The girl who lives in delusion

The next few months, things started to become “America Normal”, as Matty put it. “America Normal” meant having playdates with kids they met in the playgroup in houses which made their apartment look like a pathetic excuse for a home and made Taylor question if their security details were even close to sufficient (it took Matty several weeks and a lot of sweet-talking to convince her that actually not that much needed to be changed, especially regarding the fact that as long as she was working on the script, the workflows were slightly different anyway). “America Normal” meant that at least Matty himself could go to coffee shops and record stores and fleamarkets in the neighbourhood, at least without causing too much fuss even after the news of them relocating to New York inevitably broke to the tabloids. “American Normal” meant that Blake and Selena were visiting them on a regular and that Scott got to be around when Liv decided to say “Mummy” for the first time in late November which led to Matty witnessing the usually quite stripped off emotions, rather keeping-it-cool American bursting into tears. Matty liked “American Normal” a lot, it made many of the things he had been so worried about ever since he decided to go back to Taylor seem so unjustified. It also got him closer to Jack again which was something he had never dared to dream of at some other points in his life, since they could meet up more regularly, with Jack becoming a frequent guest at their home, often times when Taylor wasn’t even around which led to some of the most awesome afternoons him and Liv spent together.

“American Normal” also made the time pass way, way faster, seemingly. Because inbetween moving and setting their lives up here, the leaves on the trees in Central Park turned brown and when he came home from taking Liv to playgroup one day (something that had taken way longer than it should because Liv had recently started to take a huge interest in a dog-café they came across on their way home), he noticed that Taylor set up the whole apartment with scented candles, cleared an entire section of a cupboard out for her tea-collection and re-arragned all of their closets into winter-mode before going to work. And before he knew it, they were sitting here, in the early hours of the evening of December 5th, their fingers covered in glue and glitter and with something that could rightfully be described as a “respectable mess” all around them. Leftovers of paper-cutouts, beads rolling around all over the floor (much to the pleasure of Meredith and Benji who had the time of their lives chasing them) and open glue bottles everywhere, always just seconds from falling over and turning the floor sticky.

“I still don’t think putting feathers on a unicorn is appropriate in any way. You’re creating a proper monster there, Healy.”

The side-eye Taylor shot him while she watched how he did put some bright pink feathers on the back of the little unicorn he built out of papmaché the past few days made him huff in dissapprovement.

“It’s called ‘artistical freedom’, thank you very much”, he retorted and continued to put the feathers on the unicorn, although the original plan had been to stop at about three on each side.

“Oh, I…I’m sorry”, Taylor said, looking at him with her head slightly tilted, “did I hurt your feelings as an artist? Because if I did, I swear on everything that’s of value to me, it was absolutely intentional.”

“Yeah, how about you just fuck off, because this little unicorn is actually the most pretty of them all this far. Plus I know Liv is going to absolutely love touching the feathers, so this is going to be her favourite.”

“If by ‘touch’ you mean she’s going to rip them off in no time and spread them all over the floor, yeah, you’re absolutely right”, Taylor said dryly. Matty waited patiently until she turned her focus back on the balloon she currently blew up before he took a handful of glitter out of one of the pots sitting next to him and threw it right in her face. Taylor screamed in shock so loud that it made the cats jump and Matty just chuckled darkly.

“Hope you learned your lesson”, he said, “the creative empire will always fight back.” He watched her giggle and helplessly trying to wipe the glitter off which, of course, was stuck to her skin, her hair, her clothes.

“I hate you so much I don’t even know why I put up with you sometimes…”, she murmured, carefully opening her eyes again. There was glitter all over her, still and so much affection in the way she rolled her eyes at him now.

“Let me give you a little reminder…”, he suggested, his voice way lower than it had been before, “Close your eyes, baby.”

When she did, he crawled over to her to close in the little space inbetween them. As soon as he was close enough he carefully pushed the strands of her that fell into her face back behind her ear, before softly caressing the glitter off her face. There was a tiny scratch right above her eyebrow where Liv had scarred her a few days ago when trying to get a grip on her hair again. There were the little wrinkles on her nose when she scrunched it under his touch. There was the one tiny birthmark right behind her ear he loved so much because it always felt like knowing about it was something absolutely intimate. He revisited all of those things with his fingers, carefully brushing the glitter off and kissing the spaces once they were clean. Those little moments had been rare, recently, the little instances where it was just the two of them with her going back to work, sort of, and also their social life sort of coming back by all the connections they made through Liv’s playgroup. It made what was happening now feel way more special. He enjoyed every second of touching her, enjoyed every moment of feeling how her hands got lost in his hair and how they both carefully sank to the floor, lying in the midst of all the glitter right now. When he was done removing most of the bright, sparkly parts off her face, he gave her a sign to open her eyes again. She did and looked at him with so much affection it made his breath hitch in his throat for a second.

“I love you”, she breathed, her fingers twirling his hair, “Thank you for making these past 364 days, 17 hours and 47 minutes so special. Thank you for your love and your support and your unwavering trust in me as Liv’s mum. Thank you for all the late-night-shifts and diaper-changes and being there when I couldn’t. Thank you for everything, darling. I love you so much.”

He leaned down to kiss her again, at loss for words and perfectly aware that he could and should have given everything she just said back to him, a thousand times multiplied. And he would. At some point. The kiss was long, sweet, several little kisses actually, him hanging on her lips like he couldn’t get enough of them. And how should he have, honestly? How should he ever have?

“What time did you say it was?”

Taylor carefully turned her head, reached for her phone and took a look at it. “Around eight-ish…”, she replied finally and Matty began to carefully go through the memories his brain came up with. One arm propped up on the floor next to Taylor, he said after some time:

“A year ago right now, I was just about to go on stage, I think. I even think I texted you right before I went and was a little confused why you didn’t text me back at first, but I tried not to think too much of it. I calmed myself down like I usually do, I went through the setlist in my head and I thought that something felt weird, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But I knew I had a job to do, so I tried to push everything away. Retrospectively, of course, I think I had a hinch that something was…different.”

Taylor chuckled slightly.

“Of course you did. You having a very good feeling of when I’m not ok is the main reason we even got way more than one chance, you know?”

He put a kiss to her forehead, again, wiping off some glitter right after.

“Where were you? Or what were you doing?”

She tilted her head slightly, little wrinkles appearing on the spot where he just kissed her, and he watched in awe how slowly enlightenment shinned up in her eyes.

“I was on my way to the doc. I was with Jill. She had been with me the entire morning and about an hour ago we decided that the contractions were way too regular to just brush them off as Braxton Hicks. So we went to see the doc. I think that was about when I started to text you more frequently, because I was really super scared and I couldn’t really tell whether this actually meant there was something wrong with her or if she was just messing with me a little.”

Matty exhaled audibly and kissed her cheek.

“Must have been super fucking scarry. I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through.”

Taylor smiled softly. “It was. And on the other hand, I thought, you know, it was sort of fitting. We put a shit ton of effort into you being able to do this tour and still be around for her being born and now, if things went down really badly, you were about to miss it. Wrong place, once again. Sort of tragically aligning with our story, somehow.”

He could see her swallow. Hard.

“But yeah. I was on my way to the doc, breathing through the pain, my mum next to me in the car and hoping for the best.”

Matty took a look at Taylor’s phone again on which the screen had just lit up. The background-picture was a black-and-white version of him sitting in a rocking-chair with Liv, a few hours after her birth, enjoying skin-on-skin-contact with her. Carefully chosen so that if it should show up in any picture somewhere, nothing about Liv’s face would be visible.

