Page 78 of Split Decision

"You're not terrible," he says.

"I'm terrible, and you're being polite."

"I'm never polite. You're a beginner. There's a difference." He adjusts my hand position on the neck. "Try it again."

I try it again. It's marginally less terrible.

"There," he says. "That's a G chord. You can play half of all popular music with G, C, and D."

"That seems like an exaggeration."

"It's almost not."

He takes the guitar back and plays something simple — three chords cycling, steady and familiar—and then adds a line over it. In a small room with no production around it, his voice is different from the one he uses onstage. Less polished. More exposed. There's an uncertainty in it that somehow makes it better.

"Is that a song?"

"The beginning of one." He keeps playing. "I've been working on it for a couple of weeks. I can't find the second verse."

"What's it about?"

He lifts his eyes to mine. Just long enough for the answer to register.

"Someone who belongs somewhere else."

I hold his gaze for a beat. He lets me—doesn't look away, doesn't soften it. Then he drops his eyes back to the guitar, fingers still moving, careful not to let the moment go further than it should.

I think about what it's cost him—five months of proximity, of being the person I called when I had fifteen minutes between soundcheck and doors, of knowing the texture of my life in ways Luke couldn't because Luke was in Vegas and Travis was here. Of wanting something he never tried to take.

That's not nothing.

And the thing that breaks my heart a little is that I can see he's already done it. He's set it down.

"Travis."

"I know," he says. "Don't."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"I know. That's why I said it." He sets the guitar down. "I'm fine. I'll finish the song, and it'll be better for having felt it, and then I'll move on. That's how it works." He looks at me directly. "I'm not telling you this to complicate anything. I'm telling you because I think you should know that what you have with him is visible. Even from where I'm standing."

I look at him for a moment.

"I know you're fine," I say. "I've known that for a while. That's not what I was going to say."

"What were you going to say?"

"That you're one of the best people I've met on this tour. That I'm glad it was you standing here." I pause. "That I'm sorry it was hard."

He's quiet for a moment.

"It wasn't hard," he says. And then, more honestly, "It wasn't only hard."

I nod once. That's all it needs.

He picks the guitar back up. Plays the three chords again—G, C, D—and this time doesn't sing over them. Just lets them sit in the warm afternoon, unfinished and true.

"Go see your fight," he says at last. "Tell him all the things you haven't been telling him. Don't wait for the right moment. There isn't one."