Prologue


Nick

So this story is about Kintsugi.

Which, the first time I heard that word, I thought it was like some badass new kind of sushi roll I ain’t tried before (luckily, I did not make an ass out of myself ordering it some place before I Googled it). So, just so you know, yeah, it ain’t sushi or nothin’ like that.

Kintsugi is Japanese; it just ain’t sushi.

Literally translated it means gold joinings. Basically it’s like this art thing they do with, like, broken pottery and shit, where like if something breaks, they like use this liquid gold to basically, like, glue it back together again. And you end up with this thing that’s like this really kinda shitty, broken thing that’s like beautiful because it’s got these veins of gold running through it, holding it together where it once was falling apart. And because it’s got the gold in there it’s worth like all kinds of money, even though it’s just a broken piece of crap in all reality, you know? But it means something because of what’s been put in it.

It’s like making beauty out of the broken places.

Not sushi. Art.

And, anyways, that’s what this story’s about.

Kintsugi.





Brian

What’s the worst dream you ever had? Like in your whole life, from childhood right on through to last night. What’s that one dream - I guess it’s more like a nightmare - that just haunts you, just sticks with you, ‘cos some place in you you’ve dreaded it being reality since the moment that thought entered your mind, even subconsciously like that. Everyone’s got one.

In mine, I’m standing front and center of the stage at the biggest show the Backstreet Boys have ever had. There’s millions of fans - possibly all of them - all gathered around me, screaming, chanting like they do -- Back. STREET. Boys. Back. STREET. Boys. -- and the opening notes of I Want It That Way kind of echo all around me. I’ve heard this song so many damn times, I swear I can hear the notes in my mind even without them even really playing, like muscle memory, and I’m ready - I’m ready to sing it.

But then I open my mouth.

And nothing comes out.

I try and try and try and it just stays in there all stuck somewhere behind my Adam’s Apple.

Thing is, it’s not like your dream-slash-nightmare, where it can’t become reality, where all it can do is haunt you. For me, my nightmare is very quickly rushing in, about to become reality, just like I’ve always feared.

And there ain’t shit I can do to stop it.

Chapter One


Nick

”Shut the fuck up!”

”No you shut the fuck up! Don’t you be a dick, don’t you be a dick like everyone knows you are!”

I looked down the row of seats at Brian, his mouth tight, staring up at the screen with that same deer-in-headlights look he’d given me that day almost two years ago when this fight actually took place. He didn’t look at me.

”How about speaking from a place of love - and not a place of anger?”

”I’m not angry! I’m fuckin’ - I’m fuckin’ bein’ real!”

Then he did glance my way. His eyes were sad. No, more than sad, even. They were… nervous, too, I guess the word might be like remorseful or something like that.

It’d been two years and nothing much had changed for him, vocally. In fact, if anything, it’d gotten worse because the therapy wasn’t doing even what little bit it used to. He could drink tea, hum, and sit around on the tour bus in strange-ass yoga positions making gurgling noises all he wanted and it was still a crapshoot every night whether Brian was gonna hit the next note or not. Every. Fucking. Show.

And I was getting louder and louder backstage after a bad performance.

Last time, I’d broken Howie’s hair dryer by chuckin’ it across the room.

I looked away.

”Sit down for a second and show some fuckin’ respect.” Kevin’s voice filled the theater in surround sound, and I took a deep breath.

”How about respectin’ me and lemme stand up?” I mouthed the words along with myself. I’d seen this cut so many times it nauseated me. I was embarrassed by the way I’d come off as an asshole. I mean, I’d only said shit that needed sayin’ but I couldn’t have been more asshole about it than I’d been. The way my neck turned all red and I kept saying the word dick over and over again in the scene -- I could see the guys all thinking there goes Nicky being Nicky as they exchanged glances and see Kevin’s mental countdown from ten. They thought I was approaching it immaturely. And maybe I had, but it was the only way anybody was gonna approach it. God knows Brian hadn’t been about to admit it to himself at all. I stared down at my knees resolutely.

”Stand up then!” Kevin yelled on the screen.

In the theater, like every other time we’d watched this film, he laughed. I dunno why, but he found that part of the fight to be ridiculously funny in retrospect.

Personally, I couldn’t think of another thing that was less funny than someone having to ask for respect from the people who are supposed to be his family.

I cleared my throat and got to my feet. I didn’t think I could handle this anymore. I slid my way out of the row of seats and snuck down the side aisle.

”...baggage here from the past twenty fuckin’ years…” Kevin’s voice followed me from the surround sound system. A couple fans watched curiously as I hustled out the door.

Mike had jumped up as I passed him, following me out into the lobby of the theater and into the men’s room. He stood by, just inside the doorway, as I walked in and leaned against the furthest sink. I stared into the sink basin, at the blurry reflection of myself in the faucet, then turned it on and splashed a little water on my face.

“You alright man?” Mike intoned when I’d turned the tap off a moment later, my face still dripping wet.

“Sure,” I answered. “I just --” I shook my head, “I’m sick of the movie. We’ve seen it like a hundred and eighty times, I’m just tired of it is all. Needed a break. You know me, I barely can make it through any movie without gettin’ up. Not to mention one with my fat ass all up on it all the time.”

Mike shrugged noncommittally. I’m pretty sure he knew better, but he was cool and didn’t say anything.

The bathroom door opened and Brian came in. He glanced at Mike and Mike cleared his throat, “Gonna… y’know… fresh air…” and he ducked out into the hallway.

I wanted to stop him but that seemed juvenile, so I just stood there, my eyes turned back to the reflection on the faucet.

Brian walked up to the sink furthest from me. He took a deep breath, one hand on the edge of the sink. Then, “Look… I know you’ve been struggling with having patience with me,” he began.

“Don’t do this,” I interrupted him.

He looked surprised, “Do what?”

I sighed and ran my hand over the back of my neck, “This. Don’t try to make me feel like shit for things that happened two years ago --”

“I’m not,” Brian argued.

“You are. That’s why you came in here.”

He looked frustrated and it gave an edge to his voice, “I didn’t come in here to make you feel like shit, Nick, I came in here because I wanted to - to talk to you about --…” His voice broke mid-sentence. He groaned and put a hand on his forehead. “Fuck it. Never mind. Just forget it.” He turned to the bathroom door. “It doesn’t even matter.”

Normally, I would’ve stopped him, but I didn’t open my mouth. I just let him go.

When the door closed behind him, I went back to staring at my own reflection until Mike came back. “You… uh… okay?” he asked.

“Just peachy,” I answered. “C’mon, let’s just go back.”

Mike followed me back into the theater and he made sure I got to my spot before settling back into his a couple rows ahead of mine. I gripped the armrests of the chair I was in and took a deep breath. I could feel Brian’s eyes on me, but I refused to look his way again.

Things just felt so fucked up with a capital fucked up that whenever I looked at him, I felt this twinge in my stomach that hurt so much I couldn’t speak and sometimes, when I hurt like that, I get pissed off instead because it’s easier than thinking about the why.

The why was the part I never wanted to think about.





Brian

Leighanne rested her fingers on mine and she stared over at me in the dark, the movie screen reflecting off her glasses. I turned my hand over to squeeze hers and I felt tears burn the backside of my eyelids as my throat tightened up with emotion. On the screen, the fight was over, but the wounds were fresh from the bathroom.

When it was clear that Nick wasn’t gonna return my pleading look, I diverted my eyes down at my bright hot-pink shoes and willed the lump in my throat to go away.

Earlier in the week, I’d made a decision. Based on everything that had been happening over the past several years and based on a long and heart-felt talk with my wife, I’d decided that after the current tour dates were finished, I’d be taking a break from the group. It made every part of me scared as all hell to even think of it. The Backstreet Boys was everything to me, but I was dragging them down, Nick was right, and I couldn’t do that to them anymore. They meant to much to me, the fellas did, and the integrity of the band did, and it was just time. My therapy wasn’t working as well as it should have, I was trying to get better for me, like I’d said in the movie, but it wasn’t working and now I was to the point that doing it for me was just getting selfish and it was time for me to do something for them.

So far, the only people who knew was Jen, who had to prepare contractual stuff but who I also knew I could trust to keep my secret until I was ready, and Leighanne, who had come to the conclusion with me. I wanted to tell Nick myself before the other guys because somewhere deep down inside we were still best friends, whether either of us acted it or not. I knew if I didn’t tell him first the damage would be irrevocable. I owed it to him.

I was scared of how Nick would take the news. Would he say he’d been half expecting it? Would he say it was long over due? Beg me not to quit? Tell me good riddance? To go F myself? Would he blame me? Would he blame himself?

On screen, the movie was about to end already. It was the shots of us climbing up that damn mountain at the camp Kevin grew up on and Nick was clutching the ropes on the rock slope. ”Should we not do this maybe?”

”There wasn’t even any ropes here when we used to do it,” Kevin answered on the screen.

