The One (Jaylor)

The One Part 46

Taylor POV:

The next morning when I work up, the house was silent, which was rare. Usually, Joe would already be up starting breakfast for Patricia, or one of the cats was meowing waiting for me to get up and feed them.

Getting out of bed and throwing on Joe's old University of Bristol sweatshirt I headed down the hall. Patricia was still sound asleep when I checked, Olivia laying on her feet, angrily staring at me. Olivia had always loved Patricia, sleeping in her room every night, not that I felt betrayed or anything.  

I decided I was going to let Patricia asleep in, moving to the kitchen for some coffee and checking my phone to text back a couple of my friends who wanted to know what was going on.

Later that day I decided to take Patricia to the park, one other then the one Joe and Patricia saw the angry mom at. 

Patricia ran to the slide as I sat down on at empty bench out of the sun. I hadn't  worn sun lotion and I could burn easily. Once Patricia had climbed up the ladder, a mom with long dark hair covering her face, sat down next to me. She sort of reminded me of Selena.

"Who's your kid?" ,she asked looking over at me, obviously not recognizing me.

"Patricia, she's on that slide." ,I motioned with my head. "Where's yours?"

"Oh." ,she said stragely. "You're Taylor Swift. I can't believe you're actually out of "hiding""

I sighed, tempted to move. Why was she being rude to me? What had I ever done to her. That's when I realized that this was the mom that Joe was talking about, wherever he was. I missed him a lot.

"Your daughter's Ellie." ,I said ignoring her previous comment.

"Ellie!" ,Patricia screamed, excited to see her friend.

"Hi Patricia!" ,Ellie replied as the hugged and then began playing together.

"Uh-huh. So why isn't your husband taking Patricia here, why isn't he here?"

I swallowed fighting back tears. "At work. And I do care about my daughter a lot."

"Sure." ,she mimicked. "But she's never going to have a normal life with you as her mom. If you loved her that much, you would give her up."

I kept my eyes trained on Patricia as she talked. Everything she is saying isn't true and you know it. She's just trying to get on your nerves I reminded myself. 

Without saying another word I switched to another bench. This one was in the sun but it was better then sitting with that mom. I wasn't going to break my daughter up with her first real friend. I wasn't that mom and I never was going to be, but I knew I needed to talk to Joe.