She looked out the window and glanced down at the crowded New York City streets. Christmas time - the bright lights and gingerbread cookies, was just around the corner. Two weeks away. Nearly her birthday. It should have been the season to celebrate, not the season of darkness. Of despair and desolate memories. It should have been the season for pumpkin spice lattes and Christmas trees, lights and decorations. Instead, it was a time she'd much rather skip entirely. It was a time she wished she could erase, a time she wished she did not know like the back of her hand.
The woman with golden curls leaned against the glass, sighing. Her attention shifted to the pattern her breath made against it. The way it fogged up, blocking her view. The way it made her feel sheltered from the world, like she was alone. As if she didn't live in one of the most chaotic cities on the planet. She could almost imagine she was trapped in a snow globe, an hourglass because today was one of those days where she was at risk of falling right through. Cracking at the edges, breaking beyond repair. Broken bones and cracked skin and a shattered heart. They were things that had become all too familiar to her these days - even when she tried to ignore them. Even when she tried to fake a smile, laugh, or pretend that she was fine. She wasn't fine.
She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured the place she wanted to be - a frozen lake, ice singing around her, the snow falling to the ground and opened them again. That was her happy place. That was the place that Taylor went to when she wanted this whole thing to disappear. She'd seen it once, in a painting a long time ago. The pink velvet chair that she was sitting on? She wanted it gone. But it was her only comfort. Her only hope. One of the things that kept her holding on. The only thing that she had to cling onto, the only place of solace.
Her phone buzzed, and she left the comfort of the window. Of her pink velvet chair.
Taylor had always come to that window when she felt like she didn't want to do it anymore, when it all got too much for her. Her job, her life, her love... It was overwhelming. So she often came here, to this window with the pink velvet chair that she'd grown to love, but also despised so profoundly. She almost felt like it kept her safe. It helped her to remember the young girl that had walked into New York that first time and written a song in the kitchen because she never wanted to grow up. Because she'd just moved to this city when she'd purchased the chair. She'd been so young, so naive... so hopeful. But it betrayed her - the number of times she'd been crying in that very spot, the number of times she'd been aching and wanting it all to come to an end.
Oh, how the times had changed since then since her first night alone in this big, wide city. That little girl - who was she? Where was she now? So scared to speak out and use her voice, adored by millions, crumbling under the pressure of an eating disorder. Hands wandering her body at all hours, scars on her arm that never get the chance to heal. Hair recovering from being bleached, her eyes tired and hopeless.
The window often reminded her why she came here in the first place.
It was the city of dreams, after all.
Some days she could see those dreams, her dreams streaking across the sky in a thousand different specks of glitter, and those are the days when she feels alive and in love with life. But those days are few and far between. Most of the time it felt as if her dreams lay helpless on the pavement, being crushed under stilettos and sneakers. Her sidewalk chalk had been erased as if it had never existed... as if her fantasies had disintegrated.
I'll be back in ten, the message said, and Taylor brought her knees to her chest. She did love him, she did. He brought her chocolates when they'd been in a fight - even though she'd never eat them. He would buy her flowers on her birthday and wanted to spend all his time with her. He brought her necklaces and bracelets that she left in her jewellery box.
Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris. The biggest celebrity duo there was. The two of them were the dream couple. The couple everyone wanted to be. The couple whose names were plastered across every magazine, trending on Twitter and everything in between. They were adored by everyone, young and old. Everyone knew everything about them, about their holiday vacations, about their favourite restaurant... they couldn't escape it. They knew where their favourite restaurant was, or where they liked to shop for their groceries. They knew absolutely everything - and there was only one part of their lives that the public didn't know.
Adam was great... most of the time. She was happy. Most of the time. Most of the time he was what she'd always thought she wanted in a person. But there were times that almost broke her, too. She didn't reply to his message and didn't make a move to begin tidying as the second text had told her to do. Tidy the place before I get back.
Taylor had done what she so often did and had convinced herself that this was normal. It was completely normal for him to be so... demanding of her. Of her body and her mind. Even when the little voice echoed in the back of her mind, she pushed it away. It was normal. It had to be. She couldn't afford to realise that it wasn't normal and it shouldn't hurt like that. Taylor didn't know what she'd do if she allowed herself to feel the pain. So? She pushed it down and refused to acknowledge it.
