Back to December

“I don’t think this is any of your business, Ashley,” said Taylor as she spoke into her phone, with her hands as shaky as her voice. She was sitting stiffly on the edge of her bed, with her back straight and her bare feet touching her cream colored shaggy carpet. She tried to make her tone as polite as she could, but somehow, despite its shakiness, there was a tinge of curtness in her tone.

So she wasn’t so fond of Ashley Greene. Taylor just couldn’t help it. Technically speaking, she hasn’t done anything wrong. Maybe it was because Joe dumped one of Taylor’s closest friends, Demi, for an older, more “sophisticated” Ashley. Which also happened to cause Demi’s ultimately unexpected check-in to a rehab center. Undoubtedly, Joe did the exact same terrible thing to Demi. He dropped her flat on her butt, just like he did with Taylor.

And there was no denying how much Taylor despised him more for it. Even more so, Ashley.

“Taylor’s my friend. I care about him. Please.”

Taylor’s stomach twisted at the plea. She was asking Taylor to do the one task she has been avoiding for the past year; to apologize to him face to face.

Couldn’t the song have been enough?

“Back to December,” Taylor murmured, so low that she knew Ashley wouldn’t hear.

That was it. Back to December. The song she had been trying to write was so much like Back to December.

But why? Had her subconscious been telling her – pushing her to truly apologize to him? Had her feelings been to bottled up inside her so tight and secure that they have been clawing their way out, fighting to be released? Taylor was feeling way too many emotions that she could not longer point out what they were or why she was feeling them. She felt like she was going to be sick right then and there.

Only, at that moment, she just knew that one of the strongest emotions was guilt, she knew that now. The feeling of unwavering guilt. Guilt that had been boiling rapidly in her insides, tormenting her like hot, searing water seeping in and out of her skin.

“Will you do it, Taylor?” Ashley asked again. This time, Taylor felt her request even more sincere and utterly desperate than ever.

Taylor had always wanted to apologize to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to. And so what if she was a coward? It hurt too much to even think about it that she blocked the idea from her head entirely, shunning away all the fault and bitterness that felt absolutely nothing at all. In the end, she could see that if you hid all your feelings away, they would bite you back when you least expect it.

A few months after their break up, her label had told her she should begin to write to new songs for her new album, which, at the time, was untitled. As if she hadn’t always been writing songs. So, she showed them the ones she had already written after Fearless. They had said they were okay, but they were looking for something more. Something fresh. Something different than Fearless, or her first album. They told her to go where she had never gone before.

So, she did.

Taylor wrote nonstop after that. She had recalled weeks and weeks of locking herself up in her room, not eating and not sleeping. Her mother had been worried sick. But when she was finished, she came out with a triumphant smile on her face. This album would be legendary, although it was still untitled.

And so, along with many other songs that reached out to the people she wanted to talk to but couldn’t, Back to December was born. It was like hitting two birds with one stone.

But what was she to do now? She was on the phone with her ex’s girlfriend, who also happens to be her other ex’s cast mate, who was asking her to do a Herculean task.

“I can’t, Ashley. I’m sorry, it was just too long ago,” she said quickly.

As swiftly as she said it, she ended the call.