Sometimes, I thought, I felt like that - like there weren’t any ropes holding me up.

All I wanted was to be straight with him, make him understand me again. Like it used to be, when we were younger. Before whatever it was that made our bond break happened.

I held onto Leighanne’s hand tighter.

It’s really hard, telling someone that you want to respect you that you’re giving up.






Nick

It was later. After the movie, after everything, and I was sitting out on my house balcony, overlooking the ocean with AJ, who had his long-toed monkey feet up on the rail, his chair tilted back against the house, smoking a cigarette. His fingernails were like fuckin’ indeglo orange-pink-and-lime. I was standing up, staring down at the water on the rocks below, the beach swallowed by the tide.

“Rok was like fuckin’ crane-neckin’ ‘round me through ‘bout 98% of that damn movie,” he commented. He blew a ton of smoke out, like he was a chimney, and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Whenever you got up durin’ that fight scene, man, he bolted after you like he was friggin’ Cujo.”

I didn’t answer.

“Where’d y’all go anyway?” he asked. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth to take another drag.

I breathed in the ocean air. “I dunno where he went, I was in the toilet.”

AJ lowered the cigarette. “He didn’t go after you?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t see him.”

“Something’s going on with him,” AJ commented. “You noticed? All week he’s been actin’... fuckin’ weird. Less…”

“Dickheady?”

“Dickheady,” AJ laughed, “Now there’s a new one for Merrium-Webster.”

“Who?”

“The dictionary bastards,” he mumbled. He cleared his throat. I felt like reminding him that he was fucking his voice up with every breath he took, but I didn’t wanna be that guy. Plus, it was taking every ounce of willpower and restraint in my body not to knock him over the head and steal the damn pack. Lauren would kill me if she ever saw me smoking, though. “Seriously, though, you noticed it?”

“I think we’re all just tired,” I answered. I folded my hands together and stared at them.

“Tired would make me act more dicky,” AJ responded. He put his feet down and sat forward, his chair hit the floor with a thunk and he smooshed out the cigarette against the wood.

I watched the ashes fall like fireflies down over the beach and into the water below.

“Being tired usually does make dicks softer.”

AJ scoffed. “Jesus Christ,” he laughed, shaking his head, “Damn. You know, I miss the damn Frick & Frack days,” he commented. He flicked the last of the cigarette into the ocean. Lauren would’ve killed me for letting him do that, too. The whole environmental thing. But I didn’t have the energy to fight him right now.

There was something gnawing at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Kind of all the emotion of the movie and the past and Brian and everything kinda all coming to a head and it hurt like a sonofabitch deep inside.

AJ stood up next to me and leaned against the rail too. “You think you motherfuckers are ever gonna work it out?” he asked.

“I dunno if it can be,” I replied glumly.

AJ, always the advocate for things staying the way they’d always been, for going back to the way things used to be. I felt bad to tell him that I didn’t think it would ever be the same as it was. “What the hell changed anyway?” he asked. He shook his head, “I feel like I missed whatever it was. Was it something like while I was under the coke?”

I shook my head.

“So what the fuck, man?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.





Brian

Leighanne was turning down the sheets on the bed while I brushed my teeth. “So…” she took a deep breath.

“So?” I asked around the mouthful of toothpaste.

“Did you talk to him at all?” she raised her eyebrow as she stood there, holding the pillows we’d requested in the lobby. She tossed them onto the bed in their respective places.

I shook my head and went in the bathroom to spit.

Leighanne took a second, but she followed me around the corner and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching my face in the mirror from behind me. “What happened when you went after him?”

I shrugged, “He was just kinda pissed off,” I replied, running the tap and rinsing my mouth out.

“About what?” she asked.

I shrugged yet again. “He’s Nick,” I answered. “He doesn’t need any other reason. I swear he’s the moodiest person I’ve ever known in my entire life.”

Leighanne nodded emphatically.

I tossed my toothbrush into my travel bag and spit one last time. “I think AJ has it figured out anyways. You know how many times he’s told me how great it is to be five again this week? It’s like he’s trying to guilt me out of thinking about leaving.” I paused and looked down at my blue wash cloth, spinning it between my hands. When I looked back up, my eyes met hers in the mirror. “I’m not making a mistake am I?”

Leighanne held up her hands, “I told you already, I’m abstaining completely from this choice. I don’t want to be the one to blame for your decision either way. You have to do this for you and not for anybody else. Not me, not Baylee, not Nick, AJ, Kevin or Howie. Not management. Not the fans. You.”

I sighed.

She reached out and ran her hands along my shoulders. “I think you’re going to make the right choice, whatever you decide you need to do.” She kissed my ear softly.

I put my hand over hers as she slid it across my chest, coming to rest, palms down, over my heart. “You’ll love me even when I’m not a - a Backstreet Boy?” I asked in a half-joking tone.

“Husband, I’ll love you no matter what,” she replied.

Chapter Two


Nick

The bittersweet thing about getting the attention of the press is getting the attention of the press. It’s great when you’re trying to be paid attention to and suddenly they’re like clamouring for interviews and like askin’ you questions about the stuff you’ve worked on and doing the promotional runs and all that. That’s the sweet. The bitter is the part where they realize you’re hot-hot-hot right now and they wanna stalk the shit out of you every damn place you go and ask you questions about your personal life that in no way has anything to do with promoting your work stuff.

“Nick, how’s your momma reacting to you calling out your family troubles in the movie?” one guy called as Lauren and I sat outside a little Thai restaurant downtown. I chewed my curry chicken and tried to ignore them.

Lauren looked at me, “You’re quiet today, are you okay?”

I glanced at the guys with the big cameras like two feet away on the other side of the fence that barricaded in the patio area of the restaurant. I looked back at her. “I feel like everything I say can and will be used against me in a court of paparazzi,” I replied.

She chewed a shrimp from her plate and looked over at the photographers, too, then turned back to me, “Well fuck’em,” she answered and she flipped them off.

I laughed.

“Seriously, c’mon, this is one of the last times we get to do this at home, together, until after you do this promotional run and the tour and everything, and I want you to be here with me,” she said, “Not brooding, emo Nick.”

“Okay,” I answered. “What do you wanna talk about then?”

“Whatever you wanna talk about,” she replied. She smiled.

I took another bite of my chicken, spinning some of the veggie noodles and peppers around the fork with it. I chewed slowly, thinking up something to talk about. “I’m glad you’re coming with me,” I said.

“I’m glad I’m going with you,” she replied.

“It’s always better when you’re there,” I said. “The bus gets lonely and blah when you ain’t around baby.”

Lauren smirked, “You just like having all the foreign sex.”

I grinned, “I ain’t gonna lie, that’s a huge plus.”

“Nick, do you and the fellas hold any contact with Lou Pearlman since his arrest?” called one of the paparazzi.

I licked my lips and looked back down at my plate again.

“Ignore them,” Lauren intoned.

“I am,” I replied, but I could feel the heat rising up my neck.

She sighed.

“Did Lou Pearlman ever make any sexual advances toward you or any of the other Backstreet Boys?” yelled another photographer.

I grit my teeth.

“Nick,” Lauren’s voice was low. “Don’t engage.”

“C’mon, Nicky, you can tell us,” the guy laughed.

I threw my fork down on the table.

“Oh shit,” Lauren reached for my hand, trying to keep me sitting down, “Nick, don’t, they aren’t worth it.”

But I didn’t really hear her, I was already up and out of my seat and lunging toward the squat little hedge that lined the inside of the little fence. The guy that had asked was chortling at the edge of the group, writing something on his little notepad, camera hanging by it’s lanyard. I held my hand up, pointing right in the guy’s face, which got his attention, “You shut the fuck up and mind your own goddamn business,” I shouted at him.

Lauren had come up behind me. She grabbed my non-pointing arm. “C’mon, we’re leaving,” she said sternly to me.

“You fuckin’ show some respect, mother fucker,” I snapped, “I’m eatin’ lunch with my wife, I don’t need you yelling bullfuckingshit at me from the fuckin’ sidewalk.”

He grinned at me.

“Fuckin’ come over this side of the fence, see if your smug ass is still grinning then,” I barked.

Other photographers were filming and taking pictures.

“Nick. Enough.” Lauren’s voice was sharp and she tugged me behind her. I followed - partly because she was gonna pull me along whether I wanted to go or not - and partly because I felt like I’d said everything I wanted to say to the photographer.

Lauren’s mouth was set in a hardline as she pulled me into the restaurant, abandoning half out food on the patio table. “We’re going home,” she announced.

“But we were gonna go shopping and whatever,” I reminded her.

She shook her head, “I’m not dealing with them following us around, goading you all day,” she answered. “I’ve had enough of that song and dance for one day.”

I sighed.

Like I said, the attention is bittersweet.





Brian

Leighanne nudged me as she crawled onto the bed next to me, eyes glued to the TV set. I looked up from my cell phone, where I was making picks for my fantasy basket ball league. She lunged for the remote to turn the volume up.

