TNT Short Fics

Wreck my plans - Part 3

Dreams

Looking back, Taylor supposes she really starts thinking about it in LA. Life seems ideal. She and Travis are finally in one place for an extended time. He fits seamlessly into the house and with her friends, and they orient around each other just like they always have as if they've been living together for years. But something in her is still restless.

One night, they stop by a party a friend invited them to. While they have fun with her friends, they soon realize the party is full of typical LA false fronts. She catches Travis's eye from where he's been cornered by an exec, and he crosses his eyes at her, making her giggle. The woman she's talking to looks less than impressed. She used to enjoy these parties; they once made her feel important and grown up. Now, they just make her itchy.

Suddenly Travis is at her side with a knowing smirk, interrupting, "So sorry. Tay, can I pull you away for a quick huddle in the backfield?"

She smiles as she excuses herself from the conversation. They've started using football terms as code words to get the other's attention and it's hilarious to see the confused faces of industry people who have no idea and assume it's some hip new slang. They're in an unspoken competition to make each other laugh with the nonsense ways they use the terms. Once, she told him they were late to a "pick six with the O-line" and she's pretty sure the record label guy who Travis had accidentally fallen into conversation with thought she was stealing him away for an orgy.

"Thank god," she says as they round the corner to a deserted hallway. She leans her head on his chest and shakes it back and forth. "Can we make a run for it?"

They end up with milkshakes, trading horror stories of the dullest conversations on the ride home. And while she loves that they can joke and not take it all so seriously, it makes her miss Betty Rae's and riding in the Chevelle down late-night KC streets.

It's not to say LA is all bad. Their friends come and go all spring, and dinners and brunches with Travis's local friends are a blast. She loves finally merging their friend groups even more. She loves seeing Travis go wide-eyed when Mick Jagger tells him he's a very tall man at Paul's party or watching Chris and Zoe talk comedies together at Jack's birthday. She also loves when they're at home just being their normal selves, cooking dinner, watching trash TV, or working from separate ends of the couch, feet tangled in the middle. Yet, something about this city just doesn't sit right with her. It never has, but now it's even more pronounced. One night, a wave of homesickness hits her, and she's not sure what to do with it or where to direct it.

The feeling gets put to the side as she dives back into the tour. She knows London will never be home again, but the melancholy she knew would hit her being back here is soothed by the man who makes it his mission to be there for her whenever work permits. To make new memories with her and steer them towards the future. And as she and Travis have a sparkling summer all across the continent, she realizes that maybe home isn't a place she never can pin down, but rather a person. Her person.

And yet, her skin still prickles with something she can't quite name.

Closing out the European leg of the tour, she's caught up in both the pride of the accomplishment and the sheer exhaustion of that much work in 14 weeks. She spends more hours asleep than awake the week she returns to Kansas City. She had planned to spend a couple of days in New York the following week but she never makes it. And suddenly it's a month later and her business manager strongly suggests an in-person meeting to go over some documents.

Walking into the Tribeca apartment, she realizes with a start that she hasn't been here in almost a year. Elizabeth, her house manager does a great job of keeping the house ready for her so it feels like entering a space she never left. She walks through, running her hands across her favorite things in the house, while noticing things she now realizes she can part with. And one thing stands out.