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"Hey, can I ask you something?" he asks, looking out across the yard.
"Of course, little brother."
"You know how I've been thinking about getting a new house?"
Jason's eyebrows kit into a furrow. Sometime last year, when he was still figuring out how to move on from his broken relationship, Travis had flippantly mentioned that maybe he would move.
But as he'd settled back into himself, and new memories with family and friends reshaped the fractured walls of his house, he'd never mentioned it again. He'd spent as much of the offseason traveling as he did at home, and by the time the new season picked up the roots had taken hold and it never came up again.
Now, sitting on Jason's deck in the setting October sun, that seems like a lifetime ago. Before the friendship bracelet, before the paparazzi, before the Taylor Swift of it all. Before Travis's eyes went soft and a blush crept in just thinking about her.
"In KC?" Jason asked with genuine surprise, well aware that his brother's career prospects after he retired weren't limited to the midwestern city he'd come to call home.
"Yeah."
The way he was anxiously picking at the label of his beer bottle cracked through his usually calm demeanor.
"Well, my agent found a house I like out near Pat and Britt, and I want to bring Taylor out to see it, to see what she thinks, but I feel like that might seem like way too much too soon, you know? And I don't know how to bring it up, like, 'hey I want you to come check out this house with me next weekend' without seeming like a fucking nutcase and send her running for the fucking hills" comes out all at once.
"Woah. Okay," Jason hedges. "Is this a house just for you? Or for both of you? Or--"
"It's for me.” He absently pushes the half truth into the neck of the bottle along with the crumpled pieces of paper.
"So then what's the big deal? Just bring her by and see what she thinks. She's already seen your Cribs bachelor pad and keeps going back for some godforsaken reason, so I'm sure she'll think it's fine. It's not like you're asking her to marry you."
"It's not that easy, Jase. It's going to seem like too much."
"But if the house is for you..." He’s always been able to needle Travis along the fine line between earnestness and teasing that only an older brother can.
"I want to make sure she likes it and is comfortable there and can actually relax and spend time there without someone shoving a goddamn long lens down her throat! And that her team thinks it's safe enough, and all that shit. But I don't know how to invite her and her whole fucking security team to see a house and make it seem normal" he says in an exasperated rush.
When he looks back up from the tattered bottle in his hands, the teasing glint in his brother's eyes is replaced with sincerity.
"Trav, I say this lovingly, but there is absolutely nothing normal about this relationship. And I think Taylor, of all people, understands that. I think you just have to be straight up with her."
“I just don’t want to push her away.”
Staring back across the lawn, he’s not sure if he even said it out loud. The fleeting sunlight falls on scattered toys and little shoes strewn out in front of the deck. Signs of the home Jason had built here. One Travis had always longed for.
"It's kinda weird, you know. This feels like the first time I can't just do what you did. I've always just followed your lead, but this feels like new territory. It's kinda terrifying, actually."
"I don't know what you're talking about, that's how I do it too. Flowers on the first date, and a house on the second," glint back in his eye.
"Fuck off" Travis mumbles, getting a raised eyebrow in return.
A few quiet seconds pass before, "You're really in love with her, huh?"
***
A week later, she's in the passenger seat of the Rolls, sunglasses on and coffee cup in hand. Trav is taking the long route out to Leawood, across the river and out of the city, over the state border and winding through suburban roads and country clubs.
Once they're out past prying eyes, she rolls the window down and lets her mind wander back to the previous weekend.
Travis had come back to New York from Philly late the night before, quietly climbing into her bed behind her and wrapping a giant arm around her waist. She was on the edge of sleep, overcome by a sudden wave warmth from Travis's body heat and the memory of the easy way their lives had started to knit together that weekend.
Spending time mostly together, but a little bit apart -- cozy dinner dates and SNL, Travis going to Jason's game then popping down to Philly to visit Kylie and the girls, picking tufts of cat fur off of Travis's tracksuit while they recounted the afterparty over a cup of coffee, Taylor running to the studio to add a few finishing bits for the new record. It had all woven together so easily in an effortless braid.
