Page 72 of Taylor

Alice

After Taylor left, Alice rolled over and went back to sleep. Part of her felt like she should get up and be productive. It had been so ingrained in her to always find the most effective use of time, but a large part of her wanted to slow down. She found joy in taking things slow and taking them in. When she allowed her brain time to do nothing, she found more of her creative reserves.

She did finally get up around ten. It was weird waking up in Taylor’s house without him. In the bright light of morning, it looked different than it had when she got here last night. Rubbing her eyes, she made her way to the kitchen and made herself coffee. She opened her refrigerator, and it was impeccably organized. It resembled those aesthetic organizing videos. It was full of fruit veggies and single premade meals.

She did find a breakfast burrito and warmed it up while her coffee brewed, then walked to the big floor-to-ceiling windows and pulled the curtains.

While Glendale was not a huge city, living downtown made it easy to forget, so the arena was visible.

That was when she saw it.

How had she missed this last night? There, on the wall of the living room, next to the kitchen, was a wall of family photos, some hockey ones. The picture of him and Wayne Gretsky made her smile.

In the middle of it all was the sketch she had made for him in the cabin. The sketch of him as a character fromMonsters of the Realm.

Moments like this, when she could find objectivity to look at her artwork, when she actually liked what she saw, were few and far between. But in this moment, she could see what Taylor saw. She was talented.

Moments like this actually made her think maybe she could do it. Maybe she could find a way to make it work for her. The microwave beeped, reminding her of her breakfast burrito. She set the plate down at the table next to her coffee and scrolled while she ate her breakfast. She had lots of artists in her feed, and this morning, she pulled up their profiles and looked at how they set up their shops and commissions.

Doing this wasn’t new. It was something she’d been doing for years, but she found herself starting to believe she could do it again. It was a dangerous feeling for her because she could easily get lost in it and lose all reality. At least that’s what her family said when she talked about doing this full time, but Taylor had her thinking maybe she could do it.

After she finished eating, she moved to the couch to keep working on the series of drawings she was doing with the team. As she curled up on the couch, she noticed a rainbow of neat block letters on her leg that readMy Rainbow Girl. She couldn’t have stopped the grin that spread across her face if she tried. When had he done that?

With her heart feeling all warm, she settled in on the couch and finished up the sketches of the team.

A stack of papers on the coffee table pulled her attention. Picking it up, she examined it. It looked like scribbles inside of a big oval. It was on a stack of papers all with similar looking scribbles. These seemed out of place in Taylor’s pristine condo, but knowing him there was a perfectly good explanation for these.

Before long, the door opened, and in walked Taylor. She couldn’t stop herself from hopping up off the couch and going straight to him and throwing her arms around him. He barely had time to get his bag down before she was in his embrace.

“Whoa. What’s this for?” he asked as he braced himself.

“I’m just happy to see you,” she said, beaming up at him.

Maybe Alice in the past would have tried to hide her joy at him simply walking through the door. This was part of what other deemed “too much.”

But she didn’t want to tamp it down.

And when he looked down at her with his eyes filled with adoration, she relaxed into the feelings... She wished it could be like this all the time.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” he said. He cupped her face and kissed her. “Are you hungry? I wasn’t sure what you would eat, but I always eat grain bowls on game days,” he said as he showed her the two to-go containers he’d set on the counter before she jumped into his arms.

“I’ll eat either of these. One is Chicken. One is steak. Also, don’t feel like you need to eat these, I just wanted to include you. If you want to eat one, please do. If you want to order something else while I eat this, that is fine with me, too.”

“These look great. You pick the one you want, and I’ll eat the other.”

“I always eat a steak grain bowl before games.”

“Well, then, I’ll take this one,” she said with a soft smile. “Thank you for thinking about me.”

“Do you mind if I watch some game videos while we eat?”

“Not at all,” she said, joining him on the couch with her grain bowl.

She sat next to him and ate while they watched the game. After they had both finished eating, he took their containers to the kitchen and came back and settled on the couch with her. She got out her tablet to keep working on her sketches while he settled into watching the game.

After a while, Alice looked over at him. He was hyperfocused on the TV. It was like nothing else existed to him. His hand was moving, and on the couch next to him he had the stack of papers. He scribbled on the paper next to him.

“What are you doing?”

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