miracle | tayley

it all felt simple

"This is the last one," Zac says as he maneuvers a large, but not too heavy box through the front door. The box is labeled Hayley's Room, so he heads up the stairs to stow it in the room that has been recently designated as hers.

"Hey, Taylor?" Hayley calls out, unsure of his current location.

"Yeah?" She hears his voice echo distantly from the direction of the garage. She makes her way to the door that opens from the living room and into the music room, finding him hanging her guitar on the wall next to his.

"Zac just unloaded the last of the boxes. I'm going to call Brian and have him bring Rowan home," she says, watching as he steps back from the now carefully hung guitar.

"Okay," he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. "I'm going to go get Zac to help me hang that mirror in your room before he heads out, and then I'll see about finding something for dinner. Any requests?"

"Not really. Just something easy, it's been a long day," she says. Truthfully, she's starving, so she knows she'd probably eat just about anything Taylor put in front of her. She knows from years of experience that he's a pretty decent cook. "I'm sure Brian's fed Rowan already, so anything is fine, really."

"Okay, then. I'll be back down in a few," he says, and she watches him disappear out the door. After a few seconds she can hear the echo of his footsteps as he makes his way upstairs. Zac has been a godsend, agreeing to help them move her stuff at the last minute. She'd told Taylor there wasn't that big of a rush, but once the decision had been made, he'd been determined that the move should happen asap.

Today, just shy of a week since the initial decision had been made, they'd moved her and Ro's belongings to Taylor's house.

Subletting her place in her trendy neighborhood had taken less than forty-eight hours, and since half of their stuff is staying packed and being stored temporarily in Taylor's large, mostly-empty garage, unloading the truck has only taken them a few hours. She's a little startled at how quickly it's all happened, but utterly grateful to Zac for making it easy on them.

She thinks Taylor might have confided in him about the press leak regarding Rowan because he's been very respectful about Hayley herself as well as their daughter, not asking many questions or so much as raising an eyebrow regarding her and Taylor's new living situation. She misses the point in their lives where she could confide in him too, hopes they can get back there soon.

Hayley's mom and Brian, on the other hand, have had plenty to say about it, and understandably so. Cristi and Brain have had front row seats to the train wreck that Hayley's life had turned into the last time things fell apart between her and Taylor. Cristi has chosen to refrain from stating an opinion on the move one way or the other but has merely posed several concerned, open-ended questions along the lines of How does the idea of moving in with Taylor make you feel?

Brian, on the other hand, spent thirty minutes ranting about how insane Hayley was for even considering moving in with Taylor and went on and on about how she'd better not let him break her heart again, before finishing with a highly confusing But you should definitely have sex with him again... You know, for closure.

And her father? He's still coming to grips with the fact that Taylor is not the horrible person he'd been fooled into believing he was, so he's been adamant that she should not, under any circumstances, be making this move. Protective as he is of her, she still has him under a strict no-contact order where Taylor is concerned. She made him promise to stay away from him when she'd first disclosed that she was pregnant, and she has not lifted the ban yet.

Maybe by the time Rowan starts kindergarten, she thinks, doubtfully.

Even Michelle, who she'd thought would be totally supportive of the idea, had seemed concerned when they'd told her. Of course, she and Peter are thrilled that Rowan would be getting more time with Taylor, but she's fretted openly about their plan, which has only served to intensify the near-constant churning in Hayley's gut.