Twenty Five: Underneath Your Clothes
Diana carefully lead me down the stairs to an awaiting Taylor standing in the foyer with his eyes closed. I almost tripped over the heels Jessica had leant me and giggled with Diana.
“Can I open?” Taylor whined, standing there in black dress pants and a blue button-up shirt. He was wearing almost the exact same thing he usually wore to church every morning. It was my favorite look on him. There is something about a dressed up Taylor that drives me wild.
“Not yet! Keep them closed,” Diana instructed as we stepped down from the stairs and she positioned me in front of him.
I felt awkward, to say the least. In my nightmares I could see him opening his eyes and muttering that I didn’t look all that special after all.
“I’m going to open…” he teased in a sing-song voice.
“Not yet!” She gasped, turning to me and fussing with the stray pieces of hair around my face. Giving up on getting them to stay back, she just looked me over and nodded approvingly. I had never been so dressed up in my life, and it wasn’t even all that fancy.
“Okay handsome prince,” I smirked at Taylor. “Open.”
He removed his hands from his eyes and slowly looked up, letting his eyes graze over me and take me all in. I think I must have held my breath as I waited for his response.
“You look… beautiful,” he finally said, taking my hand and holding it lightly in his. “Absolutely beautiful.”
“You look pretty amazing yourself,” I said approvingly.
“I do look amazing,” he smirked. “But not nearly amazing as you.”
“How humble of you,” I smiled. We stood there, put our arms around each other, and posed for Diana who was crouching down in front of us snapping picture after picture as we talked.
“Kay, we’re going,” Taylor said, pulling his keys from his pants pocket and eyeing his mother through the lens of her camera. “Bye Mom…”
Diana distractedly waved as she continued to shoot pictures of us as we walked over to the door. Taylor rolled his eyes at her and pulled the front door open for me.
“Mom, you’re worse than the paparazzi,” he sighed as I carefully stepped outside, making sure not to trip in the heels. They weren’t’ very tall, but I wasn’t very used to heels period. Taylor stuck his tongue out to the camera at last minute and then slammed the door on her, walking next to me protectively as we walked over to the car which he had parked out front.
“You ready for the best night of your entire life?” He joked.
“You know how lame this is going to be, right? The dance itself?”
“Yeah,” he smirked and opened the car door for me, motioning for me to sit down like the gentlemen I’d always known he was. “But you’re spending the night with me. Can it really get any better?”
I laughed loudly at his arrogance and sat down in the car. It couldn’t, I decided. Stupid dance or not, I looked beautiful, he looked beautiful… the night couldn’t be anything but beautiful. Or could it.
*****
We actually went out to dinner first. I was getting spoiled… new clothing, eating out every week, high heels. Taylor loved it though. His expression when he was treating me to things was priceless. I could tell it made his day and it made it easier to grit my teeth and thank him.
As you might figure, we couldn’t get through a single dinner without clumsy Taylor spilling something on one of us. Fortunately, it was himself this time. We went to the same restaurant we went to after church a few weekends before and half-way through the meal Taylor ended up dipping his sleeve in a bowl of tomato sauce. I laughed and decided not to tell him I did that all the time myself.
On the way out to the car he stopped in the bathroom to try and redeem his stained shirt while I stood outside. Within a few minutes I heard him whining from behind the men’s bathroom door, “Gabrielle… this won’t go out… help me.”
I awkwardly stepped into the men’s bathroom, eyed the urinals, and pinned his arm to the counter where I scrubbed at the stain with a soapy paper towel. Men are apparently incapable of doing anything productive laundry-related, because despite his efforts I got the stain out easily. We laughed as we stood under the hand dryer for a few minutes letting his sleeve dry off. As soon as an older male walked in, I widened my eyes, muttered an apology, and ran out. Taylor laughed about it during the whole drive over to my school.
“I’m nervous,” I confessed to him as he took my hand and we began walking across the parking lot towards the school gymnasium. For some reason, I felt like I could tell him anything. There was something about him that caused me to let down my guard and just be real with him.
“You look beautiful. You can’t be nervous when you look that good,” he grinned at me, squeezing my hand. Taylor is far better at listening to people and giving them pep talks than I’ll ever be. “What are you nervous about?”
