Chapter Text
The first day he thought maybe she didn’t like being listened to while she played. Kind of odd for a woman whose job is to play for thousands of people every night, but he could respect that. After all, while he dreamt of seeing her up on the bleachers during one of his matches, he knew taking her to see one of the Chiefs’ intense training sessions would be a whole different thing… Okay, who was he kidding? He would absolutely love that. She would never come, but hey, a man can dream. Maybe it was simply that they were very different, and it was something he knew he had to grow to accept.
“Baby,” he’d asked her just a few minutes before. “Would you mind if I called my mom? I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in a few days… I won’t tell her I’m here, of course.”
They had been sitting on her couch, just comfortably enjoying each other’s presence, him leaning on the armrest and her leaning on him, his hand gently stroking her side.
“Of course I don’t, it’s sweet that you want to talk to her,” she’d said, giving him the cutest of smiles. “I might take some time for myself, then, if it’s okay with you.”
“Of course.”
Just like that, she had gotten up and disappeared into the other room. She usually kept the door to that one closed and had only shown it to him once, the first time he’d been there a few weeks prior. The living room where he was sitting now had a huge TV screen and the walls were covered in books, more books than he’d ever seen. The other one looked more like a music temple. CDs, vinyl and posters of her idols, some of which he recognized, while others not so much, were hanging on every wall. There was a collection of musical instruments, ranging from a small guitar to a violin in a display case – “Can you play the violin?” he’d asked. “Not really, no, but that’s a Stradivarius, and I just really wanted to own one” she’d replied, leaving him speechless. A pitch-black grand piano stood in the center of the room and, even though he had absolutely no idea how to play the piano, the temptation to walk up to it and touch it had been almost irresistible. He hadn’t done that out of respect for her temple.
It was when he heard the muffled notes invading the living room that he’d realized what she’d truly meant by taking some time for herself. She’d wanted to play undisturbed. He smiled, happy that she had at least left the door ajar, so he could enjoy hearing her music in the background.
“Hey, Ma,” he greeted his mom the second she picked up the phone. “How are you?”
“I’m good, sweetheart, thank you! Where are you?”
“Just at home, Ma. Taking a few days to rest.”
“Is that music I hear in the background?”
Shit.
“Umm… I might have… Left the TV on in the bedroom, I’ll go have a look once we hang up.”
Donna laughed out loud.
“Oh, Trav, you were always a terrible liar…” she said, then before he could say anything, she added: “It’s okay, you’ll tell me when you are ready to.”
He sighed. Crisis averted. He brought up to Jason and the kids, and the rest of the conversation was smooth enough.
He had a big smile on his face when they finally hung up and he stood up to stretch his legs a bit. That’s when he heard the music stop. Only a second later, Taylor walked back in. He couldn’t help but admire her long legs, which the white shorts she was wearing left almost completely uncovered, and the exquisite way the pink cami top wrapped her breast. And her eyes, her lips…
DUDE!, the little voice in his head – the one that sounded so much like Jason – snapped him out of his thoughts.
“Come here, girl,” he said, wrapping her in a hug. Her hair smelled like lavender and something else he couldn’t quite place, something that reminded him of springtime.
“Hey, you,” she said, before breaking the hug just enough to stand on her tiptoes and kiss his lips.
He reciprocated the kiss and bit her bottom lip softly.
“Mmmm…”
He cupped her face with his hands.
“How was your me time?”
“Good,” she replied with a little smile, but he couldn’t help but notice her looking down for a second, as if she didn’t want to be questioned further about it. “How is your mom?”
“She’s good, she visited Jason and Kylie last week,” he started recounting, while she led him to the kitchen. “She was telling me about how much the girls are growing.”
He watched as she grabbed a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. She placed everything on the kitchen table, then moved towards the cupboard to get two wine glasses. He walked up to her and hugged her from behind, taking them from her.
“Sit down, baby,” he said. “I’ll pour the wine.”
The second day, he thought maybe she was just a morning person. He woke up to the sound of a guitar playing somewhere downstairs. There was no voice, but he was learning to recognize her touch on the instruments and the way the notes felt light and charged at the same time. He smiled. That was not a bad way to wake up.
He had already scrambled the eggs and was frying some bacon when she joined him in the kitchen.
“Oh my God, Trav, I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear you getting up,” was the first thing she said.
He moved the bacon onto a plate and then turned around to look at her.
“Good morning,” he said, walking up to her and pecking her lips. “Don’t worry about it, I was just making breakfast. There is porridge and I chopped up some fruit, my culinary abilities end there. I hope it’s alright.”
She had an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite figure out and her eyes were brimming with tears.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“How long have you been up?”
He checked his watch.
“Just over an hour.”
“WHAT? Why didn’t you come get me?” she asked, strangely worked up.
He rubbed his hands on her arms.
“I was doing fine, baby. I chilled in bed for a while, then I took a shower and came down here to make breakfast. I heard you were playing and didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Her voice broke and a single tear escaped her eye. Travis’ heart shrunk to the size of a peanut. He’d never seen her cry before, and he did not like that. He quickly wiped the tear with his thumb.
“Where is this coming from?” he asked.
That seemed to snap her out of whatever spiral she was working down. The undecipherable look on her face disappeared, replaced by a soft smile.
“Forget about it, sorry, I’m just in my head.”
