She watched him, like she weighed her options one way or the other. If she said no, he’d know there wasn’t even a chance at being friends.
But what if…
“Yeah. Here.” She reached out, taking his phone from him and inputting her number into his contact list. “Text me, so I can add you to my contacts.” She smiled hesitantly, allowing the universe to shift just enough for Roman to feel like peace might be possible.
What else was possible?
Chapter 13
Taylor
Roman had been able to commit to someone else. Taylor couldn’t stop that phrase from repeating over and over in her mind. After he left, she even said the line out loud a few more times. Did he have any idea how ridiculous that was?
No matter what he’d said about his issues with commitment not being about her, his actions proved that wasn’t true. He could commit to someone else, but not to her. That cut deeper than Taylor needed right then.
His rejection of her had everything to do with her. And the roughest part was he’d told her what he couldn’t stand about her. He’d spelled it out for her. Told her over and over just how much he hated that she wasn’t more spontaneous, that she was so scheduled, that she was so organized.
He hadn’t liked that trait of hers. He hadn’t liked it and he’d left.
So, what did that mean? Taylor couldn’t be who she was if she wanted to find love? Did that mean she needed to change herself to find happiness? Did she believe that love was the only way to be happy?
Taylor was a huge believer in the saying “the epitome of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. She was stuck in a hamster wheel and not going anywhere. She had to look at what she was doing and where there was room to improve.
Roman had always claimed he had a problem with her scheduling. Honestly, Roman wasn’t the only one who had expressed issues with her lack of spontaneity and the fact that she couldn’t let go of the control with her planner.
What if that really was a fault of hers? What if the only reason she couldn’t find love was because she wasn’t scheduling any into her life? Or letting anything happen because she was too over-scheduled as it was?
If that’s what the problem was, then Taylor wasn’t too proud to look things over and come up with a solid plan. First thing she needed to do was acknowledge that there was a problem. Could she accept that about herself? She was the problem. Okay, she could do that. No matter how much it hurt.
Since she accepted that over-planning was her problem, could she change? She had to. If nothing else, she could at least see if changing would help her in the areas she felt she lacked – like relationships.
Staring at the wall wasn’t changing anything. She had to act. Immediately.
Pushing up from the couch, Taylor moved from the living room into her bedroom. She carried the bag she normally carried her planner and to-do list in with her.
She sat on the bed and set the planner beside her on the comforter. Using a discus style planner where the pages clicked in and out easily, Taylor was as comfortable with the planner as she was her pillow.
The style made it easy to add pages or take them out without ruining the layout of the actual planner. Every year she added more months, weeks, and daily layouts, working in the details of her schedule, planned out from the moment she got up in the morning until the moment she went to bed.
Even when she woke, if it was early, she made herself stay in bed until the time came for her to get up. She didn’t know what she would do with her time before then.
If it wasn’t scheduled out, she didn’t know what to do.
The soft duvet underneath her gave when she leaned back, bracing herself on her hands as she stared at the flowered cover of her planner. She’d had it for five years. The hard-laminated cover withstood rain, spilled tea, and restaurant crayon when a five-year-old had cried and she’d helped the mother out.
Her planner was something like a friend, there for her with details of her life to come and the actual realities of her life in the past. What she was considering was painful, but unavoidable. She had to make the decision to cut herself completely clean from the way she ran things.
Did she have the strength to break her habits? Her lifestyle?
Without looking directly at her nightstand, Taylor reached over to her alarm clock and unplugged the cord from the wall. Her hand shook as she dropped the plug-in with a plop to the ground and stared at the suddenly dark face of the clock.
A sense of panic welled inside her. She needed to know what time it was. Maybe she needed to start the next day. She stared at the blank face of the clock some more. The digital device wasn’t the only clock with alarms. Was Taylor doing the best thing for herself?
She grabbed her phone. It wasn’t yet eleven. Cari would be up still. She was a night owl and never planned anything out.
Fingers still shaking, Taylor dialed her sister’s number and then held her phone to her ear as she waited for Cari to answer.
“I don’t know what you’re doing with my sister’s phone, but if you don’t tell me where you are, I’m going to call the cops.” Cari’s worry rang clearly over the connection.
Taylor shook her head, staring unseeingly at her feet hanging off the bed. She drew her knee up and leaned back against the headboard. Cari’s comment didn’t help with her nerves. “This is Taylor, Cari. Sorry to worry you.”
A brief pause would have been appropriate, but Cari was silent for almost ten seconds before she replied. “Taylor, you don’t sound like anything is wrong. What’s going on? Are you okay? Is someone holding you hostage? You’re always in bed by ten-fifteen every night.” Curiosity didn’t cover up her still-present concern.
Taylor’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “So, it’s true. You all make fun of me behind my back about my scheduling and planning, right?” Why did she think anything else was different? She didn’t need people to actually say they laughed behind her back. What else would they do?
She was an anomaly in her family of fun-loving, artistic, creative, and relaxed sisters. They normally teased her in person, but wasn’t that just a polite way of telling you what they said behind your back?