She just figured that she might have been a little more sensitive lately. So much had happened that she didn't even want to admit it just yet. Mentally, she couldn't unlock those parts of her just yet. She shoved them deep down inside of her, and she threw away the key. It was easier that way. To not acknowledge that pain. To pretend it wasn't there, that she wasn't fading away. That she wasn't merely a skeleton of the vibrant woman she had been in the past.
She'd been feeling like this a lot lately. Like she was falling further and further underwater and decided to stop struggling. Life was heavy and it hurt. It was eternal winter with neverending thunderstorms and torrential rain. It never got easier, and there was never any sunlight. It all felt too hard. She hadn't even had the energy to write music. A few, occasional lyrics would come to mind, but she wouldn't ever write them down. Nothing that made her feel like she was in love with life, in love with words. Nothing that made her sparkle. Because if Adam were to see these words, the ones with sharp, pointy edges... who knew what he'd do? She didn't want to find out. So she kept it all on the inside. She knew eventually she'd have to bring herself to write - that was her job. Writing songs and performing them for the world... Soon, the time would come when she'd have to book time at the studio.
Taylor was still sitting there, knees up to her chest when she heard the click of the keys unlocking the door. She was familiar with that sound by now, and her heartbeat doubled in speed, and she stood up, her hands shaking. She moved away from the pink chair a few steps as if that would make him see that she wasn't there. Because he hated it when she sat there. There weren't that many things he loved, actually. But she didn't let herself think about that. That was one of the many things that she kept locked in a cage inside of her chest.
"What the fuck is this?" Adam's voice called through the hallway as he came into view. He saw the mess, the clothes she was supposed to iron, the dishes scattered around the place. The layer of dust has swallowed up everything in the room. "I thought I said that you needed to tidy this, you know it's important to have a tidy home. It's good for our creativity. Our songwriting." He stared at her and she felt herself begin to crumble. Her hands trembled even more, and her words were lost. They always seemed to be, when he looked at her like that. He never used to be like this. Never used to scare her like this. "You know I like it better when it's clean."
"I'm sorry," Taylor said, trying to sound confident, but he was staring her down and as always, making her feel like she might be a little figure in a snow globe.
This has to be normal, Taylor reminded herself. Again.
"I couldn't get it all done-"
"Couldn't get it all done? Or you couldn't be bothered? Honestly, baby. All you've been doing is staring out that fucking window all day every day." He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. The tiny motion made her flinch. She took a step backwards when he stepped closer to her. His hands ran through his hair, trying to contain his anger. "I leave to go to the studio - you're sitting in that fucking chair and when I come home again - you're still there."
He hadn't gotten angry with her like this in a while. It had been a week since he'd raised her voice at her. It scared her and now that he'd stepped closer to her, she could smell the alcohol that entwined in his clothes and his breath. He'd been at the studio because like herself, he was a singer, a producer and a DJ. All this time, he'd managed to write things while Taylor had been staring blankly at the skyline. He did not struggle to get his mind to cooperate.
"Have you been drinking?" She asked him, her eyebrows knitted together. Drinking was bad. Drinking meant that he got angry and - she knew it was going to happen before his hand struck her.
"Don't you dare fucking question me!" He roared at her and clutched onto her arms with such force that she was knocked backwards, falling to the ground. She tried to catch herself on the dining table but missed, with the corner digging right into her ribs. It would bruise. He pulled her upward again and held her chin in his hands.
"If you can fucking stare out a window all day - then I am allowed a fucking drink to get me through the shit I have to put up with." His hand connected with her cheek and she stumbled backwards again. She knew better than to cry. He hated it when she cried. So, she bit her cheek and caught her balance. She stood back up. "Apologise."
"I'm sorry," She told him, fighting back tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Adam. It won't happen again, I promise."
"Sorry for what?" He leeched this out of her, and she felt herself teetering on the edge again.
"I am sorry for... for..." Her words caught in her throat and she couldn't breathe.
"Being useless? Being only fucking good for your voice?" The words cut her like a knife. They worked their way into her head and she couldn't get them out. They kept getting louder and louder, and there were more voices yelling at her. She was sure that above all of this, Adam was still calling her, still saying horrible things that she couldn't help but soak up.
"Fuck off," Adam told her, as he went over to the couch and picked up the TV remote.
Taylor just stood there, her fingers trembling. She couldn't move. Couldn't think. She was so cold. Oh, so cold. She walked towards the bedroom, and into the bathroom, locking it behind her. Behind the door, where Adam couldn't hear her, she turned the tap on and allowed herself to cry. She sank to her knees and her tears fell like comets out of the sky, her eyelids were so heavy and she desperately wanted relief from all this.
