Travis flushed and glanced away. “Ah, no. They didn’t. It’s just my mom and me, and she was the first to call. I’m from the south, Tennessee, so I wasn’t totally sure the call wouldn’t be an announcement of my disowning. Instead she claimed she already knew.”
Bailey huffed a laugh. “Moms. That’s what mine said too.”
Neither of them had mentioned a dad, and curiosity tugged at him—but he kept his mouth shut and his questions to himself. He wasn’t feeling very quid pro quo on that topic. If Bay wanted to talk about it, he’d have to be the one to bring it up.
“I was already out to a childhood friend, he was the third to call.”
Bailey glanced up, and Travis was momentarily caught in the depths of his gaze. “Who was the second?”
“My agent, panicking.” He winced at the memory. “That wasn’t a fun conversation.”
“How did you even get hooked up with Diamond Nights Records?” Bailey asked. “I mean, they’ve obviously had problems in the past with LGBTQ+ artists.”
“I was only twenty-two when I got with my agent, and it was a year later when I was finally signed. She sold them like they’d hung the moon, and I trusted her.”
“That’s shitty. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Travis paused for a moment. Besides the anger he’d let out in front of Jake, Travis hadn’t been able to really talk about everything that had happened.
“Thanks,” he murmured quietly, though he doubted he could truly express how much it meant that he was able to get some of it out in the open. He didn’t know why, but he trusted Bailey.
The conversation continued, but it turned to lighter things, and they talked until Travis’s stomach growled in protest. He glanced outside and noticed the sun was setting.
How long had they been talking?
They made their way to the truck, but neither of them were in a hurry. At least, not at first. By the time they’d made half their return trip, Travis’s feet were screaming in protest, or more specifically the new blisters that had made an appearance through the wool socks.
He breathed a sigh of relief as they reached the truck and flung the door open to climb inside.
“Cold?” Bay questioned, oblivious.
“Yeah, I’m not used to this shit,” Travis responded. He didn’t want Bailey to feel bad for showing him the greenhouse.
He didn’t want anything to taint their evening. A little pain he could get over. But he’d never forget the way it felt to have a real, honest conversation with another person again. One that wasn’t lined with a minefield of expectations.
As the streetlights grew fewer and farther apart, Travis stared at the passing, white landscape, and for the first time since he’d seen his name in the headlines, he heard the beginnings of a riff in his head.
TRAVIS
Travis always rolled his eyes when musicians tried to jump headfirst into another art—like acting, per se.
However, Travis thought he deserved a fucking Oscar for the performance he put on for Bay and Dana as he escaped to his room after they arrived back at the B&B.
The blisters on his feet were throbbing in agony, lacing his nerves with pain accompanied by every step. As soon as he walked through the front door with Bay, he knew he needed to escape. So with a jolly good night, and a wide smile, he politely excused himself for the evening, claiming he needed to jot down some lyrics before he lost them. The tell was in the way he gripped his guitar case tight in his fist, but they didn’t notice. As soon as he reached his room, he sat his case down and stripped his boots off immediately.
He winced as they fell to the floor, and gently stripped his socks off next. The blisters were on his Achilles tendons, and both of them had already burst from the distance they’d walked in the snow. With a sigh of irritation, he walked gingerly to the adjoining bathroom and turned on the tub with hot water. As the water rushed into the basin, he opened the cabinets to search for bandages, and thankfully, he was in luck. He found alcohol and bandages, and with a pair or two of his old socks underneath the new ones, he’d hopefully be able to walk without too much irritation the next day, if he actually needed to go anywhere.
When the water filled the tub a few inches high, he stripped off his pants and sat on the edge of the tub. His heartbeat throbbed in each of the wounds as he dangled his feet over the water, and he cursed.
This is gonna hurt like a bitch.
With a deep breath, he braced himself as he lowered his feet into the steaming water.
“Motherfucker,” he hissed, gritting his teeth as the water slowly enveloped his wounds bit by bit. He left them submerged for a minute, and focused on the melody that had come to him earlier. Closing his eyes, he tried to recall the rhythm of the notes, chasing after them as they tried to escape. Softly, he hummed the notes over and over to give himself something else to focus on. Eventually, the pain faded to the background, the music taking over as the lyrics developed.
He snapped his eyes open, startled with the ease with which they came. For weeks, he’d been struggling to find even an ounce of inspiration. Nights and days had gone by where he’d stared blankly at a piece of paper, chasing ideas around and around until he was too exhausted to do anything but return to bed. Or the bottle.
He needed to write them down before he lost them.
With a curse, he lifted his feet from the water and patted them dry, splashed some alcohol on the blisters, cursed some more, then—
“Fuck it,” he hissed, and left the bathroom. After tugging on some sweatpants and pulling the ankles up so as not to irritate the blisters, he dug his notebook out of his bag and brought his guitar over to the bed. He strummed the notes that had been repeating over and over in his head, having to replay them a few times before he got the rhythm right. Music drifted through the room, rough at first, until it clicked.
A smile tugged his lips when he finally nailed it, and he scribbled down some of the lyrics and a few notes before adding to it. It felt so natural to play and write and practice and fail and try again—Travis couldn’t understand why he’d been so blocked for the past few weeks.
The more he played the more tension fled his frame until he finally relaxed back against the headboard, a sigh leaving his lips. He ignored the residual pain from his blisters, the anger he still harbored over the shitty label, and the anxiety that plagued him over the thought of the headlines. It all faded away on a wave of inspiration, and he with it, until his eyes were too heavy to hold open.
When he awoke the next morning, he blinked groggily into the morning light, bright white from the persistent snow outside. For a moment, he couldn’t quite recognize the unfamiliar surroundings of the room, his mind foggy from sleep. The beige walls were unfamiliar, but when his gaze landed on the loose sheets of paper and his guitar beside him, it all came back.
With a rustle, he snapped up one of the papers and held it over his face to read what he’d written with one eye cracked open.
He read an entire verse, and with each word, the accompanying rhythm and melody danced in his head. It took him a moment to realize it, but once he did, he sat straight up in bed and re-read the lyrics again, and then again.
He’d written an entire fucking song the night before.