Interlude Two: Flashback
Flashback of August 4, 2005
“Why are you here? How did you know where my office… Taylor, I have a lot of important work to do this afternoon.”
“It can’t be as important as what I have to say.”
“Then say it.”
“Look at me. I don’t want to tell you this while you’re walking around organizing your desk avoiding eye contact. Turn and look at me.”
“I’m looking. Go on.”
“I made you a promise over three years ago… a promise that I swear I tried to keep. I intended to keep that promise for forever but I just can’t do it anymore.”
“I can’t listen to this…”
“Gabrielle, I have gone almost three and a half fucking years pretending I’m not in love with you when you’re the only thing on my mind! I have tried so hard, for everyone, to pretend that I’ve moved on! I’ve tried to give you space and give you time to come to me first… to tell me that you love me just as much as I love you.”
“Please leave.”
“Listen to me! Can you seriously look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t love me anymore? That you have moved on? That you don’t think that we belong together?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Taylor! You are a married man! With children! It doesn’t matter what we want.”
“How long are we going to pretend? How long are we going to torture ourselves and keep living a lie!? You’re not happy! I’m not happy! We both know it! It’s about time one of us stops being a wimp and confronts this!”
“It’s not about being a wimp, Taylor! It’s about being honorable!”
“Fuck honorable! I’ve been fucking honorable for the last three fucking years of my life!”
“This is a public building…”
“Honorable has gotten me nowhere except miserable and hating my life! Do you know how badly I want to just wake up and be over you? You don’t think I know how much easier it would be if I could fall in love with my own wife instead of living for you? Do you think I actually like living like this… in love with someone so far and yet so close to my reach?”
“I don’t have time for this…”
“It’s taken us three years to have this goddamn… this conversation. You better make time. I’m not willing to just go on pretending anymore, Gabrielle. I can’t do it. It’s tearing me apart and you know it’s tearing you apart.”
“You promised me… you promised me Taylor… three years ago that you wouldn’t do this.”
“Well I’m breaking my promise.”
“Just like you broke my heart! And you just expect me to fall at my knees and profess my love for you after all of this? After you married another woman…”
“You told me to! I didn’t want to but you told me it was the right thing to do!”
“I don’t know anymore what the right thing to do would have been! All I know is right now… at this moment… you being here isn’t right.”
“You know it is… Gabrielle, you know you can’t live without me… you know it!”
“Don’t come closer to me! Don’t you dare reach out to me because I don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe me honesty. I’ve lied to you once in my entire life… other than that I’ve always been honest with you about my feelings. You have always repressed everything you’ve ever felt for me. Stop standing there pretending that you aren’t feeling the exact same way I’m feeling!”
“I don’t love you, Taylor!”
“This is exactly like the first time… I knew you loved me then no matter how much you denied it, and I know you love me now.”
“Go home to your wife. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Let’s leave! Let’s just leave Oklahoma and take time to sort this out… I don’t go back on tour for a few months! Let’s leave everything that’s holding us back here and figure this out-”
“Everything that’s holding us back is your wife! Your children! I don’t understand how you can be so careless about your family!”
“I’ve put my family first for three years now! You know that! I’ve tried so hard for them… for Natalie… sometimes I lie awake watching her sleep and I try to fall in love with her! I watch her breath and I trace the contours of her face with the back of my hand and I just can’t do it! I don’t love her like I love you! Sometimes I don’t even know if I love her at all! I can’t keep putting them first because it’s making me miserable!”
“You’re selfish.”
“Fine! Then I’m selfish! Gabrielle, I don’t think you understand! No! I know that you understand! This is eating away at me just like it’s eating away at you! When I’m away on tour you’re all I can think about. When you’re sitting across from me at the dinner table, you’re all that’s on my mind. It doesn’t matter if you’re miles away or a room away… no matter how much I try to fall out of love with you it’s impossible! I don’t know what else to do! Until now, I’d tried everything… except for breaking my promise and telling you the truth. You love me with every inch of your heart… and you know it.”
“Get out.”
“You know it!”
“Get out, Taylor! I don’t! I haven’t loved you in a long time!”
“You’re lying to me!”
“I moved on the day you said I do!”
“That’s why you haven’t dated anyone! It’s not only because I killed your trust in men… it’s because you are still waiting for me! Deep down, you’re still waiting for me!”
“Get out of my office or I’ll get someone to remove you.”
“You dream about me.”
“Get out.”
“You dream about us!”
“You’re killing this friendship right now by not respecting my wishes.”
“Then I don’t fucking care, Gabrielle! Because a friendship isn’t going to cut it anymore. I can’t live pretending I don’t love you.”
“It’s too late! Don’t you get that? The moment your wife got pregnant with Ezra was the moment it was too late for us! You messed up a long time ago—you messed up too much!”
“So I have to spend the rest of my life in misery because I had sex with a woman? Because of ONE NIGHT of sex I have to spend the rest of my life deteriorating day by day? Is that it?”
“You ungrateful bastard… you don’t know the meaning of misery. Look at some of these people who I work with everyday! They don’t even have places to live sometimes! They’re dying of AIDS! And you stand there in your designer jeans and ranting about your perfect little family as if that’s misery? You live a charmed life, Taylor Hanson.”
“You spend your time trying to fix the lives of strangers because you’re too afraid to fix your own.”
“Because it’s too late to fix anything.”
“It’s never too late. I am begging you, Gabrielle. Let’s go somewhere… take a week…”
“It’s not always about what you want! I told you no! I am not in love with you, Taylor! I am not in love with you! I’m sorry that you can’t get over me, but I don’t feel the same way.”
“Liar!”
“I. AM. NOT. IN. LOVE. WITH. YOU.”
“If you can go through life pretending you’re fine when you’re not, then you’re a stronger person than me. Years down the road when you’re old and lonely and realizing that you really can’t live without me… I’ll still be waiting. I’ll always be waiting.”
“Then you’re wasting your time.”
“No. It’s you who’s wasting our time.”