Andrea
'Taylor?'
'Tay, sweetie, where are you? I thought we could grab some lunch, take advantage of your few days in Nashville...'
Andrea's sentence trails off as she enters her daughter's living room, spotting her curled up on the couch, covered in blankets. The coffee table is littered with tissues, an empty chocolate box, a wine glass and a few too many bottles that she chooses to ignore.
Immediately, she knows. It had happened. The thing that she'd worried about, that Taylor said he promised he wouldn't do. He had left.
'Oh my baby', comes flying out of her mouth involuntarily as she hurries over to her sobbing daughter, gently pulling at her torso so she can move her on to her lap. Taylor only sobs harder, hands clutching at Andrea's sweater, and she curses the man who had left her brilliant, talented, funny and beautiful 33-year-old daughter needing her mom like this.
They sit for who knows how long, and eventually Taylor's sobs subside, her breathing evening out. Andrea isn't sure if she's fallen asleep, actually, until she hears a mumble come from Taylor's lips.
'What was that, honey?'
'He left. He just fucking... Left. Said I was too much. God, mom, why am I always too much?'
Andrea can't help the tears that fall from her own face, now, as Taylor finally sits up to look at her, before she pulls her in for a hug. 'You are beautiful, and you are brilliant, and you are so, so talented, my girl. You are not too much. He wasn't enough. You hear me? I don't ever want you dimming your light for anyone ever again. I want you to be the wonderful person you are, and you'll meet the one who's just as wonderful as you. I know it'.
She can feel Taylor nod against her shoulder, and she accepts the silence, letting Taylor mull over what she'd said. Then, in a tiny voice she had grown used to over the years, she whispered, 'Mommy? Will you stay here with me? I don't want to be alone'.
'Always, Tay. Whatever you need'.
So she'd stayed the weekend, peeling Taylor off the couch to go and shower and look more presentable, and cooked for her: childhood staples, pancakes and maple syrup, and those sweet coffee concoctions she loved so much, even sourcing some gingerbread syrup in the middle of summer. She stayed by her side, too, when the tour resumed: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Kansas City; then onwards into the back end of the summer in Denver, Santa Clara and California. Only a few, of course, knew the true extent of Taylor's heartbreak: Andrea, obviously, and Scott - Tree, too, as well as her closest friends. But to the outside world, she was the consummate professional, performing flawlessly every night - never revealing that she broke down in Andrea's arms almost every night after final curtain.
Andrea watched throughout the summer as Taylor - her Taylor - began to reemerge from the cloud of sadness, of bitterness and grief and whatever was left over from those six years in London. They spent 4th July at Holiday House, and both she and Scott remarked how great it was to see the house full of people again, of Taylor's closest and best friends. She watched from her bedroom window, unseen, as they all gathered outside around the fire pit, wine glasses in hand, late into the night. She heard snippets of the conversations ("He was never good enough for you"; "We can all have a single summer together"), and she was noticeably happier after that, a new resolve to move forward putting a spring back in her step.
She would have thought that was all it was - a determination to move forward on her own for a while - that was making her girl smile so broadly again, but there was a shift in the air around the beginning of August. She found her giggling over her phone more than a few times, quickly slipping it in to her pocket when Andrea walked into a room; or excusing herself to another part of the hotel when the ringtone chimed. She did wonder to herself - and once with Austin, who gave a vague answer of his own - what it was all about. Taylor had been back in the recording studio, that much was public, so she knew it wasn't that. She knew, though, that Taylor-being-Taylor, she would fess up to whatever it was eventually - especially if she was going to be so obviously giddy about it.
