Four: Blue Wallpaper
We emerged into a kitchen with a bright fluorescent light and blue wall paper with pastel yellow flowers decorating it. Before me stood Rapunzel with a pan of brownies in her hand. She winced and set the pan down on the counter, examining her tender finger.
“Is there still some manicotti left?” Taylor questioned, walking over to the counter and peering into the casserole dishes of tomato sauce.
“If you look they’re in there,” Rapunzel replied, watching as he stuck his pointer finger into the sauce. She grabbed a fork and poked it into his side gently, “Use a fork!”
He gave her a sheepish smile and turned to me before he continued his search for the pasta underneath the sauce, “Mom, this is Gabrielle.”
“Good to meet you Gabrielle. I’m Taylor’s mom,” she gave him a confused look for a moment, implied something with her wide eyes, and finally said, “Gabrielle who you met the other day?”
“Yes, Mom,” he sighed, using the fork to put some stuffed pasta on the plates beside him, “The poor one who I met on her front porch. I wanted to interview her about growing up in poverty, remember?”
His mom looked just as shocked as I was. He was so blunt- so direct. Things came out of Taylor’s mouth and hit me like a train rumbling down the track at sixty miles per hour. He managed to clobber his mother too with his brutal honesty.
“Taylor…have manners…” she said quietly, trying not to make the situation anymore awkward than it already was.
“I do!” He turned to me, “I’m getting you some dinner, okay? Want a drink?” He gave his mom a proud, satisfied look and meandered over to the fridge.
In return, his mother sighed and smiled at me weakly, “I wish you two could have made it for dinner.”
“I don’t!” Taylor cackled, filling cups of ice, “That would have been hell. You would have been asked a million and one questions, Gabrielle.”
“It would have been nice for you two to have more than just left overs,” Rapunzel added to me.
“Left overs are fine with us,” Taylor replied, “Water okay? I usually just drink water.”
I could only nod at the boy before me. He had seemed so old and scary in his fast car and his dark sunglasses. But here in the familiarity of his home he was a little boy again, talkative and innocent.
He set our food, drinks, and silverware on the table like a gentlemen and then plopped down on a chair and began eating. He looked at me in confusion when I didn’t join him.
“Sit down! Eat!” He laughed, shaking his head and licking tomato sauce off of his upper lip.
I sat down next to him and muttered to him underneath my breath, “This is so awkward…”
Taylor shrugged. I noticed then that he was never one to care about awkward situations. He walked right into them willingly. He nodded at my food, encouraging me to eat.
With reservations, I finally picked up my fork and began to eat the manicotti with him. I was surprised by how good it was. Never before had I had a dinner so delicious. Within seconds I found myself shoveling forkfuls of the creamy cheese into my mouth. Taylor didn’t notice. He oblivious to everything but his own thoughts which seemed to be consuming him at that moment. Robotically he put food into his mouth while he stared at the wall behind me.
Rapunzel came up behind me and placed a careful hand on my shoulder, “I’m going to get the kids ready for bed, Taylor. Let me know if you need anything, Gabrielle. I’m Diana by the way.” So not Rapunzel after all.
I nodded and thanked her before I shot Taylor that nastiest look I could make. He looked at me innocently, waiting to speak until she had left the kitchen, “What?”
“What? Your mother is pitying me.”
He threw his hands up in frustration, “Well I didn’t tell her to. You’ll have to take that up with her.”
I sighed and shook my head. I concentrated on cutting my pasta into mouthfuls.
“You’re difficult. You make everything difficult…even something as simple as sitting here eating dinner.”
“The way to a girl’s heart is not insulting her.”
“Who said I was heading for your heart?” He smirked, shaking his head and gulping down his glass of water, “I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just saying you’re difficult. But it’s okay. I would probably be too if…” He trailed off.
“If what?”
“If I was in your situation.”
“What situation?” I tested him, pointing my saucy fork in his direction and adding in my sauciest voice, “Do tell.”
He shrugged and got up to get some more dinner. I watched as he used the pasta as a distraction and a reason not to answer me. When he sat back down, he sighed to see me still waiting for an explanation.
“I would be untrusting too if I had grown up with a family I couldn’t trust and well…neighbors I couldn’t trust.”
“If you were poor,” I pushed.
“If I were dirt poor,” he nodded. He didn’t flinch at all when he said it. His candor killed me.
A silence took over the kitchen and for the next few minutes the only sounds were the clanking of forks and the squishing of tomato sauce in our bowls.
Finally, he spoke up, “So can I interview you?”
“No.”
“Well can I talk to you anyway? Will you stay for dessert just to talk?”
“Thank you for the offer, but I have to decline,” I sighed, setting my fork down in my empty bowl and sitting back in my chair.
