Everything Has Changed

It's Complicated

August 22nd 2024
New York City, New York

Sitting on a plane, incredibly nauseous, was not something Taylor ever recommended. Sitting on said plane also concealing your deepest and darkest secret was also not something on her radar, or bucket list. But there she was: sat, curled up in a ball as the plane descended into Morristown, New Jersey.

Taylor had some unfinished business to attend to before her break in New York City and so had planned to stay in her New York apartment for a day or so before flying back to Kansas City to take a well deserved rest with Travis and the rest of their family. Taylor had been looking forward to seeing them all again. Well that was until she discovered what she had the day before, in the en suite bathroom of her quaint little house in London. She had said So Long, London but brought all of its baggage with her. Some stuff that couldn't just be chucked carelessly into the plane's cargo or discarded like trash at some random downtown airport.

She was defiantly pregnant, there was no doubt about it. Several trips to the bathroom were made and Taylor wondered how women for centuries and millenniums had done this before. It felt like her insides were sloshing around constantly, volatile and on the verge of expelling anytime she got a sniff of anything other than pure plain and basic air particles. Which is considerably hard when you don't live in a plastic bubble. The whole plane ride Taylor tossed and turned between failed sleep, nausea, actual vomiting and wracking her brain for ideas on how to tell Travis about all of this. She knew that she would want to confirm it first. Pregnancy tests can be wrong sometimes can't they?

She knew of a private OBGYN office in New York City. Somewhere discrete and under the radar, she couldn't afford anything to get out to the press before Travis knew. But what with what happened in Edinburgh, Taylor also knew it would kill Travis and herself if she got his hopes up, only to come crashing down on them like a meteor again. Whilst he never let on, she knew deep down that her miscarriage that summer had broken him more than she would ever know, or he would tell her. There are some things you don't ever have the words for, and if Travis hadn't read her diary, Taylor truthfully didn't know what would have ever happened after that night. Would they have found a way to reconcile ?

Would they have broken things off and gone their separate ways finally?

Or would he finally see her the way she had wanted to see herself... face down in the water. Submerged in a bath tub, blood pooling down her wrists as her body turned cold with age and rust?

The journey back home from Europe was one that was completed far too quickly. Tree had arranged for a car to pick her up and drop her to her apartment in Tribeca. Her doctor's appointment had been confirmed for tomorrow and Taylor knew it would be time to dig out the wig again. The one she vowed she would never wear again after breaking things off with Joe. She still kept one, the shoulder length red haired one, for good measure and memories. The rest were dead, gone and buried. Well burnt, along with their pictures. Because as far as Taylor was concerned, she was just another one of the girls he had loved before and Joe was just another picture to burn.

Driving back through downtown Manhattan and into Tribeca brought back so many memories. Her and Travis' first date had been there. In her house, where she had cooked dinner, they had kissed and she pathetically fell asleep on the sofa beside him. He could have lied and told her so many things from that night. He could have told her that they had the most electric on fire sex the world had ever seen, or that she river danced across the kitchen island whilst he stood and watched in awe. Travis could have made her out to be so much more than she had been that night. But he hadn't. He remained loyal and truthful and told her how much he loved just being there with her, in his arms on the sofa. Walking back into her apartment felt wrong, without him but she had to get used to it.