It didn’t take me long at all to settle into my new home. That Taylor and I had been together for nearly a year helped immensely – not only did we know each other almost intimately, but I had spent so much time at Taylor’s place that it was familiar territory. I knew that the water heater was incredibly temperamental and that if I wanted a warm shower, especially during winter, I couldn’t add any cold water or I’d end up just about frozen. I knew about the cabinet in the kitchen that had a hidden compartment in the back, where Taylor kept a stash of peanut butter cups, Maltesers and raspberry liquorice bullets. I even knew that the oven ran about ten degrees cooler than it was supposed to. They were all things that if I hadn’t stayed over as often as I had, I would never have known about before moving in.

“Hey Rue?”

I looked up from my breakfast at the sound of Taylor’s voice. It was a couple of weeks after I’d moved in, and the two of us had been incredibly busy – I was getting ready to go back to TAFE to resume my Diploma studies, while Taylor had both TAFE and a new year of touring to prepare for. I didn’t doubt that we would be ready in time, though – I knew we were both prepared to kick one another up the backside if need be.

“Coming!” I called back, and picked up my mug of tea before wandering toward the back of the house. Taylor’s office was just off the end of the front hall, and it was there that I found him sitting at his desk in front of his laptop. Hanging from a rack on the wall next to his desk were his guitars – the Maton acoustic that he’d got for his nineteenth birthday from his brothers, and the cherry-red Gibson electric that had been a Christmas present from his parents that same year – and against the wall behind him was a two-seater lounge that looked incredibly comfortable, a bright red knitted blanket folded up at its far end. “What’s up?” I asked as I sat down on the lounge and balanced my mug on one of its armrests.

“Band meeting this weekend,” he replied without turning around. “Up in Newy.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He finally turned to look at me. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. It’ll be kinda boring – mostly just the three of us hashing out where and when we’ll be going on tour this year. Shit we could do easily over Skype, really, but…” He shrugged, as if to say ‘what can I do’, and gave me a small, almost apologetic smile.

“Nah, I’ll come. I’ll hang out with Sophie or something.”

“You have no idea how glad I am that you two get along,” he said. I couldn’t help but notice that he sounded relieved that Sophie and I were friends, though it had taken us both a while to get to that point. “I was so worried that you wouldn’t like each other.”

“I was so sure that she was going to hate me,” I admitted. “Not just because of the whole thing about me being a fan, but with her knowing you for so long…” I trailed off, unsure of how to finish that particular thought.

“She’s always been protective of me,” he said with a small shrug. “Especially since I tend to attract most of the really batshit crazy teenies for some reason.” He started picking at a loose thread on the hem of his T-shirt. “When I was sick the first time, she visited me the most – every time she had time off from class, she’d come and spend time with me. I don’t think I could have got through it without her.”

I got up from the lounge and set my mug down on the desk before going around behind Taylor, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his right temple. “I’m glad she was there for you when you really needed it,” I said.

He took one of my hands in his, turned it over and kissed the inside of my wrist. “Me too.”

“So how are we getting up there?” I asked as Taylor went to stand up, and I took a few paces backward. “The train again?”

“Actually, I was thinking we could drive up instead. Saves us having to change trains a bunch of times.”

I considered this for a moment or two. “I thought you hated driving to Newcastle.”

“I do. Three hours is a long drive to begin with, plus I really hate driving on Appin Road. Had way too many close calls.” He picked his phone up from next to his laptop and unlocked it. “We could take Bulli Pass instead,” he continued after a few moments, sounding thoughtful. “It’s an extra five minutes, but we’d avoid Appin Road.”

“I’m not really bothered either way,” I said as I studied the screen of his phone. The route he had highlighted in Google Maps went through a handful of the northern suburbs of Wollongong before taking a left turn right before Thirroul and heading north via Waterfall, Heathcote and western Sydney. “But if you would feel safer taking Bulli Pass then I don’t mind going that way.”

He threw me a smile back over his shoulder. “How do you feel about heading up after lunch on Thursday? We can miss most of the traffic that way, plus I can probably talk Mum into making one of her cherry pies for dessert that evening.”

“I’ve never had cherry pie.”

This time he gave me a grin. “All the more reason for me to ask her to make one. She likes you so I doubt she’ll say no. I just have to give her plenty of notice.”

I stepped around in front of Taylor and clasped my hands together at the back of his neck, interlacing my fingers, and just barely managed to bite back a grin when he put his phone back down on his desk so that he could settle his hands on my hips, his thumbs digging in just deep enough that a shiver went down my back. “So, you and me, a long-as-fuck roadtrip up to Newy, and your mum’s cherry pie,” I said as we started swaying in place. “That sounds good to me.”

“How are you so fucking perfect?” Taylor asked, and I grinned before leaning in to kiss him.