What a wonderful way to build a life, she'd allowed herself to dream, maybe a little too much too soon, as she fell back to sleep.
In the morning, she woke up to the smell of coffee and sunlight streaming through her bedroom window, Travis carrying two steaming mugs in one giant hand, and Benji cradled to his chest in the other.
"Can I at least be your second favorite in my own home, or do I have to worry about Olivia too?”. Her eye roll gets only a tongue stuck out in reply.
"What time do you have to leave?"
"'bout an hour," he says, climbing back in bed. “So Tay," he draws out over a long sip. "There's something I wanted to run by you."
"Okay, shoot."
It wasn't their first serious talk, by any means. They'd never shied away from deep conversation, and it was one of the things that made her willing to open her heart back up in the first place. One of the things that gave her hope that she could let new love grow, even while she was still healing her heartbreak.
They'd talked about kids and dreams and fears, messy relationship pasts and old skeletons covered in cobwebs that they'd barely dared to speak aloud. But those conversations were all about the future or the past.
This, right here, was the present. The first talk about taking a big step for their relationship right here, right now. One of them making a change in their life on account of the other person, beyond just weekend plans. And somehow that made it feel much heavier than all those other conversations they'd had over drinks or between bedsheets.
"I've been thinking about it for a while. Really!” and she's not entirely sure if he's trying to convince her or himself. "But I want it to be a place where you feel safe. And maybe where you feel comfortable enough to relax and get away from all of the...city stuff" he gestures broadly with a frighteningly full cup of coffee still in his hand.
It wasn't even about the money, though that was nothing to scoff at. She was usually the one doling out big sums to try to maintain some illusion of normalcy for her partners. Keep the fishbowl from flooding their lives.
No, it was his willingness to uproot his life in the middle of a season. They both had a good feeling about where this relationship was headed, and had talked about it. But there had been no promises, no certainty.
Through the anxious hand gestures and enormity of it all, she could see the earnest warmth that flickered through his eyes.
Steady.
Safe.
"I want you to do it because you want to. And to pick the house that feels right for your future," she'd said genuinely, feeling like it was important that he understood. "But yeah, I'd love to come see it. Tell me more about it?" she asked as he grab his phone from the nightstand.
And that's how they wound up here, exactly one week later, pulling past the gate to enter the private neighborhood, through curved streets and into a secluded stone driveway.
Sometimes life comes at you fast, she thinks as they park in front of the house, two cars from her security team pulling in behind them.
Shaking his head, Nate exchanged a wry smile with Travis as he steps out of the driver's seat. She knows her team is still catching their breath keeping up with this new lifestyle, recalibrating from years of her barely leaving the house. But since she first set foot here in summer the open roads felt like a lifeline, and even the most stoic of the guys from her team couldn't help but notice the way the sparkle had come back to her smile.
"Oh, hey Margot!" Travis calls to the middle aged woman walking out over to them from the front door.
"Taylor, this is my real estate agent, Margot. Margot, this is Taylor. And these guys are Nate, Drew, Mark, Steven, and Shawn."
"Hi, it's so nice to meet you. I'm Taylor," she smiles over an outreached hand. The guys all give a curt nod, still not used to be being introduced.
"It's a pleasure to meet you as well. Travis has already been here, so I'll stay out of the way and let him show you around," she replies with a warm smile. "The doors are all unlocked. I'll be in the sitting room if you need anything."
As Margot retreats back to the house, Travis leads everyone past the garage to a side door.
“So, this is an in-law suite type thing, but I thought it could make a good base for you guys. It has a bedroom, bathroom, a little kitchen, a few rooms. And its own entrance, obviously. I mean, you'd still be welcome in the house, of course, but I thought this could be good too" Travis rambles, as if it's totally normal to be addressing his girlfriend's security team like this.
"Um. I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but I guess take a look and make sure it all looks good? Safe, and everything. And you can check with Margot if you need any other information."