“I don’t know. What if people talk about me… or Melissa and her friends bother us… or… what if we feel out of place?”
“Then we’ll feel out of place together. I’ll be at your side the entire time. I’m just as nervous as you are.”
“You don’t seem it,” I mumbled, letting go of his hand as he held the heavy school door open for a couple walking behind us and then for me.
“You know me well enough to know that I’m a little nervous about going in there,” he said. Sure enough, I looked down at his hands and saw him fiddling with his ring- sliding it on and off. “They’re just high schoolers. How dangerous can they be?”
He had no idea.
“It’ll be fine,” he leaned in and kissed me. He took my hand again to give both of us courage and lead me into the gym that was decorated with streamers and balloons. The lights were dim and despite the fact that the decorating was lame in general, the silver stars that hung from the ceiling and terrace made of black balloons actually did look rather nice.
Taylor was the one who had told me we should arrive late. I would have showed up on time- not knowing you were actually supposed to come late to school events like these. But he had told me that he’d gone to a prom before and they arrived an hour late. By the time we arrived, the dance floor was pretty packed. I looked around searching for a familiar face… any familiar face.
“Gabrielle,” someone said from behind me and I turned to see Kelly Cooper standing there in a black dress. Diana was right. Looking around, it looked like a funeral so many people were wearing little black dresses.
“Hey Kelly,” I smiled at her. I didn’t know her well, but I’d talked to her enough throughout high school to know she was genuinely nice. She was studious like me and we usually ended up being paired up together by teachers for projects in the classes we had together. She’d invited me to join her and a few friends at the movies a few times, but I’d never had the spare money to go and so I’d told her I was busy.
“I didn’t know you were coming…” her voice trailed as she turned to look Taylor up and down. It was clear by the pause in her speech and the realization that hit her face that she recognized who he was.
“Yeah, he convinced me to,” I gestured at Taylor.
“Is this… is this your boyfriend…?” she tried to articulate.
“Oh yeah, I’m sorry,” I said casually, enjoying every second of her impressed expression. “Kelly, this is Taylor. Taylor, this is Kelly. I know her from classes.”
“Good to meet you,” she held out her hand and shook his as if she didn’t know his name until I mentioned it.
Taylor gave her a perfect grin and firmly shook her hand back. “It’s good to meet you too. You look nice.”
Taylor is a people pleaser. That is what he does. He’s good at first impressions and winning people over. Some people confuse his friendliness as just insincere schmoozing, but the truth is he really does genuinely like to meet people.
I looked around the gym and noticed Taylor and I were getting similar looks from everyone else in the room. They all were looking Taylor up and down, whispering quietly amongst themselves. I’d thought by then everyone had heard the news about us dating since gossip spread like a wild fire at my high school. Perhaps they were just shocked I was at a school dance… in a pretty dress… with Taylor Hanson in tow. I expected Taylor to puff his shoulders and grin in appreciation of the attention, so it surprised me when he stepped back behind me like he was shy.
“Everyone’s looking at you,” I teased when Kelly walked away, reaching behind myself and poking him in the side just to see him uncomfortably flinch.
“They should be looking at YOU,” he said, recovering, and wrapping an arm around me. “It’s not everyday you look this gorgeous.”
I smacked his arm and looked over my shoulder, shooting him a pretend angry look. “Oh really?”
“You always look gorgeous!” he corrected himself quickly. “You just look… especially gorgeous tonight.”
“Yeah, yeah… I know,” I smiled, pretending to be arrogant. It felt good to sound confident. I almost understood why he was so confident all the time.
A small group of girls from across the room seemed to notice him and point as they whispered. They were nothing less than obvious about it. He instinctively wrapped his arm around me tighter and pulled me to him as if I were some form of protection.
To cover for his moment of vulnerability, I assume, he leaned his face close to my hair and laughed, “Your hair smells like so much hairspray. My mom really loaded that on, eh?”
“Mmhmm,” I replied, simply enjoying being close with him and feeling also protected from the room of loud music and gossiping girls.
