TNT Short Fics

Every song before was just a prayer

It's quiet in the room, the only sound the clock in the hall.

It's nice though. Where once the silence would have felt barren, the cost of a life she'd locked herself away in, this feels like rest. A pause in a busy, full life.

Taylor glances down again at the page. At the list she's been keeping of potential acoustic mashups. For some reason, none of them speak to her right now for this weekend's shows.

Her phone lights up beside her, and she takes in the text that appears right below Travis's smiling face on her wallpaper.

"Did you hear back from Max?"

She'd texted earlier, the middle of the night for him, that she'd officially asked Max to make the next record with her.

"Not yet, but he did say he was finishing up a project this week."

"I'm sure he'll say yes, Tay. He'd be crazy not to."

She smiles. He's always her cheerleader.

But then his words play back in her head. Crazy.

God. She hasn't thought of that song in a long time.

She turns back to her journal and scratches Crazier onto the page before pulling up the lyrics. She knows them by heart, knows all her songs by heart, but seeing the words helps her find connections.

She runs her thumb across the words on the screen, over words written by an idealistic girl with hopes full of romantic whims. Words that, for the last sixteen years, every time she's visited them as a potential song on a tour, have felt far removed from the woman she was in that moment.

So it had gone back on the shelf.

Until now.

It's not just the obvious. The way Trav spins her around in the kitchen when he walks through the door after practice. It's the feelings. The emotion she felt while writing it. It's here with her now.

It's not the first song to feel this way lately. So many songs feel different now. Songs that maybe should feel hard to sing, but don't, because they suddenly land with so much more emotion. Songs that felt like a too-tight dress now settle around her like a worn-in sweater. Familiar. Easy.

She reaches for her guitar and starts to strum, picking up the chords from memory.

Looking back now, she can see it for what it was.

A wish. A prayer for the future. Her hopes and dreams, written down before she knew they might come true.

And maybe that is what so many songs really have been.

She glances back at her mashup list, circling Crazier with a quiet smile, then swipes to her notes app—her ever-growing rolodex of ideas, and types two words for the future. For the studio time she'll hopefully have with Max and Johan.

"Wish List"