It was a bad habit. But bad habits were often incredibly hard to break.
She knew it was. She'd known it was the moment she did it the first time - the first time Adam had hit her. The first time she'd seen that other side of him. And now she couldn't get out of it. She was trapped. And when you're trapped in a cage like this, you find any little escape that you possibly can. She was used to it - having to find these different escapes. As she thought about that girl - about herself - when she'd first arrived in the big city, the girl who escaped through the keys of a piano... and looked at herself in the mirror, blade in hand... she cried harder. How had she gone from someone who wrote songs about pain, to a person who scarred herself in an attempt to hide the mental agony she was feeling?
They were the feelings, the memories that would stay with her forever.
As she found her escape, she wondered if she would ever experience love outside those walls, those fucking white walls that would forever haunt her dreams. Those white walls with a thousand pairs of eyes glaring at her, judging her for every wrong step she takes. There was the pink velvet chair sitting in the corner that she cried herself to sleep on the second time he hit her and every day since then. There was the dining table that he broke Taylor's favourite mug on because she'd spilt water on him by accident.
There was a painting, one of happy days and flower fields that she'd done before things got bad. There was a stain on the carpet from where he knocked over a glass vase and made her pick up the pieces. The piano, one of the secret escapes she'd sometimes found - the piano with a missing key because she'd played a song that was too sad. Then there were the escapes that came like a knife in the back, the ones that he feared most. The ones that meant she was taken away from him - through moments she could find given a sharp edge, a microphone or a map. Those were the escapes he feared most of all.
He couldn't live without her, he said. He needed her to survive, he'd whisper to Taylor in the dead of night. He'd die if he had to live without her, he'd murmur. He kept the windows closed, even in summer. He didn't want her to escape. He didn't want her to breathe in the freedom of the world below. Sometimes... on days like today, she would beg the universe to make it end - sometimes she'd press the blade too deep into her skin, trying desperately to make it all go away... in any way possible. Those were the only escapes that she could think of, the only ones that would offer her complete freedom.
After all, she wouldn't get far if she tried to run away, he was faster than her...he'd drag her back here, to that bed, with the silk sheets and the light grey blankets. He'd drag her back here to do unspeakable things. She remembered what she told the public, the paparazzi and the interviewers.
"When I am with him, I don't feel like I'm me."
Everyone thinks that it doesn't happen to people in the spotlight, that they'd be able to see it. But look at her. She's an artwork of distorted colours, a Halloween nightmare, standing in a blinding spotlight. And there was no one around for miles to notice her tears.
She knew how to hide the scars and the bruises - it was second nature, now. She knew to use a concealer that is three shades lighter to hide the obsidian circles under her eyes when she is out in public. She knew how to smile, how to distract people from asking too many questions. She knew the best lies when the bruises were too bad that she couldn't hide them, or when she couldn't avoid staying home.
Taylor scrunched up her face in pain - that sweet relief that she'd been craving. She needed this. It was the only way to make everything outside of this bathroom go away. Her phone rang in her pocket, and she winced as she pulled it out, seeing her Mom's name flashing on the screen. She felt herself cave in. She couldn't hear her mother's voice right now, couldn't bear to answer her questions, but this would be the fifth time today she'd let it go to voicemail, and she knew that her mother would worry.
Her Mom, Andrea, tended to worry about everything and always focused on the worst-case scenarios of any given event.
"Hey, Mom!" She plastered on a smile so that she sounded happy.
"Hey, baby. How are you?" The question that Taylor dreaded the most.
"Good... How are you? How's Dad?"
"Well... he is currently asleep on the couch... and I am just about to get ready for bed. I just wanted to give you a call to see how you were going - I haven't heard from you in a week, baby. I got worried. It's not like you." Her mother sounded hurt, and Taylor added that to the list of things that she couldn't do right. The list was getting longer and longer each and every day.
"Sorry, Mom. I've... I've been really busy at the studio and I've barely had time to breathe." Another lie. She'd gotten so good at lying like this. She hadn't set foot in a recording studio in nine months.
"Oh! How exciting! Have you got anything I can hear yet?" She asked and Taylor began to feel herself relax a little.
"No, not yet. We're... uh, just in the beginning stages. But anyway - I'd better let you get to bed, I am about to go have a shower..."