“And you were very successful in that…”, he murmured, kissing her again. “So successful, even, that we get to celebrate her first birthday in a few hours. That’s fucking amazing.”

Taylor chuckled. “We are aware though that this is just the beginning of an obscene amount of partys she’s going to have thrown for her over the course of her life, right? Like…from the third one, I think, we can start really working with mottos and not just generals stuff like this year. Like…can you imagine? A Cinderella-one, if she’s up to it. Or a Shrek-one, maybe, at some point? Ore something with cats? Oh I’m sure Meredith, Benji and Olivia would love it if the whole house was decorated in cats!”

The sound of the steady beeping of the machines started to lulling her in, sort of, so did George’s snorring. Or maybe it was just her blood sugar dropping. Or the energy it took to cut out the horrendous back pain that made her limbs feel numb by now. Or the fact that the sun shining through the windows made her become perfectly aware of how long she had been sitting here. Ever Since she put the girls to bed. For the entirety of the night. Matty didn’t move for hours at this point, except from very, very occasionally caressing the back of her hand with his thumb. If it wasn’t for the terrible, but at least somewhat stable stats the monitor he was attached to showed, she wouldn’t even have known if he was still alive. But he was, apparently. Technically. Taylor forced herself to sit up more straight again, putting the hand that was not holding her husband’s in her neck. She knew she had to stay awake now, and knew she couldn’t leave. The window for that was closed now and a part of her hated her past self for declining the opportunity, when her own mum, Denise and Carly tried to force her to take a nap on the couch. Because she knew she couldn’t do that now. Because despite Laura and Christina refusing to give them a definitive time-schedule, she knew that every minute she didn’t spend in here might bear the chance of her not being there when he died. And that had been the point of it all. This had been the goddamn point of it all. 

The room was empty, almost, except for George and her, with him having dozed off on his chair a while ago and by doing so, giving Charli the perfect excuse to go for a zig, taking Denise and Tim with her for a breath of fresh air. She had no idea where Louis went. Or where Ross was, for that matter. She didn’t really care though, if she was honest. She knew they would be back and the only people outside of this room she worried about were taken care of by her mum. For now, she was thankful for the relative silence if she was honest. The silence that allowed her to let her thoughts wander off and- She stopped in her tracks right this second, interrupted by an oh so familiar sting in her upper stomach region that made her inhale sharply. Lowering her head slightly while lifting her eyebrows, she gave her bump a noticeable side-eye. That was an unusual time for her baby to start moving, normally she’d rather do that when Taylor was just about to fall asleep and that was especially true for the pointed kick in the rib she had just suffered. And for a moment, she couldn’t fight the feeling that even her unborn baby knew something was different today. Was that really that far off? The door to the room was opened and Laura came in. She checked the stats on one of the monitor’s, wrote something down and then went over to the chair Taylor sat in. 

“You’re ok? Do you need anything? Some water? Something to eat?”

She shook her head, declining politely. She didn’t like the way Laura’s voice sounded. The petty that was in there already, although nothing happened yet. The knowledge about how this wasn’t to become any better anytime soon scared her more than she was willing to admit. 

“Alright. I’ll talk to Christina then and we’ll discuss the next steps. Will update you as soon as I can.”

And with that and a little smile she left the room again. Taylor looked over to George who was still sleeping in his chair, completely undisturbed, noticing how a new sort of envy started to creep up on her. She didn’t sleep for more than 30 minutes straight ever since the arrived in italy. At least. The next sharp sting in her belly-region made her close the fingers of the hand that was holding Matty’s tighter around his by reflex. But she probably wouldn’t even have noticed this if it wasn’t for the hoarse whisper of her name in response. It was him being awake for the first time in hours and the faint sound of his voice made her heart skip a beat immediately. 

“Hey darling. I’m here, everything’s alright. George is here too. What can I do for you?”

She took a deep breath and bowed down so that she was able to put a kiss to his head, although it made her back hurt in a way she was actually convinced her spine was going to split. Matty didn’t respond to her question. He didn’t even open his eyes. But him squeezing her hand again told her everything she had to know. 

“Glad to know you’re awake. You didn’t miss much though. The others have gone for some fresh air, so it’s just me and George left at the moment. But I’m sure they will be back any minute.”

Her hand that was not holding his caressed his head softly. His eyelids fluttered as if he tried to open them and then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. 

“It’s ok, my beloved, don’t worry about it. There’s not much to see here anyway. Basically it’s just George sitting on his chair and-” She cut herself off, growling, because the baby had kicked her once more, “and me sitting in my chair. And then, of course, there’s Nia playing football with my organs for fun.”

His heart skipped a beat at her words, she could literally see it. It had been noticeable the past few hours already, how his pulse and his heartbeat increased - in excitement, she figured - when she talked to him about their children if he happened to be awake. It was literally obvious now. The hint of a smile started to form around her lips, although she didn’t let it become more than this.

“I’m serious though. See for yourself”, she said and carefully guided his hand to the place on her belly where she felt Nia’s last kick. She closed her fingers over his and pressed them down, knowing all too well he was too weak to keep the hand up there himself. For a moment she closed her eyes, hoping for something to happen. So so so bad. Because while god only knew how many moments they had left together, she for sure knew that the moments where he would be able to feel their daughter move in her belly - every move he would ever get to know of her anyway - were very, very limited. So she just sat there, holding her breath and pressing his hand down on her body, as if she could provoke their daughter to bounce back that way. But nothing happened. For one heartbeat. Two. Three. She released the breath she had been holding. Nothing happened after that either.

“I swear, Matty, I am not making this up, she was just-”

And then there it was. Soft, more gentle than the last one, but undoubtedly there. What she suspected was a little foot kicking against her ribcage. 

“See?”, she whispered, her voice way thinner than she could have wished for it to be, “She said hello to you, darling. And I’m sure she was just waiting for the right moment to do so. I’m absolutely sure.” 

(...)

And so, they all took their places for what they knew was going to be the last time they were all gathered in here like this. And the most important one as well. Taylor sat down on her chair again, an act that took her way longer than what she could have wished for and then carefully reached out for Matty’s hand that was placed on his chest by now, just the way she had put it there before they went outside to talk to Laura and Christina. She didn’t really think about it this time, she just took his hand and put it on her belly. It felt like the only right thing to do. Maybe it was. From the corner of her eye she could see how the others slowly found their places. Charli and George stood on the opposite side of the bed to where Taylor herself sat, George grabbing Matty’s shoulder so tight as if he was never letting go of him again. Adam sat next to him, holding Matty’s other hand, while Denise, Louis and Ross where lined up to Adam’s left with Louis sitting on the edge of the bed. Tim stood on the head side of the bed, somewhere in between all the  tubes and cables that connected Matty to the IV-bags and monitors, caressing Matty’s head and humming a tune to him Taylor couldn’t identify. When Christina came in, a syringe in her hand, she knew what was going to happen now. The doctor had just explained it to them. They were going to increase the dose of the painkillers for Matty now so that he wouldn’t notice that his body was failing him for good now. And then they were going to wait. Taylor did her best to shut everything out from now on. Ross’ sniffles. Denise’s sobbing. Even Tim’s singing. All she could see, hear, feel, was her husband in the bed next to her. The way the pauses between the shaky breaths he took became longer and longer. How there were little gasps in between them as if he was fighting for more air he didn’t get. His head rolling to the side at one point. But even then she didn’t want to believe that it was over. She couldn’t. Not until she noticed that the fingers of his hand she had kept pressed to her belly went slack. That was when she realised. And for a moment she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t breathe, even. She just sat there while the feeling set in. That this hand that was lying right where their baby had been moving not that long ago, was dead. She took a look around as good as possible without moving her head. Nobody seemed to notice this far. So she bowed down, her hand still holding Matty’s, pressed a kiss to his temple and murmured: “It’s alright, love. Thank you for everything. I’ll take care of the rest from now on. I promise. I love you.” 

