one last try » taylor swift

Thirty-One

Taylor

Four days.

That was how long I had until the papers came back, until everything would finally be in order.

I smiled to myself as I lay in bed that night. It was late, maybe one a.m., and Grace had long been asleep.

Everything in my room was dark, as my TV and phone were both off.

Suddenly, however, a light illuminated the room.

I looked over to where my phone was siting on my nightstand, and furrowed my eyebrows as I picked it up.

My eyes adjusted to the light quickly, and I read the text displayed on my lock screen.

"Hey."

It was Tom.

I unlocked my phone and texted him the same message back.

"How have you been?" he asked moments later.

"Good," I texted. "Things have been good."

"I'm glad." he said.

Before I could think of something to write back, he sent another text.

"But I need to make sure we're on the same page..."

"Meaning what?" I asked, not catching on.

"When I left... I don't know that we ever truly finalized either of our decisions." he wrote. "I basically just wanted to ask if you want to officially break up, it's been a while."

"Yeah," I wrote. "I think that would be for the best, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll have my team release a statement in the morning."

"No, I think we should do it ourselves. On twitter or something." He texted.

I audibly laughed. "If I did that, I'd wake up in the morning with Tree standing over me with a knife in her hand."

"?" He wrote back.

"Everything I say or do has to go through my team first," I explained, although he already knew that.

"I think that's why we didn't work."

My breathing hitched for a moment.

"There was no sense of privacy. And you had no sense of confidence. Our relationship required validation from your team, from your fans, from every goddamn person in this world." he typed. "When in actuality, the only people that should have any input or say in a relationship are the people who are actually in it."

"Tom..." I wrote after a long period of time, not knowing what else to say.

"Sure took you a long time to type that," he wrote, and I could hear the anger of his voice through the words on my screen. "Did you have to send it to your publicist before you could send it to me?"

"Tom, that's not how this works, you know that."

"If that's not how this works, then why was I reading about our relationship being confirmed before you even said yes to being my girlfriend? People magazine knew about you and me before my own mother did! Hell, the magazines knew before I did!"

I was silent again. I didn't type anything.

"Does that seem normal to you? Do you really think there's nothing wrong with that?" He wrote.

Again, I didn't respond. What was I supposed to say?

"Exactly what I thought. You can't handle the concept of thinking on your own. I can't ask you what you think about something because you don't know how. You're too used to other people doing the thinking for you."

That text from Tom was the end of our conversation.

I locked my phone and put it back on the nightstand before rolling onto my side and looking at the empty space next to me.

The space Tom once filled.

Right there, lying on my side in the darkest hours of the night, I realized everything he said was true.

I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how to be happy, or be sad, or be anything.

The only thing I truly knew was my persona, and that was written about me, not by me.

I didn't know who I was, I only knew the person people wanted me to be.

And right in that moment was when I decided to change that.
- - - - - -

Four Days Later

I had tried to maintain my cool through the rest of the week.

I did what Tom had wanted, I told people myself.

As expected, Tree and the rest of the publicity team were incredibly unhappy, but I didn't care.

The only thing that had all of my focus was Grace.

The end of the week couldn't come fast enough, for the two week estimate I had been given ended this Saturday.

January 8th.

Grace didn't know it yet, but that would be the day the papers would come back, and that would be the day I would finally get to call her mine.

Adoption day.