You Belong With Me

Taylor's P.O.V.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Alex and Jack walk into the cafeteria together. This must have meant that they worked out whatever issues they had between each other. I was so sick of being the mediator between them.

“Hey guys!” I smiled brightly at both of them as they sat down on either side of me like usual. “So have you two finally made up?”

“Yeah, we did,” responded Jack.

“What were you guys really fighting about anyway?” I pressed.

“We told you before,” Alex responded. “It was really just stupid band stuff, but everything is fine now.” Somehow, I always knew when he was lying. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

“But you guys have had stuff like that happen before and you got over it in like five minutes. You went days without speaking to each other this time, so it must have been a really big deal,” I continued. I wasn't going to give up that easily today.

“Really it was just us being stubborn,” said Jack. “Neither of us like to admit when we are wrong, so we just didn't talk to each other. Eventually, we realized our friendship is more important than some dumb ass fight, so we apologized to each other.” Now Jack was in on it too. What the hell were they both lying to me about? This wasn't like them. I would have to find a way to get to the bottom of it, but I knew it couldn't be through either of them because they would probably just continue to lie about it.

“I'm glad,” I said. “Now I don't have to worry about you two biting each other's heads off during every lunch period.

“We weren't that bad, were we?” said Jack.

I rolled my eyes at him. “You were each like tigers about to pounce on their prey and rip its guts out. It got kind of scary.”

“That bad, huh?” said Alex and I nodded. “Well, I'm sorry we put you through that then.”

“It's all good just as long as you guys are good.”

“We're good, but not good together,” Jack commented.

Alex just gave him a weird look. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“We're not good together because we're both straight. Duh!”

“You are so strange sometimes,” Alex responded. “I hope you know that.”

“You know you love me,” Jack said, smiling at him.

“Now you're quoting Gossip Girl. Really, Jack, are you sure you're not gay?” Alex asked him.

“I'll admit that sometimes I get a little bit confused, but yes, for the most part, I'm straight.”

“The real question to me is why can you two 'manly men' quote Gossip Girl?” I asked them mischievously.

They both looked slightly uncomfortable and I couldn't help but giggle. “Well, uhm, you see...” Alex began. His face began to turn slightly red, which just made me laugh even harder.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said, putting a hand up to stop him. “You mean to tell me that both of you have been making fun of me for the shows I watch and you guys watch Gossip Girl?” When they both looked at me sheepishly, I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.

“We were bored one night watching TV and we happened to stumble upon it, so we watched it. Then, we never actually stopped watching it,” Jack finally admitted.

“All this time you have been making fun of me for watching teen dramas, but you secretly watched Gossip Girl,” I teased. “What hypocrites! I'm a little hurt that you didn't tell me so that I could watch it with you. Gossip Girl is one of my favorite shows.”

“Well maybe we just didn't want you to think less of our manliness,” Alex said pretending to get defensive.

“If you let me watch with you, I promise not to make fun of your diminishing masculinity,” I said.

Alex and Jack looked at each other. “I don't know, dude,” said Jack. “Should we let her in on our weekly ritual?”

I turned down my bottom lip into a sad puppy dog face and looked at Alex. “Please?” I begged. “Pretty please with everything you want on top?”

“Fine!” he said, immediately giving in. “No fair! You know I can never turn you down when you give me that face.”

“Yes!” I cheered pumping both of my fists into the air. “And maybe afterward, we can do our hair and paint our toenails!”

“Or we could just not do it at all,” Alex said in a warning voice.

“Sorry, I just had to throw that one last joke in there. I'm done now,” I responded. We moved on to other subjects, but somehow I couldn't keep the smile from my face as I pictured Alex and Jack glued to the TV every Monday night watching Gossip Girl. Now, they probably knew more about designer clothing and the scandalous life of Serena Van Der Woodsen than I did. It was almost as good as picturing them watching episodes of Sex and the City with cosmos in hand.

Gossip Girl wasn't on this week, so we decided to meet at Alex's house to watch it whenever it was on next. Half an hour later, the last lunch bell rang and we filed out of the cafeteria.

No matter what I did, I could not seem to concentrate on my classes that afternoon. I couldn't stop wondering what it was that Jack and Alex had been lying to me about. What was it that neither of them wanted me to know? Ugh, sometimes boys just drove me off the wall. I wanted to tear my hair out of my scalp.