”...threatening a photographer outside of a restaurant downtown today.”

The video showed Nick shoving his finger into some dude’s face. ”Fuckin’ come over this side of the fence, see if your smug ass is still grinning then,” he was shouting.

I smacked my hand onto my face. “Oh for cryin’ out loud,” I muttered.

Leighanne shook her head, her jaw slack as she stared at the TV screen.

“Kevin’s gonna kill him,” I said.

Leighanne muted the TV as it went to another segment, then turned to me, “He should be used to it. Nick’s always starting trouble.” She got up off the bed and went back to packing her things into the suitcase on the other bed.

I sighed, turning back to the phone. “He’s just got this… this temper…” I Googled a couple rookie players in hunt for their college stats. “If he’d just calm down…” I muttered and let my voice fade off because I wasn’t sure what else to finish that sentence up with. “Well, I guess any publicity is good publicity,” I said.

Leighanne walked by and came back a moment later with her hair dryer from the bathroom sink. “I feel weird packing just my stuff,” she commented.

I looked up. “I know.”

She smiled sadly. “We’ll join you as soon as Baylee’s play is over.”

I nodded, “I’ll fly in for opening night.”

Leighanne sighed as she zipped up the suitcase. “You should ask one of the guys if you can stay with them so you aren’t alone up here in this hotel room all week before y’all leave.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, noncommittally.

“I’m sure AJ or Kevin have some extra room.”

“Well Howie’s staying with AJ, and I love Mason and Max but I don’t think I could handle staying at Kevin’s right now, those kids are a handful.”

Leighanne sighed.

I smiled, “I’m okay, honey, really.” I sealed the deal on picking one of the rookies and I scrolled through my roster real quick, decided I was satisfied with it, and tossed my phone onto the bed next to me. I stood up and captured Leighanne into a hug. “Seriously,” I added.

“I was thinking,” she said, “You should probably tell Nick about you quitting the band with, like, other people around.”

I raised my eyebrow, “Why?”

“That temper,” she replied. “He was ready to throw down some random guy for taking pictures of him. What if he gets mad at you and…” she shook her head.

I laughed, “Nick would never actually hurt me. He might yell but he wouldn’t throw down with me. Not seriously, anyway.”

Leighanne shrugged.

“He wouldn’t,” I answered. “Our friendship might be on crutches but it ain’t completely broken,” I said.

Leighanne sighed. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.





Nick

“Do you know how much damage control I’ve had to do?” Jack looked frustrated. He was pacing my kitchen. “Look, you can’t just go hauling off, threatening to kick the ass of random photographers.”

I was holding a cup of wheat grass and kale smoothie I’d just made. Jack had taken one sniff of the stuff and politely declined taking a glass of it. I sipped through the bendy straw I’d put in the glass. “It wasn’t just some random photographer,” I answered, “This guy was trying to get me going. He was baiting me.”

“You gotta be the bigger man,” Jack said. He looked down at his cellphone a moment. “Look at this. TMZ. E Online. People. MTV. Fucking Rolling Stone, Nick. All of them point out you have an anger management problem based on the explosive scene in the movie and now this. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I needed him to leave me and my wife alone,” I answered, frustrated. “Seriously, we were on a date and these guys just are like sitting there like a pack of vultures trying to get me to say something they could print, asking all these personal questions… bringing up shit they ain’t got no business at asking.” I put my glass down. The smoothie tasted as nasty as it looked.

“You’re a celebrity,” Jack said, “You just released a documentary about your life, about your past, that had a lot of really intense personal stuff involved in it. You can’t seriously think that they aren’t gonna ask you questions any where they can find you.”

“I asked nicely like twenty times between the house and the restaurant for them to leave us alone,” I explained, “They didn’t, and then this one asshole’s asking me shit and I told him to stop and he just… grins at me… like… like a friggin’... friggin’... that pink cat thing in Alice in Wonderland.”

“Cheshire Cat?”

“Yeah, that thing,” I answered.

Jack sighed, “Look, all I’m saying is there’s a lot going on right now for the good for you guys. Don’t wreck it by lashing out like that at people. Even if you feel like you’re in the right they can bend it and make it look totally different than it is. You come off looking like a total asshole and they come out with thousands of dollars for the pictures they get and just come after you all the more. Don’t give them a trigger to pull. That’s all I’m saying.”





Brian

The five of us had a dinner reservation the night before we were scheduled to leave for a European press run. It was the first time we’d all five been in the same room since the premiere earlier in the week. I followed the waitress to a table in the corner of the pub-like restaurant Kevin had selected for the dinner. I felt a little queasy when I saw I was the second person there. Nick was the first and he already had a glass of beer sitting on a coaster in front of him as he stared up at the TV screen and stripped wrappers off of the straws on the table.

“Here you are,” the waitress grinned, “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked as I slid into the booth opposite of Nick.

“Just water with lemon, thanks,” I answered and she nodded and walked away.

I looked over at Nick.

He looked over at me.

“Well hey,” I said finally after an awkward amount of time had passed with us just looking at each other.

“Hey,” he nodded, then turned back to the straws.

“So that Superbowl, huh?”

“I knew the Patriots would take it,” he said, “I said so on Twitter.”

“I saw that,” I nodded.

“Yeah,” he nodded, too.

“I was going for them, too,” I said. “Seattle was getting too haughty about it. Especially by the end. That whole kerfluffle was insane.”

“Kerfluffle?” Nick looked up at me.

“Yeah, you know - the fight or whatever?”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Nick said, “Just, the word kerfluffle is weird is all.”

I shrugged.

Nick started weaving the straw wrappers all together.

“So are you ready for Europe?” I asked.

“Sure,” Nick answered.

“Is Lauren coming?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I waited for him to ask if Leighanne was coming, but he didn’t. He picked up his beer and took a long gulp of it. I sighed. “Leighanne’s not coming,” I said.

“Good,” he said. Then he realized what he’d said and he backtracked, “I mean, because isn’t it because of like Baylee’s in a play or something? That’s the good. Not her not being there. Unless you didn’t want her to be. Then it’s good for you, too, I guess.” He cleared his throat then took another sip of beer.

I balled my hands under the table, trying not to let it piss me off what he’d said.

It was moments like this that I would not miss about being in the band. Moments when I had to choke back stuff I wanted to say because I didn’t want to start things. Moments when I was stuck having to pretend Nick wasn’t infuriating me because of his lack of respect for my wife.

If I’d ever said good to him - even if I’d backtracked it like he’d done - about Lauren not coming someplace… he’d have blown his freaking lid right off. But me… if I reacted, he’d say I was being a dick.

It was a lose-lose for me.

So I kept my mouth shut about it.

“You hear from the other guys at all about how long they’re gonna be?”

“Howie texted a little bit ago, him and AJ are stuck in traffic up in Malibu,” he replied.

“Oh.”

The waitress appeared suddenly with my glass of water and she put a little plate with some lemon wedges on the table beside the glass. “Would the two of you like an appetizer while you wait?”

“Dawg, do you got like any, like, nachos or somethin’?” Nick asked, looking up, “I really want like somethin’ with like a shit ton of cheese and sour cream and those little green thingies sprinkled on top, you know what I mean? Or like maybe chili cheese fries or somethin’?”

“Those are onions,” I said, “The green things.”

Nick was staring up at the waitress.

“We have chili cheese fries.”

“Yes. Yes a plate of chili cheese fries. Extra sour cream. And green thingies.”

“Okay,” she scribbled on her pad and turned and hurried away.

“They’re onions,” I said again.

“Whatever they are,” Nick shrugged. He looked around the room. “It’s nice to actually get to be out without those fucking paparazzi following me around. They on your tail too?”

“I haven’t noticed,” I answered with a shrug. “They don’t bug me. Let’em take pictures if they want to. What’s the big deal?”

Nick laughed, “Obviously they ain’t following you like they follow me ‘cos they bug the shit out of me.” He picked up the napkin-silverware roll and pulled the little paper thing holding it shut off and unrolled it, letting the silverware clatter a bit on the table.

“It just doesn’t bug me is all,” I answered.

“Well aren’t you a fuckin’ saint,” he snapped. He was spinning the three pieces of silverware into a triangle on the table.

I shrugged, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s saintly to be able to control my temper, but --”

Several things happened at once.

One. Nick stood up. He was sitting on the side of the table that had chairs and his chair slid backwards with a loud errrrt sound as he leaped to his feet.

Two. Kevin walked up from the right, having spotted us from the doorway as he’d walked in.

Three. The waitress came back, carrying Nick’s plate of chili cheese fries with extra sour cream and green thingies.

Do you see where I’m going with this yet?

“It’s not my fuckin’ fault that they’re harassing me, asking me about Lou Pearlman fuckin’ sexually assaulting one of us or some shit, while I’m trying to eat lunch with my wife,” Nick hissed, his hand flying out in his fit of passion.

