Daylight - Taylor Swift

Chapter 41

October 6th, 2017 / October 7th, 2017

"Taylor? Need to talk to you," Jo said as soon as she came into the kitchen. Her stomach was tied up in knots, her brain unable to think straight. Even the smell of the coffee was absolutely nauseating, too strong, too early, too much going on.

"What's up?" Taylor poured the coffee from the pot into a kitten-patterned mug. It even had little ears that were molded on the sides.

"Privately," Jo pointed over her shoulder, looking at Charlotte who was sitting at the breakfast counter. She too had a mug of coffee, a groggy look on her face.

"Okay," Taylor agreed, she put the pot back on the warmer and said to Charlie, "Be right back."

She followed Jo to their bedroom, watching as Jo shut the door tightly and let out a huge, nervous sigh, "I did something."

Taylor could heard the anxiety in her voice from a mile away, "What?"

"Melissa is pregnant and I told my Dad I'm keeping Charlie, uhm... not very nicely either."

Taylor covered her mouth in shock, "Sorry, what?"

"Last night you told me we should keep Charlie because of everything going on with my Dad, so I called him. I just planned on telling him off and asking if it would be okay if she moved in with us, but he said he's been so busy taking care of the kids because Melissa has morning sickness and I lost my shit on him and told him I was keeping her, not up for discussion... then I hung up on him when he said no."

"Josephine," Taylor said quietly, "I don't remember saying you could move your sister in with us..."

"But you did," Jo furrowed her eyebrows, wondering if she had just made a terrible, terrible mistake.

"Okay, apparently I did. Okay... we can handle that, she's like, self sufficient anyways. There's no diapers, she puts herself to bed... we can handle that."

Jo's phone hadn't stopped ringing in her pocket of her pyjama pants, but she was ignoring the vibration she felt when she said, "She's not completely self sufficient, she's still a kid. But pretty much, yeah. The bigger problem is that I'm pretty sure I technically have kidnapped her at this point."

"Right," Taylor pursed her lips, "Call him back and work it out. He'll give in, he knows he's in over his head."

Jo didn't want to surrender, but she did. She took a moment to steady herself, collected her thoughts and feelings before she finally answered the call. She had missed about fifteen, and so he sounded relieved when she answered.

It took about half an hour, between Billy trying to feed Dylan a pancake without chocolate chips in it and bickering with Cassidy about how she had to go to school, Billy barely had time to argue with Jo.

Eventually, he agreed that he wasn't the best place for Charlie right now, even with Jo on tour. If Charlie didn't want to be up and about, she could stay with Taylor or head home for a bit, but ultimately it was up to her where she wanted to be and when.

As for school, Jo knew she could look into online school, or she could enrol in Nashville and stay with Taylor until the end of the year, meaning Jo would have to move her things from California to accommodate for it.

Once they finished talking about Charlie, unbeknownst to the teenager, Billy apologized for his distance. Jo wasn't completely ready to forgive, but admitting his faults was a big step in the right direction.

Later that afternoon, after a couple hours of 'being weird' according to the teenager, Jo tried to subtly bring it up while unpacking in her dressing room, "Hey... you ever feel like you could use a change of a scenery?"