Flippant
by Nyssa Jayne
Taylor was always very flippant about our relationship. In the beginning, I was so positive that I was his Georgia leg-of-the-tour fling, until he rocked up at my prom, crowned me a princess and upstaged any traditional romance the event normally wouldn't have blessed me with. After that, Taylor would breezily admit to anyone who asked about us with, "I've been in love ever since I was seventeen."
That sentence, and others similar, always caught me off guard. Words like "love" required thought, planning, timing and warning, how could he just say them like he was commenting on the weather?
This made me worry about whether he actually meant the words.
I loved him like crazy. Even before the prom, he treated me like a princess when he was in town, something that the romantic within appriciated and adored. I wanted to be as careless as he was about expressing it, but I truly meant it and I wanted him to know that. Moments rarely arrived when I could tell him, but his replies seemed sincire enough when I did speak up.
"This album is annoying me," said Taylor once morning as we lounged about in bed.
"Why?" I asked, leaning over to grab my Pill packet.
"It should be out by now. I miss playing and touring." I paused for a moment.
News of the new album always made me nervous. I knew Taylor was a hard working musician, but it just happend that we'd been dating during a period where Taylor didn't have to work. A conflict waged between the band and the label. The album was finished, but the label didn't like it. No one wanted to compromise, so we left it to the managers and the lawyers to sort it out. I never thought about it, I spent winterbreak in LA with Taylor and the band when they recorded it, but other than that, I had nothing to do with this album. Taylor had always had this time to spend with me.
"What will hapen when you go on tour... y'know? What will happen to us?"
"You'll stay here. I don't want you to get hurt. Those fans can get crazy, I would never ever want to put you in danger." More meaningful words said almost carelessly. "It would only be nine months."
Only nine months? Nine months wasn't the longest period of time, but when you're on-the-verge-of-adulthood seventeen like me and as flippant as eighteen year old Taylor, nine months was long enough for things to change drastically. School semesters started and finished, seasons changed, along with fashions and attitudes, and people in a spotlight like Taylor's married and divorced.
With the idea of Taylor gone, I imagined myself settling into a bohemian college lifestyle that was already on the cards once the summer was over, and upon his return, dismiss him and his profession as fabricated before heading off to a protest march (because that's what college students do, right?). And Taylor would accept this and gracefully move on, just like he'd come into my life.
This was not the future I wanted to imagine. I loved Taylor too much to want to live without him.
"Do you promise to come back?"
"Of course!" he said, in that tone which meant he was probably serious, but you could never truly believe him.
I looked at the Pill in my hand, and without much thought, put it back into the packet.
Taylor had to come back now, because no record company, rockstar, professor or student could be flippant with biology. That gave me a little more time to work on my "I love you's".