With that, Drew and Mark head through the side door to check out the suite, and Shawn and Steven take off towards the back yard to evaluate the property, leaving Nate trailing a bit behind them to give them at least a modicum of privacy.
I'm not running away from any of it rattles around her mind, as he grabs her hand, pulling her out of the fishbowl and back towards the front door.
The house is beautiful, even nicer than the pictures he'd shown her last week in bed as they scrolled through the listing on his phone.
It was big, but not cavernous. Even empty, it felt like a house meant to be a home. Full of life and laughter and memories. Bright and airy, but intimate and safe.
In the walk-out basement he'd pointed out the gym and the room he thought he would use for the podcast. "This space would be good for it. Isolated from the noise and don't have to deal with changing light since it doesn’t have windows. We may even set it up as an actual studio if this season goes well" he said with a knowing smile.
Upstairs they'd walked through hallways with enough bedrooms and bathrooms to comfortably accommodate the recurring cast of friends and family who were always coming back to Kansas City to support Travis. The ones who had taken her in so easily, without pretense, and let her be just Taylor.
Walking out of the master bedroom and back into the hallway, they crossed the smallest bedroom just across the hall and she sees an unmistakable hopefulness flash across Travis's features, before he schools them back to normal.
As if he could. Her sweet man, who wore his heart on his sleeve and his dreams in his eyes. Not naïve, but always believing. Always manifesting.
The thing is, she'd seen it too. Looking through the doorway, there was a tacit understanding that the room could be a nursery, full of soft hues and tiny clothes and baby giggles, and the fulfillment of dreams that maybe she'd lost hope would ever come true.
Squeezing her hand, Travis leads her back down the stairs to the main floor.
"You know, I have this thing where I tend to just furnish entire rooms for friends," she says, to reel them both back from their runaway thoughts. "Like, they'll go out of town for a weekend, and come back to a new living room. I just really like furniture shopping. And surprises."
"So if I get back from practice and there's a moving truck in the driveway, I should assume that was you?"
"Oh, definitely" she teases.
"Well, I'm keeping the other house so I'm going to need basically all new furniture for this place," he says, pulling her into a hug at the bottom of the stairs. "Maybe you could give me some tips? Help me pick out some things? Only if you want to, though."
"That could probably be arranged, for a small fee”, her eyebrows waggling.
"Oh? Do you only take cash and Venmo, or c—". She cuts him off with a biting kiss.
The last room on the main floor is the den. It has built-in bookcases all the way up to the high ceiling and big windows looking out to the back yard, with a huge wooden desk in the middle of the room.
Standing in the doorway, she can feel the warmth of his hand through the back pocket of her jeans, and she's trying not to spiral thinking of all of the things he could do to her on that desk.
Travis walks over toward the window, knocking her out of her reverie and back to the present.
"I really like this room. It's cozy." The afternoon sun is filtering in, and she can imagine Olivia laying on the wood floor in its amber beam. She walks over to the window, leaning back against Travis's chest.
"The trees here are really nice. Something about a house surrounded by a lot of big trees feels so...established. Sturdy. I've always loved it."
A million miles from LA and New York and London, she thinks, and all of the cities that I've grown to love but somehow never quite felt like home.
"That makes sense", and for a split second she wonders if he can hear her thoughts.
"Mmm?"
"Yeah. I mean, New York is hardly a Christmas tree farm."
It's the familiar way he says it that fills her with warmth and has her mind knitting together childhood memories with visions of what could be. A braid of kids' laughter and crunchy autumn leaves and burnt sienna wraps around her insides like his arms across her waist.
Which is probably why "I love the colors. It's nice to live in a place where I can actually appreciate the seasons again" slips out before she can stop it.
But somehow, with the sunlight on her eyelashes, leaning against Travis's sturdy chest, the admission doesn't feel scary, or even like too much too soon. Even if it's not entirely true (she doesn't actually live here, she reminds herself), it just seems honest.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees where Drew and Mark have met back up with Shawn and Steven and are now walking back towards the house from the perimeter of the property. They seem to have found whatever they were looking for.
