Love, Taylor | TS

Seven

December 2003

We were sitting up in my room, studying for our midterm exams. Taylor was sprawled on her stomach on my bed while I was sitting at my desk, flipping through an unassigned book. The Agatha Christie book I found in my mom's collection was much more interesting than The Lord of the Flies that we were supposed to be reviewing.

We were sharing a bag of Doritos between us, the last of it left sitting by the foot of my twin bed. Taylor reached for one and then wiped her fingers on her jeans after eating it.

"Can I ask you a question?"

I turned around in my swivel chair, leaving my finger in the spot I stopped at. "Shoot!"

"How stupid would it be if I dropped out of school and just played shows at the café until I'm like famous enough?" She asked, closing her math textbook exasperatedly. "I mean, I don't need trigonometry to write songs!"

I smiled amusedly, returning to my novel. "You know what you should do? Write a song about trigonometry. Then, submit that as your midterm. Mr. P will have to give you an A!"

Taylor burst out laughing and tossed her used tissue at me. It landed right in my book. With a roll of my eyes, I held the book on top of the small garbage bin under my desk and let the napkin fall in there.

"It works!" I insisted, my smile widening. "All you have to do is rhyme angle with angel. Or write about an acute angel. Ha ha. Get it?"

Taylor stopped laughing. "Dude, that was a terrible joke!"

And again, we were laughing. "And then, you can put it on a CD and pass it to like radio shows and they'll have to play it. You'll be Nashville's number 1 overnight sensation."

"Shut up!" Taylor giggled, throwing a pillow at me this time. I dodged it by a hair but it still hit the reading lamp that clattered against the wall. Taylor sat up quickly to check the damage. "Crap, did I break it?"

Thankfully, the lamp was fine. "Nah, you're good."

She sighed in relief and threw herself on her back, her feet brushing against the carpet. I went back to my book, finishing just one page before she spoke again.

"Can I ask you something else?"

"Another one?" I groaned, pretending to be annoyed.

"Fine, I won't," Taylor chuckled but when I turned to look at her, she was chewing on her bottom lip, deep in thought.

"You can ask me anything," I reassured her, putting my bookmark in so that I could give her my full attention.

"My birthday's this Saturday."

"Oh?" I was surprised. She had never mentioned it before. "Happy early birthday, Tay! Are you going to do anything?"

She shrugged, tapping her fingers against her belly, trying to act nonchalantly. "Not really. We always go out for dinner, the four of us. I think Dad wants to take us to that new sushi place in town. He said his friend from work tried it last week and it was great."

She had made a good amount of friends at school since she had come here. At least, a lot more than me. She was my only friend, actually, and we occasionally hung out with Abigail from English class. Taylor more so than me. I would have thought that she would want to have some kind of get-together with everyone to celebrate her birthday. She was pretty sociable.

"That sounds cool. I hope you have fun!"

"Thanks," she smiled at me before sitting up on her elbows. "Rory, do you like sushi?"