The "homework" he assigned himself before Taylor flew out to attend her first game (and his first game back after his injury) was Red. He would give it a listen and after she got there, they planned to talk about it.
The nerves didn't fully hit him until he got home from practice that night. It was the perfect time to give the album the attention it deserved; his body was spent, but he wasn't fully sleepy. After a long, hot shower and one of Kumar's premade chicken meals, Travis decided to go outside and sit out on the patio.
It was relatively warm for September and he sat in one of the Adirondack chairs, relishing the stillness. Practice had been rough. There was some semblance of pain, though it was nothing new...he'd learned to live with it over the years.
Returning to anything after being out with an injury sucked. There was no way around it. He felt rusty and despite reassurance from Coach Reid and his teammates, he fucking knew it.
His emotions were already at a high, so he figured what better way to channel them than through music.
Right away, he loved Red. The three albums before, he had really liked, especially Speak Now because it gave him a lot of insight into her past, but there was something special about that particular one. It could have been the fact he was grooving to it in nature, could have been that the first couple of songs were so soft and he loved her voice in them...whatever the reason, he was drawn to it, even as she was writing about the break-up songs.
If he had to choose, "All Too Well", was his favorite and he'd immediately skipped to the ten minute version, thinking he'd get more from it and he wasn't disappointed. The way she told the story of a love that rocked her and then ended badly made his eyes tear. He got that it was told with the wisdom of someone who'd come through the other side; it didn't feel like the same kind of pain as "Dear John". Maybe it was because she'd matured since then. He'd definitely been in relationships where it felt like the fucking sky falling down and he thought he would forever feel like shit and then woken up one day to realize it was okay again. The song put it all into perspective and again, he couldn't believe how she managed to articulate those big feelings into an actual song.
But he liked of all of them, really...the mixture of both heartache and falling in love again hit hard and it immediately made him think of them.
Oh, shit.
They'd been together for two months or so, give or take, and it had just fully hit him, during the listen, that he was in love with her. No way around it and "Begin Again" and "Come Back, Be Here" came in and sucker punched him so unexpectedly, he had to get up and walk around a little, clear his head.
Years before, Taylor had somehow expressed what it felt like to fall in love again and specifically how difficult it was to navigate it long distance. The way it applied now was actually beautiful.
It wasn't the first time the connections dawned upon him. Him, sharing her grandmother's birthday, how her cousins had taken pictures in front of his locker at the stadium during her concert, his coach being good friends with her father. Just little ties that could have been easily written off as coincidence, but he couldn't. He was the believer that everything happened for a reason and he was of the mindset that somehow, they were meant to be exactly where they were.
By the time he finished all the tracks, Travis was exhausted, but in the best possible way and the frustration from practice earlier in the evening had since ebbed. He almost didn't want to wait for Taylor to get there to talk about the album and he dug his phone from the pocket of his shorts, poised to call before he stopped himself.
What he needed to say, he knew he'd better say in person. The nerves that had eased up a little were slowly coming back and two days later when Taylor was at the house, she noticed.