When she sat back up, her gaze met George’s. And she knew he knew without saying a word. 

(...)

The way up to the girls’ room  had never felt this long, the stairs never seemed so steep. Halfway through, she had to pause, wondering for a moment if she really had the energy to make it all the way up. The pain in her back was brutal by now and she felt short on breath without knowing why this was the case. What she did know though was that she hated everything about it. Oh so much. Nonetheless, she stood there for a few heartbeats, catching her breath, trying to calm herself down a little bit. She knew it was absolutely no use if she went in there now as the mess she was. It wasn’t what was going to help them - and it wasn’t what they deserved either. From downstairs she could hear the soft sounds of the before planned protocol being set in motion. Just like they had agreed on and so weird at the same time. Even the thought of things going on, that time wasn’t  frozen at all, not even down there, was scary as hell to her. But it wasn’t something she could focus on now. She knew it wasn’t. So she focused on something else. Putting one foot in front of the other. Actually making it up the stairs. Besides the pain in her back. Besides her feeling like she couldn’t breathe properly. 

When she  thought about this moment before, there had been a scenario where both of her daughters were still asleep when she came into their room. But she knew way before she opened their door already that this wasn’t the case. From inside the room, she could hear Liv talking to herself, apparently playing with something. And from time to time she could hear Jo squeak as well. In fact, when she opened the door, it was her younger daughter who saw her first, toddling over to her with slightly insecure steps, that’s how fast she went. Taylor bent down to the best of her abilities and cuddled her, widening her embrace to Liv, of course, as soon as the second girl noticed her. That’s how it happened that the three of them sat on the floor of the room now, Liv kneeling in front of her and gesturing wildly while she explained what she had dreamed about last night, Jo cuddled up in Taylor’s lap, nestling against the baby-bump and sucking her tongue. 

“...and then I fought a dragon and we won and everybody was happy”, Liv concluded her description of the dream at some point. On any other day, Taylor would have taken the opportunity to make a whole story out of this immediately, going on for hours with Liv now about the adventures of the knight she had just been. But today wasn’t any other day. It was the day.

“Listen, lovelies, there’s…there’s something I need to tell you. Liv, would you mind coming over here?” 

She patted the floor to her right. It was important to have her in hand’s reach, she figured, so that she could  touch her, hold her, however her daughter might need it within the next few minutes. Liv crawled up to her side and looked up at her expectantly. 

“What is it?”, she asked and for a moment Taylor was surprised by how alert her oldest one was. 

“Do you remember what I said when we came here? That we’re doing this because daddy wished for it?”

Liv nodded. 

“Yeah. You know…the thing is…you know daddy has been super tired lately, you noticed that, right?”

Liv nodded again. Taylor noticed how Jo started to play with a strand of her that was falling over her shoulder.

“Yes”, Liv replied, “This is why he was in bed all the time, right? Because he needed to sleep.”

“Exactly. And you also remember that daddy’s sick, don’t you?”

Liv nodded once more.

“So you know…sometimes when adults become really, really sick, they need to sleep. Deeply. Like super, super deeply.”

Liv nodded but seemed slightly confused at the same time. 

“So…you know…this is what daddy’s doing now. He just…he just fell asleep. A few minutes ago.”

“And when he wakes up, he’s good enough so that we can play, you think?”, Liv asked. “We haven’t played in so long because he was always tired.”

Taylor forced a smile and put a kiss to Liv’s head.

“No, darling. No I’m…I’m so sorry but no. You see the thing is, sometimes, when adults become really, really sick and go to sleep they…they’re not waking up anymore. And that’s what daddy did.”

It felt strange saying those words. It felt strange hearing them, even though they came from her own lips. 

Liv looked at her frowning but she didn’t say anything for a while. 

“What is it, darling?”, TAylor asked, caressing her head, “What got you thinking that much?”

“We just have to find a way of waking him up then”, Liv declared and Taylor exhaled audibly. Then she put a hand on Liv’s cheek, caressing it.

“No, darling. No, this is not going to work. And I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”

Her elder daughter looked at her completely puzzled and Taylor could already see how her confusion would turn to anger. Jo was still playing with Taylor’s hair, obviously oblivious to everything that was said about her. Nia kicked her in the ribs. And for the blink of an eye, the fragment of a second, if even, a strange feeling befell Taylor. A feeling that despite everything that was happening, despite all the sadness and pain and fear, there was one positive thing after all. She wasn’t alone in this. Not at all. Before she really realised what happened, Liv had jumped to her feet and went to the back of her room and from there straight to the door, her plushie unicorn in her hand. 

“Livi stop. What are you doing?”, Taylor asked in confusion, grabbing Jo by reflex who had just been on her way to follow her sister.

“Going to see daddy”, Liv said nonchalantly. Taylor swallowed. Hard.

“We can do that, darling, but there’s one thing you really have to understand first: He is not going to wake up, ok? No matter what you try, he will be sleeping.”

Liv nodded overly enthusiastically. 

The video she sent him wasn’t one of herself though. Instead it showed Jack who happily bobbed Liv up and down on his shoulder, occasionally gushing about how amazing she was, how cute, how perfect and the most beautiful girl he ever saw in his life anyway. Matty couldn’t help the lump that started building in his throat. Once again it dawned upon him. How easy it would have been to loose everything. How fast it could have happened that Liv would have never bene born and he couldn’t watch a video of Jack entertaining his baby daughter now. So easy. Him turning Tree down that second time around would have been one reason. Taylor deciding that he was too much of a risk the way he was would have been one reason. Tree convincing her that he was not worth it would have been one reason. And what a shame it would have been if he couldn’t. Oh what a shame. He replied with a crying-, and a heart-emoji, accordingly and put his phone away. Then he turned around to Tree again.

„Thank you, Tree. Thank you for everything, really.“

She smiled softly, got up from her place on the chair and went over to him.