The waitress tripped on his chair as it was shoved back so suddenly into her path, and had almost caught her balance, just barely saving the tray, when Nick’s arm flew out and caught the edge of the plate that had almost fallen off it, sending it into the air, coming down for a direct hit, chili-cheese-sour-cream-with-extra-green-things firework against Kevin’s chest.

My jaw dropped.

Nick looked around, shocked, as the plate fell from Kevin’s chest onto the floor, shattering at his feet. “Aw shit,” he muttered.

Chapter Three


Nick

Of all times for Kevin to walk in, he had to choose that one moment that would leave him covered in my cheese fries. His eyebrows arched inward and I braced myself for the wrath of the Dirty Brow. “What the hell?”

The waitress looked just as petrified as I felt. “Oh my God,” she gasped, “I am so sorry, sir, I just - I tripped and --”

Kevin held up his hand to stop her, “This,” he said, “Is not your fault.” He looked at me.

I swallowed.

“Let me get you some paper towels,” the waitress said, as Kevin unbuttoned his nice shirt, which was now not so nice as it was covered in chili cheese.

“Thanks,” he answered and she rushed away.

A bunch of people were staring at us from all over the restaurant. “Isn’t that the Backstreet Boys?” I heard someone whisper somewhere to my left.

Kevin balled up the chili covered shirt, his undershirt a grey muscle tee with a little bit of residue where the chili had soaked through.

Brian was sitting in the booth, staring up at us, his eyes still wide with surprise.

Kevin glared at me, holding up his sopping shirt.

My mouth went dry. “I, was, uh, we were talking, and - well, fighting, and --” I stammered through an explanation. “I didn’t know she was there. It was an accident.”

“Fighting?” Kevin looked at Brian, then back at me, “For fuck’s sake,” he said, irritated.

The waitress came back with a whole roll of Bounty and ripped like a million pieces off and handed them to Kevin, who used them to wipe sour cream off his jeans and shoes and sat down. A guy came out with a mop and dustpan and started sweeping the mess off the floor.

AJ and Howie walked up as the waitress was asking Kevin if he needed a bag for his shirt. “You might as well just throw it out,” he said, dropping it into the dustpan with the rest of the mess.

“I’ll get you another plate of fries,” she told me.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat chili cheese fries ever again.

“What the hell did we miss?” AJ asked, looking around the scene in surprise.

Howie looked at the dustpan as the bus boy rushed off carrying it and the broom. “Looks like a chili cheese fry explosion,” he laughed.

“Nick tripped the waitress,” Kevin supplied, “Fighting with Brian.”

I looked down.

“Again? Jesus,” AJ slid in next to Kevin and Howie pulled out the chair beside me. “What the fuck are you fightin’ about now?” AJ rolled his eyes.

“We weren’t fighting,” Brian injected.

I raised my eyebrow, “No, you’re right, we weren’t fighting, you were basically just attacking me.”

“Attacking you?” Brian’s voice was defensive, “I wasn’t attacking you!”

“Yeah you were, you were talking shit about my temper,” I snapped.

“You started it,” he snapped back.

Howie sat back in his chair with a sigh.

“I didn’t start fuckin’ anything,” I hissed, pointing at him, “You did, baby, you did. You wanna talk about what happened with me and the photographer, fine, that’s fine, but don’t --”

Brian rolled his eyes, “You brought up the damn conversation, Nick, not me.”

“-- don’t -- don’t fuckin’ make it sound like I was wrong for defending myself against him. For defending my fuckin’ privacy.” I glared, “And don’t fuckin’ interrupt me, either.”

“Remember that game, Interrupting Cow?” AJ asked, looking around the table.

I glared at him and he sat back, too, like Howie did, holding his hands palm-up and looking away.

I grabbed my beer and took a sip.

Kevin looked from Brian to me and back again. “Is this what this entire promo run is gonna be like? The two of you bickering over stupid shit?” he asked.

Brian shook his head.

I looked away.

Howie leaned forward, “I would also actually like to know that because I don’t think I can handle weeks of… this.” He waved his hand around the table.

“Fuck no,” AJ said, “I know I can’t.”

Kevin raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

Brian sighed, “I wasn’t fighting,” he persisted.

“Fuck you,” I snapped.

“Hey,” Kevin held up his hands between Brian and I, making the timeout signal. “Knock it the fuck off or I’ll bang your heads together.” He sighed, dropping his hands to the table. “Damn. Damn!” He looked sideways at Brian. “Can you two hear yourselves? Seriously? I thought we got this shit under control?” He looked back at me. “You always are whining for respect and to be treated like an adult, so fuckin’ act like one then. Don’t throw tizfits in restaurants and pick fights over whether y’all were fightin’ or not. And for fuck’s sake watch your fuckin’ mouth.”

The fact that he was saying fuck while scolding me for saying fuck was really fuckin’ ridiculous.

I took a deep breath.

“I’m tired of this,” Kevin said. “I’m tired of you two acting like this.” He looked at Howie and AJ. “Aren’t you two tired of this?”

“Yes,” Howie answered.

AJ just made a grimmace sort of face.

Kevin licked his lips.

“Chili cheese fries… extra sour cream, extra onions,” the waitress said as she came up and put the plate onto the table very carefully. I stared at the plate. “Can I get the rest of you anything to drink? More beer?” she added looking at me.

“No more beer for him,” Kevin replied for me. I glared at him. “I’d like a Manhattan, dry, with Johnny Walker blue label if you got it.”

“Red bull,” AJ mumbled.

“Raspberry ice tea?” Howie asked.

“Just a Sprite,” I mumbled, looking at the silverware triangle I’d made before the whole kerfluffle occurred.

As soon as the waitress had written down all our orders, Kevin leaned forward, pointing between me and Brian, “Now… about you two.”





Brian

“This is bullshit.”

Nick was leading the way to his car a little ways down the street from the restaurant. I followed. Kevin had used valet and AJ had parked the opposite way down the street, so it was just me and Nick and now that we were out of earshot of the other guys he was speaking his mind.

“Fucking absolute bullshit,” he muttered. He was digging his keys out of his pocket, and his phone fell out and hit the cement. “Fuck,” he grumbled and picked it up, inspecting it for damages, but it must’ve been fine because he just shoved it back into his pocket and kept going.

It was dark out, a little chilly for California. l lumbered along behind him and we turned into a parking garage. He jogged up the steps a lot faster than I could, seeing as his legs were about twice as long and he’d been working out hardcore for the past two years. I kept up okay, though. His car was this big ass white truck that Lauren had given him for Christmas. It seemed like every time I turned around the guy had a new big ass white vehicle.

He clicked the button on the key and the lights flashed as the truck unlocked.

I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was riding with him as pissed off as he was. Nick’s always been a bit of a wreckless driver, something that I guess I’m partly to blame for since I’d actually been the one that taught him how to drive, years and years ago in the Bleeding Banana, but he’s actually worse when he’s mad. But I didn’t wanna piss him off anymore than he already was, so I got in and buckled up, pulling the seatbelt tight across my chest.

Nick started the truck. “Where’s your fuckin’ hotel anyway?”

I was getting tired of all his f-bombs.

“Watch your language, will you please?”

Nick looked over at me.

“If I have to stay with you for the next two weeks, then you need to watch your language.”

Nick’s eyes glowered.

“I mean it, I ain’t puttin’ up with the cuss words every other word out of you.”

“Fine.” Nick’s voice seethed with irritation. “Where is your hotel?”

“My hotel is the Marriott by the Hollywood sign.”

“Fine.”

He pulled out of the spot and shot down the sloping driveway to the exit of the parking garage, swiping his credit card at the pay station, and pulled into traffic with barely a glance. I held onto the handle over the window.

Kevin, AJ, and Howie had all come to a very final conclusion. If we were going to fight during the whole promo run then we could do the promo run by ourselves and fight all we wanted because they didn’t wanna hear it. “You can kill each other for all I give a damn,” had been Kevin’s final words on the topic and no matter how much Nick whined and complained, he didn’t budge and he kept Howie and AJ from budging, either. So now we had an itinerary with enough work for five people to split between two people and nobody else to talk to for two weeks while we traveled all over the place doing all this promotional stuff.

They were effectively quarantining us.

Nick clutched the wheel as he drove, glaring straight ahead.

“Jen won’t let them not go,” Nick said after a few minutes, “She’ll make’em go. As soon as she gets wind of this, she’ll make’em go.”

I wasn’t as confident as he was. Jen had been struggling with Nick and I fighting at meetings for some time now and I had a feeling she was going to be a lot more sympathetic to the other guys than either of us and probably would even find the idea to be quite funny.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Nick glanced at me. “Aren’t you pissed off, too?” he asked.

“Of course,” I replied. “Just the sheer amount of work they’ve stuck me with --”

“Me, too,” he said defensively, “They saddled us both with it.”

