The Lucky Ones

Chapter 33 - Good Idea...

"Tay, you can’t!"

"Ah ah ah ah ah!" I spun around to face my mom next to me on the couch and put my hands on her face to quiet her. She opened her mouth to speak again, "AH AH AH! SHHHHHHH!" Mom looked at me with wide eyes and I kept my hands on her face until I was positive she wouldn’t speak. When I lowered my hands, she just looked at me but didn’t say anything. I smiled and nodded, "Okay. Now. I told you that you can’t change my mind on this." I could see the sadness in her eyes and I knew what she must be thinking. This career was what I worked so hard for. I spent my entire life pursuing this. How could I want to give it up? But that wasn’t the right question. The right question was how couldn’t I? After all that I’d been through because of my fame, how could I not give up something that had once made me happy but was now making me miserable?

"I just… I don’t…" I pressed a hand to my chest over my heart, "I don’t love music anymore. I dread it. I dread writing new songs because I’m afraid of what people are going to say about them. I dread performing because I know people are going to critique, not my performance, but me. And I dread falling in love with someone because I know the moment I become public about it, there will be lies and hatred and rumors and… I just… I can’t…” I shook my head. There wasn’t pain or sadness in my voice as I spoke. It was only confidence and some bitterness. “I want to love music again. I want to crave my guitar and sing when I’m in the shower again. I want to lie in bed and write songs for me and not a critic who’s gonna hate it anyway. And I can’t do that if I’m still in the industry.”

Mom looked at me with tears in her eyes and she pulled me into her arms for a hug. I hugged her back, feeling better than I had in days. “If it’s what you really want, Taylor.”

"It is. I just miss… music. Not the fame or the money, but like… playing my guitar til my fingers bled and stuff like that. I miss that feeling, you know?" Mom smoothed my hair back and smiled a little, looking at me with pride in her eyes.

"How did you get to be so smart?" Tears trickled down her cheeks and she kissed my forehead.

"It’s in the genes," she laughed and wiped at her eyes before saying she should probably go make some phone calls about this new development. I would never be able to thank her enough for all that she had done for me. My mother – the woman who was there with me through everything. She was the biggest reason I made to the place I was and she was the only reason I ever followed my dream of being something big, being someone big, being someone worth something. And here I was telling her that I didn’t want to be a part of the world I had tried so desperately to make it in and she was concerned about my happiness first. There was no one who would love me the way my mother loved me and I remembered (not for the first time) just how incredibly lucky I was to have her as my mom.

I looked over at Harry as she left the room and waited for him to say something about this decision I had made. I could still see the shock on his face, but he wasn’t making any move to tell me not to give it up. I wondered if that was because he didn’t blame me for getting out of the industry that had torn something precious from the both of us, or if he just knew there was no point in trying to get me to change my mind. I smiled a little and shrugged as he continued not to say anything. “Crazy?” I finally asked, scrunching my face up in a way that said ‘please be kind with your words.’

He smiled at me and shook his head, “Smart. I think you um… you deserve a break…”

"Really?" A genuine and bright smile crossed my own face. For the first time since losing the baby, I felt like something was right – something was going to be okay. I felt like my future wasn’t so bleak; like I was taking ahold of my destiny once again and was steering it in the direction I wanted to steer it. It was what I needed. I needed control in this crazy whacky world that I had lost myself in. And it felt so good to have two of the people I loved the most tell me that they thought it was a good idea.

"Yeah. But um…"

Or maybe not. My smile dimmed a little and I looked at him curiously.

"What if you… erm… what if you took that break… with… with me in London?" He mumbled this, his voice low and hard to hear because of how nervous he was. I caught what he was asking, though, and my heart soared again. This was definitely a good idea.

"Yeah?" He looked at me and I smiled more, "Yeah! I’d love that!" Harry’s smile mirrored my own and then he suddenly kissed me passionately and with so much joy I was about to burst from it.