He drummed his fingers along my side as he looked around. Perhaps if I’d known more people in my high school we’d have had more people to talk to, but at that moment it felt like we stood out from the crowd like sore thumbs- both unsure of what to do exactly.
“Where’s the punch?” he teased. “On TV at these dances I always see the guy go and get the girl punch when they don’t know what else to do. Am I supposed to do that?”
I laughed. “That’s TV. I don’t think they have punch at dances these days. You know nothing about high school, do you?”
“I was mostly joking. I told you… I went to junior prom once… and you know what… I think they had punch!”
“Who did you go with?” I asked curiously, trying to ask as subtly as I could but hoping it wasn’t his most recent ex-girlfriend who I knew he still talked to on the phone sometimes- Natalie. Diana warned me time after time not to be worried about Natalie, but Taylor’s history of breaking up with her and getting back together with her had me nervous sometimes.
“My ex-girlfriend- Natalie,” he said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t happy about it. “I flew all the way out to Georgia for her prom… and I mean it was okay… but it was sort of like I was her trophy all night. She just walked around introducing me to her entire high school until my hand nearly fell off from meeting so many people. She asked me to come with her to senior prom this year… and I was actually going to until we broke up. Thank god.”
I felt slightly pathetic that his ex-girlfriend had apparently been such a socialite she had countless friends to introduce him and I couldn’t seem to find a single person to hold a conversation with, but I tried to focus on the distaste in his tone instead. He said he didn’t appreciate her flaunting, and I forced myself to believe him instead of questioning it. I could drive myself crazy with questioning.
“Let’s dance,” he said out of nowhere, pushing my forward with him towards the dance floor.
I dug my heels into the ground and held him back, grasping his hand on my hip and shaking my head furiously.
“I don’t dance!” I yelped.
“Gabrielle…”
“I’m serious!” I turned around to face him and looked him in the eyes so he’d believe me. “You don’t understand. I really don’t dance. I haven’t danced… ever.”
“Oh quiet. I’ve seen you dance the hokey pokey with Zoe before. Don’t act like you don’t have rhythm,” he smirked, dragging me towards the dance floor.
“Taylor!” I squeaked. “I don’t think people really dance anyway at these things! Look! Everyone is just publicly rubbing against each other. Not dancing.”
He paused his pulling and nagging as his playful smile turned devious. “Well… we could do that too…” he smirked. As soon as he saw my unimpressed expression though, he added, “Or we could just forget what everyone else is doing and just dance.”
As the rap song ended and the music switched over to the opening piano chords of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”, Taylor knew it was his chance to get me to dance since it was something besides R and B. He grinned and finally succeeded in dragging me onto the dance floor, taking my hands in his and beginning to sway his hips back and forth. He grinned at me the entire time as I awkwardly tried to dance along with him.
“Tay! I feel stupid!” I gasped.
“Yeah, and you look stupid too all stiff and nervous like that!” he smirked and stepped closer to me, wrapping one arm around my waist and beginning to sway quickly back and forth with me. I squealed as he twirled me and laughed.
To be honest, he wasn’t a bad dancer. I’d seen him dance around the house before with his little siblings and I’d see him dance sexually in the mirror before just to get a rise out of me. But I’d never assumed he was actually… actually good at dancing when he tried. I supposed it was his years of dancing growing up that gave him natural rhythm but he lead me with ease. I, on the other hand, clumsily tripped over my feet as we went but he didn’t say anything. He just kept grinning down at me.
“And I still need you, and I still miss you, and now I wonder…” he sang quietly to me as we danced. “If I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass us by? Because you know I’d walk a thousand miles if I could just see you.”
“I can’t believe you know the lyrics,” I mumbled, pretending to be embarrassed but loving every second of it. I’d grown to absolutely love his voice.
“It hit number one on the Billboards last month,” he shrugged with a smile. “Who doesn’t?”
“I don’t!”
“You wouldn’t,” he laughed, leaning in and kissing me in front of so many people that it made me uncomfortable but I didn’t show it. He was always pretty affectionate in public and it took some getting used to.