Her day started way more early than she had anticipated. At around two a.m., Jo did more stumble into her bedroom than to walk over into it, her teddybear pressed to her chest, complaining she didn’t feel well. A quick check-up confirmed Taylor’s first suspicion that she caught a fever, so she spent the majority of the rest of the night getting her daughter to drink enough, putting leg compresses on her and cuddling her back to sleep. Therefore, by the time her alarm rang, she felt entirely exhausted already. But then, maybe she would have felt that way completely unrelated to what happened to Jo last night, she thought, caressing her daughter’s hair, kissing her forehead but deciding to let her sleep a little bit longer. Taylor figured Jo must at least be as exhausted as she herself was. So, while Jo got to sleep, she got out of her bed and went straight to the bathroom. The cold of the floor made her walk a little bit faster, hoping to reach the saving realms of her bathroom with the floor-heating sooner. During her way accross the hall, she could hear voices from downstairs. Of course her parents were already up as well as Denise and Tim, she figured. A clear case of senile insomnia, she was absolutely sure of that. Her bathroom greeted her with a warmth that was absolutely welcome on from what she could tell so far was going to be the fist chilly autumn-morning of the year. So she only stood there for like a few minutes, let the warmth fill up her whole body from head to toe in what felt like something that literally happened right in this moment. It had a meditating element to it, really, just like the shower she took afterwards had. She took her time with it, using not only her body-wash but all the scrubs, hair-products and bodylotion she had stored in the bathroom anyway, as if she wanted to be particular clean today. As if to emphasize the fresh start this day bore. She got out of the shower, wrapped the towel around her body twice and around her head three times and drew little circle-shaped figures on the fog on the mirror mindlessly. Today was a big day. For Liv and for her and for everyone involved, basically. Liv had been excited about this eversince her teacher visited them at home a few weeks ago, constantly bombing Taylor with questions about what she was going to learn, who she was going to be in a class with and if she would finally get to use the pink, glittery pencil-case she bought with Austin during their summer-trip to the US. Four weeks ago, Taylor started to read a book to her as a bedtime-story that described how children in other countries went to school and Liv loved every minute of it. And Taylor had eaten up her enthusiasm, trying to fuel it, desperately trying to get Liv as interested in the whole school-subject as possible. Because she had a lingering feeling this was going to change the more sooner than later. When she looked up again, she noticed that she had work to do. Still. Lots, to be exact, to achieve a state that could be deemed halfway acceptable looking. She let out a long sigh. 

“You’re going to do this. And it’s going to be great. Everyone’s there and Liv is going to love all the attention a lot, there’s no denying that. None.” 

She saw her own smile fade a little at the words “everyone’s there” but forced it back on. Becuase she had been right, of course. And that was what counted. It was everything that counted.

She was sort of surprised when she got to Liv’s room. She had expected to have to wake her daughter up from the middle of a dream since she knew Liv did go to bed way too late last night. But she already noticed that the light was on before she entered the room and when she opened the door, her mouth fell slightly agape. Liv sat on the floor in the middle of a mess consisting of pens, pencils, rulers, opened books and papers. Her obviously emptied satchel lay on the floor abandoned and in the middle of all of the chaos sat Liv, humming to herself and obviously happily drawing something on a piece of paper. Taylor couldn’t helpt but chuckle, then she entered the room and sat down next to her daughter on the floor.

“Good morning darling. First day of school today. Are you excited?”

Liv smiled at her broadly. “Yes! I want to see Ms. Smith again. And Clea. I get to see Clea, right?”

Ms. Smith was Liv’s class-teacher who came to visit before the summer-holydays to introduce herself. Clea was a friend Liv made during her riding-lessons and they both had already decided that they were going to sit next to each other if they were allowed - and if they were in the same class, of course. 

“I’m sure you’ll get to see her at some point today…but as for that to happen, I need you to get ready now, ok? Brush your teeth, wash yourself and then we’ll get you into your school-clothes, alright?”

Liv nodded, jumped to her feet and was halfway out the room already when she abruptly stopped and turned back around. 

“Mummy, I need braids so that I’m the most pretty today”, she declared and Taylor raised an eyebrow at her.

“I think you can ask for that way more nicely”, she said and Liv rolled her eyes before replying: “Please, mummy, I need braids so that I’m the most pretty today.”

Taylor held back a chuckle, wonderin when exactly it was going to change that Liv would be told things so easily. She reassured her she would take care of her hair and then, finally, Liv sprinted away into the direction of the bathroom. Taylor stayed where she was, carefully picking up Liv’s school-supplies and put them into the bag, making sure everything was in the exact place it was supposed to be (like it had been before Liv poured it all out) and looked like it hadn’t been touched before. She tried to remember how she had felt like on her first day of school, if there had been something special arranged for her, but she couldn’t quite remember. When she had just finished putting Liv’s clothes for today out, she heard Liv asking for her and seconds later, her five-year-old stood barenaked next to her. 

“Mummy! Louis is coming, right?”

“He sure is. We’ll meet him at your school.”

Liv started to jump up and down a little in excitement. “That’s good. Because he needs to come in with me. I want him to come in with me. He knows that, right?”

Taylor reassured her he did. “But you won’t be going anywhere if we don’t hurry up a little bit now, ok? Here…”, she said, handing her daughter the school-uniform. “You put those on now and then we’ll take care of your hair.”

To her own surprise Liv obeyed, if that was because she understood the urgency of the situation, or because she just took the opportunity to excitedly bombard Taylor with questions about the day, remained a mystery. 

The fact that Denise, Andrea and Scott stayed at home to take care of Jo and Tim had already announced to join them alter anyway, turned out to be for the better as Taylor noticed when they arrived on the grounds of the private school in the north of London, for  two reasons exactly. Reason one was the noticeable amount of cars already parked in front of the gates and the impressive number of people swarming around the compounds, that reassured Taylor that a slightly reduced entourage was probably for the better anyway. The second was the fact that “reduced entourage” still meant a decent amount of people in her (and Liv’s) case. The five-year-old had just left the car when she ran across the compound already, loudly screaming “George!” for everyone to hear. And when Taylor got out of the car, she saw them two, all three of them, appropriately dressed up and Charli in an all-black ensemble that was nothing short of stunning and would have stolen the show completely, if it hadn’t been for Carly’s effortless beauty as usual. For the first time today, she felt like she was genuinely smiling. Of course she knew they would be there. Of course she didn’t even have to ask them to come, not only to the party they were going to throw afterwards, but to the main-event as well. No discussion from either side. No questions asked. All of them there in full force because the one who should couldn’t be. Each and everyone of them welcomed Liv now first, of course, telling her how amazing and - most importantly - like how much of a big girl she looked now with her satchel and her uniform on and how amazing her first day was going to be, each of them finding new variations for the subjects that stayed always the same.

“I know it’s the least important thing right now, but you look gorgeous” Ross said when they hugged for the greetings - which was mainly possible in all this length because Liv had decided to focus her attention on her godfather and her godfather only. She couldn’t help but smile. So, at least her efforts on putting Maya on the task of making her look suitable for today hadn’t been in vain. And a little black dress seemed to be as reliable as always. She reciprocated the compliment and let go of him, looking around the five people she stood in the middle of now, while Louis and Liv were caught up in a conversation some feet away. They all smiled at her, the same pride, the same happiness, the same hint of a bitterness in their features she knew were in hears. Oh it was good to have them here. So good. Right in this moment, the headmistress took the floor.

“Good morning everyone and a warm welcome to all the new students of Highgate Junior School. We are very excited to welcome you here today. Our school holds a long tradition of guiding young people like all of you throught the start of their lives…”

She continued to speak about the school’s values and how she considered those especially important given everything that was going on right now. Taylor could hear Adam murmuring something in Carly’s direction that sounded suspiciously like how in his opinion they made the absolute right descision by sending their kids to a regular school. She saw Ross and Charli almost bursting into laughter about something, not knowing what it was. And she saw Louis and Liv, constantly chatting. With a half-ironic sigh she turned around to George. “There’s no chance in hell this girl is ever going to pay attention in class, is there?”

“No fucking chance”, George replied dryly. 

And then the big moment came. The headmisstress had started to read out the names of the pupils and Taylor had taken her place right next to Liv. The little girl had started bopping up and down on her feet about five minutes ago already and Taylor had given up on telling her to stand still, assuming she would hear lots of that throughout the day and therefore, there was no need to double down on that now. And then the headmisstress said: “Healy, Olivia Theresia” and Taylor hugged her one last time.

