Page 52 of Loving Taylor
The rawness in my chest made me want to avoid the subject.
"My mom had an affair with a married guy. She was young and from the wrong side of the tracks when she met a rich, married guy who swept her off her feet. They started having an affair. He kept telling her he was going to leave his wife, but he never did...then she got pregnant with me." I paused. "The day she told him she was pregnant with me was the last time she saw him. She named me Sin so she would always remember how I came into this world."
My throat burned at the hurt that I still couldn't erase. Even now it was hard to look at her and not see the mother who had given me nothing but pain.But she has changed, I reminded myself but it was still difficult to see her in a different light.
"That's horrible." She moved onto her side to look at me. In the darkness I could still make out her features. My revelation had affected her. Taylor was not only naive and innocent, she was sensitive too, taking on my pain as her own. I could see the turmoil in her features as she struggled to make sense of it.
"It's okay. I like the name. The girls love it." I tried to lighten the heavy conversation but something I didn't understand compelled me to open up. "It's also a reminder to me that people are human and they make mistakes. My mom made a mistake believing my father's lies." It was the reason I controlled my life to the degree I did so I wouldn't have repercussions to deal with.
I couldn't ignore the fact that I was constantly rewriting my rules for her even though I knew there was a chance I was making a big mistake.
"Did you ever meet your father?" she asked tentatively.
He wasn't someone I liked talking about. It didn't seem right to give him attention in my life when he hadn't given me any in his.
"No," I answered, feeling the weight of the fact that even if I wanted to I couldn't. "He wasn't really a father in the true sense of the word. He was just a sperm donor."
Feeling more agitated, I put both my hands behind my head.
"Did he ever try to contact you?"
"No, and then he died a couple of years ago."
She quieted down as she digested the information. I remembered her telling me that her parents had died. Had I reminded her about their deaths?
"I'm sorry." I reached for her hand and held it. "I didn't mean to remind you about your parents."
"It's okay," she said softly but I could hear the emotion in her voice.
I couldn't imagine having parents who loved me, or losing them.
"How old were you when they died?" I found myself asking.
"I was nine."
She was so young. At nine I was trying to keep things together while my mother continued to spiral out of control.
"Do you still see your mom?"
"Yeah, I check up on her every week. She doesn't live far from here." I moved onto my side and she lay on her side facing me. "She never quite recovered from the rejection from my father. From then on, she tried to find solace in the form of alcohol."
It was one of the few times I had ever opened up about my mother.
"Who took care of you?" she asked.
"I did." It wasn't the answer she was expecting. Even with the death of her parents, she had someone who had loved and cared for her.
"I'm sorry," she said, obviously not knowing quite what to say. The sadness in her voice loosened a warmth in my chest.
"Don't feel sorry for me. I had Slater and he had me," I told her, not wanting her sympathy.
We had been in similar situations and there hadn't been much choice. It wasn't like an adult in our lives was going to care for us so it had fallen on us. And we had done the best we could. There were times when I remembered going to sleep with the hunger pangs twisting my stomach. I tried to physically shake the feeling.
"Does Slater have any siblings?" Her question took me by surprise.
People assumed Slater was an only child but I knew different. When I had first met him, he had been withdrawn and quiet. It had taken a few weeks to break through his protective walls and it had taken much longer for him to open up to me. It was the first time I had realized that despite my crummy upbringing and alcoholic mother there were children out there who were much worse off. It had made me look at life differently.
"He had a sister," I told her softly.
