Life never stops throwing curve balls, even once you’re a billionaire.
Following an epic summer vacation in Europe, and barely a month after they posed for Playboy together, E! News confirmed that Kylie Jenner and her partner of two years, Travis Scott, had decided to take some time apart. The parents of 1 1/2-year-old Stormi Webster didn’t consider themselves officially broken up, we were told, but they had been fighting and thought it best if they retreated to their separate corners to figure things out.
The night before the news broke, Kylie, sister Kendall Jennerand mom Kris Jenner had been guests at Hailey and Justin Bieber‘s wedding in South Carolina, the separation already in effect.
“Travis and i are on great terms and our main focus right now is Stormi‼️” Kylie tweeted a few days later. “Our friendship and our daughter is priority.”
It’s only been a few weeks and the change in their status hasn’t affected either mom or dad’s time with Stormi—Travis, who has been primarily staying at the Beverly Hills mansion they bought together last year, spent Sunday at Kylie’s house in Calabasas with them—but the split, even if it’s temporary, has still understandably left Kylie rattled.
Especially toward the end of a year that already saw another important relationship in her life suffer a devastating blow.
Instagram / Kylie Jenner
“She has good days and bad days,” a source tells E! News. “There has been a lot of transition and change, but overall she’s doing well.”
“Not a lot has changed since Travis has been gone,” the insider added. “He was never around all the time so things aren’t that different. Kylie has her sisters and her girlfriends. She’s always texting or on FaceTime with them all day long. She is always surrounded by people. She has family, assistants, a nanny.”
In turn, she’s hardly ever alone “and she’s too busy to get too down about any one thing.”
Business isn’t exactly slow, either, with a Kylie Cosmetics Ulta Holiday Collection having just launched, her skincare line expanding, and everyday decisions demanding plenty of the 22-year-old’s time.
“She is really focused on her cosmetics empire right now” and has been spending a lot of time at her L.A. office, a second source explained. But no matter what, the source added, “Stormi is the number one priority and always will be. [Kylie] is a very hands-on mom and spends majority of her time” with her daughter.
As usual she’s been sharing absurdly adorable photos and video of Stormi, sometimes with her similarly precious cousins, sometimes just the two of them. And no one should judge if she’s trying to give a certain someone a little separation remorse with her recent spate of sexy pics.
Business as usual, really.
The second source acknowledged Kylie has been maintaining “a very calm and chill mood, and isn’t getting worked up over the situation” with Travis. They’re “still communicating and are on good terms. The only difference is that Kylie has been sleeping alone at her house without him.”
Frequently staying with her in the meantime is good friend Stassie Karanikolaou—a role that until this year was usually played by her longtime BFF Jordyn Wood, but Wood wrote her ticket out of the Kardashian-Jenner inner circle after getting too close to Khloe Kardashian‘s then-boyfriend Tristan Thomas at a party he was hosting one night in February.
Jordyn denied the most salacious parts, that she had been making out with Tristan or that she gave him a lap dance, as some partygoers had claimed, but she admitted he had given her a kiss on the lips and then she lied to Khloe and Kylie (whose house she’d been living at) about what went down at the gathering.
After the situation escalated, “I called her and she didn’t really say anything,” Kylie recalled confronting Jordyn (as captured on Keeping Up With the Kardashians). “She was just like, you know, crying the whole time. And I was just telling her, ‘I’m like scared of you now. Like, you’re capable of waking up the next morning with a smile on your face.'”
Needless to say, Jordyn moved out, and Kylie started the process of moving on. “I think that this whole Jordyn situation needed to happen for a reason,” she told Khloe. “For me, for you, for everybody…She was my security blanket. She lived with me. We did everything together.” Kylie even unfollowed her former bestie on Instagram in July.
“Sometimes,” Kylie concluded, “people are there for certain reasons at certain times in your life and then not there for others.”
Now it’s Stormi who has played the outsized role in Kylie’s ability to bounce back quickly from the challenges she’s faced this year.
Kylie’s daughter “is her constant and gets her through any hardships that she faces,” the first source says. “Just being with Stormi takes away her stress and heartache.”
Her little girl is “everything to her and the light of her life,” the insider adds. “As long as she gets to spend time with Stormi every day and be her Mommy, that brings her a joy and fulfillment like nothing else can.”
The beauty mogul, who usually chooses to express herself with actual pictures of herself, took a page from Khloe’s playbook last week and posted a quote that at least seemed laden with meaning: “Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy,” the quote reads. “No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.”
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Not long after the Jordyn debacle, a rumor that Travis had cheated reared its ugly head, prominently enough that a rep for the Astroworld artist explicitly denied the allegation to E! News.
At the same time, Kylie’s trust was already in a precarious place after what happened with her sister and by then ex-boyfriend. Their summer together was a whirlwind of yachts, jets and romance, but when they decided to take a break, a source said Kylie had been “skeptical about Travis” for awhile. The same-old rumors shadowed their split, with Scott’s rep telling us that “any rumors of cheating are totally and completely false” and the woman he was linked to, Instagram model Rojean Kar, wrote on her private account, “Please stop spreading lies & leave him, her & I alone because it’s affecting real lives.”
Meanwhile, after just a few days, sources described Kylie and Travis’ reunion as “inevitable,” saying, “They want to make it work and have both expressed they miss each other and are still in love with one another.” When they were together on Sunday, it looked as if “nothing has changed with them,” in a good way.
Travis, who performed last Saturday at the Rolling Loud New York festival, resumes his Wish You Were Here Tour on Nov. 2 in Las Vegas. And maybe at some point this week he saw a doctor, having told the NYC crowd, “I ain’t gonna lie, I think I just broke my knee right now. But this show can’t stop just yet.”
Instagram / Kylie Jenner
Come what may, at least it’s Halloween season, one of Kylie’s favorite holidays, and she’s already been baking themed cupcakes and taking Stormi to the local pumpkin patch.
“She’s excited for Halloween with Stormi and dressing her up with her cousins,” the first source says. “The cousins still have their playgroup, music class and do lots of trips to the park. Kylie loves seeing them all together and knows they will be BFFs. They are so cute together and love their little get-togethers. The holidays are also going to be fun for them and they are going to go big with presents and parties.”
And perhaps by the time Christmas rolls around, Stormi’s dad will be back in the fold full-time.
“Kylie knows that this split is temporary,” says the second source, “so she is just trying to keep busy and occupied for now until things blow over, and she is ready to welcome Travis back.”