TNT Short Fics

I'm coming back so strong - Part 2

Her mother had been skeptical at first when Taylor told her she was staying in Florida for spring training rather than traveling back and forth from New York.

"What will you do with all that time?" she asks. Not because she doesn't like Travis, but because she knows her daughter and how she rarely sits still.

That is the thing, though, Taylor explains. She is ready to learn to stand still. To focus her attention in a healthy way. Not hiding out after a cancellation or being afraid to leave the house, wondering if someone would still be there when she returned. But rather because she wants to live. To grow with a partner and learn all the ways they fit together when someone doesn't have to fly away two days later. She laughs when telling her mom that she wants to be normal enough for Travis's little idiosyncrasies to get on her nerves. For him to tell her that her propensity for scattering half-finished cups of tea around the house is annoying as fuck.

And she also wants to stand still in her work. Yes, she can write a song in ten minutes, but what about one that takes days? How would letting one sit and marinate and grow and change feel? She loves working quickly back and forth with Jack and Aaron. But what does it look like to dig into the instruments? To change them and see how each grows or alters a song?

She's also giving herself space to rediscover her hobbies. She's picked back up reading in the last couple of months, in fits and starts. She'd been too exhausted on tour and now she plods her way through books until it starts to become second nature once more. She reads with coffee in bed after Travis kisses her awake before he heads to training. She reads him her favorite bits from the books she's engrossed in as they sit and wait for sunset over the ocean each night after dinner.

So when Andrea comes to visit a few weeks after they settle in, Taylor's eager to show her exactly what she meant. They take long walks along the beach, collecting shells. Andrea helps her pick out herbs for a container garden on the porch, and one morning,g Taylor makes lunch while Travis is out at practice. She slices vegetables with the kind of precise ease only years of home cooking—and boredom during pandemic lockdowns—can provide.

Andrea watches her for a moment, then smiles. "You really are staying still."

Taylor nods, sliding the knife through a tomato. "I am. And I like it."

Later that evening, the three of them sit out on the deck, watching the last light fade from the sky. Travis insists on playing Scrabble, a mistake he's made exactly three times now.

Andrea spells out "vortex" on a triple word score and shakes her head at her future son-in-law. "Travis, you sure you want to keep doing this?"

He groans dramatically and slumps in his chair. "She's a lyrical genius, and now her mom's out here dropping SAT words on me."

Taylor laughs, curling into his side. "You're still my MVP."

Andrea just smiles, her eyes soft as she takes them both in—this quieter, steadier life her daughter has built, all sunshine and salt air and a kind of peace that was once hard to imagine. When she catches Taylor watching her, she nods once, noting the moment.

On her last day, Andrea sets her coffee on the kitchen counter and looks at her daughter across the room. "You know," she says, "I wasn't sure what this would be."

Taylor waits.

"But it's not stillness like I thought. It's... It's you settling in. You're not standing still. You're rooted."

Taylor smiles. That word settles in her chest like a stone in calm water.

Rooted.

She steps forward and wraps her arms around her mom. "Thanks for coming, Mom."