"So, what do you think?" she feels more than hears, Travis's low voice rumbling against her back. "Can you see yourself here? Safe and relaxed and happy?"
She twists around in his arms, knowing it's important that he understands.
"I really can."
Then, almost a whisper, "And having a life here?"
"So much it should probably scare me" she exhales.
***
Just after Halloween, she's back in New York for meetings and last minute sessions trying to wrap up all of the final touches for the new album before leaving for the next leg of tour.
They're on a lingering FaceTime call while Taylor is cooking a late dinner, and Travis is pretending to review film for this week's game on his iPad.
"I get the keys to the house tomorrow," he says abruptly, as though he'd just remembered in the middle of watching the busted zone coverage on his screen.
"Are you sure there's nothing else I can do to help make you more comfortable there? They're going to start moving stuff in this weekend.” His excited smile betrays the cool confidence.
"No. Seriously Trav, you've already done so much" she says, before a something doubtful flashes across his eyebrows.
"Hey, no. Trav. It's not too much" she says, before he can even voice it. "A lot, yes. More than I'd be comfortable asking for myself, probably. But not too much. You're never too much."
She'd realized early on that this was a frayed nerve for him. That somehow, this exuberant man, with his bold fashion choices and flamboyant dance moves and larger than life personality, had a real hangup about being too much for the people closest to him.
A nagging feeling that he needed to reel himself in and meter his love, lest he be too much and push them away.
She'd never pressed him on it, but she always tried to be sensitive to it. On a visceral level, she could understand the fear of being too much.
"Really, though," she says as she stirs her pasta with a reassuring smile. "The team has already coordinated to go out next week and get the systems set up on the property. You may actually have earned enough brownie points with Nate that he'll let us take the Chevelle again without putting up a fight", she jokes in an attempt to break him from his anxious thoughts.
"Oh hell yeah!”
And then, "but you'll let me know if you think of anything else? I want you to be comfortable there. Especially when we have a bit more time between legs."
“Time between whose legs?!" she says with a wave of her wooden spoon.
The thing is, even at the old house, it had already started in so many little ways.
In the summer they'd spent most nights tangled together in the middle of the bed, sleeping practically on top of each other. But as fall had rolled in, the routine of football season brought structure into their relationship. He'd get out of bed early to go to the facility, and she now had a side of the bed, away from his blaring alarm. Then, one weekend she came back to Kansas City to find a brand new charing mat and a bottle of her favorite hand lotion on the nightstand by her side of the bed. Her side of the bed.
A few days later she'd been back in New York for an event. "Oh, you left a few things here, if you're looking for them. That lavender sweater and your Shania t-shirt and a sports bra. I had them washed and put in a drawer for you" he'd said so casually on a late night FaceTime call.
A drawer for you rattles around her head for a second too long. He must have seen it on her face, because he immediately deflects.
“I mean, at least I don't have to worry about you being cold there in New York without your sweater", his eyes sparkling with mirth through the screen to where she sits drowning in his well-worn UC hoodie.
It's the little purple notebook that he's constantly finding laying around the house when she's there, black pen tucked in the spine to mark her spot. Sometimes she's hunched over it in her favorite chair, scribbling away while strumming on the guitar she travels with. Sometimes she's reading from it and murmuring half words half melody into a voice note on her phone. He constantly finds it on side tables, the night stand, the couch.
He never reads it.
Eventually the guitar is left behind as well, propped in the corner of the living room beside her chair. Her chair.
Then, on an unseasonably sticky fall day, she calls to him as she’s trying to tame her curls in the humidity. ”Have you seen my big blue hair clip?"
Rounding the corner, she finds him on the couch watching college football and scratching Benji behind the ears. "The pinchy one? I think it's up in our bathroom" he says.
Our bathroom lodges somewhere in her chest, between her heart and her lungs.