“Off you go, baby. Have fun yeah? See you in a few hours. I love you.”

“I love you too”, Liv replied before she stormed off so fast, Louis had to call order on her in a desperate attempt to keep up. Taylor just watched them leave, watched how Liv stopped for a second, waved at the sky and got Louis to do the same shortly after, after she apparently explained something to him. A lump built up in Taylor’s  throat of which she had wished so much that pride had put it there. But she knew better than that. Oh so much better. 

“You’re doing amazing”, Carly said, Adam and her having showed up on both of Taylor’s sides without her noticing it. 

“Yeah not really, am I?”, she argued, carefully wiping the tears off her face. 

“No stop it. You ARE doing amazing”, Adam argued and rubbed her shoulder. “Letting your child take the next step into independence is such a hard thing to do, trust me, I know that. And it’s alright to get a little emotional then. In fact, I would have been worried if you weren’t.”

Carly chuckled. “Adam waited five minutes in front of the closed classroom-door before I could convince him that we should leave now when we had our big day”, she remembered and it did in fact make Taylor feel a little less embarrassed of becoming so emotional. 

“Well let’s see how long it takes Louis to come back…”, Taylor said softly, her voice still audibly tearstained. 

“Fifteen minutes. Minimum”, Adam stated and after  Taylor considered this a good distraction, everyone had to place their bets on when Louis was to make his return. 

In the end Charli had won with her bet of exactly 11 minutes and Louis had taken the opportunity that they shared a ride home to brief Talyor about how he had felt utterly useless since everybody else’s parents had been walked to the places where their children sat by them and gotten the opportunity to help them settle in, while Liv had basically told him goodbye at the door and didn’t look back once from there, enjoying sitting next to Clea way too much. And now they were home, a busy beehive of her mum already preparing the food for the party, Tim being in complete nurse-mode for Jo Scott putting up the final touches of the decorations and Denise urging Taylor and Louis alternately to give her a detailed report on how Liv had been holding up. Taylor herself, switching into perfectionist-mode helped absolutely everybody while also checking in on Jo on a regular who was, not quite awake but not quite asleep, curled up on the sofa, her thumb in her mouth constantly - something she didn’t do in a while - and clinging on to Denise as if her life depended on it. 

But right in this moment, Taylor focused on getting all the presents into the right places, so that the main one - an ipad - would be handed out to Liv at the very end. Before that, her daughter would experience the joy of getting to unwrap some mor pencils, a very fancy water-colour-set, some books that were meant for beginner-level-readers, some audio-book-giftcards and a few more horse-stickers to put on the back of said ipad if she wanted to. Taylor had just finished putting everything down on the table when Denise came over. 

“Oh, love, that looks gorgeous”, she said, obviously noticing that Taylor had put a lot of thought into the arrangements of the gifts the past few minutes. She thanked Denise and asked her if her being here meant that Jo had finally fallen asleep.

“No, I’m afraid…although she really, really needs it, I think, poor little munchkin is still blazingly hot…”

Taylor held back a sigh of worry. A seriously ill child was not really something she could use today but apparently she wasn’t really left with a chance. 

“I’m on it. Thank you, Denise. Would you mind watching the cupcakes for a little bit? When the time goes off, they need to be checked for consistency.”

Denise agreed and Taylor rushed over to the livingroom where Jo lay on the sofa. Her eyes were only halfway-open and when Taylor put a hand on her forehead, she could feel the heat radiating from her. So she decided to check her temperature, which was high although not yet seriously dangerous and give Liv another round of medicine and leg compresses. 

Once that was done, she pulled her younger daughter up in her lap. Jo’s head rested against her chest exhaustedly, her thumb kept on slipping out of her mouth.

“You’re tired, darling, aren’t you?”, Taylor whispered. Jo nodded.

“Let’s put you down on the sofa and get you a blanket so that you can get some sleep, mhm?”

Jo shook her little head but the fact that the curls where only bopping slightly instead of flying around like they usually would have told Taylor everything about her exhaustion.

“Yes. I think you should really get some rest, love, so that you’ll be better soon.”

Jo shook her head again.

“No rest. Liv party.”

Apparently, she was too exhausted to form whole sentences. 

“Liv is not even here yet, honey. I promise you can join her party later, alright? But I really think you need some sleep now. In your bed where there’s not so many people disturbing you all the time.”

Jo shook her head again. “No bed please.”

“You wanna go in my bed? Sleep in mumy’s bed again like last night?”

The same reaction. 

“What do you want, sweety? What do you think would help you to find sleep?”

Jo looked at her for a few moments, her view visibly glassy. 

“Daddy story”, she said and Taylor was surprised by how much this surprised her actually. And how much inclined she was to just say no now. But how could she have when her obviously absolutely exhausted child did more hang in her arms groggily than anything else.

“Alright”, she gave in, “You’re right. You’re ill and being ill is a reason to get a daddy-story. So how about we take you up to your room now, I’ll tuck you in and put some daddy-story on for you. Does that sound good?”

Jo nodded weakly and Taylor did as she just said. She carried Jo up the stairs and into her room. She laid her down on the bed, tucked her in and went looking for her ipad. She turned on the recording of Jo’s current favorite bedtime-story and let the sound of Matty’s voice drift the two of them away for a little bit. To a place where everything was good. Right. Where things got their happy-ending. Just like he promised her the day of the recording. 

Jo had fallen asleep in about fifteen minutes, which was a good thing, given what happened afterwards. Maybe it wouldn’t have at all if Jo hadn’t drooled on her shirt in such an unfortunate way that Taylor had to change it. Because to change it, she had to return into her bedroom, where she had taken the alternative outfits Mayra had picked out for her. And if she didn’t go into her bedroom, her gaze wouldn’t have fallen onto the picture on the nightstand. Matty holding Liv up to his hip, while she herself had Jo on her arms, the most beautiful mountain-view in the background. Zurich, two days after their arrival. About 20 hours before everything would go to shit. 20 hours before things went down in a way they shouldn’t have. In a way that made things the way they were now, with him not being there for Liv’s first day of school. Although he should have been. He fucking should have been, it should have been him and not George, or Adam or Ross or Louis filling in a blank space each of them knew they couldn’t fill out appropriately anyway. The blank space he left. Taylor sank down on the bed and buried a hand in her hair. Gathering all that was left of her strength, she looked over to the watch on the nightstand. Five minutes, counting down from now. That was what she and her therapist agreed on. Five minutes a day of pure, uninterrupted, unsurpressed feelings. And there were a lot of them today. Anger. Hurt. Love. Pain. And the fucking grief, sneaking its way into her body and her thoughts, paralyzing everything, making breathing so gooddamn hard she thought just stopping it might be a valid option for a second. She let the tears flow freely, unable to tell if she was going to be able to stop them again. Like ever. But for now that was not important. Matty’s absence was and how goddamn unfair it was that all Liv had been left with was nothing but bad substitutes, herself included. That every memory Jo probably had of her father was coming from videos Taylor herself took and pre-recorded reading-sessions and she didn’t even dare to imagine the stuff Jo straight up made up in her mind to fill in for that. She noticed that her whole body started shaking. She didn’t care. “Don’t fight it”, was one of the mantras her therapist repeated every session. “Don’t fight it. Let it be. Don’t judge your own feelings. Just let them be.”

At least the tears would make the picture in front of her eyes blurr out. 

