SIXTEEN

"Did you ever hear about

the girl

who got frozen?"

———

March 11th, 2018

Fourteen days.

Fourteen days in a row, Taylor replayed their last conversation.

She was gone.

Taylor would wake up in the middle of the night and habitually check the empty side of her bed. There was no trace of her; no lingering scent of her perfume on the sheets or a strand of hair. Taylor saw an indentation where there wasn't one. If she stared at the spot long enough, she could almost convince herself that she was right there laying at her side.

Taylor texted her after she left that Sunday morning.

The girl promised she was okay.

Before she left, Taylor let her cry. For some reason, she felt like that was exactly what she needed. Of course, it wasn't the first time she'd seen the brunette in tears. But with Taylor's unspoken permission, and one of her hands on the other woman's arm, Dorothea shattered right before her eyes.

It was one of the most difficult things she ever had to experience. Getting publicly ridiculed and nearly exiled from her career paled in comparison to watching someone completely fall apart. It made Taylor feel selfish. Here she was, fantasizing about possibly going on tour with this absolutely gorgeous, perfect girl. Here she was, envisioning their future through the lens of what was to come in her life. How could she have possibly imagined that she could just pluck someone from their own complex, detailed history and dreams and take it all for herself?

After she left, Taylor cried. When the singer closed the door, she kept her hand gripped on the handle, fighting every bit of herself not to open it and pull the girl back into her arms. Once she finally allowed herself to retreat back into her apartment, she found herself on the couch with unstoppable tears. What started as quiet sadness turned into being unable to control her breathing. Through a blurry lens of tears, Taylor had grabbed and dropped her phone multiple times.

She could have stopped her, but why didn't she? She told Dorothea she'd be there for her. She repeated, like the worst song on the radio, that the girl wasn't alone. But the girl said that she—understandably—needed space. She was still in the early stages of processing what pregnancy meant. She'd hardly had time between when they met and now to grasp that keeping her child meant a permanent detour from wherever her life was originally going. Taylor was right there with emotional support; right there to offer her a photography job and be sure she got paid what she deserved and then some to make sure her and her baby would be okay. But while those things helped, none of them could lessen the responsibility of carrying and raising a brand new, innocent life.

Dorothea had texted her three days later and told her she was flying to Dallas.

Taylor completely understood, but news like that wouldn't fill the hole inside of her. Though the girl told her it was only temporary, it only made it that much harder to keep going. Would it be a few days? A week? A month? The longer she stayed and the fewer messages they exchanged, the less it seemed true. Taylor wanted to be patient. She knew optimism was essential because she also knew that the girl from The Pearl was forever tattooed in the most sensitive corner of her heart.

Taylor tried to find the courage to call, but it always felt too soon. When she picked up the phone, she imagined the girl in the middle of a deep conversation with her mother. Or laughing in the passenger seat beside her sister. All she could picture was the brunette glowing in the Texas sun, radiating with relief that she was surrounded by the people who knew her best. Surely, she'd realize that raising a child took a village and it made the most sense to return to where she knew she'd get support.

They had only known each other for two months, but Taylor wished that she could be that support. She wanted to help Dorothea so she wouldn't lose her. Was that selfish? It was hard to say. But one thing Taylor knew was that emotions could hurt. And when they hurt, people did whatever it took to make it stop.

But how could she possibly offer herself to be a part of such a life-altering circumstance, that she had no part of to begin with?

She couldn't.

So she waited.

And waited.

It started to feel as though she was stuck in time. Frozen in the moment that only went further into the past with every passing second. She still woke up each day and showered and made coffee and fed her cats and went to meetings and played music and yet everything inside of her was trapped in the last time she and Dorothea were sitting side by side. It was an agonizing thing to dwell on. But it was just as agonizing to wait or to just fucking forget the hazel-eyed girl who stole her heart and took it South. The hole in Taylor was large and it ached and was sometimes unbearably cold, and all she saw was her heart in the sunshine and drunken heat of Texas, taken unbeknownst by Dorothea in the most savage robbery the singer would ever experience.

And so the hole grew bigger.

And as it grew, Taylor found more bits of herself vanishing into the endless void beneath her skin. Piece by piece, she dissolved, until the day before she was due to leave for Los Angeles. What Taylor couldn't fill herself with was shoved into her suitcases. She had an entire wardrobe in her Beverly Hills home, and yet for some reason it seemed essential to stuff every possible piece of clothing into those bags.

When Taylor came to her senses, she found herself staring at the three bloated suitcases. Like her, they were frozen in the middle of her bedroom; waiting for what could be ten minutes or forever.

But Taylor couldn't possibly risk forever.

And so instead of going to LA, she took herself and her three ridiculous suitcases on a one-way flight to Dallas, Texas.