“I give up!” It was his turn to throw his hands back. He shook his head in aggravation and dropped his head back against the back of the wooden chair. “I just want to be your friend and know who you are and-”
“That’s not true!” I cut him off, “You want your stupid psychology project to be good. That’s what you want.”
“How do you know what I want? That would be cool, yeah. A BONUS. But at this point I just want to know you, Gabrielle.”
“Why?” I struggled to come up with a reason why this attractive, rich boy would want to know me. How did it benefit him? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out a reason.
“Well…maybe one because you’re beautiful…” he smirked.
“Shut up.”
“You really are. You know by now that I’m honest,” he grinned, “And two because…well you naturally intrigue me for some reason I can’t explain. Didn’t I already explain this, Gabrielle? Something was nagging at my heart telling me to talk to you…”
“It sounds sorta like a crock of shit….”
He chuckled, “It does. But it’s not. And you want to know three?”
“Lay it on me.”
“Three is…” He looked around the room, “One second”
I watched as he got up from the table and disappeared into another room. He returned with a frame in his hand.
“You see this? This is one of my platinum records.”
I looked carefully and read it. Hanson. Mmmbop. Oh my goodness, the stranger at my doorstop was Taylor Hanson, pop star, and I had no clue. I knew who he was from seeing him a few times on the news.
“You have got to be joking…” I mumbled.
He smirked and set the frame down on the table, sitting down again, “Oblivious much?”
“How does that explain why you want to know me?” I questioned, “That only makes it more suspicious that you’re friends with like…Mandy Moore, and yet you want know ME.”
Taylor laughed, “Mandy Moore? Er….no. Not so much. Don’t you understand? I live around people who are fake and trying to impress me…people who want to be your friend because you’re rich and famous and somehow that’s cool…”
“And?”
“And…you don’t seem like that. You seem real.”
He acted like it made so much sense to him, and yet I was still baffled. But I nodded. I nodded and I accepted his answer for once, even if I couldn’t understand it.
“I’ll help you with your project.” I didn’t know where the words came from, but suddenly they were flying out of my mouth.
“No…I shouldn’t have asked in the first place…”
“I’ll help you, okay? I don’t mind.”
He thought for a moment, playing with the bottom of his shirt in his fingers nervously. Finally, he nodded, “Thanks.”
We finished the rest of our dinner in a comfortable silence- just the sounds of forks clanking against ceramic plates filling the room. Then, without asking, Taylor got up and got us both brownies. I hesitated to thank him, since I had just declined dessert moments before and he knew that, but I decided I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be tough. I smiled appreciatively.
“How early do you have to be home?” he said through bites of chocolate brownie, “How late is too late for your mom?”
I laughed, “My mom doesn’t care. She probably doesn’t even realize I’m gone. I take care of myself.”
He nodded, “My mom has a shit fit if I’m like 10 minutes later than I said I’d be.”
“She’s strict?”
“I guess you could say that. But she’s mostly just a worry wart. So do you mind staying for a bit tonight?”
“I have a lot of homework…”
“Please Gab?”
“Taylor, we’re not on a nickname basis.”
He blushed and smiled, “Sorry. I got a bit carried away.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He was so genuine and honest and…looking at pictures of him in magazines at the local CVS…I never pictured him to be anything but shallow and arrogant.
“I’ll stay for a bit.”
He jumped out of his chair in excitement and squeezed my shoulder, “Good! You know, I was wrong about you Gabrielle. You are a reasonable person.”
I frowned at him as he took our plates and brought them to the sink.
“Thanks?”
“For taking your plate or for saying you’re reasonable?”
I just laughed and shook my head, “Whatever you want it to be for?”
“Kay,” he gave me a tight smile and motioned for me to get up. “Come with me. I’ll show you my humble abode.”
I followed him up the stairs of the mansion to a room with crimson walls and a huge four-poster cherry wood bed in the middle of the room.
“Humble?”
“Okay, so it’s a bit extravagant,” he grinned, “But don’t you think it’s romantic?”
How do you answer a question like that? Fortunately, because of Taylor’s rambling, I didn’t have to.
“That’s sort of the mood I was going for when I picked the color out…and well when I picked most of it out,” he confessed.
He sat down on the bed and patted the spot next time.
“That’s awkward.”
“No it’s not! Where else are you going to sit? I’m not gonna rape you or anything…” he paused, and then added with a smirk, “Maybe feel you up just a bit but…”
“Taylor!”
“Joking!” He gasped, falling into a fit of laughter.
“You’re not really even that funny.”
His face straightened out and he looked at me seriously, “Shut up. Yes I am. Hey, grab that notebook on my desk and sit down.”
For once, I did as I was told. He flipped through the notebook I handed him and stopped when he found a page with a pen wedged in it.
“You know it’s okay if you changed your mind, and you don’t want to do this.”
“I haven’t.”
“Because my questions will be blunt.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“Good,” He grinned, “So…what happened to your father?”
I froze.