“What? Not at all. No one makes fun of you. What’s going on? Why would you say that?” Genuine concern added a slight twang to the double syllable words.
“It’s okay, Cari. I just… I just wanted to know what you do to stay on track with things, if you don’t have a calendar or planner like I do?” Taylor wiped the damp skin under her eyes. She wouldn’t even sniff to give away the fact that she was crying.
There was no reason to cry or be upset. She had already decided to change. She just needed to know how to do it successfully.
“Okay…” Hesitant, Taylor’s little sister thought for a minute and then her voice carried easily through the earpiece. “Well, if I have notices like something from the mail or a reminder card from the doctor about whatever I’m supposed to be doing, I tape them or stick them with magnets to the fridge. Sometimes I send myself an email. Other times I put the event into my phone, if it’s one I really don’t want to miss. There was this one app I used a while back that seemed pretty good, but I forgot to use it and eventually I just uninstalled it.”
Taylor furrowed her brow. “But you still track what you’re doing? You just don’t have one common method, right?” Why that didn’t drive Cari mad was beyond Taylor. She shook her head, and inhaled deeply. “It sounds crazy and not very organized. How do you get anything done?”
Cari laughed. “Well, I’ll admit I’m not as productive as you, but sometimes I’m okay with that. And I get to the things that are really important to me. If I’m supposed to be there, I’ll make it. I don’t like to be late, but I don’t stress out about hitting a specific time on a clock.”
That was actually one of the things about Cari that drove Taylor nuts. The general lack of planning. But he
r questions weren’t about what drove her nuts. She was making the call to see how to change herself. Maybe she needed to celebrate Cari’s spontaneity instead of being bitter that it usually affected Taylor’s plans. Finding gratitude in the different traits of others would probably help her a lot in her current situation.
Was she overly picky about the men she’d come across in her life?
She wrinkled her nose as she replied to Cari. “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Taylor glanced down at her hand resting on her planner suddenly opened to the next day, showing the brightly colored pen marks and the neon color post-it notes with instructions and other details she needed to know. When had she done that without realizing it?
“Okay, well let me know if you really are okay. We can talk whenever you want to. I’m here.” Cari didn’t realize how much that bothered Taylor even more. Cari shouldn’t be that concerned with Taylor doing something outside of her normal scheduled day.
Taylor nodded despite her irritation and the fact that Cari couldn’t see her. ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.” They hung up. Leaning forward, Taylor rested her head in her hands while she took a steadying breath. She did appreciate Cari’s concern. But was it really that out of character to wonder how to do something?
She stared at the planner, then shifted her gaze to study the clock again. Could she handle putting everything on her phone? There was no way she would be okay with getting rid of all of her information. Regardless what she wanted to do, she had to make a change.
She had schedules and meetings in place for the next six months. Even though she took two hours to do so, Taylor inputted all of the information from her planner into her phone. Notes, numbers, dates and times. Everything she would need.
Then, with shaking hands, she pulled a stainless-steel pan that she used for soup season – which was coming up – from under the sink and she put it on the floor. Tossing the planner into the pot, she got a match.
There was no way she was going to be able to light it since her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.
She needed the planner. But did she? According to all of her self-realization and the triggers throughout the night, she actually didn’t need the planner. She’d had it entirely too long. She’d relied on a planner far longer than she should have.
She needed to let go of a tight timeline and just live life.
Taylor had no idea what that looked like or even how to do it, but she was determined to be someone that people wanted to fall in love with.
Spraying the planner with hairspray, Taylor finally got a match to keep its flame and then take hold on the planner’s pages.
She forced herself to step back as the flames licked at the edges and in minutes burned its way through her entire planner. The discs melted on the edges.
The fire alarm in the hallway started beeping and Taylor grabbed a kitchen towel, waving it in front of the red blinking alarm set in her ceiling.
Halfway there.
On trembling legs, Taylor turned back to her room. She grabbed her watch, a simple but expensive leather band piece with an analog face, and tossed it into the garbage. Then paused, staring down at it sitting amongst the single dinner wrappers. Well, maybe she didn’t need to throw it away. Maybe she could just tuck it somewhere and not allow herself to take it out. No reason in being wasteful.
She pulled out the watch and stood on tiptoe before tossing it up onto the top of the cabinet above the fridge, well above where she could reach. If she wanted that watch, she’d need to get a ladder or climb on all the pieces of the counter she could reach and then some.
Next, she needed to move the alarm clock to the living room. At least for now. No more alarms. No more schedules. She’d get where she needed to go and she’d do it when she was able to get to it.
Just thinking the chaotic thought left her throat constricted and a hive-ish sensation crawling up the back of her neck.
No. She could do it. Then she needed to get some sleep. She was more tired than she thought a couple hours would make her. Changing an integral part of herself had sucked more energy than she’d realized she had.
~~~
Rolling over to avoid the blinding sun pouring through the open curtains, Taylor groaned, stretching her legs in the comfortable bed. She blinked, yawning and rolling over again to peek blearily at the clock.