"Call soon, okay? I miss you." Taylor bit her lip when her mother said this.
"You have no idea how much I miss you too, Mom." This sent a fresh wave of salty tears streaming down her cheeks. "I love you."
"Come and visit soon, yeah? I love you too, baby."
Taylor crept out of the bathroom, no evidence of what she'd just done left behind. Because that was another thing that drove Adam mad. She crept into the bedroom and quickly got changed into her pyjamas, before crawling into bed and sleeping the pain away.
The pain had subsided by the morning, and she was relieved to see that her scars hadn't bled through their bandages and that Adam was obviously out. She didn't eat breakfast anymore, didn't really eat lunch or dinner, either. Not after he made that comment about how her dress clung a little too tightly in all the wrong places. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a random purple t-shirt from the back of her closet. Taylor walked into the bathroom, took one look at herself in the mirror, and realised how gaunt she looked now.
At least my dress won't cling anymore, she thought to herself as she applied her make-up. Today, she had to go out. She had a few Christmas presents that she had to go and buy, and although she dreaded it, she felt relieved that she finally had a reason to convince herself to leave the house. She knew that a person should not have to feel a sense of relief in the fact that there were no bruises on their face. That Adam had left it alone, that the only bruises on her body were ones that she could hide with a scarf and a long-sleeved coat. She knew that she should not feel that way - but still, she was relieved.
The cold nipped at her as she stepped outside, but she didn't mind, because the cold and dreary weather had chased away the majority of the paparazzi. There were a couple of camera clicks here and there, but other than that, there was only the distant hum of the city of dreams.
It didn't take her very long to find what she was looking for and decided to stop for coffee. She didn't even need to check how many calories are in it, she knew that already - but she told herself that she would walk home and that would make up for a portion of it. She would climb the stairs up to her apartment instead of the elevator, and she wouldn't have lunch. She sat down and watched the people stream past the window. Like her, they were out getting Christmas presents. There was nothing quite like New York City at Christmas time.
Did their relationships hurt as much as hers? Was their skin covered in cuts and bruises? Were they hiding secrets and bruises?
"Taylor?" A British voice said behind her and she flinched. She turned around, and her eyes meet a pair of ocean blue eyes. "What are you doing here?"
She knew this voice. She knew this person. She spent a lot of the Met Gala watching him out of the corner of her eyes as she danced with somebody else. She spent sleepless nights wondering about him and imagining his lips against somebody else's. The soft look on his face had captivated her, even if he'd never looked at her the whole evening. His eyes were blue and they made her want to smile. She wanted him. That night, as she stared across the room at him, she had wanted his lips against hers - until she'd met Adam. He'd been in her dreams ever since, her refuge and hopes.
His smile made her smile - not a forced smile. Her mouth naturally curved upwards as she took him in. Something that hadn't happened in a long time. She hadn't smiled naturally in months. Taylor motioned to the seat in front of her, and he sat down with his own hot drink. For some reason, she couldn't stop smiling. She wasn't used to feeling this way.
"I'm currently Christmas shopping. Well... not right this second, obviously... but..." She cut herself off and smiled again. Cursing in her head, because why would he ever care about what she was doing here? Why would he even care about what she had to say?
"What about you?" She asked, the smile not leaving her face - not even for a moment. While he was talking, she gently ensured that her bandage was covered, that the bruises were covered and that the scarf was hiding her neck. She did it subtly, pulling down her sleeve so that when she reached for her drink it didn't ride up. His eyes were so blue, his smile so warm and his aura radiated that of the golden sun.
"How interesting." He observed, not taking his eyes off of her for a second. "See, I always thought that you would be the type to have their Christmas shopping done by the end of October at the latest. You seem like an incredibly organised person." He murmured with a smile. This made her laugh a little. Because until Adam, she had been that person. It had been such a long time since she'd last laughed that her chest hurt.
"I... I just moved here. I am here to get a much-needed coffee after rearranging my entire bookshelf."
Taylor laughed, and she'd forgotten what it was like to be happy
"What? It is very draining. Books are heavy."
"What do you like reading?" Taylor asked him, and he smiled.
"Poetry," Joe told her with a warm grin.
"That's very broad." Taylor couldn't stop smiling.
"I will read any sort of poetry, trust me." He chuckled, his accent soft and smooth.
Taylor sat there, talking to him about poetry, and realised that it felt as if she had finally seen the sun, after months in an eternal, dark winter.