Chapter Text
It's not a spur-of-the-moment decision, breaking up with Taylor, not even close. It's not a half-baked thought or something Joe thinks he might try just to see what happens. Taylor's driving him crazy. If he has to put up with any more of her shit, he's going to go full-on American Psycho on her. It's not going to be pretty, and when his father next accuses him of having the devil inside, Joe's going to have to accept it as a legitimate concern.
Joe's not much of a believer, but he refuses to give his father a reason to try to exorcize him, so the only option left is calling it quits.
He doesn't actually plan to hang up less than half a minute in, but there's a reason he's breaking up with Taylor, and that's the fact that sometimes she just won't shut up.
"'This is not working'?" Taylor snaps, about eighteen seconds in.
"Taylor," he warns, but she's not listening.
"Have you tried to make this work? Every time I try to talk to you, you look the other way, sometimes at other girls, Joe. How is that my fault?"
"I didn't say it was your fault," he says, but she's talking over him already.
"Of course it is," she goes on, half sobbing, "you said it's not working, and obviously if you thought it was your fault maybe you'd try to put something of yourself in it," and he hears the door to the B&N storage room click open, "but you're just dumping it on me—you're just dumping me, oh my God, Joe, how can you be so freaking selfish?"
That's when Demi comes in, and he blurts out, "Okay, good talk," and hangs up.
"Who was that?" Demi asks, wary.
He blinks, eying his cellphone like Taylor's voice is going to keep coming out of it even though he's canceled the call. He turns it off. "That was Taylor."
"I don't know what you're doing with her," Demi says casually, standing on her tiptoes to lift a cardboard box up into a shelf.
"I'm not," Joe mutters, walking out.
Demi follows. "You're not what?"
"Doing anything with her," Joe says.
"Oh," Demi says. Then, with a mocking grin, "Is that a bad thing? Do you need me to cradle you to sleep?"
Joe shoots her a glare. "It can't be worse than dating her."
Demi nods in agreement.
"She's going to have me shunned," Joe says.
"She can't shun you; you're the school's QB," Demi offers helpfully.
"She's not going to stop until she has my head on a post," Joe despairs. "I broke up with her in half a minute."
Demi's eyes widen, and when he thinks she's going to be understanding and tell him that anyone would have done the same given Taylor's ability to shriek at levels forbidden by law, she has the balls to punch him in the arm. "You little shit," she says, and she looks serious about it.
Okay, so he shouldn't have hung up. But Demi had just walked in, and he wasn't going to let Taylor trash-talk him in front of Demi. He has a rep to maintain. So Demi's a lesbian, whatever, she's still a girl. She has the inside scoop, she looks good on Joe's arm, and she'd accepted Joe's offer to be his backup date to school events in case things with Taylor got really screwed up and he found himself unable to get out of taking her to the Homecoming dance. Taylor takes things like prom pretty seriously. She writes songs about it. They're pretty fucking decent songs, but that's not the point.
"She was screaming at me," he defends himself.
"I'm going to assume you'll beat yourself up appropriately for this," Demi says, glaring. "Or at least the fear of Taylor Swift will be painful enough for my services to not be required."
Joe lets out a breath, feeling relieved as he watches Demi walk off with a cart full of books.
"This isn't over yet," Demi calls back, and Joe really, really hopes it's just the shock talking. Demi can't stand Taylor any more than he can.
He switches his phone on again, and finds it pretty astonishing that he has no raging lunatic-type messages from Taylor. That's kind of her style, letting it all out before she has a chance to cool off and think.
So, okay. No more Taylor for him. School starts in three days and he probably won't have a chance to have a civilized talk with Taylor before then. That means he'll have an angry ex-girlfriend to face during football practice, since Taylor also takes the whole cheerleader thing seriously despite how much she actually hates cheering. There's clearly nothing better for team morale than a cheerleader hating on the quarterback, the sport and the art of human pyramids.
On the bright side, at least he can drown his sorrows in cheap beer at Henrie's summer's-over-fuck-this-shit party tonight.