It's a Love Story | TNT Short Stories

Take Me Out and Take Me Home (Forever and Ever)

"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."