Later on, she would suspect  that he lingered in the doorframe for some time, torn between the wish to help her and the fear of overstepping boundaries. But when he sat down next to her, she would be happy he did. He didn’t do anything, really. He didn’t even touch her. He just sat there next to the crying mess she was. But that was the thing. He was there. He stayed. He wasn’t afraid of her. He wasn’t appalled of her. He was obviously willing to stand her like this. Broken. Not strong. The opposite of what she wanted to be.

“Sorry…”, she choked out at one point, “You shouldn’t…see this. I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t be doing this.”

She wiped the tears off her face with shaky hands.

“You’re damn right you shouldn’t”, he said, the usual calmness in his voice. It was one of the things she admired about him, really. His ability to stay calm, no matter how fucked up the situation was. She’d always remember him keeping his composure like nobody else in Zurich. “At least not on your own.”

The laugh that left her lips sounded inappropriately dry. “My daughter just had to make it through a really big event in her life without her father. I don’t think I am in the position to complain.”

“I think you are”, Ross said without any patronisation in his tone, “Because you just had to make it through a really big event in your daughter’s life without her father present. I think that’s enough reason to complain about.”

Taylor snorted. “And what should I complain about then? The fact that the love of my life is dead? The fact that my perfect little fantasy of our family-life together died with him and it’s moments like this that remind me of that, way too harshly?”

“You could.”

The sound that left her lips captured her attempt to cry, laugh and scoff all at once way too well. The strangest thing she ever heard and straight up scary for somebody who usually was perfectly able to rely on her voice. 

“I really don’t think I can. Liv and Jo, Denise, Tim, Louis, heck, probably even you have a lot more to complain about. You lost a whole career.”

“This is not a competition, Taylor. Grief isn’t, neither is healing. And you’re doing so much, all the time already and I do feel so helpless so often because I can’t think of anything else than if there’s any way to support you better and I know you won’t let me because you always think your grief is invalid. And it makes me crazy. It makes me fucking crazy. Because it’s so hard seeing you like this, Tay. Fighting on your own, lifting way more than you can carry, even you. And I know you wouldn’t have to. I just wish you did too.”

The softness in his tone made her hackles rise. The softness and the way he looked at her now. With so much compassion in his eyes. He had no reason to be here in the first place. Yet he was. He choose her, despite the mess she was right now. That was frightening. And beautiful. Oh so beautiful. 

“I know”, she said, nodding way too enthusiastically, which led to Ross scoffing and calling her a liar. 

“I know you don’t. It’s ok. But if you allow me, I’ll remind you of that from time to time, alright? That you’re not alone. And that you don’t have to keep it together, come what may. That it’s ok to fall apart sometimes. And that you have people around who catch you. I promise you do, Taylor. I really promise you do.”

She didn’t even know how it happened, really. But it was like his words made something inside of her snap. Something that had kept her up and going all the time just until now. And now that it snapped, she could feel herself deflate. But before she could collaps onto the mattress, she could feel Ross’ arms around her body. Pulling her into him. Holding her weight. Showing her that she was not alone indeed. 

“It’s ok, Taylor. You have every right to be exhausted now. It’s ok.” 

For how long they just sat there - or to be more precise, Ross sat and Taylor leaned against him - none of them knew.

“You know, I miss him too sometimes. A lot, actually. And I cried for like twenty fucking minutes this morning before I went to pick George and Charli up. And I have made up scenarios about how this would go down if things were a little less fucked by the plenty.”

It felt good to hear it, really. To know she wasn’t as alone with those things as she thought.

“Tell me about them. Please.”

A short pause followed. Then Ross said: 

“I thought about how he would spent the entirety of the day telling Liv that there are way more important things in live than school and that she shouldn’t take it too seriously. I thought about how he would sneak around the building, looking for the best spots to hide or to cause trouble somewhere else and tell Liv about it. I thought about how he would have tried to do her hair this morning and how of course you would have to step in because it looked horrible. And I thought about how at some point he would have taking me to the side and said: ‘You see that, mate? My daughter, the child of me and the woman I love is just walking into her classroom for the first time. Fucking amazing innit?’”

This time, Taylor didn’t fight the tears that ran down her cheeks. 

“Sounds good.”

At some point he had been asked if he wanted to make Liv feel more comfortable by givingher a bath and he had aggreed, of course after checking in with Taylor first if she was ok with him leaving her now for a bit. And then he took Liv out of her arms for the first time and carefully went over to the room next door with her. She started crying the moment he did and he pulled her a little bit closer into his arms. That didn’t really help but at least it made him feel capabel of doing something. Anything, really. It stopped though the moment he let her down in the basin that was waiting in the room they went to.

“Is that better now, darling? Yeah, I can imagine that. Feels more familiar, doesn’t it?”, he asked her softly. “Listen, I can in no way imagine how it feels to be so harshly taken out of your comfortable surroundings and put into an outlandish environment. But I promise you, you’ll be fine, love. I really, really, really promise you. I’m here now and I will be for the rest of my life. And your mum will do just the same. You have an amazing mum, I can tell you that much. And I’ll be there, Liv, I promise you. I will be there. We will be there.”

He had to tighten the grip around her a little bit because the way she was moving, she threatened to slip through his hand while he carefully poured some water over her with the other. It wasn’t up until this moment that the realization really hit him. That he was able to hold her, that he could be sure she was able to hear his voice now when he spoke. That, finally, he didn’t have to rely solemnly on Taylor anymore to keep her save but that he could do his part. And that he would. Make sure she was happy and save and that she had everything she needed. For now and forever. She moved her arms again, making the water around them splash a little. And he just kept looking at her for a solid minute. Taking in the sight of her. The way her eyes were the same colour as Taylor’s (he’d regocinze that from anywhere), the way that one strand of dark hair stood up from her haid even with all the water on it and the frowns on her forehead when she cried. He let the realisation sink in just right then. That she was there, alive, breathing. His and Taylor’s daughter was. And just like that it hit him: He had never felt such a wave of compassion for anybody in his life. Not for his mum, his dad, not for Louis, not for Adam, George or Ross, not even for Taylor, if he was completely honest. A love that was one thing above it all: Unconditionally, eternally. He knew it back then already. He knew that nothing about that was ever going to change.

“You good now, baby?”, he asked at some point when, from all he could see she seemed to be cleaner than she did before. He carefully took her out of the bath and put her on the towel the nurse that was with him put right next to the basin.

“We’ll take her weight now, measure her, do some tests and then you can dress her, if you want. In the meantime, if you’re up for it”, she held a white plastic-band out to him, “You can put her name down here, if you want to. It used to be us who do it, but in recent years, more and more parents decided to do it themselves so that it becomes a little more personal.”

Nine days. Nine days and a cliffside in the swiss alps was what it took for her to break. But he didn’t know that back when she stumbled into his arms after coming off the stage in Vancouver. He just went into after-show-care-mode, providing her with some water, kissing her neck, telling her over and over and over how proud he was of her. 

The “We did it” she whispered in his ear made his hackles rise in the most comfortable way and he put the next kiss on the crook of her neck.

“You did it, Tay. And now it’s over. It’s done. You made it. And I’m so proud of you. I’m so unbelievably proud of you. You really are the greatest of your league, Tay, you have just proven that.” 

For the last 21 days it had been all about surviving. About making her survive and nothing else and everybody in her team knew about exactly that. So he spent every minute by her side, made sure she ate and drank enough and that she had everything else needed ready at her disposal, wether it be an open ear about how afraid she was her voice was not going to make it through “Shake it off” anymore or fulfilling her need for after-show-sex. He was there and he would continue to be. As long as she needed him. The way she let him hold her whole body’s weight for a second now told him she did. Her breathing had gone back to normal by now, since he was by far not the first one she greeted, but he could still feel how fast her heart was beating in her chest. She moved away from him slightly, lifting her head and resting her forehead against his. 