But the clock was gone. Wait. Where was the –
She flopped back on her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. No. She wasn’t going to let herself get stressed out because she didn’t know what time it was. She wasn’t going to let it worry her that she had no idea where she should be and at what time.
The night before, she’d even forced herself to leave her phone in Do Not Disturb mode on the counter in the kitchen.
When she did something, she went all in.
Taylor took her time taking a shower and then faced herself in the mirror. With her wet dark auburn curls hanging past her shoulders, she decided not to do anything else to her hair or makeup. She was going spontaneous. She didn’t need any of it anyway.
Grabbing a chapstick from the bathroom drawer, she swiped the stick across her lips and tucked it in her jeans.
Jeans! She never wore denim to the office. If that’s even where she was going. She had no idea. She still didn’t even know what time it was.
Leaving the bathroom, Taylor found herself standing at the counter, staring at her phone.
Ten am. Okay. She could work with that. She swiped the phone’s screen and then took it off Do Not Disturb, noting with mild alarm that she had more texts, messages, and missed calls with voicemails than she normally had on any given day of the week. Ever.
The text messages seemed the easiest to deal with in her state of mind. She pressed the message icon and scrolled through the messages from four of her sisters and her father as well as one from Mr. Gentry and one from an unknown number that identified himself as Roman.
She didn’t want to answer him, but she did. Letting him know she got the message. That was all she did. Promise. She couldn’t let him think his visit the night before had messed her up or made her change herself. That would be admitting to his having more power than she wanted him to have.
Glancing at her schedule, Taylor pressed the information button for the lunch date she was supposed to supervise of Roman and Olivia. She had to go to the office first, judging by the still-arriving text messages from Cari and Lily.
Taylor rolled her eyes. If nothing else, it just showed how much the world fell apart when she wasn’t carrying her planner. They all didn’t even realize how much they actually relied on her for keeping everyone running on time.
At the office, Taylor pushed the door of her car open, relishing the relaxed feel of her cowboy boots, the jeans, and the button-up soft blue shirt she’d worn under her dark brown leather jacket.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be at the brunch?” Lily rushed outside to catch Taylor who hadn’t yet decided just what she was going to be doing until the lunch date.
“It’s a lunch. I have plenty of time.” Taylor moved to go around her sister, but Lily grabbed her arms and yanked her back outside into the chilly wind. “No, the schedule was changed last week to a brunch. You wrote this down in your calendar, what is going on? I watched you take the notes.” Lily searched Taylor’s bagless form. “Where’s your bag?”
Narrowing her eyes, Lily folded her arms and pursed her lips. “Cari said you were acting weird last night, calling her after-hours and whatever else. What’s going on?”
Shaking her head, Taylor dug back in her pocket to retrieve the keys she’d tucked on her right-hand side. “A brunch?” She pulled out her phone and narrowed her eyes at the calendar entry. She’d typed brunch but the time said twelve, not ten. That was fine.
Nodding at her sister, Taylor bounded down the steps. She glanced back over her shoulder as she rushed to the truck. “Do you know where?”
“Just the café. It’s not like Mistletoe
has a huge selection.” Lily laughed but continued looking at Taylor weird in the morning sunlight. Maybe she doubted that Taylor could get to the café in time. It’s not like it was across the state.
Even though the sun shone, the wind bit at any bare flesh, delighting in trying to make everyone stay inside.
The café was close enough she could walk there, but, even though she was ready to let things go and not stress about being on time or whatever else she was doing, Taylor couldn’t help driving the short distance to the café to save even scant minutes.
She was only ten minutes late, but by the time she blew into the restaurant, she was horribly embarrassed.
Wasn’t it rude to be late? Didn’t she believe it was disrespectful of other people’s time? Yes, and yes. But so many other people didn’t care about being late. Why did Taylor care so much?
Especially considering, she’d have to sit and watch Olivia and Roman flirting on a date. Potentially their first date, although, Taylor had never asked about their history together.
Maybe she should. It wasn’t approved questions or even recommended to question about the contestants’ previous relationships, but did it count when it was about them?
She wiggled her fingers at the café’s white-haired owner who swirled black coffee in a glass pot and jerked her chin up as Taylor passed.
The mid-morning was smack in the middle of two rush times – eight am breakfast and twelve noon for lunch. Most people did brunch on the weekends, which confused Taylor but she pushed it aside. Maybe normal people didn’t care when they got together and ate.
Roman stood when he saw her approach, his eyes wide with concern as he studied her face. His dark eyes left her feeling breathless even though she knew he wasn’t looking at her like that. At worst they were enemies trying to win a contest. Taylor had no right playing with everything stacked against her. At best, they were friends. She never wanted just a friendship with him and the fact that that might be as good as it was going to get between them made her irrevocably sad. Yet, she smiled as she approached the couple in the booth.
Matched With Her Cowboy Billionaire Ex-Fiance Page 11