On Thursday afternoon, just after we had finished eating lunch, we loaded up Taylor’s car and hit the road. Nick Cave was playing on the stereo as Taylor eased the car onto the M1, not even twenty minutes after we’d left home. “Are you sure you don’t mind me driving at some point?” I asked.

“Of course I don’t mind,” he replied without taking his eyes off the road. “Why would I mind if you drove my car or not?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a small shrug. We were nearing the Appin Road overpass by now. “Troy hates it when Abbey drives his car, that’s all, but I think that’s more because she’s a terrible driver than him being all precious about it.”

“You’re a good driver, though,” he said with a half-shrug of his own. “There’s a 7-Eleven servo in Bankstown, I was thinking we could switch there.” He glanced over at me for a couple of seconds. “Are you okay with driving through Sydney?”

“It’s not the CBD, right? I think I’ll be okay.”

The greenery and towering stone walls of the Illawarra escarpment were eventually taken up by the suburbs of the Sutherland Shire and western Sydney. The whole time that Taylor was driving I was treated to an impromptu solo concert that I joined in on whenever I knew a song that was playing on his iPod, which turned out to be most of them. I got the impression that he didn’t mind all that much, if the bright smile he’d given me when I’d belted out Wild At Heart by Birds Of Tokyo at the very top of my voice had been anything to go by. By the time we finally stopped at the traffic lights across the intersection from the 7-Eleven in Bankstown, though, I was badly in need of a break – both to rest my voice and so that I could stretch my legs.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” I asked as Taylor pulled up to one of the petrol bowsers and cut the engine. We had decided that morning that because it was his car Taylor would be in charge of paying for petrol and any tolls, though I planned to sneak a bit of money into his wallet before we headed back home, leaving me in charge of paying for any snacks and drinks we might have wanted to pick up along the way.

I didn’t get a reply straight away. Instead, Taylor undid his seatbelt and hopped out of the car, and opened the rear driver’s side passenger door so that he could get into the little esky that sat on the backseat. “I’d love an iced coffee,” he said once he had finished poking through the cans and bottles of drink we had packed that morning. He frowned. “Actually, make that two. I feel like I’m going to need it.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t fallen asleep yet, actually,” I said, and filed Taylor’s request away in my head before unbuckling my own seatbelt.

After I’d ducked into the ladies’, I grabbed two bottles of Dare double espresso iced coffee from one of the drinks fridges for Taylor, adding a bottle of chocolate milk for myself before wandering up to the front counter. “Just these, and…” I spotted the display of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and grabbed the box right at the front – it had four doughnuts inside, two with strawberry icing and two chocolate mudcake. I put the box of doughnuts on the counter next to the drinks. “These as well.”

“Headed anywhere for the long weekend?” the girl behind the counter asked as she rang up the drinks and the box of doughnuts.

“Yeah, up to my boyfriend’s parents’ place,” I replied as I glanced out the store’s front window. I could see Taylor through the glass, his back to me as he washed the windscreen of his car, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to distract myself. The absolute last thing I needed right now was to be turned on in public.

I somehow managed to beat Taylor back to the car. He came back outside to find me perched on the car’s bonnet with my heels propped on the front bumper, nibbling on a strawberry doughnut. “Where’s mine?” he asked as I slid down off the bonnet, his tone teasing.

“Front passenger seat,” I replied as I went around to the driver’s door, eating my doughnut as I went. “So, you know, don’t sit on it. And I put one of your drinks in the cup holder, the other’s in the esky.”

While I fiddled with the driver’s seat, adjusting it so that I could easily reach the pedals, Taylor studied our route in Google Maps. “We still have two hours until we get to Newcastle,” he said. “I reckon we can stop for like five or ten minutes in Gosford, stretch our legs or something, and still get there before dinnertime.”

I quickly glanced at my watch to check the time, the display reading 14:45. “Well, I’m ready to go when you are,” I said, having finished adjusting the driver’s seat. Driving without hand controls was going to take some adjustment, but I figured it wouldn’t take me long to get used to it.

I had just pulled the car up to the lights at the turnoff to Rookwood Cemetery in Lidcombe, around five minutes after getting back on the road, when I chanced a look over at the passenger seat.

“Well, that explains why I couldn’t hear any singing,” I murmured when I saw that even with music playing, Taylor had fallen asleep. Part of me wanted to poke him awake, but I knew he’d woken up early that morning to go for a surf – and to be honest, I really was shocked that he’d managed to stay awake for as long as he had. So rather than annoy him and potentially be the cause of a bad mood later on, I turned the volume of the music down a few notches and returned my focus to the road. The traffic light ahead of me turned green, and I drove forward through the intersection.