“We did”, she whispered softly before kissing him, “Team-effort.”

He opted against telling her again that this was her doing and her doing alone and focused on reciprocating her gesture of affection instead. When she denied his follow-up question wether or not she could stand on her own feet, he guided her over to one of the sofas backstage and made her sit down on it, asking Scott to get some water and sat down next to her so that she could lean in to him if she wanted to. Put the weight of her body on him that carried her through so much recently, while he carefully began to take her shoes off and carelessly throwing them beneath the couch before sliding the straps of her bodysuit off her shoulders. Her make-up was absolutely smudged, a result of her crying during the entirety of Karma on stage. She had stayed there for a solid twenty minutes just taking this one last applause in and - he was absolutely sure of that - not even being remotely aware of that this had been it. The grand finale of the Eras-tour. The very last time. Andrea helped her daughter putting the bathrobe on they brought for her and as soon as that was done, her head fell back against his shoulder. And he just kept on holding her, telling her how proud he was and how well she had done. And that it was over. Over and over and over again. She turned her head so that she could look him directly in the eye at one point. “I don’t know how to feel”, she whispered and he did the best he could to smile. 

“It’s alright, love. It’s ok. You don’t have  to.”

He remembered all too well how he basically collapsed backstage on a couch after the last SATVB-show. How he lay there for two hours, unable to move, the chaos of feelings rushing through him seemingly paralyzing him, without him being able to figure out what exactly it was he felt. And the more desperate he got in trying, the less he had an idea. 

“Just let it be”, he whispered in her ear, “Just let it be, Tay. It’s ok. You made it. That’s enough. More than enough.”

He felt her shiver and carefully closed the two parts of her bathrobe, rubbing her shoulders. Around  them there was the usual after-show-chaos with people running around, everyone sort of stuck in their own rituals to somehow get down from their highs. He didn’t pay attention to it, his focus solemnly directed at the woman in his arms. She had her eyes closed by now, breathing irregular, jaw visibly tense. And he just held her. It was all he did for a long time, really. Just holding her while around them everything kept spinning and he knew for a fact that it did in her head. After some time he noticed the tension leaving her body while he just stayed there, holding her, while Scott and Tree and Andrea and Blake all went and told Taylor how proud they were of her and how proud she could be of her self. He knew she didn’t get a word of what they said, despite the smile on her face and her nodding, seemingly, in agreement. He thought about leaving, the pain in his back a sharp reminder that he was indeed not in his twenties anymore but when he asked her if she was fine with it she shook her head and thus he stayed.

Stayed through the dinner with the entire crew that took place the following night, where Taylor, her chief of production and the leader of her dance-crew all gave speeches about how unique the experience had been and how they would all have to adjust to a life away from tour now. He noticed her voice being raspy and took that as the first sign of caution, carefully starting to suggest she should take it slower from time to time. Nonetheless, he didn’t oppose to throwing her the biggest of birthday-parties not only because the had organised the thing for weeks anyway and “you only turn 35 once!” as Selena had stated. So, they didn’t only rent a club but a whole hotel in LA and he was way more impressed than he dared to admit, publicly, how she kept that going. But she did, dancing and partying all night and when he hopped on a plane with her the other morning without a minute of sleep, it was the first time he was really thankful that such profanities like packing your bags for a two-weeks-trip could be outsourced to Taylor’s current PA.

Maybe that was why the drop felt so cruel now. The silence in his hotelroom so exceptionally loud, the loneliness in his bed so exceptionally painfull. He had feared of it in particular today, that was why he went to the afterparty with George and dance and sang and tried to distract himself. An it worked, but only to a certain degree. Like most of the things that were supposed to fight the drop did. To be quite frank, there were only two exceptions to that. One was drugs. The other was his phone ringing now.

“Made it to bed?”

Taylor smiled at him softly, her gaze so full of affection, he could feel goosebumps spread all over his arms. He nodded, yawning.

“Awww no. Look at my pretty baby. So exhausted after the hell of a show he put on.”

The hint of a smile found its way on his lips.

“So you watched?”, he asked and when she nodded, his heart flow over with emotion.

“‘course I did. Stayed away from the discord this time though. They became awfully suspicious after last week, I might have run my mouth too much.”

“Why? Did you get too many setlist-changes right?”, he teased her and she sucked in a breath and looked at him, mockingly devastated.

“I fear I did.”

Matty couldn’t help but chuckle.

“My number one fangirl then. Still.”

“Always, darling. Always.”

For a few moments there was silence. They didn’t always need words, had they learned to enjoy each others presence in silence, even when there were miles between them.

“How are you feeling?”, she asked after a while and he just replied that he was exhausted, which was closer to the truth than him saying he felt happy although the was absolutely sure that this feeling would come back the sooner the later.

“They were really responsive today. Good crowd, honestly. Very eager, really gave me a lot back.”

Taylor smiled at him again. “Glad to hear it. And a little bit jealous, that sounds like a really good crowd though.”

He chuckled softly. “Miss it again already?”, he asked. “You know, you always have a space in my crowd, if you want to.”

Her response wasn’t quite what he ha expected though. Taylor sighed and raised her eyebrows. “Actually…”, she said slowly, “I fear it isn’t that.”

He frowned and hated the way a feeling of uneasyniess started to creep up on him ow. The way he began to scan her face, way more attentively than he had before, looking for signs that something was wrong and what it was that was wrong, indeed. If something was really wrong, she would have told him, he tried to calm himself down. But would she, really? On a day she knew he was having a show coming up? Could he really rely on that?

“Why? What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

He hated the panic in his voice, knowing all too well if something happened, him panicking now wouldn’t have done anybody any good. Still, he couldn’t help it. Not even the way Taylor smiled, kept smiling, really calmed him down enough to be honest. But she did. Smirekd at him mysteriously and said: “Close your eyes. Don’t open them until I tell you to. And if you peak, I’m going to be really offended.”

There were a lot of people he would have told now that he was too tired for shenanigans like that. not in the mood. But she wasn’t one of many people. She never had been, really. So he obeyed, closed his eyes, no, more than that, screwed them shut dramatically so that she could see his whole face contort from the effort.

“Good…”

Taylor’s voice sounded like it came from ore far away then before and he could hear some noises coming through the speaker. A clonc-ing, like something was put down. Soft ruffeling of fabric.

“Are your eyes still closed?”, she asked and he answered in the affirmative.

He had figured from what he saw before that she was in the master-bedroom so he could imagine her walking around there now quite vividly without really seeing her. Still, he didn’t really have an idea what she was going on about. It took several more moments until she spoke to him again. But then she finally told him to open his eyes. And when he did, his heart skipped a beat.

Taylor stood in front of their bed. From the angle he assumed that she put her phone down on the drawer in landscape mode. She stood a few feet away, the top of her pyjamas rolled up until right under her breasts. This lead to her belly being exposed, giving him the chance to see it. Where there had been nothing visible the last time he saw her, there was a bump now. Quite small, still, actually, he was convinced that if she had stood there not showing him her profile, he wouldn’t even have seen it. But now he did. And he felt like he didn’t know how to breathe anymore. A hoarse whisper of her name was everything that left his lips, everything he was capable of saying, really, while tears ran down his cheeks which he would only come to notice way later on.

