick
Tell me baby
What do you want, what do you want
What do you want
Cause I just want you to
Get out of my heart
Get out of my heart
Just leave me in my misery
The song was unlike anything else she had heard from him. It was simple and stripped down; just Taylor and the piano, playing a melody that Carolina could have sworn was ripped straight from something from the fifties. His voice was soft at times, growling at others, the emotion in it stirring something deep within Carolina’s chest. It was a feeling she loved and hated at the same time.
As soon as the song ended, Carolina hit play again. She couldn’t resist. She needed to know and understand every single to word, to find all the deeper meaning in this song and to understand what could possibly make Taylor feel this way.
There was an obvious answer, but she refused to believe it. It couldn’t be her. She couldn’t make anyone, especially not Taylor Fucking Hanson, feel so deeply.
She was just some girl from West Virginia. No one special. There was no possible way the song could be about her. If anything, it was as though Taylor had crawled inside her own mind and written every line of how she felt about him. Whatever it meant, whoever it was truly about, the song left her feeling raw and exposed, and yet it was all she ever wanted to listen to again for the rest of time.
The sound of heavy footsteps behind her, loud enough to break through the song on its third repeat, reminded Carolina that she was at work. She couldn’t lose herself in Taylor like this when she was on the clock. She had to remain professional and do her job.
Like that, the spell was broken. She closed the tab and pulled out her earbuds carefully, bracing herself for the cacophony of sound from her coworkers. There was no good way to prepare herself for it; it was like ripping off a bandaid. Just like that, she was back in her real life, the feelings Taylor had awoken in her buried back deep down where they belonged.
Realizing what time it was, Carolina stood up and grabbed her purse. She poked her head into the branch manager’s office and let her know that she was stepping out to get lunch. There was a taco truck that parked down the street from the library on Tuesdays, and Carolina had a serious weakness for their chicken nachos. It was just a little early for lunch, and so there wasn’t a line; she picked up her nachos quickly and made her way back to the small park adjacent to the library.
The park was surprisingly and pleasantly, uncrowded, too. Carolina supposed everyone was still inside the library, and she couldn’t really blame them, considering how hot it was. There were times when Carolina wondered why she had moved to such a hot state, but her trip back east at Thanksgiving had reminded her that she wasn’t cut out for cold weather, either. In so many ways, she liked neutrality, status quo. Anything that disrupted her usual routine, anything extreme at all, was more than she could handle.
She pushed her nachos aside, finding her appetite abandoning her as it often did when her emotions were too much. The bright side, Carolina thought, was that she might drop a few pounds if this feeling stuck around for a while. She took a sip of her soda, then pulled out her phone and called Laura, hoping she was on her own lunch break and could talk.
“I’m guessing you listened to the song,” Laura said, skipping any hellos or pleasantries all together.
“I did,” Carolina admitted. “It’s not—I mean, I’m just hearing what I want to hear in it, right? And I don’t even know if it’s really what I want to hear, but… do you know what I mean? Am I making sense at all?”
Laura laughed softly. “You aren’t, but I still know what you mean.”
“And what do you think about it?”
“Honestly, I really don’t know,” Laura replied. “I mean, he posted a status just a few days ago about working on a new song, which I assume is this one, but it doesn’t mean that he just got inspired to write it, you know? It could have been in the works for a while.”
“But the timing—I mean, what we assume is the timing. To post something like this right now…”
“It does make you wonder,” Laura finished for her. “I think all we can do is see what happens when we meet up with him next week.”
“I can’t believe it’s so soon,” Carolina remarked.
“I know,” Laura said. “Oh, but hey, that reminds me. I talked to Mia and she wants to get together for lunch one day, too. And you know Taylor can be flaky, so I thought maybe we could all get together. He might be more likely to show up if she’s going to be there, too. And it could be good to have some extra time with her, to talk to her…”
“She doesn’t know, does she? About me and him?”
“Nut unless you’ve told her.”
“I haven’t said a word. I mean, I haven’t even spoken to her since Los Angeles. All she knows is that I saw him the day before everything started, but what she knows about what happened after that… I guess it depends on what Taylor has told her.”
“I don’t think Taylor would talk about that sort of thing,” Laura replied.
“Not even to Mia? They’re best friends. And even if not to her, maybe to Zac. I don’t know.”
“There’s really no way of knowing without asking, and I don’t think you want to do that,” Laura said.
“No,” Carolina replied. “But I do think it could be good to have her tag along for this lunch thing. Get a read on what she might know and what she might think of the whole situation. Like, just to spend some time with him without crazy fans around, but with normal people who might see what I see in the way he acts around me, you know? I think that could be good.”
“Well, what I think is that you should send him a text or something and make sure he knows you’re coming to Griddle Café with us. I think he’ll be more excited about it if he knows that.”
“You think?” Carolina asked, her self-doubt creeping back in like it had never left.
“Absolutely,” Laura replied. “After he posted that song today? You need to let him know you’re thinking about him, too. And text me later and let me know what he says.”
Carolina let out a weak laugh. “Yeah, alright. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Later, girly.”
After hanging up her phone, Carolina forced herself to choke down a few more nachos. She found that she could barely taste them at all. She had no clue what to say to Taylor, but her lunch break was nearly over and it seemed like a now or never situation, before she lost all semblance of nerve.
Hey, just wanted to make sure the plans with Laura were still on for next weekend. Griddle Café on Saturday, I think she said?
Not knowing what else to do while she waited for a response, Carolina stood up and threw her nachos into the nearest trash can. She hated the way it felt, like she couldn’t breathe, while she waited for Taylor to respond to her text. She didn’t want to throw the l word around, didn’t truly believe you could feel that way on your own—wasn’t it a thing two people did together?—but the way he made her feel was like nothing else. And she wasn’t entirely sure it was a feeling she liked.
Saturday? I thought she said Sunday. I can probably still make it, but I’ll let you know. It’ll be good to hang again.
And just like that, with a few meaningless words, her heart dropped to her feet. It took so little for him to completely undo her, and she was beginning to hate it.
If the new song was inspired by anything real at all, she was certain it was her own blatantly obvious feelings, not Taylor’s.
You should just take a look at yourself
Then you’d see you should leave me in hell
Oh yeah
You got into my heart
You got into my soul
Now all the walls I built around myself
Are all covered in holes
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you out of my heart
I can’t get you, get you out of my heart