After we danced for awhile, the song faded and some song I knew to be called “Complicated” came through the speakers- although I didn’t know the song well at all or the artist. The audience squealed with delight and everyone seemed to prepare themselves to prove to each other that they knew the lyrics well.
“Avril,” Taylor said with a grimace. “It’s number one right now on the radio and everything. Punk rock… she’s signed by Arista.”
He always knew music details like that, despite the fact that he detested the modern radio. He watched the Billboards like a stock broker watched the stocks. I suppose he figured it was his job, or maybe it was just his passion.
As the opening chords transitioned into a girl’s nasally voice, Taylor started jumping around and laughing, pretending to rock out to the song I could tell he didn’t like. He held his hand up in the symbol of “rock” and laughed at his own antics, which only caused me to laugh, which in turn encouraged him to continue the embarrassing behavior.
Eventually I had no choice but to walk away from his seizures and leave him there on the dance floor alone- jumping around like a deranged psychopath. After psychotic head banging, he finally cleared his hair away from his eyes long enough to realize I was gone and I watched as he looked around nervously for me. He rolled his eyes at me when he saw me standing off to the side of the dance floor and dragged his feet over to me.
“You left me!”
“You looked ridiculous!”
“I was just trying to be punk rock…” he stuck out his bottom lip, clearly mocking the genre in general. “Would you still love me if I were punk rock?”
“No,” I smirked, reaching up and fixing his hair that was all tousled and falling in the wrong direction.
“Taylor!” we heard someone’s voice call out from the crowd of people on the dance floor. After a moment, Melissa emerged in a neon green dress that hardly covered her body at all.
“Look, Tay, it’s Tinkerbelle,” I smirked, but he didn’t seem to get my sarcastic allusion to her dress.
“Taylor!” she repeated when she got close to us, wiping a strand of her hair away from her face. “You never called me back!”
She said it in a teasing manner, gently pushing his shoulder with a smile plastered on her face. In fact, she tried to make it seem like she didn’t care that he didn’t call her back but I knew better, and Taylor seemed to know better.
“Yeah… sorry about that,” he said apologetically. It was so rare of Taylor to be rude that he couldn’t even find it in him to give her a sassy remark.
“So Gabrielle took you instead, eh?” she said, her voice clearly competitive and challenging.
Taylor laughed it off. “Sort of. She actually didn’t want to come but I insisted we come… so I sort of took her.”
“Y’all been dancing much or no?” she asked, wiping at her forehead to emphasize how tired she was. “I’ve been out there for awhile now… this DJ is pretty good.”
“We’ve been dancing some,” Taylor shrugged. “As much as I can convince Gabrielle to dance. We didn’t get here too long ago.”
“Awww, see now… you should have come with ME!” Melissa smiled. “I love to dance!”
She had stepped over the line. She was pretending to be nice and friendly and to have no hidden agenda… but that comment made it more than obvious how devious she was trying to be. She was being passive aggressive, and we could both sense it. The question was, was either of us willing to say something about it?
“Nah,” Taylor brushed the comment off casually and put his arm around my waist. “I just wanted to come with my girlfriend. I don’t care what I do as long as I’m with her.”
I almost beamed with pride… okay maybe I almost beamed with victory. I had won and she knew it. I hated to be competitive over him but she made it hard to help. I didn’t mean to be petty, but at that moment standing there with Taylor’s affection and her jealousy, I couldn’t think of any feeling more perfect.
“New dress, Gabrielle?” she asked, ignoring his comment completely and trying to pretend to actually be interested in my dress for innocent reasons. Again, I knew better.
“Yes.”
“Neat. Where did you get it?”
“Dillards.”
Taylor had told me before that he always found it odd how I could be so extroverted and talkative around him, but around other people I was so shy. He said it was like I was a different person, and standing there giving her short answers and holding onto Taylor I suppose I saw what he meant.
“Oh… you know… I always forget they sell clothes there!” she exclaimed. “I mean I knew they had clothes… but I never remember that they have decent clothes, you know?”
“Only boutiques for you,” Taylor commented and I could tell that he was rolling his eyes in his mind.
Melissa laughed, “Well… just upper-class stores, I guess. Tulsa doesn’t exactly have boutiques. But hey, if you could find a decent dress at Dillards all the more power to you, right!?”