“I noticed this morning.”

Her voice was small, soft, but he understood her anyway. “It’s…it was literally like it happened over night. I woke up, brushed my teeth and was just about to hopp into the shower when I…noticed.”

He exhaled audibly. He wanted to say so many things. He wanted to ask ehr so many things. But the only two words leaving his lips when he opened his mouth now were “Fuck me.”

He was unable to take his gaze off of her, of the beauty that she was. A sensation. The most perfect woman in the world, pregnant with his daughter and everyone, absolutely everyone could see now.

“Is it that bad?”

For a moment he couldn’t really make sense of what she said. Then he hurried to say: “It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, darling, and that means a lot talking about the sight of you.”

She laughed and he could see her wipe her face with her hands.

“I hoped you’d say something like that…” she said. “And I hope that you don’t hate me when I say I’m stil…sort of…getting used to it, I think?”

There were a lot of things he could say now, starting with the outraged question how on earth she could think that he might hate her for that. How big his respect for her was, that he couldn’t even imagine what wuld happen to him if his body wen through that kind of transformation like hers did now, how much he admired her being this calm, how proud he was of her for keeping up with all of what she had the past months. The morning-sickness. The hiding. The incredible nervousness before every doctor’s appointment, ever since her Obgyn told her that she counted as a high-risk-pregnancy already due to her age. How difficult he found it to stand all those things and that he was, of course, not even half as involved in the whole thing as she was, at least physically.

Still “I wish I was with you now” were the only words leaving his lips. The most honest, the most raw, the most vulnerable he was capable of now. The wish of holding her was indeed overwhelming, closing his arms around her, carefully running his hands over her belly in a similar way she did her own now. He knew he would soon enough. He had planned to take a pitstop in London between the next two tops anyway, but that, suddenly, seemed way too long to go. Who knew what could happen until then? What could change until then?

Taylor smiled and started to roll her shirt back down.

“You will be soon enough”, she said, but he heard the words lying beyond those all too well. It made the missing grow even more. Still, her ressurance gave him the srenght to wipe the tears off his face now. He took a deep breath, trying to recollect himself, to get his nerves back together, somehow. He wasn’t quite sure how successful he was.

“Are you…are you ok?”

It was a stupid question. He asked anyway, wanting to know everything, be a part of it as good as possible, if being a part of it physically was impossible, that was.

“Yeah, I…I’m good. And it’s sort of…relieving, you know?”

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I feel like…like it’s real now. LIke more real than it was before. I…I don’t feel like a fraud anymore, if you will. Like…Like I have proof now. I didn’t imagine anything. Dr. Hitchman didn’t lie to me. We’re really going to have a baby, Matty. Our daughter is real and she’s…demanding space, obviously.”

It was just now that he noticed he was crying. If that was an “again” or “just now”-situation, he didn’t have a clue. But hearing Taylor talking their daughter into existence was next level.

“As she should.”

His voice was shaky. He didn’t care.

“I have to ask you something weird”, Taylor said next and he just nodded in agreement.

“Do you…do you think she feels comfortable in there? Like…do you think she likes sharing a body with me?”

He heard the fear in her voice. The questions. The self-doubt that was so brutal on her so often. And he would have given everything he owned to just be able to kiss it better now.

“I’m sure she does, love. I’m absolutely sure she does.”

Nevertheless there had been a point where he had to get up eventually and the point had actually been a textmessage. One he had been waiting for for ages at this point and loosing hope inbetween, thinking that it would not only not come in time, but never at all, most probably. When it did, he had been on his feet in no time, presenting Taylor with the most lousy excuse anybody ever made up, showering as fast as he almost never had in his life, getting dressed and hopping in the car that was waiting for him by then in record-time. And now he was on his way, the cold decemberwind whipping teardrops against the window of the car while the streets they drove along drowned in grey. For a moment, his memories slipped back to the same time a year ago when they had just returned from the winter-wonderlands of Switzerland, the memories collected there enough to make him stand the disappointment that had greeted him at home. This year was different, though. The driver parked the car outside the shop on denmark street where he needed to be now and after a short negotiation with the bodyguards, Matty found himself triumphing on the fact that he actually convinced them to let him into the shop by himself. “There’s nobody going to be in there, I have an appointment” was what did it for them in the end, apparently. So he found himself entering the shop on his own eventually and the moment he said food across the threshold, he started smiling. Everything about this place was magical, it always had been to him, eversince Jamie once recommended it. Teh slight creaking of the wooden floors when you stepped on them, the way the guitars covered every inch of the wall that was not plastered with notes and articles. There was a very distinctive smell as well, of wood and what he called “history”, as at loss for a better word as he was. It was one of the very few places that got him smiling the moment he entered them, no matter what his mood had been before.

“Matty!”

Steve emerged from somewhere behind the counter, the biggest grin ever on his face. They hugged, exchanged the usual how-are-yous and Matty couldn’t help but let his gaze wonder around the room again. Before he could really help it, he had already walked over to a corner where probably the most beautiful Fender Stratocaster he ever saw hang.He walked over and looked at her up and down, the perfect shape, the most beautifu red-and-white-contrast, the amazingly soft neck made of rosewood as the sign next to it informed him. On there it was said as well who the previous owner was.

“How did you get this one?”, Matty asked, not taking his gaze away from the instrument for a second, “Did Mark Knopfler just walk in one day and drop it here?”

Steve grinned. “Something like that, yeah. Actually, it was quite similar to how I got the one you ordered. Someone wished for it, so I got some contacts moving. But as opposite to yours, this one was never picked up.”

The mention of the guitar he was actually here for made Matty jump a little. He tore himself away from the beauty the Fender was and turned back to Steve.

“Well, this is not going to happen this time”, he said smiling. “Can I see her?” When he saw the shop-owner smiling, anticipation rushed through his veins. There was a part of him that was still convinced that something must have gone wrong here. That it wouldn’t turn out quite how he wanted it to. But Steve just nodded and asked him to give him a minute, before he disappeared in the back of the shop. He returned a few minutes later, a black guitar-case in his arms and Matty had to stop himself from warning him to not drop it out loud. Of course Steve didn’t drop it. Instead, he placed it on the counter.

“There she is. Want to open her yourself of shall I do it?”, he asked and Matty declined doing it himself since he could feel his hands shaking at the thought already. So it came that Steve carefully opened the clasps of the guitar case and lifted the lid. And there she was. Black with white stars gracing her neck and a rosewood fretboard.

“Oh fucking hell!”, he gasped, his mouth slightly agape, staring down at the instrument as if it was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. And maybe that wasn’t that far off, to be honest. His fingers carefully slid over the neck, barely touching the strings, down to the core, shiny and black and oh so beautiful. And there it was. 1989 engraved on the bridge and Matty couldn’t help but chuckle.

“He really did it, yeah?”, he asked, still unable to take his gaze away from the guitar, still slightly disbelieving.

“Yeah. There’s actually a letter that came with it as well…”, Steve said, reaching into the case and pulling up an envelope that had Taylor’s name written on it. Matty’s grin became even broader.

“Oh she’s going to love this…”, he murmured, one hand buried in his hair, in an attempt to ground himself. He cleared his throat, trying to get himself back to reality instead of getting too lost in ideas about the reaction Taylor was going to have tonight and looked up to Steve again.

“Thank you, really. And if there’s any chance, I’d like to thank the man himself as well. And I’m sure she will want to too.”