Your Imaginary Girlfriend: Taylor Swift

Welcome back to Your Imaginary Boyfriend/Girlfriend, Jezebel’s series in which we explore the wild and entirely fabricated world of dating a famous person. As is the risk with most fan fiction, things might get weird and things might get creepy, but the important thing is that we all have a good time.

Today’s Imaginary Girlfriend is Taylor Swift.

“Damn smile,” you think as it tugs at the corner of your mouth. You’re trying to play it cool. You’re trying to seem calm and serene rather than giddy and childish after such a remarkable first date.

“Do you maybe want to come over?” Taylor Swift asks you as she delicately hands her ticket to the valet. “I know we just ate, but I made macarons this afternoon and they turned out so well.”

“Um,” you start to answer, but the words get stuck in your throat because the girl standing in front of you is so damn beautiful and so damn composed in her crisp white button down with the Peter Pan collar and bangs so straight that they look like they were trimmed with a ruler.

“Sorry,” you blush. “Yes, that sounds great.”

“Great,” she echoes back at you as her silver SUV pulls to a stop at your feet.

***

“Everyone thinks I’m so crazy,” Taylor Swift explains to you as she guides her car along the freeway. “Like I’m this desperate girlfriend who overwhelms whoever I’m with until they’re sick of me, but that’s not true. I’m not crazy in relationships. I’m normal, it’s just that I express myself in music that happens to get popular and then everyone thinks that they know something about me. It’s dumb though because lots of people sing about love and relationships and no one says that they’re crazy.”

“Yeah,” you reply. “That seems really unfair. You seem really normal.”

“Thanks.” Taylor Swift smiles and flips her honey blonde hair over her shoulder just as her phone buzzes in the cup holder. She grabs it to look at the message and — just for a moment so quick that you question whether it existed at all — her features go dark.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling off at the next exit. “I need to stop at my friend Manny’s real quick.”

“No problem,” you tell her and you spend the next ten minutes driving in tense silence before she finally pulls in front of a small house where none of the lights are on.

“Maybe he isn’t home,” you offer, but Taylor Swift doesn’t respond.

“Sit in the driver’s seat.” Her words chill you to the core, but you can’t articulate why. “And keep the car running.”

How could you say no?

“Okay.”

She gets out of the car and you scramble into her vacant seat. The silence that fills the air suddenly feels suffocating and you would do anything to stop it. Reaching over, you turn on the radio.

“Ooooh, we called it off again last night…”

The car is once again filled with the voice of the girl who just left it. You try to breath deeply. You try to concentrate on what a nice time you’ve had with Taylor Swift so far and how nice the rest of the evening is bound to be and yet for some reason, you can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly, horribly wrong.

Your spiraling thoughts are interrupted by a slamming door and you look up to see Taylor Swift exiting the house. She doesn’t run, but she walks, eyes straight ahead, with a stone cold purpose.

“Drive,” she says in a deadly whisper as she slips into the passenger seat.

“Are you okay?” you ask, hoping, praying that she’ll turn, smile and tell you that everything is fine and that no one was home.

Suddenly there’s more noise, unwelcome shouting from inside the house, the sound of heavy boots on stairs as three or four men pour out of the door, running at the car.

“Fucking drive,” Taylor Swift yells, shifting the car out of park and slamming her own small foot on top of yours to propel the gas pedal. She pulls back when you finally manage to physically respond, gripping the steering wheel and trying like hell to get the two of you out of there. There’s a loud bang and the back windshield shatters. Bang! again as a bullet explodes the driver’s side mirror.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” you say, taking a sharp right to remove yourself from the path of gun fire.

“Fuck,” you say again as the violent noises disappear into the background. “Fuck. FUCK.”

You turn to look at Taylor Swift for the first time since you pulled away from the house and notice the dark stains that have ruined the yolk of her blouse.

“Taylor, you’re covered in blood,” you say, voice full of tremors.

She looks down and snorts before reaching into her purse and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

“It’s fine,” she says with a chilling calm as she lights up. “It’s not mine.”

The meaning of what she’s saying crushes down on you and soon your hands are shaking, but you keep driving because what else can you do.

“Pull over here,” she says after you’ve driven for a length of time — how long you have no idea. It could have been 10 minutes, it could have been an hour. You don’t even know what part of Los Angeles you’re in so you pull into the gas station parking lot without a word. With the car finally stopped and the ignition finally cut off, you pry your fingers from the steering wheel, stumble from the vehicle and vomit.

Finally, when it feels like you have nothing left inside to purge, you straighten and take in big gulps of the heavy night air. You turn to find Taylor Swift leaning against the hood of the car, smoking her second cigarette and brushing unhappily at the blood on her collar.

“Is Manny your ex boyfriend?” you choke out. Now that you’ve thrown up, you’ve started to cry. You don’t want to sob in front of Taylor Swift so instead it’s coming off as pathetic sniveling.

“Ha, no,” she says, grinning. “He’s just owed me money.”

“Is he dead?”

“I’ll answer that question if you want,” Taylor Swift replies, flicking her cigarette butt into the darkness. You watch as the orange burning ash jumps and sprays across the pavement. “But I doubt that you do.”

You nod as your face crumples grotesquely in pointless attempt to keep away your freely flowing tears.

“Do you still want to come over,” she asks and all you can do is shake your head no. No no no no no.

“Okay, I’ll drive you home.”

“Thank you,” you say, getting back into the passenger seat.

***

Taylor Swift pulls up in front of your house and without a word of goodbye you move to get out of the car only to be stopped when she grabs your forearm.

“You’re not gonna talk, right?”

You don’t turn to look at her, but shake your head no and she lets go.

“Good. Enjoy your night.”

You give her one last nod and get out.

“Left, right,” you whisper to your own legs, reminding them how to work as they walk you to your door.

Later that night, you stand in the shower under a stream of water that’s long been freezing cold. You’re shivering and you haven’t blinked or stopped staring at the same spot on the tiled wall for minutes, but, still, you can’t find the will or bravery to propel yourself out of the tub.

Everyone thinks I’m so crazy.

I’m not crazy.

I’m normal.

Normal.

Previously:
Your Imaginary Boyfriend: Jesus Christ
Your Imaginary Boyfriend: Kanye West
Your Imaginary Girlfriend: Rachel Maddow
Thanksgiving With Your Imaginary Boyfriend Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Your Imaginary Boyfriend: Cory Booker