“I know,” I said quickly. “I’m just --” I sighed. “I can’t say anything right with you, can I?”

“Not when you say it in a holier-than-thou kinda attitude,” he replied. “You ain’t no better than me, we both have the same roots.” Nick frowned. “But I always get this feelin’ like you’re judgin’ me, like you’re thinkin’ how glad you are you ain’t as fucked up as me.”

I frowned.

“Sorry,” he said with an edge to his voice, “I didn’t mean to say a bad word.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten.





Nick

I watched as Brian went inside the hotel while I idled the truck outside. He was just getting his bags and checking out because, per Kevin’s request, he was coming back to my house for the night to begin our two weeks of togetherness. I rolled my eyes as his back disappeared into the lobby of the hotel.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket and called Lauren. “So I got some bad news.”

“Uhoh,” she sighed. “What?”

“Well Kevin’s a dick and he’s making me take Brian home with me tonight. And also the other guys are now not going on the promo run at all. Just me and El Douche.”

Lauren was silent a long moment.

“Can you believe that, boose?” I demanded.

“Brian’s coming here?”

“Yeah.”

“And then it’s gonna be just you and him on the promo run?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, and you.”

Silence.

“Boose?”

“Nick, I don’t wanna go if it’s just you and Brian. Is Leighanne going?”

“No, she’s in like frickin’ New York or something with Baylee. He’s got that play whatever thing he’s doing.”

Lauren laughed, “Yeah… Nick, no. Do you know how uncomfortable that would be for me?”

“Do you know how uncomfortable it’s gonna be for me?” I asked.

“I’m sure I’ll hear all about it via Skype,” she answered.

I sighed and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel.

She took a deep breath, “Also, I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you, your mother apparently is trying to file a lawsuit of some sort for defamation or something, I don’t know, you better call Lori though before you leave the States tomorrow.”

“Fuck my mother,” I snapped. I closed my eyes. “Fuck my life. Lauren, this day has been so shitty… This whole week has been.” I felt like I might cry. I sucked a deep breath in, trying to zen myself back out of the burning feeling behind my eyes. I felt like everything was coming at me all at once and I didn’t know how much more I could take before I broke. “Please,” I whispered, “Please don’t make me go to Europe alone with Brian.”

Lauren sighed, “Nick… he’s your best friend. You’ll be okay for a couple weeks alone with him. Who knows, maybe it’ll even fix things.”

“No,” I said, “It won’t.”





Brian

We walked into Nick’s front door among two dogs barking, tails wagging, jumping against our knees. Two cats watched from the stairs. I dropped my bag just inside the door as Lauren came down the hallway and engulfed Nick in a hug. He’d been silent the whole way back from the hotel. He pressed his face into her neck now and stayed there an uncomfortable amount of time while she held him tight and rubbed his back. I stared down at the pug dog staring up at me and bent down to pat him as they hugged. When he finally pulled away, Lauren muttered, “It’s okay.” She stared into his eyes a moment warmly, then turned to me. “Hey Brian.”

“Hey,” I answered.

Lauren smiled, “I’d ask if you’re hungry but y’all just ate, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I answered, “I’m okay.”

“Do we got beers boose?” Nick asked, heading for the kitchen.

I stood up.

“I don’t think so,” Lauren called. She turned to me. “So, just the two of you, huh?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

She glanced over her shoulder in the direction Nick had gone and then she said in a breath, “I think it’ll be good for the both of you.”

I shrugged, “If we don’t kill each other, maybe.”

“Seriously, Brian, I think this is ultimately going to be a good thing,” Lauren nodded. “Something’s been bothering him lately, and I don’t know what it is, but he’s been really hot tempered and emotional. I love him to pieces, but he’s driving me nuts and I really think you have the power to help him in ways I can’t.”

I sighed. This wasn’t the first female of Nick’s that thought I was some sort of miracle Nick Whisperer or something. I shook my head, “He won’t even talk straight with me,” I said, “I doubt I’ll be able to help him at all.”

“I think the two of you getting along again would be help enough,” she replied. “I think he’s kind of missing the way things were before when it was all five of you and you two were best buds and all that. I think he needs that back.”

I hesitated. “Can you keep a secret?”

“From Nick?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

Lauren inched closer, “What’s the matter?”

“I’m gonna quit the group,” I said. “After this tour.”

She stared up at me, eyes wide. She shook her head slightly in shock.

Nick came back from the kitchen, “Boose,” he whined, “There’s nothin’ to drink. I dunno how to use the Soda Stream thingy.”

Lauren nodded, recuperating from my bombshell of news. She ripped her eyes from mine, “I’ll do it, what do you want?”

“Orange,” he replied, and he followed her back out to the kitchen, the pug scrambling after them, leaving me in the foyer with the other one of the dogs.

I looked down. “You’re Igby aren’t you?” I asked. He looked up at me and tilted his head to one side. “I hope you can keep a secret, too.”

He laid down.

I sighed.

Chapter Four


Nick

Brian and I were in the dining room the next morning, sitting across from each other at the table, eating cereal. I’d ripped open the newspaper and dug through until I found the comics page. Brian was reading the actual news. The only sound was the rustling pages, the crunch-crunch-crunch of cereal between our teeth, and the occasional “hm” from Brian as he read.

I wiggled my toes under the table as my eyes scanned through the Garfield panels.

The deck door opened and Lauren came in, the dogs rushing around her feet to get inside, too. She was all sweaty from a run on the beach, the top of her chest all shiny around the edge of her tank top. I dropped my spoon with a clatter into my bowl.

Why the fuck isn’t she going with me? I wondered. I will so need to get laid after spending fourteen days alone with Brian. Hell. Fourteen minutes, even.

Brian looked up from the paper at me, then turned to look at her. “Morning, Lauren,” he said.

Lauren smiled as she pulled her hair out of the pony tail she’d put it in for running, “Morning, Brian,” she replied.

She walked into the kitchen.

I thought about following her, throwing her up against the fridge and having my way with her, but that would be kinda awkward with Brian sitting here in the dining room and all.

Especially since you could see the fridge from where he was sitting.

Brian turned back to the newspaper.

I crunched my cereal.

Somewhere in the house, there was a clock ticking, and suddenly the tick-tock-tick-tock rhythm seemed super loud and it was all I could hear. I looked around, trying to spot the culprit of the noise.

“What time is our flight?” Brian asked.

I turned to look at him, sure Lauren had come back in the room because he couldn’t possibly be talking to me. He hadn’t said a word to me since he’d come downstairs. Well, other than to complain that all we had was soymilk and then claim he didn’t know I was lactose intolerant. Everyone in the friggin’ world knows I’m lactose intolerant.

Everyone who pays attention and gives a shit, that is.

Which, obviously, Brian does not (give a shit, I mean) because he did not know about the lactose intolerance.

But Lauren hadn’t come in the room, and he was, indeed, talking to me.

Well fuck me sideways and call me a zebra, I thought.

“I dunno, like noon, I think,” I replied. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and swept my thumb into my passbook for the boarding pass. “Yeah, noon.”

“Okay.” He turned back to the newspaper.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Seriously, where the hell was that clock at?

Lauren came back out. She was carrying a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries. She sat down beside me and held out a little cup of blueberries. “Here, eat these. You need to consume something healthy and not just all that sugary cereal.” She’d been against my French Toast Crunch since the moment I’d been excited they were producing it again.

I’d had to make a special trip to Target to buy it because she’d refused to be present when I did.

If she had her way, I’d always be eating like fiber bran sticks or something.

“Okay.” I popped one of the blueberries in my mouth.

“How’d you sleep, Brian?” she asked, satisfied as I delved into a handful of the berries.

“Slept okay,” Brian replied. There was something reluctant in his voice, though. I chewed my blueberries, watching him suspiciously. But he didn’t elaborate.

Personally, I hadn’t slept much. First, when we went to bed I’d spent like a half hour trying to convince Lauren to go with me on the promo run with Brian. When she’d absolutely-positively refused, we’d had some pretty wild (and fuckin’ hot as hell, if I do say so myself) bon voyage sex. But then, after the sex was over and she’d fallen asleep, I’d laid there in the dark, unable to stop the thoughts and memories and nightmares. The constant echoing in my head of the moment when my friendship with Brian shattered had kept me awake all night long.

We all three fell into silence.

The tick-tock-tick-tock sound returned with vengeance.

“Where the fuck is that clock?” I asked Lauren.

“What clock?” she asked.

“You can’t hear that?” I asked, standing up. Nacho ran over, jumping up and down, used to getting the leftover milk from my cereal bowl when I was finished eating in the morning. “There isn’t even a clock out here, what the fuck? It’s like fuckin’ Godzilla clock.” I walked around, really studying everything on the walls.

Lauren was looking at me with a raised eyebrow, “I don’t hear a clock, but there’s one in the kitchen, maybe that’s it?”

I went into the kitchen and pulled the clock off the wall and removed the batteries from the back, laying them down on the counter before going back out to the dining room. I sat down again and listened.

