Everything Has Changed

A Mouthful of Air

July 15th 2025
Kansas City, Missouri

The day had started out with good intentions, and Taylor should have appreciated this. For it would not last...

Taylor felt herself wake early, much earlier than she would have liked seeing as she had no major work to be done that day apart from the obvious replying to emails and working on any new material Jack had sent to her or had come to her mind recently. She groaned, rolling over to glance at the clock on the nightstand beside the bed.

5:15am

Ugh, why!!! Her insomnia hadn't been bad for a long while, not since she was pregnant. Why now was it coming back with a vengeance. Her inability to sleep had obviously woken Travis as well as she felt him toss and turn in the bed before reaching out for and realising she was no longer curled up beside him in his arms.

"Tay?" She heard him utter, his voice groggy with sleep.

"Yeah?"

"Are you ok? What time is it?" He asked, rubbing his eyes as he came to sit up next her, resting his head against the large headboard of the bed.

"Umm just gone 5:15am. Sorry did I wake you up, I didn't mean to." Taylor whispered, resting her head against Travis' shoulder, yawning slightly despite the fact she knew she wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep.

Travis shook his head, planting a soft kiss on her forehead.

"Don't worry, you didn't. My knee was playing up last night so I was just going to go and get some Tylenol. I'll be back in a minute." Travis replied, pulling back the covers and pacing out of their room into the en suite to grab the bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet above the sink. They knew before long they would have to put a child safety lock on it. Even though it was up high, you could never be too careful, especially around young children. Travis returned quickly, placing two pills into his hand and washing them back with the glass of water he kept beside the bed for during the night, the same as Taylor did. He wrapped his arms back round her waist, pulling her back against his chest and feeling the waves of sleep beginning to rush back over her.

However, just as the pair of them were about to drift back off to sleep, they were disturbed once more. This time not by their own disrupted sleeping patterns and inner clocks, but by their three and a half month old baby who was supposed to be sleeping in her bassinet sleeper in their bedroom. Taylor sighed, pulling a pillow over her head in annulment. Travis, picking up on this, rested his hand on her arm.

"Don't worry, I'll get her. Try and go back to sleep for a bit."

"But Trav, you've got training camp today, you need to sleep." Taylor sighed, pulling the pillow back from her face and placing it back on the pile of pillows beneath her, ready to get up and play mother for the day.

"So have you. You guys are joining me at training camp and we can't have you both falling asleep. I am guessing that you got very little sleep last night, am I right?" Travis asked, raising one eyebrow at her as he crossed over to pick up the now screaming baby. Based on the way she was eating at her hands and turning her head from side to side, Travis guessed she was most likely hungry. He had been asleep for her evening feed, knowing that Taylor has probably already been awake and noticed the signs that Luna was hungry before she had to make it known to them.

"How did you know?" Taylor sighed, knowing he was right. She wasn't exactly sure what it was that was keeping her up. But she felt this impending sense of doom. As if something bad was inevitably about to happen. Call it fate, if you will, but this had happened before. Maybe it is because there is happiness. And where there happiness, sadness almost always comes after it. It is a sure found fact of life, and death. In every sort of way, life ebbs and flows through periodicals: happiness, sadness, grief and acceptance. Over and over again. When will we ever learn?