“Sounds like you’ve been there a few times.”

She nods and takes a bite. “Some days it feels like I’ve been everywhere . . . but also nowhere at the same time.”

I follow her lead and unwrap my taco. “What do you mean by that?”

She tilts her head to the side as if she’s trying to figure out how to explain it. “Before I left here, I wanted to go everywhere. It took a while before I realized that not all travel is created equal. When you’re hitting a new city every day, all you see is hotel rooms and venues and backstage. It all looks pretty much the same. So, while I’ve been to hundreds of cities, I haven’t experienced hardly any of them. No tourists sites. No landmarks.”

I nod. “I know what you mean. I’ve been to big cities all over the world—and seen their finest conference rooms.”

“Seeing the Eiffel Tower from a hotel window isn’t exactly the same as standing under it at night, staring at the lights.”

I chew the bite of my taco, and I’m in complete agreement with her. I’ve seen a lot of things . . . while on the way to and from meetings. But rarely have I had a chance to experience the culture of the places I traveled because there just wasn’t time.

“So, where would you go first if you were to choose for yourself?” I ask, opening the guac and pushing it across the table toward her.

Whitney snags a chip and scoops up a glob before crunching down on it and letting out a small moan. After she swallows, she reaches for a napkin.

“Back to Austin first for tacos, obviously,” she says with a laugh.

“Seriously?”

“Maybe as a pit stop on my way to the Indian Ocean. I’ve seen it from a plane window, but I want to stand in that crystal-clear water of the Seychelles.”

Part of me wants to know where the hell she was flying to see the Seychelles, but that’s not important. What’s important is making the visual in my mind—Whitney standing in the water up to her knees, wearing a tiny blue bikini—a reality.

“Seychelles sounds incredible,” I reply, reaching for another taco. “So, how did you manage to discover Torchy’s Tacos if you didn’t get to see more than the hotels and venues?”

“There was a veteran roadie from Austin on all the tours. He was actually an amazing bass guitarist, but he wouldn’t ever audition for a band because he never believed he was good enough. Every time we rolled into Austin, his sister would show up within an hour and she’d have all his favorites. He asked me to join him one day, and I was hooked. After that, he always saved me some because he knew how much I loved it.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that Whitney would make friends with roadies or that they would make sure she always got her favorite tacos. Whitney’s sweet. Smart. Witty. Sarcastic.