It was almost half-past four by the time Taylor woke up again. Rather than interrupt his much-needed nap so that we could switch drivers again I’d decided to bypass Gosford entirely, and was nearing the turn-off onto the Hunter Expressway when I heard a yawn coming from my left. “Good afternoon Sleeping Beauty,” I said as I bypassed the turn-off, staying in the right-hand lane and slowing down as the road began to take a ninety-degree turn.

“What – where are we?” he asked, sounding a little disoriented.

“Just went past the turn-off to Singleton,” I replied. “I think we’re maybe fifteen or twenty minutes from your mum and dad’s.”

“You drove this whole way?”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah. You obviously needed to sleep, and I wasn’t going to wake you up just so you could take over driving when I had it handled.” I glanced up at the rearview mirror, meeting his reflection’s gaze. “I don’t mind, honestly. And anyway, I like driving your car. Though not having any hand controls is a bit disorienting.”

“Hey, at least it’s not a manual like my last car was,” he said with a shrug as I made the turn into Woodford Street. “Trying to change gears while you’re driving when you have no idea if your hands are going to work properly or not gets old really quick.”

“Good point,” I conceded. “I can’t drive a manual anyway.”

The scenery outside the car soon changed, with green bushland giving way to farmland, the drive punctuated with telegraph poles every hundred metres or so and the suburbs that made up the outskirts of Newcastle. When I reached the turnoff into Black Hill Road, I could see Taylor sitting up straighter in his seat, and I just managed to hold back a chuckle. I knew I looked the same whenever Wollongong came into view on the way down Mount Ousley whenever I was driving back from Sydney. It meant that I was nearly home. Even though I knew that Taylor hadn’t actually lived in Newcastle for the last six, nearly seven years, it was still home to him. I took my left hand off the steering wheel just in time for him to reach for me, and I squeezed his hand briefly. “Nearly there,” I said as I flicked the left blinker on.

Our long journey north finally ended five minutes later at the end of an unpaved road just off Black Hill Road, outside the redbrick house with its long, sweeping driveway that was our home base whenever we travelled to Newcastle. Out of the windscreen I could see Taylor’s parents sitting out on the verandah, and I let out a contented sigh. Beside me I could hear Taylor doing the same. “Home sweet home,” he said, and he gave me a smile before undoing the buckle of his seatbelt and popping open the front passenger door. “Come on. I think I hear Mum’s cherry pie calling my name.”

---

“Hey.”

I looked up from my notebook to see Sophie sitting down across from me. She was setting two plates of cherry pie down on the table as she settled herself, sliding one over to me and keeping the other for herself. “Thought you might be hungry,” she explained as she passed me a fork. It was a couple of days after Taylor and I had driven up to Newcastle, and the house was much quieter than it had been when the two of us had visited for New Year’s. I supposed that the lack of nieces and nephews underfoot had quite a lot to do with it.

“I am a bit, yeah,” I admitted. Right as I said this my stomach started growling at me, and Sophie let out a quiet chuckle. “Taylor’s over at Zac’s place if you wanted to talk to him,” I added, about half a second before I popped a bite of pie into my mouth. “Band meeting or something, he said.”

“Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to you,” Sophie said, and I nearly choked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said once I could talk again. “It’s just…you want to talk to me?”

I earned a raised eyebrow for this. “We’re friends, right?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, but usually you want to talk to Taylor. Not me.”

She shrugged a little. “I guess I see your point. I really do want to talk to you this time, though.”

I considered this for a few moments, eating some more of my slice of pie as I thought it over. “Sure, okay. Somewhere a bit more comfortable, though?”

We didn’t go far. As soon as we were both settled on the lounge that was on the other side of the house’s main living area, Sophie spoke again.

“I actually have a small confession to make,” she said as she toyed with a thread that had come loose from the seam of one of the lounge’s armrests. “When Taylor told me that he had started going out with a Hanson fan, I wanted to hate you. I really did.”

“He told me that you don’t like us,” I said quietly, and she nodded. “So what makes me so different from the rest?”

“Because unlike the vast majority of fans I’ve been exposed to during the last, what, nearly seventeen years, you’re not batshit crazy,” she replied, sounding almost blunt, and I let out a shocked laugh. “But also because Taylor loves you, and that counts for a hell of a lot as far as I’m concerned.”

“Speaking of, what was he really like when he was younger? I’ve only seen what the rest of the world has. You grew up with him, though, so you know him better than almost anyone else.”

Sophie didn’t say anything for a little while. “Quiet,” she said at last. “I mean, he still is, but back then he was much quieter than he is now. And really shy, like scared of his own shadow shy. I still have no idea what made him come out of his shell, but seeing as it was what made us become best mates I’m not complaining.”