He would lie if he said he wasn’t confused. She looked genuinely upset one minute and totally fine the next. There was something going on here for sure, and he was starting to feel like it had to do with her playing. It was like she wanted to hide from him or, more specifically, like she was worried of his reaction if her playing time somehow interfered with their time together. But both of them had taken multiple work calls the day before and that hadn’t seemed to be an issue. Those were just their lives, and he was happy to embrace the chaos and find ways to move through it, cutting out little moments together from their very busy schedules. He was under the impression that they had been doing a good job so far. They both were respectful of each other’s engagements and understood that spending twenty – four uninterrupted hours together without being bothered by anyone was out of the question for now. However, the day before they’d turned off their phones around 5 pm, without even having to discuss it, and they’d focused on one another. They’d chatted, had dinner, even did some silly dances around the kitchen – he’d somehow worked up the courage to tell her about a very specific fantasy of his and she’d made it come true. Everything seemed to be going well, which is why seeing her so worked up and almost defensive over her time in the music church room was odd. He definitely wanted to confront her, ask why this playing thing made her so nervous, but he didn’t want to pressure her. So, he decided to let it go, for the moment.
The third day, at first, he thought she was just bored. He had to go through the latest episode of the podcast to see if there were any final adjustments to make. She had been sitting next to him, scrolling on her phone, only looking up whenever he wanted to show her some of the funniest jokes Jason had made. At some point, she just stood up and walked away. Two minutes later, he heard the familiar melody of Love Story playing, and heard her angelic voice play a much slower version of the song. Soon enough, he realized she was transitioning into another song he didn’t recognize. He distinctly heard her sing “on a Wednesday in a cafe” and couldn’t help himself. He opened his browser and looked up the words. He didn’t have to look far. The song was called Begin again. He resisted the impulse of getting up and standing by the door of her music room to clearly hear her singing it. He hadn’t been invited and he didn’t want to make her feel ambushed, like he was invading her privacy. He did, however, think about the meaning of the song, and wondered if she just played whatever came to her mind or if she played songs that somehow reflected how she was feeling and what she was going through. After reading the lyrics to that song, he desperately wanted the latter to be true.
He was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t notice her walking back into the living room.
“Are you alright in here?” she asked.
“Yeah, almost done.”
“Good, I’ll only be another ten minutes or so.”
She started walking away and he decided it was now or never.
“Tay?”
“Yeah?”
“You know you don’t need to make sure I have a distraction to go into your music church room, right?”
She chuckled.
“My what?” she asked, walking up to him.
“Come here,” he prompted her, and she walked around the table to sit on the chair next to him.
He took both of her hands in his.
“I think you know what I mean.”
She was fidgeting a bit, which told him that yes, she did, and she’d probably been thinking a lot about it too.
“I… I think I do…”
“What I mean is, I’m worried you feel like you can’t just tell me you need some time for your music. And I just want you to know that you can, is all. I told you this morning I needed to get some work done and I knew you would understand, the same works for you.”
He noticed how she was trying to put the right words together, her forehead crinkled.
“It is not necessarily a work thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I want to be in there. I don’t necessarily have to. Well, some days I do. Some days I have a lot of inspiration and I go in there to write new stuff, but sometimes it’s just… Sometimes I just want to be in there. I go through old songs, I think of mashups, I practice, I get creative. It’s something I’ve always done and in the past few months it has become very…”
She looked for the right word.
“Personal?” he suggested.
“Yes, it is very personal. It feels like, whatever happens, I can still go in there and play. It’s not the same thing as playing for others. It’s for me. The thing is… Sometimes I lose track of time in there. It’s something my ex wasn’t very fond of, me disappearing for five hours inside the room and playing my old songs over and over. Then the guy I dated after that… He just sucked the life out of me, by the end I barely had the energy to get out of bed, let alone go in there. The music church was closed for quite some time and now that I have those moments back, I don’t want anything to ruin them.”
He took a few moments to fully comprehend what she was trying to say. Her eyes were glistening again, but he thought he also saw a glimpse of relief, like she was glad to finally be tackling the topic.
“Is that why you hide? You think I could ruin it for you?”
She took a deep breath.
“I still don’t know you very well, and I have a terrible streak in trusting men I shouldn’t have trusted,” she started, making his heart sink. “But you haven’t made me cry yet and that is more than I could say after a few weeks of dating any of the other men that came before you.”
“You’re crying right now,” he pointed out, collecting a tear with his thumb.
“This?” she asked with a bitter smile. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s all me and my insecurities.”
“Hey,” he said, pulling her into a hug. He buried his face in her soft hair, inhaling her wonderful scent. “You can talk to me about it, if you’d like to.”
“Not yet,” she muttered, an almost imperceptible crack in her voice.
Travis felt his heart skip a few beats, a savage instinct of protection suddenly taking over him. He almost wanted to hurt them, the men who had hurt her, made her needs feel so insignificant and made her feel like she needed to shrink in order to fit into a box. She was Taylor Swift, for fuck’s sake, and he took it to his own heart to help her be reminded of that.
“Tay…”
“Yeah?”
He pulled away a little, just enough for his eyes to lock on hers.
“Wherever this goes, with us, I mean… I never want you to hide who you are, not even the parts that other people asked you to hide.”
“You say this now,” she started. “But you don’t know how you’ll feel when…”
He placed a finger on her lips.
“If there is something that bothers me, I will talk to you about it. I don’t exactly get what it is that should bother me about you taking time to do what you love, I’m sure there are way more annoying things that I do. But I know you will call me out on those, if necessary. For now, all I know is that I can’t get to know you, the real you, unless you allow me. Unless you are one hundred percent yourself…”
She took hold of his hands, placing a gentle kiss on his knuckles.
“You are saying that I should go back to my music room…”
He nodded.
“And that you should be in there for as long as you need. Then, you’ll come out here and have some breakfast, and we can talk about how we want to spend our day. Or tomorrow. Or the next fifty years…”
He let out a little gasp, realizing what the implications of what he just said were, and wondering if it was maybe too much.
“You think about things like that?” she asked, obviously surprised, but she also looked somewhat pleased.
“Sometimes…” he replied vaguely.
“Me too,” she whispered, giving him one last kiss. “Sometimes.”