Tick-tock-tick-tock.

“The fuck,” I complained.

“Baby,” Lauren’s voice was soothing, but also nervous. “You okay?”

“There’s a fuckin’ clock ticking somewhere and it’s driving me crazy,” I said.

Lauren looked at Brian helplessly.

Brian tilted his head and listened, “I don’t hear it either.” He paused. “Wait. Is it my watch?” he held his arm up and the ticking got louder.

“Fucking hell Brian, that watch is loud as shit,” I complained.

He held it up to his ear, “Well I mean, I hear it when I have it up like this, but --”

I covered my ears.

It might’ve been an exaggeration, maybe it really wasn’t as loud as I was acting like, but suddenly it seemed like it really was.

Brian sighed, “I gotta go pack anyway,” he announced and he picked up his cereal bowl and carried it out into the kitchen, Nacho following, excited about the prospect of having two cereal bowls to finish.

Lauren’s eyes were asking a hundred thousand questions when she looked at me as I lowered my hands from my ears.

“I hate ticking sounds,” I said.

“I can’t believe you could even hear that,” she commented.

“It was silent as hell in here,” I replied.

Lauren shrugged and reached for the newspaper pages Brian had left behind, reading as she ate her oatmeal and I sat beside her in a much more comfortable silence than the one Brian and I had been sitting in all morning. I ate my blueberries and reveled in the absence of the ticking clock.

“You really gotta lighten up, baby,” she said as she chewed.





Brian

I took my watch off on the stairs and when I got to my room I shoved it deep into my suitcase. There was no way in hell he could hear the ticking from my watch, he was just being a diva -- as usual. Everything had to be Nick’s way or he’d complain and whine and eventually get it his way just because we were so desperate to shut him the hell up we’d do whatever it took. It was so irritating the way he did it, too, like a little kid. I threw myself onto the bed and closed my eyes.

All I wanted was a nap. After the awful night of trying to sleep through the sounds of Lauren and Nick having sex through half the night, I was exhausted and I didn’t know how much more of Nick’s bullshit I could take without killing him.

I woke up about twenty minutes later, little after nine, and grabbed my suitcase. If the flight was at noon, then we needed to get going. I made sure I had everything and then hauled my stuff down the steps into the foyer. Nick’s suitcases were there, too. Yes, suitcases because, again, Nick was a diva and couldn’t pack just one bag. Probably one whole suitcase was nothing but packages of damn underwear, I thought.

Probably that one, I thought, looking at the largest bag.

I waited. It was almost ten before Nick and Lauren came downstairs and I’m guessing by the fact that Nick was still tucking in his shirt and his hair was all messy that they’d been - er - busy until just a moment before. I went to look at my watch, but it was still in my suitcase, per Nick’s obnoxious sonic hearing. “We need to go,” I said.

“I know, I’m comin’,” Nick answered, but he bolted off into the depths of the house.

I looked at Lauren.

She smiled wanly.





It took a ridiculous amount of time to get Nick out of the house and I had to practically herd him through LAX to get him to the gate - only just in time. We were among the last passengers on the flight by the time we got there. “See, relax,” Nick chirped as we sat down in our seats in the mid-section of the plane, “All that damn rushing and we’re here just fine.” He shook his head.

He was mostly grumpy because I’d literally yanked him out of the Starbucks line on the concourse.

“Barely,” I said pointedly. I adjusted the seatbuckle across my lap. Nick was messing with the backpack he’d carried on board, pulling out his headphones and iPod. A woman was waiting impatiently for him to sit down so she could go by, but he was taking his time. “Nick,” I said, “Move.”

“What?” He looked at me, then at her and shifted slightly so she could squeeze by.

I rolled my eyes. He was so damn self absorbed, I couldn’t understand how and when he’d gotten that way. I felt like smacking him sometimes.

Armed with his music and a stack of sports magazines, his Playstation Portable, and a small bag of granola he’d managed to buy at the newsstand on the way by, he finally took a seat. He spent a good ten minutes shoving all his stuff into the pouch in front of his knees, then spread out so one foot was occupying some of my space and the other was under the seat in front of him. He let out a long, low sigh and pulled his Beats over his ears.

I leaned back.

“Welcome aboard flight 285 nonstop to New York, connections to Boston, Toronto, and Paris... We’re expecting pretty smooth skies for the beginning portion of our flight today…” The pilot’s voice filled the cabin as he ran through the usual take-off announcements. “...and we ask at this time that you stow all of your belongings and turn off any personal electronics until the flight attendants give you the okay signal.”

I looked at Nick. He had his iPod on still. I nudged him and he didn’t react, so I nudged him harder. “Nick,” I said. He ignored me. “Nick.” I reached for his headphones and pulled them forward.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“They want you to turn your devices off.”

He scowled and turned the iPod off. “I would’ve when we started movin’,” he grumbled.

I sighed.

And to think we hadn’t even left LA yet.

As the plane was taxiing across the runway, getting ready to take off, I decided that I’d use the time on the flight to tell Nick that I was leaving the group. It was as good a time as ever, I thought, because there wasn’t anything else for either of us to do but talk to each other. As the plane lifted off the ground and the gravity messed with my stomach, I clutched the arm rests and closed my eyes and imagined Nick and I finally having a heart to heart. Maybe by the time I actually left the band, Nick and I would be friends again and I wouldn’t end up losing him completely.

But when the plane had leveled out and I opened my eyes again, Nick had already pulled his headphones back over his ears, tugged the strings on his hoodie tight so his eyes were covered, and leaned back, listening to his music, which was loud enough that I could just barely hear the bassline making them hum.





Nick

I’ve never been a big fan of long plane rides - or any plane rides at all, in general for that matter - but that flight from Los Angeles to New York to Paris was the longest fucking flight ever because I was stuck with Brian next to me and my fuckin’ iPod battery died somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. I’d glanced at Brian and waved my iPod, “Battery died,” I complained.

He’d shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

I’d turned on the TV screen in front of me and he complained about the film I’d chosen to watch and about the brightness of the light overhead keeping him from sleeping and for pity’s sake Nick, can’t you just take a nap or something?

It was annoying as all hell.

Especially the part where he had to go to the bathroom every five seconds.

“Excuse me,” he’d said no less than ten times during a fifteen hour flight. He’d shuffle by me, sticking his ass in my face and walk down the center aisle, touching the back of every seat like he was having a rough time balancing, even though the plane was perfectly level. Then he’d come back after taking an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, again touching every seat, this petrified look on his face like his walking around on the plane might disturb it’s ability to stay in the air or something, and then squeeze his way back into the row, again sticking his ass in my face. Only to repeat the whole process like an hour later.

One of the times he went, he took like ten minutes to take a pee so when he sat down, I glanced at him, “What happened? You get initiated in the Mile High Club or something?” I grinned because I thought this was pretty funny and, back in the day at least, it would’ve started a conversation about whether either of us was actually in the MHC, but instead he just gave me this look of disapproval.

Right, because he’s a goody-goody and the Mile High Club is above him.

I bet him and Leighanne only have Missionary Sex every single night.

If they had sex at all. Maybe they were too holy and pure for something as dirty and forbidden as sexual intercourse. Or at least they weren’t allowed to talk about it, obviously, because I was clearly a heathen devil worshipper for even suggesting he was a member of the Mile High Club.

God forbid.

But, anyways, we’d somehow managed to make it all the way to France and now I finally had gotten the Starbucks he’d denied me at both LAX and JFK. I felt a lot better as we stood by the luggage carousel and the caffeine was starting to kick in. Brian was still acting like he was in a rush, hurrying to collect the bags off the carousel as they came out of the chute rather than letting them come ‘round the conveyer belt to where I stood.

“Would it kill you to help?” he grunted as he tossed my large suitcase onto the trolley he’d pulled over.

“It ain’t my fault you’re runnin’ after ‘em all,” I said with a shrug and I reached down and grabbed my backpack from the floor, tossing it onto the trolley. “I’m tryin’ to help man, you ain’t lettin’ me.”

Brian sighed, “Well, you can push the trolley at least.”

I grabbed hold of the pole and pushed it along as he led the way down the concourse toward the front door, where a driver was waiting for us to drive us on to the hotel where our entourage would be waiting. I was just glad that our bodyguards would be there and I’d get to talk to Mike or someone - as long as there was anyone else to talk to besides Brian, it would be an improvement.

How’s it going so far? Lauren had texted me, and I balanced my coffee cup, phone, and the trolley pushing job as I tried to tap out my response.

Brian’s being kind of a dick, I tapped, too distracted by my mission to reply to notice that he’d come to a sudden stop ahead of me.

“Ouch, what the hell? Watch what you’re doing will you?” Brian glanced back. The trolley had driven into his ankle.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

Brian shook his head.

The driver helped us load the cases into the back of the car and we got in, crunched together in the backseat.