“I didn’t think you would.” I finished the last bit of crust from my slice of pie and leaned forward so that I could set my plate down on the coffee table. “I wouldn’t complain either, to be honest.”

She cracked a smile. “Nice to see we’re on the same wavelength. After the band got signed and everything, not much changed about him. He learned to stand up for himself and to let criticism of their music roll right over him, but that was pretty much it.”

Here her smile vanished, and she slouched down a little in her seat. “After…after he got sick, and once he finished chemo and everything the second time, he became a lot less willing to put up with bullshit. And he really hates repeating himself – I’m not sure if you’ve noticed that.”

I thought back to all of the interviews that the band had done for radio and television over the last few years. “He gets this sort of really annoyed look on his face when he has to repeat himself during TV interviews,” I said. “Like he wants to throttle the other person.”

Sophie grinned. “That’s the one. When he had the trach, most of the time he couldn’t speak any louder than a stage whisper, so if you weren’t paying attention or listening closely enough you pretty much had to ask him to repeat what he’d just said. And after the first ten or twenty times I think he must have gone ‘fuck this’, and just flat out refused to do it after that. He’ll do it for family and friends, but woe betide anyone else who asks.”

We were both quiet for a little while after this. I was just about to get up and take our plates into the kitchen when Sophie spoke.

“I’m glad he found you.”

“You are?”

She nodded. “Taylor’s probably told you this already, but the one thing he absolutely hates about being…well, famous, is that he can’t trust other people not to treat him differently. He’s avoided trying to get to know others and make new friends for years because they tend to see him for what he is, rather than who he is, and since he finished high school getting into a relationship with anyone has been completely out of the question.”

“Being sick for so long can’t have helped the relationship thing either,” I commented.

“Yeah, definitely not.” She let out a quiet sigh. “So he just hasn’t been bothered to even try. When he met you, though…all of that changed. It was like you lit a fire under him. And when you ran into each other again and became friends, I’m pretty sure that was the best thing that ever happened to him. You treat him like you would anyone else – to you, he’s not Taylor Hanson the rock star. He’s just Taylor.”

“He really is just like anyone else, though,” I said with a small shrug. “Other than the fact that I’m going out with him, I don’t see any difference between him and any of the other guys I know.”

“And that is why I like you so much,” Sophie said, and I grinned. “Just…can you promise me something?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Promise me that you won’t do anything to hurt him.”

I looked over at Sophie, taking in the serious look on her face – one that had darkened her bright hazel eyes almost to black. “I would never intentionally hurt him,” I said. “And I’m going to do my best to make sure I don’t do it accidentally. I know he’d do the same for me. He is far too important to me to even take the risk of hurting him in any way.”

She seemed to relax at this. “I had to make sure,” she said. “I just don’t want anything to happen to him, you know? He’s already been through so much.”

“I get it, don’t worry.” I gave her a smile that she quickly returned.

Right at that moment, I heard the front door opening and what sounded like sneakers being kicked off against the wall. “Anyone home?” I could hear Taylor calling out.

“And that’s my cue,” Sophie said, and she got up from her seat. “When are you guys headed home?”

“Monday, I think. Are you and Mattie coming over tomorrow for lunch?”

“I’m pretty sure we are, yeah. See you tomorrow, then?”

“See you tomorrow,” I replied.

A minute or two after Sophie had headed off, Taylor sat down on the lounge and immediately slouched against me, putting his head down on my left shoulder. “Hey,” he said quietly. I couldn’t help but note that he sounded beyond tired.

“You sound absolutely exhausted,” I said sympathetically.

He let out a rusty-sounding chuckle. “It’s that obvious, is it?”

I reached over and smoothed his hair down over his head. “A little bit, yeah. You’ll sleep pretty well tonight at least.”

“I feel like I could fall asleep right here, actually,” he said, before letting out a yawn that he hid behind one of his hands.

“Yeah, nope. Up you get.”

It took a bit of coaxing, but I finally managed to get Taylor back on his feet and into his bedroom. “Isaac talked Zac and I into a full band practice,” he said almost as soon as we’d sat down on the end of his bed. He was toeing his sneakers off his feet as he said this. “After we sorted out all the touring we want to do this year.”

“I was wondering why you were so tired.”

“Mmm. Turns out going for an early morning surf is a really bad idea before a band meeting. Especially when there’s a good chance of being roped into practicing afterward.”

“It was a good meeting, though?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll depend on what Liberation thinks, but we decided that once we’ve recorded our next album we don’t just want to release it at home.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out what Taylor meant by this. “So, America?”

“And Europe, yeah.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t hide his yawn this time. “You think we’re ready for it?”

“Honestly?” I asked, and he nodded. “I think you guys were born ready.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Yeah, me too.” I let out a quiet sigh. “Me too.”

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