Upstairs, she opens the drawer to find her clip, alongside an extra bottle of her favorite bougie shampoo, a new box of tampons, and a sticky note that says "I love you" with a smiley face scrawled in his messy capital letters.
***
After Brazil, she's just so happy to be home. Back to Travis, and back to the relative peace that Kansas City affords them.
And back to the new house, which she'd spent barely any time in.
Travis had sent her pictures and video tours as it was coming together, but she had only been there in person once since that first walk-through in October.
It shouldn't feel like home already, but somehow it does. The first night she gets there, after a reunion fueled by pent-up emotions, both of them frayed at the edges from trying to keep it together until they could be back in each other's arms, she crashes face first into a pillow that already smells like Travis.
She sleeps through the night for the first time since leaving Argentina.
Is home a place or a person, she’d wondered in the mid-morning light, nose still buried in her pillowcase. It's a hard thing to pin down when you move around so much, a life split between houses and hotel rooms.
Maybe it's a feeling. A bone deep sense of being settled. Knowing where you are before you open your eyes in the morning, because your limbs are tangled together. Being able to quietly do mundane things alongside one another.
After being home for a few days they'd settled into something normal, something quiet. It was mostly spending time cuddled up on the couch reading with the TV on low in the background. Occasional bursts of fraught scribbling in her little purple notebook. Scrolling through Pinterest looking for pieces for the rooms that had yet to be furnished. Staring at the flames dancing in the fireplace, lost in thoughts that threatened to pull her under.
Somehow Travis had known she didn't really want to go anywhere or do anything, and she was so grateful. She'd needed the peace and the privacy of their little bubble to put her broken pieces back together before she was ready to face the outside world again.
"Hey, I have a surprise for you" he says on Friday afternoon.
As the calendar had flipped into December, Taylor's mood had lifted slightly, but Travis was still extra attentive and doting. He'd come straight back form their half-day practice, breaking his usual Friday afternoon pattern and opting to shower and eat at home.
"Oh my god, is it ice cream? Please say it's ice cream" she pleads, realizing that for the first time in weeks she was hungry.
"Um, no," he chuckles into her hair. "But I can run out to Trader Joe's and get you some if you want?"
"Maybe later.” She didn’t want him to leave so soon when he'd just gotten home.
"What's the surprise?" The sparkle in her eyes was starting to resurge.
"It's sort of an early birthday present."
Her birthday wasn't for almost two weeks, but she already knew they wouldn't be spending it together. After everything that had happened this month and this year, her friends had desperately wanted to throw her a party in New York. Since it was mid-week, Travis would be stuck here for practice. He'd encouraged her to go celebrate with her friends, promising they could plan something separate over the weekend.
"Okay! Close your eyes!" he says excitedly.
"What are you doing?!" she squeaked as she feels herself tilted off axis and lifted off the ground.
"Piggy back ride!" he bellows, hauling her onto his back and wrapping a giant hand over her eyes.
“Trav! I'll keep them closed, I promise! Just don't drop me" she promises as he takes off at a clip, walking in circles around the house to disorient her. Then, out of nowhere and in a fit of giggles, he gently plops her down on a soft cushion.
"Okay, open them" and she can hear his butterflies.
They're in the den, and she's sitting on a plush emerald green couch placed in front of the window overlooking the back yard. The autumn leaves have all fallen from the trees since last time she was in here, replaced by the flurries of snow swirling around on the other side of the glass. But the clear afternoon light floods through the bare branches and across the room just the way she remembered it.
Following the beam to where a desk once stood, she finds a baby grand piano sitting in the middle of the room. Her piano. Well, not her piano, per se, but the very one that her and Jack had been drooling over last summer.
"I had some help picking it out," he says with a chuckle that's mostly proud and a little bit nervous.
Her shiny eyes are bouncing around the room, across the glistening keys and the intricate pattern of the area rug that warms the wood floor, taking in all of the little details.