Brian

The hotel was quite a way from the airport and Nick was really too tall for the backseat of the car they’d picked us up in. His legs were crushed up against the seat in front of him and he was hunched down from the low ceiling, almost in a ball. I fit perfectly, but I’m also almost half foot shorter than he is.

“My fuckin’ neck is killin’ me,” he complained when we got to the hotel and climbed out of the car. He was rubbing his neck with the ball of his hand as the driver collected our bags from the back. I shouldered mine and waited until a busboy had come out and put Nick’s onto another trolley, and he followed Nick and I into the lobby. Mike, Nick’s bodyguard, was waiting for us.

“There you are,” he called, getting up from a table in the lounge. He came over and Nick practically jumped on him with excitement. Mike laughed, “Long trip?”

“Yes,” Nick announced enthusiastically. “Impossibly long.” He glanced at me meaningfully. “Alls I want right now is the hottest fuckin’ shower this place has on tap. Where’s our rooms?”

Mike’s grin shook a little at the edge with apparent humor. “Come with me.”

We followed along to the elevator and Mike pressed a button with his thumb and we rode up, the busboy and the trolley making it a tight fit. When the door opened, Mike led us down the hall and he pointed to a hotel room door, “There you are,” he said, standing by. His mouth twitched.

Nick stared at the door, “Me or Brian?” he asked.

As soon as he said it I knew the answer.

Mike cleared his throat, “Jen cut the reservations down to, uh, one room, to… accommodate… the both of you.”

Nick stared at Mike.

“She, uh, said if you have any problems with sharing a room with each other you can call her and she’ll tell you, uh, where to go.” Mike’s amusement was definitely not at all concealed as his voice quivered with it.

I took a deep breath and reached for one of the keys Mike was holding out and headed into the room.

“Son of a bitch, you mean we gotta share rooms, too? This is bullshit. I’m going downstairs and getting a room with my own fuckin’ money,” Nick said and I heard him storm off.

I slugged my bag onto one of the two double beds in the room.

“Nick…” Mike called out, half laughing, even as he went after the pissed off Nick.

I sat down on the bed.

The busboy looked into the room and cleared his throat, “Where should I put these, sir?” he asked in a thick French accent.

“Oh, sorry,” I stood up and pulled a couple euros out of my wallet and handed it to him as a tip, “You can leave them in the hall there. Nick can carry them in himself.”

I grinned to myself as the busboy unloaded the suitcases literally right in the middle of the hallway and pushed the trolley away. I went back in the bedroom and laid down on the bed and fell asleep before Nick and Mike came back.

As much as I’d like to think Nick had to bring the suitcases into the room himself, I’m sure he bitched and moaned until Mike did it for him anyway.

Chapter Five


Nick

The grass was fresh cut in the neighborhood, you could still smell it, even though the sun had gone down. I hurried across the yard, my feet aching, lungs tight in my chest. I’d run clear across Orlando to get there. Digging through my pockets, I found the key and opened the door, careful not to do it too loud so I didn’t wake the other guys up.

I snuck through the living room to the hallway without a light - I knew this house better than I knew my own family’s home by then. My mother had just moved us kids into an apartment that month and it was still strange and foreign, not as familiar as this place. I made my way down the hall to Brian’s room and pushed the door open. “Brian,” I said as I stepped inside, “Brian, I need to talk to you.”

There was a thud and a squeak and Brian’s voice, “Nick? What the hell?”

”I’m sorry I’m wakin’ you up. I tried calling, but --” I turned the light on.

Leighanne was in Brian’s bed, clutching the sheets up to cover her chest, her eyes wide. Brian was on the floor, the comforter wrapped around his waist. “This ain’t the best time, Frack,” he said pointedly.

I stared at Leighanne, her hair all messy. At the time, I only knew her as the model from the music video, though. She looked mortified that I was there. “But, Brian, it’s important,” I whined.

“I’m kinda busy,” Brian replied. “Whatever it is can wait ‘til the morning.”

I’d never been rejected by Brian before. Not for a woman. Not like this. Not when it was important. I mean sure he’d had girls in the hotel rooms and the tour bus or whatever when we were off doing our tours and stuff... and sure they’d kept him from, like, playing basketball a couple times, too, but this was different. This wasn’t basketball or something stupid like wanting to watch Baywatch or whatever, this was actually important.

“No, Brian, please, it’s important, I --”

Brian pushed me out his bedroom door and into the hallway. “Nick seriously, we’ll talk in the morning, I’m busy.”

I woke up with a start as the door slammed shut in my dream. I stared up at the ceiling, my palms sweat-drenched and my heart racing. The room smelled like eggs and bacon. I sat up slowly, looking around. The window was uncovered, sunlight pouring in, and there was a tray with two covered plates on it sitting between the beds, Brian was at the door tipping room service. When he came back and saw me sitting up he said, “I was just about to wake you up.”

“You ordered food?”

“Yeah,” Brian nodded. “We have a radio appearance in about an hour.” He pulled the lid off the food and the smell became stronger. I rolled over to the edge of the bed and breathed it in.

“Actual bacon,” I mused. “Shit. It’s like food sex.” I grabbed a piece.

“Wait, wait, the blessing,” Brian said. I dropped the bacon back to the plate and swept my greasy hand across the bedding as Brian settled himself down on the edge of his bed and muted the TV set. He held out his hand and, reluctantly, I dropped mine into it as he bowed his head to pray. “Father thank you for this food we’re about to eat and bless it for the nourishment of our bodies and minds ---”

I tuned out as Brian kept on about God blessin’ the food and whatever.

“Amen,” he finally finished.

I grabbed my bacon again and stuck it in my mouth. “Yes that is good,” I said, nodding.

Brian started eating, too.

We sat there, once again chewing breakfast in silence. I thought about how there’d been a time, and it seemed like it hadn’t been so long ago (though in reality it’d been almost a decade), when Brian and I could’ve easily filled that silence. Like it was nothin’. We would’ve talked about everything in the world, and the crew would’ve had to come get us to go to our interviews and shows and whatever because we would’ve lost track of time completely. We’d have chosen to have the same hotel room, instead of being forced to by stubborn managers and an opportunity to go on a whole promotional run just the two of us would’ve seemed like an adventure instead of a death sentence.

I would give anything, I thought, to be able to undo the damage that’d been done between us. If could just turn back time I wouldn’t have let him slam the door on me that night. Actually, there was a lot more that I wouldn’t have done that night if I’d known where it would get me in the end, but that’s a whole other thing.

I wondered if he remembered that night and, if he did, if he knew it’s significance.

Probably not.

I don’t think that anyone, besides me, knew about what happened that night, since it’s among my darkest secrets… the ones you never tell or think about.

In fact, I felt sick thinking too much about it and I stopped eating, pushing my plate away.

Brian looked up, “You’re full already?”

I nodded.

He kept eating.

I stared out past him, at the city below our window, willing my mind to stop thinking about the Whys.





Brian

When Nick has nightmares, he makes this sound in his sleep. Like a hum or a whimper, almost. I remember it from back in the early days, when he and I shared a bus and hotel rooms a lot. Back when his family was breaking apart, during the divorce, he used to have nightmares almost every night. He’d wake up in a cold sweat, crying, and we’d end up in the same bed because he was afraid of having the nightmares again if he was alone. I hadn’t heard that sound since he was like sixteen.

I woke up only a couple hours after having arrived to the hotel, the early morning sunlight peeking around the edges of the curtains. I laid there staring up at the ceiling, wondering what had woken me up -- and then he made the sound again. I sat up and looked over at him, concerned. He was so much bigger than he’d been last time we’d been through this, but his flared nostrils and slightly trembling lower lip gave him the appearance of being much younger again. I chewed my lip, unsure if I should wake him or not. Nick is a beast when he’s woken up, though, so I finally decided that I’d just open the curtains and order breakfast and hopefully the light and the smell would wake him up.

The smell of bacon has a certain magic about it that way.

As we sat there, after he’d woken up and everything, I wondered what he’d been dreaming about and if he’d maybe wanna talk about it the way he always had when he was a kid. I stayed silent, leaving the space between us open just incase he wanted to volunteer the information, figuring that if he wanted to bring it up, he would. I didn’t want to pry and have him hate me for probing into his personal stuff too much. Or worse, embarrass him by telling him that I’d heard him whimpering in his sleep.

He stayed quiet, though, and the moments slipped away and soon we were climbing into the back of a car to head to the radio station, Mike and Drew alongside us. Drew had gone to get coffee for the four of us before we’d left the hotel and we rode through the Paris streets, drinking the lattes and watching the morning traffic weave its way through all the iconic architecture.

One of the strangest things about traveling, I’ve always thought, was the way that something can be so monumental and important but seem so small and insignificant in the experience of it. I’d felt that way about most of the major landmarks that people talk about. Big Ben was just a clock tower, the Alamo a part of a shopping mall in Texas, the Eiffel Tower just a big metal structure at the end of the road. Even the equator was nothing more than a yellow line painted on a sidewalk; without the signs there you’d never know that you were straddling the place where the world came together.

