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They are sitting at the dining table one Wednesday night in LA when Taylor asks, “Can we go home? Just for a day?”
They have been laughing about something that had happened on the set of the commercial he is shooting with Travis doing an impression of the gruff director as he tells the story. So she knows he won’t read into her question. That it’s nothing bad, just something she wants.
“Yeah baby, of course,” he replies. “Any particular reason?”
She loves that he knows exactly what she means when she says “home.” Home is the place where she more and more considers their future. The place away from bad memories and the false fronts of the cities she’s inhabited over the past 14 years.
“There is something I want to show you. And it needs to be there,” she states.
It is cryptic but she needs to just get him there and show him. Something tells her that this one requires it to be shared in the place that inspired it.
“Then we’ll go.”
She brightens at his agreement, and continues, “Okay, this weekend? The weather will be nice and we can go when you're done for the day on Friday. I need to show you before things get busy with the album. Does that work?”
“You already know it’s good with me, Tay. Let’s go.”
Friday arrives and the moment they walk into the house, she feels her shoulders relax just a bit more. She loves their life no matter where they are and they are making amazing memories together in LA. But something about being here in Kansas City, where they fell in love and where they laid the foundation of everything to come, is on a different level. It is the place where people may look but they let them be. Where they can stop in and grab food without a riot. Where she once giggled in disbelief the whole way through a spontaneous trip to Target on a random early weekday morning because no one seemed to notice them. It settles into her bones and clicks something back into place that feels like a piece of her she lost long ago but found again here in this ordinary, midwestern city—normal.
It’s late so they settle for ordering dinner from their favorite pizza place and eating out on the deck with the Christmas lights they forgot to have taken down twinkling above them.
Later that night, he loves her slow and sweet just like their first time in this oasis from the noise. After, he holds her tight and whispers promises into her hair. About how they’ll be back here soon. That they’ll have adventures across the world but will always end up back here together.
“Thank you for bringing us home, Tay,” he murmurs. “I was kind of bummed that I’d have to come back for training camp later this summer and not have gotten one more glimpse of you in this bed before August to tide me over.”
She kisses him in response and pulls him closer. Feels the weight of him over her and memorizes everything she can about their bodies together. So that just like him, she’ll have this moment to call back to when they are apart.
The next morning, she wakes up to a perfect, sunny Spring day, as if she’s ordered exactly the weather she needs. She pulls him from sleep with coffee and silly kisses across his rough cheek. And once he’s sufficiently awake, she suggests a drive.
He’s happy to oblige, understanding that this is what they have come here for. They are quiet on the way out of town, just sitting in each other’s company. She wonders if he notices the nerves in her hand as she passes it across the back of his neck from time to time.
Once they hit the deserted two-lane highway out of town, he lowers the top and shifts them to a higher speed. She grins at him. He knows she likes it fast just like he does.
A few minutes later, she pulls out her phone and connects it to the console, hesitating to press play. He glances over in question at the silence.
“There is something I want you to hear,” she shares. She’s not sure why she’s so nervous. Nothing about the song itself makes her nervous. It makes her joyful and hopeful. She just hopes he hears it in the words and music too. She takes a deep breath, pulls up the file of the finished track, and hits play.
The guitar riff Aaron called “Bruce Springsteen meets Dawson’s Creek" starts to play and as it does, she can tell he’s zoning in to listen closely. When her voice starts, he looks at her in surprise. No doubt thinking she had been planning to play him another artist. They do that sometimes, play each other things they like or songs that remind them of each other. He reaches and turns the speakers up.
The second it plays the words, “crinklin’ eye” he inhales audibly. Cheeks pinking up as if on cue to the next line.
“Tay,” he says in awe.
“Shhhh,” she chastises lightly. “Listen.”
He does and somehow turns even more red and laughs out loud at the post-chorus.
She lets the words wash over them, sticking her hand out the window and feeling the freedom in the air rushing past her fingers. Just watching him take in the song, seeing the happiness on his face as she does.
Propping her leg up on the seat, she turns to face him when his hand reaches for hers on the line, “I'm bettin' on all three for us two.” He squeezes three times hard, their silent promise.
She has him fully laughing at rhyming “Aristotle” and “Grand Theft Auto” just like she thought he would.
And he looks over at her with glassy eyes as the outro starts again. As the final words echo through the car—the words he had said to her the first time she had asked him if he loved her—he pulls over onto the shoulder of the road.
When the car stops and the speakers go silent, he reaches for her, pulling her into a searing kiss before holding her close, hand on the back of her head.
“Why here?” he asks.
She’s not surprised he asks that only that he’s asked it first.
“It feels like home,” she answers, knowing he’ll understand she means the song. “And it also feels like driving down the road with the top down with you. Just like last summer. Just like this.”
He strokes his hand down her hair again before pulling back to tell her, “You’re right, it does.” And she knows he means them and not just the song.
“I want to put it on the album. On the anthology.”
“Taylor," he says quietly, touched. “Are you sure? I love this…I more than love this song. But I want you to be sure.”
“I’m sure if you are okay with it. I…I want people to know that I’m okay. Better than okay. And I want the beginning…I want the world to see the beginning of us. How all of that shit led me to all this good. How you helped me find some of those pieces I thought I lost.”
He kisses her hand and puts it over his heart before saying “Of course, it’s okay with me.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to change your mind later about all this. The other one, it’s more vague…you could…”
“Baby,” he interrupts. “I know what you are worried about. What they’ve said or are going to say. But I also know that you know I’m not them. And I think...If anyone is not proud of how you portray them in your writing, that says everything about them and not about you. You can write about me whenever you want. And I’m going to do my damnest to make sure I’m proud of what I hear always. That part is on me.”
She tucks her face into his neck and gasps out a sob at his words. He turns his head to kiss her hair, wrapping his arms around her tightly.
“I’d be so fucking proud for you to include this, Tay. Like the other one.”
“Yeah?” she confirms.
“Absolutely yes,” he says definitively.
“Thank you, Travis,” she replies, wiping at her eyes.
“Thank you. For your beautiful, funny, silly words.”
He reaches to help her, thumbing at the tears on her cheeks before continuing, “High school, huh? It really did feel like that at first didn’t it?”
“Yes,” she agrees. “It still does. I don’t think that will ever go away. It’s just…it’s deeper now. You know? Settled. Like we’re growing up together.”
“Yeah it is,” he nods. “And I can’t wait for all you’re going to write about us over the years.”
“Me too.” she sighs.
“And it does still feel like that. I think I'm still going feel like I’m walking down the hall with my best girl even when we’re like ninety years old.”
She laughs and hugs him one more time. He starts the car back up, not letting go of her hand. She switches the console back to his playlist. They turn and laugh with each other when, as if by fate, “Teenage Dirtbag” comes on.
As he pulls back onto the road, he can’t help but tease her. “Do you know how much shit Harry and Ross are going to give us with this?”
She gives him a look.
“Babe, I hate to break it to you, They knew what we were sneaking off to do. Why do you think Harry kept calling you “Right There Trav” for like a month?" she says, blushing as she remembers nearly spitting out her wine the first time he called him that. For a million-dollar house, that place somehow had deceptively thin walls.
"Oh god," he snickers at the realization and shakes his head. “So glad we have the new house so those fuckers can leave us in peace.”