It takes her a moment to hear Travis rambling, in the way he does when he's anxious or excited. About wanting her to have her own space in the house ("But not that I don't want you everywhere in the house! You can be anywhere, everywhere really."). How he hopes he isn't overstepping ("This way you can be comfortable to write or play or think when you're here."). How he knew she liked this room ("You said you liked the light, and it has a nice view of the trees.").
She knows she needs to formulate words to cut off his ramble before he really starts to worry, is just about to form them on her tongue and push them out of her mouth, when her eyes land on the bookshelf.
Inexplicably, it's the stack of brand new lavender Moleskine notebooks that shakes her out of her stupor and makes her cry.
First a single tear dislodged, as she looks at the notebooks and sees his tacit permission to fill them with their shared hopes and dreams and fears and struggles, permission to put their lives into songs.
Then, like a burst dam, the tears flood down her face as she looks around the rest of the room, really seeing it for the first time. Not just a piano and some furniture, but his invitation to build a life in this home, together, full of love and memories.
She twists around in his arms, needing him to see the love in her eyes. She knows that even with shelves full of those little damn notebooks, she wouldn't be able to find the right words to express the enormity of what she's feeling.
"Oh sweetie. Are these happy tears? I just want you to be at home here."
Luckily, they both know that he doesn't need a verbal answer to that question, nor is there an easy one.
They're overwhelmingly happy tears, yes. Grateful for his gifts, but also for his willingness to jump into the fishbowl with her. Thankful that he lovingly created so much space for her in his life and in his home.
But they both know that sometimes these big feelings get tangled together, and when you knock one, they all come tumbling out.
So, mixed in with the overwhelming happiness, are the waves of grief and exhaustion that have ebbed and flowed over the past weeks.
The weariness and loneliness they'd battled these past months every time they'd stepped foot on a plane, temporarily flying away from one another and the incipient life they were beginning to knit together.
Lingering pain from scar tissue of past relationships and broken dreams that they've both been working so hard to mend and reconcile, acknowledge and heal.
And as the tear tracks finally begin to dry on her cheeks, a quiet peace.
"Thank you," she whispers into his chest. And he knows it's not just for the piano.
"Happy birthday, baby. I love you."
As they rock back and forth, slow dancing in the silence, she can hear that this room is already full of music.
Somewhere in the periphery of her mind, mingling with melodies that sound like firelight and a warm summer breeze, she realizes with a smile that Travis didn't ask her if it was too much.
***
"There you are" Travis whispers from the doorway of the dark room. Taylor is sitting in the plush chair, gently humming fragments of a melody that she's been trying to work out for days. That's been rattling around her brain in the space between sleep and consciousness that seems so familiar as of late.
She'd thought maybe if she came in here the melody would settle.
"I couldn't find my girls. What are you doing in here?"
It was true, they didn't actually spend much time in this room these days. The squirmy bundle in Taylor's arms slept in a bassinet next to their bed, and her blankets and changing baskets had already been strewn across the house in the last couple of weeks since her arrival. If she was being honest, the nursery was really just an impeccably decorated place to store her tiny clothes and toys, for now.
In the gentle glow of the moonlight, she can see that every corner of the room is already filled with signs of the life they'd created.
Her mind flashes back to the first time she saw this little room, technically empty, but so full of implicit dreams. Looking around now, past the fatigue and the exhaustion, she's filled with a bone deep comfort.
For a long time, she'd thought it was this house that held the magic -- that protected their peace. And in some ways it did.
She loved the midwestern sunshine filtering through the living room, and the way their bedroom felt like a cashmere blanket, and the laughter that flickered from the fire pit out back. She hoped they'd stay here to raise their family, even now that they technically didn't need to live in Kansas City anymore, in this house that they had filled with so much light and love.
But that was the thing, she'd slowly come to realize. It wasn't the walls or the windows, or even the big trees out back, that held the magic. It was the memories and the people who shared them, woven together in the most beautiful tapestry, the most intricate melody.
"Come on," Travis says, gently pulling her out of her reverie. "Let's go to bed."