I hated girls like Melissa. I would have preferred she was just blatantly rude to me instead of doing it in such a passive aggressive way. She could get away with being mean to most people, and yet somehow no one really called her out on it because she did such a good job covering for herself with feigned giggles.
“Melissa,” Taylor heaved. “It was great talking to you, but we’ll see you around, okay?”
“Oh yeah, definitely!” she said, taking the hint that he was done talking to her but refusing to acknowledge his rejection. “I’m going to be at University of Tulsa next year… we’ll have to hang out. You’ll have to check out some of the parties in that area of Tulsa with me.”
Usually he would have taken a deep breath and responded appropriately, but I could tell his patience was gone and he was annoyed that she kept trying to make me jealous. He didn’t like being in the middle of a tug of war for his affection- affection we all already knew I had.
“Actually…” he started, wetting his lips and taking a deep breath to work up the courage to stand up for himself… well, and to stand up for me. He knew I didn’t appreciate her hitting on my boyfriend. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, so I’ll just be honest and tell you right now not to call me. I’ll probably be too busy next year anyway… spending time with Gabrielle anyway.”
Melissa laughed and touched his arm gently, “Oh, yeah… totally. I was just offering in case you got bored… I was just teasing.”
“Sure,” Taylor nodded, trying to act like he believed her although we all knew she was faking.
“Well, good talking to you guys!” she said before running off and trying to salvage as much pride as she could.
Taylor let his shoulders fall into a noisy sigh as she danced away, joining some of her mutually slutty friends and grinding with them on the dance floor.
“She’s out of her mind,” Taylor sighed.
“You were the one interested in her a few months ago,” I shrugged.
“Oh please, Gabrielle,” he snapped and rolled his eyes. I’d struck a nerve, apparently. “We’ve been over this. You know I was just pretending to be to take my mind off of you… and to make you want me.”
“I know,” I smirked. “I just like to hear you both flatter me and admit your own lameness at the same time.”
“It worked didn’t it?”
“What worked?”
“It made you want me,” he wiggled his eyebrows at me and pulled me close to his a body- a gesture that earned him a groan of annoyance from me and a light smack.
During the last few weeks Taylor had been making more and more suggestive comments about sex and about how badly I wanted him. I’d told him time after time that I thought about more than just making out with him, but he was convinced I wanted him as badly as he wanted me. The truth was, I did. But he didn’t need to know that.
We talked idly for a little while until I actually spotted a few people that I had talked to a few times in high school, took a brave breath of air, and pulled Taylor over to them. I casually introduced everyone else and struggled to maintain conversation with them for ten minutes, but at the end of it I found that I was impressed with myself. I had forced myself to step out of my comfort zone. Taylor had taught me how to do that, and although it was, I took a lot of pride in that step. It was a big step for me.
The music finally shifted to a slow song with quiet, acoustic strumming of a guitar. I knew I was expected to dance with him, and I knew he’d ask me any moment. I figured I’d surprise him and act him first. He was always willing to step out of his comfort zone for me, and since I was getting so good at taking risks, I figured I’d do it for him.
“Dance with me?” I asked, shy about asking but trying to sound like I actually wanted to. I guess I sort of did.
“Really?” he grinned at me and then teased, “Why, I thought you’d never ask…”
I laughed at his lame response, which he probably got from the same show he got the punch idea from. I took his hand and carefully pulled him onto the dance floor, stepping around swaying couples and finding room towards the outside of them. I didn’t want to be in the middle where everyone could see me. I wasn’t that comfortable dancing yet and it didn’t seem like he’d appreciate the unnecessary attention.
I glanced around at all the couples and quickly studied how to dance with a boy. It was pathetic… I know… that at age 18 I had no clue how to slow dance properly, but I picked it up easily. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled my body close to him since I knew he’d do that anyway. I naturally rested my head against his chest and relished in the feeling of his arms wrapping around my waist.
