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And there she stood, as easily as if she had been there all throughout her life, blinking as the colours of the evening's sunset fueled her. She focused desperately on the sheer beauty of it all, the changing patterns of amber and golden light. Taylor inhaled, breath rattling against her ribcage, as though all the hurt and pain she'd been feeling had mingled with each deep inhale she took.
She knelt, eyes still concentrated deeply on the fading daylight before her, and thought back to her glimpse of relief, her images of joy that preceded her now. Her knuckles stung, and each part of her body still burned with the realisation that she may be cursed to sit and watch the sunset every day, all the time, for the rest of her life, because she had allowed something to slip through her hands again when the sky was decaying and fading into nothingness.
A crisp, forgotten silence filled her. Taylor knew, deep down, that evenings like these wouldn't be remembered in ten years, that all her hurt and anxiety would disperse and remove itself eventually. Yet, somehow, her deepest and most desperate fear of forgotten pain still stood. She could not help feeling like her heart was as bruised as it should be; each circulating notion of her mind was jagged, seared and pointed, but she enjoyed the fact that the pain could exist within her. It sat as easily as though she had taken a large part of herself away and left a small, insincere gap, strictly for nights like these.
She contemplated, for a brief moment, calling her back.
‘Stop, put me down!’ Her laugh was contagious, brimming in all directions, mixed with the salty air around her. She threw her head back, gripping tightly on the woman below her, as they spun over and over again.
‘Never!’ Karlie whispered, bringing their heads close together as she kissed Taylor, once, twice, three times.
The air was cold, perfect for early mornings like those, heart racing with pure enthusiasm and adrenaline.
Adrenaline, that was a hormone, wasn't it? She didn't know it as much as she did back then, not while kneeling at their old spot and treating herself like a victim of her own violence. All she felt was a dull dizziness, like standing up too fast.
‘I love you, do you know that?’ she whispered back, revelling in the pure, untouchable feeling of being as loved as she was in that moment.
Oh, I think she knows, Taylor remembered thinking. She knows as much as I do. She's as sure as I am. I'm insane, I love her so much.
Taylor shuddered and held her head in her hands, shaking from the force of such a breakdown. ‘Stop,’ she said to herself. ‘Stop, she's not coming back.’
The nighttime air was still, so easy to identify that Taylor wondered how she hadn't noticed it before. It was so still, so still that not a single breeze disrupted the dull moment of recognising pain and wishing for it further. Healthy people didn't want to be unhealthy, she remembered reading that before. Normal people. What part of abandoning the love of her life and pointing the knife at herself was normal?
‘I'm never ever ever leaving,’ Karlie said, laughing. ‘I'm going to attach myself to you, and you'll never be able to escape.’
I don't want to escape, Taylor remembered thinking. I never want to escape this feeling of high, endless love. ‘I don't want to,’ she said instead. ‘I love you.’
‘And I love you.’
Taylor huffed as she heard the shattered pieces of her heartbreak further, split like glass and pierce her internally, stabbing cruelly at all the delicate memories she had held onto for so long. She swore, throwing her arm at the ground and beseeching it to hurt her, hurt her as deeply as she felt the long-forgotten image of her lover, her girl, her one true love, her life and soul, the only remainder of herself that she could love.
‘I loved it when we were younger, when we first met.’
‘At the Victoria's Secret show?’
‘No,’ Taylor whispered, though she didn't elaborate, even if she wanted to. She wanted to tell Karlie that they met in the life before this one, and the one before that, and all the lives they had found each other in.
Karlie looked at her like she was made of glitter and kissed the top of her head gently. ‘I love you too.’
Taylor ran a desperate hand through her hair and then stood, reaching for Karlie, before she realised that she was no longer twenty-four and that Karlie Kloss would never return to her in the same way that she had from their past lives into that one. Nothing would ever be as beautiful as their souls finding one another, and the desperate yearning when they locked eyes, like, oh, yes, I've met you before, and I'm going to enjoy getting to know you all over again. Beautiful, incredible dreamgirl, why won't you kiss me and ruin my life? Please, please, ruin my life.
And she has gotten what she wanted. Her life was ruined. No amount of tears and breaking down would ever change that she had wished for it, yearned for it, begged for it, and whispered to each crevice of the earth that that was all she wanted. Beautiful, incredible dreamgirl, you've ruined my life, and now I wish that you had waited a little longer before doing so.
I wanted a little longer with you before you crushed me, as you did just now, Taylor thought to herself. Why couldn't you have destroyed me when we were a little bit older, when this situation had passed us and we were free?
‘You're in love with me,’ Karlie said, pressing closer to her as they lay, a few weeks later, as a hundred coffee cups sat around their shared room. ‘That's lame.’
Taylor giggled, kissing her lover on the cheek. ‘I'll write you the most beautiful song without ever saying ''I'm in love with you." How about that?’
Karlie smiled at her, sunbeams dancing within every part of her deeply orientated personality. ‘If you ever write me anything, I don't know how I'd ever be able to live my life normally. Your writing is pure poetry. If anyone else ever told me they were in love with me, their love would be minuscule in comparison to yours.’
‘Oh?’ Taylor replied, faking disinterest.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
‘I'm going to write you a million songs, one every day for the rest of my life. Some of them, I won't ever show to the public. They'll just be yours.’
She watched as the most beautiful human being in the world chuckled lightly, complimented her again, and kissed her. ‘That would be the best thing that would ever happen to me.’
‘You're the best thing that's ever happened to me,’ Taylor said, leaning and connecting their lips. When she pulled away, Karlie was looking at her like she was a monument, like she had single-handedly hung the stars and set fire to them.
Taylor stepped towards the sea in front of her and splashed salty water on her face to stop the terrible, painful feeling of suffocation in a wave of her most beloved memories.
She soaked her hair in all of it, dropped her arms into it and allowed each particle of her body to remember the moments that came when she felt the most pain of her life. Classical conditioning. Asocciating-based understanding. If I don't associate beaches and saltwater with heartbreak every day for the rest of my life, Taylor thought, I don't think I'll be able to come here ever again. I want to remind myself of this mistake and know it, over and over again, until it's all I can feel.
I love you.
I love you. I wish I did more.
Karlie Karlie Karlie, her brain whispered, as though still absorbed in the world she had give away. Taylor knew that if she ever saw Karlie again, it would be by chance or by forceful arrangement, but that didn't stop her wishing.
I wish I wasn't so scared, Karlie.
‘I wish I wasn't so scared,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘There's so many people.’
Karlie rolled her eyes playfully. ‘You always do this and you always kill it. Don't lie to me and tell me that you're going to mess up, because we both know that you're only going to break records and win awards. It all goes up from here.’