Somewhere We Can Be Alone

A reimagining of “Love Story” by Taylor Swift, told with tender honesty and vivid memory

We were young.

Not just in years, but in the way we believed love could fix things. We moved through the world as if the ache we carried could be soothed by someone simply saying, I see you.

It was summer when I first saw you.

I was barefoot on the balcony, the wood still warm beneath my feet from the heat of the day. The scent of honeysuckle floated up from the garden. Below me, the party glowed. All flickering lights, soft laughter, dresses that shimmered like water. Someone played music from a speaker hidden in the bushes, and the whole night pulsed like a heartbeat waiting to be named.

Then you appeared.

You didn’t rush.

You moved through the crowd with calm certainty, sleeves rolled past your elbows, hands in your pockets like you belonged wherever you decided to be. People turned as you passed, but you didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe you just didn’t care.

You looked up.

You saw me.

Our eyes met in the hush between songs. You didn’t smile right away. You waited. Then you walked toward me, slow and deliberate, until you were standing at the base of the balcony.

“Hi,” you said.

And just like that, the world rearranged itself.

I never imagined you would come back.

That night and every night after, I would find you beneath my window. You tossed acorns at the glass, soft and careful, just enough to get my attention without waking the whole house. It was your way. Gentle, deliberate, full of meaning where others gave noise.

But one night, the porch light snapped on.

My father stormed out, rage written across his face. I was already halfway down the trellis, my dress snagged on the railing. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t care to understand.

He pointed at you and shouted from the lawn.

“Stay away from Aveline.”

You didn’t argue.

You looked at me one last time. Then you stepped back into the dark.

He dragged me inside like I was something fragile that might break in front of him. I collapsed onto the staircase the moment the door closed. I didn’t scream. I didn’t speak. I simply sat there, hands folded in my lap, tears falling onto the silk of my dress like rain on water.

I whispered into the quiet, again and again.

Please don’t leave.

Please come back.

Please take me somewhere far from this.

Because what they called love in that house had never been safe. It was measured in silence, in anger, in things unsaid and doors left halfway open. You were the first thing that felt like freedom.

I waited.

Night after night, I crept out to the garden. Sometimes you were already there, waiting beneath the old oak tree. Other times I stood alone in the moonlight, hands wrapped around my elbows, hoping the stillness would bring you back. When you came, we didn’t speak loudly. We sat close, knees nearly touching, words pressed between us like petals in a book.

You told me to close my eyes.

You said, “Just for a minute. Imagine we’re somewhere else.”

So I did.

And in that moment, I believed we could be.

Some nights you didn’t come. I told myself you must be waiting too. But the silence grew heavier with each passing week. I started to wonder if I had imagined it all. If love was something I had made up in the spaces between your visits.

One night, when the waiting felt too heavy to carry, I left the house and walked to the edge of town.

The sky was low and grey, the air thick with the kind of stillness that makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world. I didn’t expect to see you.

But there you were.

You stood beneath a broken streetlamp, your hair damp from the mist. You looked older somehow. Tired, but certain. You didn’t speak right away. You just reached into your coat and pulled out a small box.

You knelt, slowly, in the grass.

The world didn’t hold its breath. It didn’t need to.

This wasn’t a spectacle.

It was a truth.

“Marry me, Aveline,” you said.

“You’ll never be alone again. I love you. That’s all I know. I spoke to your father. You’re free. Come with me.”

There was no music.

No applause.

Just the soft hush of the wind and the sound of my heart remembering what it meant to say yes.

I wasn’t a secret anymore.

I wasn’t a girl on a balcony or a shadow slipping through the trees.

I was yours.

And I was free.

We were both young when I first saw you.

But somehow, even then, I knew.

____________

By Gemma Ortwerth