1 (jaylor) wisteria hearts and caged folk songs

chapter seventeen.

Standing in this room were all the people that she loved the very most in this world. And she wouldn't want to change anything about it. Because the love that was in the air filled the hollow space left in her heart from Karlie's betrayal. And that was nice. It filled the void, that deep chasm that Adam had created within her. It helped her feel like maybe the rest of her life was waiting for her.

"Oh, Taylor this is lovely!" Taylor had decided a few years back that she would give her friends and family homemade Christmas presents. They were more special, and they also made Taylor happier. She had money - of course she did. And she often brought little bits and pieces for her friends and family throughout the year. There was something nice about receiving a homemade gift - even when Adam hated the gifts she'd made herself. She'd hand embroidered a silk blanket for her mom, putting her initial in the corner, along with a bunch of little light green leaves. She was really proud of it. For her father, she'd gone along the same road, by hand embroidering several different handkerchiefs. He was just as happy with these, and she was pleased by their reactions. For Austin, she'd carefully taken the time to recreate one of his favourite pictures of the two of them, she'd painted it herself. She couldn't help but feel scared for him to turn the painting around for the rest of them to see. But Joe's face just broke into a smile. 

She loved painting. She loved that Joe loved painting. She also loved how even though she found herself worrying that Joe would think her paintings were silly, he never did. He always made out as if she could paint just as well as he could. She'd worked on these while Adam was away, because Adam hated the mess of painting. He hated the smell of paint, hated the bright colours and thought it was pointless. She always had to scrub herself raw to make sure that there was no evidence of it on her skin. She had to light candles and ensure that when he walked into the room, he had no idea that she'd been painting.
Then, it came to Joe, opening his present. The person she was the most worried about - would he think that it was stupid? Would he think that she should never have done this? Regret the fact that he'd let her into his life?
"You have to open the present first," Taylor told him. She was beaming, Joe had noticed. That sparkle in her eyes had come back, and he could tell that she wasn't faking any of her smiles today. He could also tell that she was a little nervous for him to open her gift - did she realise that he felt the same way?
"And then you can open the card." She told him.

Joe didn't even know what to expect as he unwrapped the present. He saw a notebook, and he looked up at Taylor with a smile. He loved notebooks. He loved the fact that she knew he was always running out of them.
When he opened it, two sheets of paper fell out.
He took one glance at them, before his eyes began to water. "No way! You didn't!" They were plane tickets. To London. To his home country, to his family.

On the first page, Taylor had drawn a plane and a globe, and the next page, there were those words he'd longed for. The Lake District. His eyes widened. He pulled Taylor into him, wrapping his arms around her. The fact that she'd listened to everything he'd said, she'd listened to how captivated he was by the group of poets, and she'd paid for tickets.

"You really didn't have to, Taylor-"
"Oh hush," Taylor laughed. "Of course I did. We leave on the eighth. And we get to do everything we talked about - the lakes, and Ashdown Forest, and there's time to see your parents." Joe didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve her. He couldn't think of a single thing he'd done that had let him deserve to have Taylor Swift buy him a Christmas present. "And I've written down a list of hikes we can do, and we're staying in a little cottage in Windermere, and there's so many things we can do."
It was Taylor's turn to wipe a tear from his eyes.
"Taylor, you really, really didn't have to. But thank you so much. I don't know that I can thank you enough. There aren't the words to describe it."
"You don't have to thank me." Taylor said with a smile. "I hope that you like it... I tried to fit everything we'd talked about into a month."
Joe was speechless. She'd planned all of this? He felt like his gift paled in comparison. He was almost slightly embarrassed of the fact that she'd gone and done all of this, and his gift was nowhere as extreme.
"That's going to be fun!" Andrea exclaimed, and Joe smiled.
He opened the card, and was greeted by one of Taylor's drawings. It was a watercolour drawing - and he loved it. Taylor Swift was a woman of a great many talents. In it, were words in Taylor's curly handwriting.