Love, Taylor | TS

Forty

i wanted to torture you guys some more but, i realised, by posting this chapter, i would be doing just that!!

i love y'all 😭 thanks for reading and supporting this story

also, yes taylor ran away bc she's scared bc she read the postcard that rory loves her if you didnt catch that altho it should have been clear okay anyway

THROWBACK TIME!

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October 2008

The last person I expected to see standing outside my dorm room was Taylor. She never told me she was coming. As far as I was concerned, since our last phone call, she was still in Los Angeles. She had this red carpet thing and then this TV interview thing and then she was celebrating a friend's birthday there. She had a lot of new friends over there. She asked me to join her at least for a weekend, but I couldn't make it because of my midterms. Plus, getting to LA was a little out of budget. I barely had enough to make it to Nashville for Christmas and feed myself. Transportation was expensive as hell during the holidays, but I did save up a good amount while working part-time waiting tables at a restaurant with other broke college students and off-broadway actors trying to land auditions.

Literally hours after submitting my last exam, there was a knock on my dorm room door while I was in the middle of a nap. I hadn't slept properly in days. Naturally, the first thing I wanted to do, of course, was sleep.

"Who the fuck is that?" Cas groaned from her own bed across the room from me as I pulled the blankets over my head.

"You get the door. I'm sleeping," I mumbled and with a groan, my college roommate got up and shuffled to the door.

"I swear if it's that Sarah girl from down the hall asking for shampoo again I'm going to give her Nair instead so she'll stop asking for it," Cas muttered and I couldn't help but laugh as she opened the door. "Why can't she get her own shampoo?"

"Hiiiiii Cas!"

I sat up abruptly as soon as I recognised Taylor's voice.

"Oh, it's you," Cas replied tiredly before jumping back into her own bed, leaving the door open. "Rory, there's a famous country singer here to see you."

Taylor stepped further into the room and grinned excitedly at me. "Hi!"

"Tay... what? What are you doing here?" I chuckled in disbelief as Taylor closed the door, kicked her boots off, and hopped over to my bed.

She wrapped me up in a tight hug, squealing in my ear. "Surprise! I thought I'd come and visit you since I literally haven't seen you properly in way too long."

"Yeah, you're too busy performing at award shows and doing interviews with big talkshow hosts and recording a whole new album to see me," I said, my grin widening as I hugged her back just as tightly. I had missed her so much; having her here didn't even seem real.

"Never too busy to stop by and spend the day with my favourite person on earth," Taylor replied, throwing us both back so we were lying down on our backs in my tiny single bed.

"How long are you staying?" I asked, running my finger over the silver bracelet she was wearing. The one I gave her about four years ago.

"Just until tomorrow afternoon," Taylor told me. "I had a photoshoot earlier this morning somewhere in the city that I totally, accidentally forgot to tell you about and totally not on purpose so that I could surprise you."