I don’t know if we were more dancing or just holding each other, but I know there had never been a moment when I’d felt closer to him. I don’t know how it was possible to feel so loving and affectionate towards him in a gym full of people, but everyone really did seem to disappear and the only thing I could focus on was Taylor. We rocked side to side together, clinging to each other, as I heard his throat humming the song quietly.
Underneath your clothes
There’s an endless story
There’s a man I chose
There’s my territory
Eventually Taylor smirked as we listened to the sexual lyrics, as I figured he would, and muttered into my ear, “Speaking of underneath clothes… let’s not go home.”
“What?” I whispered back at him.
“Let’s go… somewhere alone.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I blurted out, although I probably shouldn’t have because he sighed and I seemed to ruin the moment some.
“Okay…” he nodded, “I know. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying… we should just spend tonight together.”
“Where do you propose we do that? Some seedy motel ‘round here?”
He rolled his eyes and glanced down at me with an irritated expression, but upon looking at me he cracked a smile and shook his head in amusement. “You’re so romantic.”
“Just for you,” I mumbled, kissing his chest to reassure him I was trying and sighing at the feeling of his embrace.
“Let’s go to my old house… it’s empty and I have the keys,” he smirked.
“Did you plan this?”
“Maybe.”
As the song ended, I didn’t want to let go of him. Taylor was turning into my everything. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Sure I was still planning on going to school and I still cared about my job, but if I were asked to drop all of it for Taylor I might have agreed to. It was scary… terrifying, in fact. But I eventually gave up trying to resist my love and reliance on him and I just accepted it. I was falling hopelessly in love with Taylor Hanson with each day with him, and there was no denying it. I stood there with my arms around his neck just enjoying the feeling of being so close and connected to him.
“You feel like staying around here much longer…?” he mumbled up against my ear.
“Do you?”
He smiled as we stepped away from each other. The space between us suddenly seemed so vast- I wanted to run back to his arms and hold him again.
“No. I had my fun… watching you try and dance was fun enough for me,” he laughed and I smacked him gently for maybe the fourth time that night. “You’re getting abusive!”
“You’re verbally abusive!”
“Let’s go,” was all he said in reply, walking hastily towards the door.
“Wait for me!” I called out, trying to run after him in my heels to keep up with him. I’d hardly worn heels before so they were hard to walk in and they hurt like hell. “These hurt and I’m slow!”
He turned around and looked at me as I pathetically hobbled over to him. Then, with no warning, he suddenly reached out for me and scooped me into his arms so he was holding me.
“What are you doing!”
“Carrying you,” he said simply, as if it was obvious. “So you’ll stop your whining.”
“You just want to feel me up,” I rolled my eyes as I looked down and nodded at his hand that was supporting my back and wrapping around to my chest. I gasped when he laughed and felt me up really obviously, right there in front of the auditorium. I assumed most people were minding their own business, but I wasn’t naïve enough to know that considering he was Taylor Hanson, some people weren’t. I did my best to push them all out of my mind and focus on just relaxing with him instead. I was trying for him.
“I don’t know this man! Rape! Rape!” I screamed out as he dropped his head back in a cackle and began walking towards the door with me. As I turned and looked over his shoulder, I couldn’t help but notice Melissa standing in a group of girls that was watching us. She looked especially interested. They all turned away really quickly when I looked at them.
“Where are you taking me?” I continued to play along as we stepped out into the night. He adjusted me in his arms so he’d have a better grip and wouldn’t drop me as he stepped down the stairs of the school.
“I’m going to gag you, tie you up, and rape you. What else?” he smirked.
“Kinky,” I laughed with him as he carried me out to the car. Although we laughed, I couldn’t help but hear a small voice in the back of my mind screaming at me that he wanted to do more with me than I was entirely comfortable with. I had a strong aversion to most sex. Although I didn’t remember much, I had been sexually assaulted by a boyfriend of my mother at an early age. I couldn’t help but wonder if it contributed to me hesitance towards sex. As disgusting as the thought was, the only person I’d ever done anything sexual with was Bobby… and looking back I’d consider myself to have completely psychotic on the account of Taylor’s games that night. I was scared of sex… but I knew that was what Taylor had in mind despite his innocent demeanor. The problem was there was another voice back there telling me that maybe I wanted it too.