When I was finally able to get myself to stop thinking about that, I distinctly heard one of my classmates mutter the word “prom” to the girl next to her. As you can imagine, that brought a whole new train of thought into my mind. Since Jack no longer wanted to go with me, who would I go with? My parents told me many times that I was not allowed to go to prom without a date. They were very old-fashioned like that. Then, I began to think about Alex. Would I be a horrible person if I asked him to go with me after I had just turned him down for Jack. Would it seem like I had chosen to go with him only because I had no other options? That was the last thing I ever wanted him to think because it was the farthest thing from the truth.

But, then again, he had asked me, right? And I told him that the only reason why I couldn't go with him was because I was going with Jack. Surely, that had to mean something. I'm sure that Jack must have told him about what happened by now. I decided that I would bring up the subject when I saw him at the end of the day.
_______________________________________________________________________

A few hours later, I slammed my locker shut and zipped up my backpack. For once, I was done before Alex, so I headed over to his locker.

“Hey,” I said when I got there and leaned against the wall beside him as he packed up his backpack.

“Hey yourself,” he responded. “It's about time you come to visit me. I'm sick of doing all the walking all the time.”

“Oh boohoo. God forbid you have to walk a whole ten feet to come to my locker,” I retorted sticking my tongue out at him.

“It gets to be tiring after awhile.”

“Ok, Grandpa, I'll be sure to buy you a cane for your next birthday,” I chuckled. He couldn't help but crack a smile.

“So what's up?” he asked me.

“Nothing really, but I do have a question,” I responded.

“Shoot.”

“By any chance, did you ever get a date to the prom?”

He shifted on his feet uncomfortably and looked down at the floor. “Uhm, yeah, actually I did.” He hesitantly looked up to see my reaction.

“Oh...” I said. Suddenly, all the wind was knocked out of me and I felt as if I had been punched in the gut. I looked away from him. “Who is she?” I asked quietly.

“Actually, it's-it's Katelyn,” he nearly choked out.

I never knew I could be so infuriated by one simple answer. “What?!” I exclaimed, now looking him straight in the eye.

“Look, don't be mad, ok? It just sort of happened this morning.”

“Why the hell would you want to go to prom with that bitch?” I asked angrily.

“I don't know, I guess I feel bad for her. I can't put my finger on it, but something about her has changed. She's a different person now.”

“So you just magically trust her again after all the shit she has put you through and all the horrible lies she has said about me?”

“No, it's not like that.”

I threw my arms up in the air in anger and frustration. “Well then what is it like, Alex. Please, enlighten me.”

“She's just a friend. If I had known that you and Jack weren't going together anymore, I would have gone with you in a heartbeat.”

“Oh, so then I would have just been your pity date? You would have gone with me because you knew I lost the date I had? Thanks a lot.” I turned on my heal and began to walk away, but then Alex grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him.

His eyes were sincere when he said, “Taylor, you know it's not like that. I asked you to go to prom with me before I even considered going with anyone else. I would much rather go with you, but I can't just cancel on Katelyn, especially when I just asked her this morning. That's just not right.”

“Whatever,” I nearly spat at him. “Just don't come crawling back to me when she breaks your heart again. It would be like last fall times two.”

When I said this, I could tell that I had hurt him from the look on his face, but, for some reason, I just didn't care. I turned around and walked out the front door of Dulaney Valley High, leaving Alex Gaskarth behind.

When the anger finally subsided, I was left with numbness in my heart. I couldn't allow myself to feel anything else. I knew I would break down if I did. I got in my car and drove to the studio, trying desperately to keep my mind blank on the way. My eyes stared emotionlessly at the road ahead of me.

When I finally got there, Nate greeted me and announced that we would be working on “Teardrops on My Guitar” today. As if I needed any more reminders of the past...

As I sang the song, all that numbness I was clinging to slipped through my fingers and crashed to the floor, leaving me with no idea how to clean up the shattered pieces of my heart. I tried desperately to sing as if I wasn't crying. By the time the song was done, I had to run to the bathroom so that no one would see me break down into hysterics.

For a short time, I had made the mistake of allowing my hopes to go up. Throughout this afternoon, I had fantasized about what it would be like to be Alex Gaskarth's date to the senior prom. I thought about how, for one night, he would be mine. We would float across the dance floor and every other couple would be completely jealous of just how in love we both obviously were. But, that was only in my imagination. Fantasies like that made it so much harder to accept reality.

Now, Alex was going to prom with Katelyn. I had never been more jealous of her in my life. She always seemed to get him just when I wanted him and she had him wrapped around her tiny little fingers. God, how I hated that girl... I wanted nothing more than to punch her in her pretty little face.

I crawled up into a fetal position on the floor of the bathroom and rocked back and forth against the wall. How on earth did I wind up here? I had gone from having two possible dates to prom to having nobody. It felt pretty damn humiliating, not to mention lonely.