Long Story Short - Taylor Swift

Chapter 2

@tamk12 get a piece of paper baby ❤️

| (18/2) | (8-7 . 13) | (18/2 . 7x2) | (12 . 27-12 . 22 . 3+2) | (30-7 . 18/2 . 10x2 . 8) | (25 . 27-12 . 7x3) |

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Taylor sat before her vanity, staring at the many pallets, brushes, lipstick choices set before her. It should have been simple, some light makeup for a night she didn't want to go through, and waterproof mascara for the aftermath.

She had this feeling in her stomach that she needed to end things tonight but she didn't know how to. Joe was so sweet and she had been with him for almost four years but it just didn't feel right anymore.

Months ago she would have died for him with no second thought, she would have defended him from anyone, been in the front row of every movie premiere and married him with a paper ring, but now... almost a week from their four year anniversary that fateful September, she had to let him go.

Maybe if one thing had been different, everything would have been different that day, but their story was coming to an end.

She had held auditions for the 'willow' music video about a week prior, and she hadn't found a single guy she liked for the role. When all of them resembled Joe's eye or hair colour, deep voice or accent, she realized that the guy she had been singing "that's my man" about, shouldn't be her man anymore. She wanted the furthest thing from him.

Taylor finally finished her makeup, put on a simple black dress and some short heels. She was going to dinner with Joe's family and would end it with him on the way home. She couldn't do it beforehand, he had been looking forward to this night for weeks apparently. She wanted to give him one last good memory.

It was all he talked about. Taylor was going to love dinner, his mom was making her favourite. His brother was bringing the good wine, his friends were going to be there too. It was a small party in his hometown.

She did love him, she did. She liked the way he smiled and his dimples showed heavily. She liked how we could play the piano with her any night of the week and how he didn't mind the fans who thought she and Karlie Kloss, her ex, were still together. She wasn't even out of the closet as bisexual to anyone other than her immediate family and closest friends. She loved him, she did. She just wasn't good for him any longer.

At least, she didn't think she was.

"Are you ready to go, love?" Joe asked from the doorway of the bedroom Taylor was sitting in at his home in London. She always called it his, it really never felt like hers, or theirs. She did live there, kind of. She had a closet full of clothes, an end table with her books and journals in it. She had a toothbrush, and she used to wear his sweaters to sleep and cuddle into him at night.

The clothes had slowly been disappearing, she had been sending them in small amounts with the care packages she sent to her parents, brother. She just tucked some her favourites in, just so that they would still be there for her when the toothbrush got thrown out, when the journals got a little dog-eared in her bags and the only thing she wore to sleep would be the frame of a woman who had felt like she had wasted almost four years.

She loved him, the past-tense of that word is important. If she didn't love him at some point, she wouldn't walk away now. She didn't deserve how he smiled at her, how he was just too perfect. Taylor had to walk away, it was the only thing that made sense every time she opened a bottle of wine and drank the last bit in one gulp, letting the carbonation scrape down her throat.

"Yeah," she replied softly, turning and forcing a smile at the only man she could say she really had ever been in love with. He nodded, his eyebrows slightly creased as he fixed the cuffs of his light blue button-up, tucked under a sleek black suit jacket and brown leather shoes.