But a lot of things in life are like that, I guess.

I glanced at Nick as we rode. “Frack,” I said.

He looked over in surprise to hear me use the old nickname. “Huh?”

I opened my mouth, the words on the edge of my lips about wanting to quit the band, when the car came to a stop and the driver announced, “We’re here.”

Nick looked at me, question in his eyes, and I knew that right then wasn’t the right time to breach the topic. After all, it was a lot more involved than something you just blurt out in the backseat of a car, I realized, and it would take time to talk through all the reasons and whatever. So I shook my head and he shrugged and climbed out of the car.

Drew and Mike leaped into action, helping us through a little crowd of fans that were clamoring for our attention on either side of short barricades that led from the curb to the door. “Nick!! Nick! Brian!” they called us and Nick and I spun side to side, scrawling our names on album booklets and tickets and whatever else they held up for us to sign. One girl gave Nick a big two-foot Valentine card and a teddy bear, and then we were ushered into the radio station. Nick gave the gifts to Mike to hold onto and we were led upstairs to the deejay’s soundbooth.

The funny thing about promo is that there’s this shift in dynamic the moment we’re in the public eye. Anything that’s going on behind closed doors in our lives is shut off, like being “on the clock” makes the fights and tension fade until we’re alone again. It’s always been like that. I remember back in the day we’d all be on the tour bus ready to kill each other over whatever stupid things we were fighting about and then we’d unload to go on some morning talk show and be instantly best friends, only to go back to telling each other to F-off the moment we got back to our privacy. Just like in the 90s, when there was pressure to be the clean-cut, good boys that the world believed us to be. We had to be that or there was this fear that we’d lose our jobs or something. It’s because there’s certain things that fans expect about us and there’s this pressure to deliver it.

Anyway, what the fans expected was for me and Nick to be best friends. So the instant we walked into the deejay’s booth it was as though the past decade of drifting had never happened and Nick flung his arm over my shoulders once we’d settled into the seats across the soundboard and the mics were pushed our way.

And you know, it didn’t even feel weird because I, too, was on the clock now and I’d melted from this state of seriousness and worrying what Nick would think when I quit to being the clown I always am in interviews.

“Nous sommes ici avec Brian et Nick des Backstreet Boys � parler de leur nouveau documentaire Show’em What You’re Made Of.” He turned to Nick and I. “Tell us about the movie.” It’s hard, too, when you’re in a foreign country and the deejay speaks the native language for several moments, then suddenly switches over to English.

“It’s just real,” Nick said, leaning forward. I looked over at him as he talked. “Like raw, you know, like we didn’t hold nothin’ back. It’s just our story.”

I looked back at the deejay as he translated that to the audience.

“So there was no script, no acting?”

“No script,” Nick said, shaking his head.

“Some of us are terrible actors,” I chimed in, “You’d know if we were acting ‘cos we’d suck.” I laughed.

Nick glanced at me and laughed. Then he added, “We just wanted to let the fans see kinda where we’re from, you know, show’em all the stuff we’ve been through and whatever.”

He’d almost said shit instead of stuff.

“So le documentaire, it covers things from your beginnings to now,” said the deejay. He looked at his notes, “You speak of getting together and the things you’ve been through as a band, yes?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Gets down to the nitty gritty of the Backstreet Boys.”

“The nitty gritty, yes,” the deejay laughed, “I hear there was some nitty gritty Backstreet Boys moments this week in Los Angeles.” He looked at Nick. “What happened with the photographer?”

I looked at Nick.

Nick looked down at his hands, “There was a lot more to that than the video that was posted online that everyone’s seen by now.”

“Do you have a temper problem?” chuckled the deejay.

“Nawh, no.” Nick shook his head, “Just he was harassing me and my wife, Lauren. Really, it looked a lot worse in the video.” I could tell Nick just really wanted the topic to be dropped.

I grinned, “Nick just knows how to defend the ladies,” I chirped.

The deejay laughed, “A regular knight in the shimmering armor, yes?”

“Yeah,” Nick laughed.

“So in the veedeo the photographer was asking you about Lou Pearlman,” the deejay said, “And do you speak of Lou Pearlman in this documentaire?”

Nick looked at me.

“Yeah,” I replied, “A bit.”

The deejay said, “See, not so hard, answering the question about Monsieur Pearlman, oui?” He looked at Nick, “We can get through this without a fist fight.”

Nick leaned back in the seat he was in and I had a feeling that he’d have given anything at that moment to be off the clock.





Nick

“Do you fuckin’ see what they do?” I grumbled when the door closed on the car, “Do you see? They find something that they know triggers me, obviously, then they fuckin’ ask it every five seconds. It’s like that guy wanted me to haul off and kick his fuckin’ ass. Little French bastard.”

Brian sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Fuckin’ baiting me.”

“He wasn’t baiting you. They found a topic that is of interest and now it’s in demand just because of your reaction. They wanna know why you reacted like you did, that’s all.” Brian closed his eyes, resting against the window of the car.

“I told you why. They were harassing me and Lauren and I was sick of it. I told’em to go fuck off and they didn’t listen.” I ran my hands over my knees. Brian didn’t say anything in response, just sat there breathing. I stared out the window.

Back at the hotel, we ordered lunch and Brian went over our itinerary for the next couple days. We had a couple TV shows to do, then we were off to Germany, where we had three stops, nine interviews, and a flight to Amsterdam for more of the same, then London and Dublin the following week before heading home. I laid down on the bed while he read all this and played Trivia Crack on my phone.

“What kind of continent is Antarctica considered?” I asked, looking up from my phone.

“What?”

“What kind of continent is Antarctica considered?” I asked again, “An ice cap, a polar shard, a… yeah I can’t pronounce that… or is it not a continent?”

Brian gave me a funny look, “An ice cap, I guess.”

I pressed the button. He was right. He’s always right. The next question was easy, it was about golf. I liked the sports questions.

I didn’t even notice what he was doing until I heard the Skype ringing sound. I looked over at his bed. He’d pulled his laptop out and was sitting on the bed cross-legged, calling Leighanne. I turned back to my phone, kind of hoping she wouldn’t answer just because I didn’t much feel like hearing the sound of her voice.

“Husband!” she crooned.

I closed my eyes and counted to three. I got the question wrong on my game and the turn defaulted to my opponent. I sighed and clicked out of Trivia Crack and started scrolling around in my phone.

“Hey Leigh-Leigh,” Brian said, grinning down at the computer. “How’s Bay?”

“Great! He had a great practice today. How’s Paris?”

I rolled onto my back, letting my ears sink into the pillows, hoping that might muffle their conversation.

“Good so far. We got here a few hours ago, took a nap, went and did our first interview.”

“How’s Nick?” Leighanne asked.

Brian held up his computer and turned so I was in the background of the shot. “There he is!” Brian’s voice was chirpy and cheerful as hell. “Nick, say hi to Leighanne,” he grinned.

“Hi,” I replied flatly.

“Hi Nick!” she sing-songed.

I waved absently, never looking up from my phone.

“You boys staying out of trouble?” she asked with a chuckle.

“Of course!” Brian laughed.

“Yeah,” I called out, “We’re waiting to let the hookers out of the bathroom ‘til after y’all hang up.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence followed by an uncomfortable, nervous chuckle from Brian, “He’s kidding, of course.”

“Yeah, I am,” I nodded, still staring at my phone, “You can’t fit that many bitches in a bathroom. They ain’t like clowns in a Volkswagon.”

Brian took a deep breath and settled himself back down, effectively taking me out of the frame of his call. I smirked to myself, amused by his discomfort. I was partly surprised Brian hadn’t carried the damn computer in there just to show her. Like Leighanne would ever actually think there were friggin’ hookers in the bathroom. If she did then she needed to get a damn reality check and learn how to take a joke.

Lauren would’ve laughed her ass off at that joke, I was willing to bet.

For the hell of it, I closed out of the game I’d pulled up and went to my text messages to tell her. Would you think a joke about hookers in the bathroom is funny? I asked.

She took a second to respond.

What’s the punch line?

Brian’s on Skype and I told Leighanne there were hookers in the bathroom. After a pause, I added, I think she kinda believed me for a second.

Lauren’s response was exactly as I expected: LMAO!





Brian

Later that night, Nick was flipping through the channels on the TV, trying to find anything in English, which in France is like trying to find something in French on TV in the States, and finally settled on some sports channel that was replaying a soccer game. He muted it and watched it in silence while eating.

Meanwhile, I was laying on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, stretching, about to do my vocal therapy exercises. I stretched my neck to one side, then the other and from my knees stretched down ‘til my face was on the floor, letting out a very guttural hum as I did so, warming my vocal chords. I sat back up and leaned as far back as my spine would allow me, feeling the stretching of my vertebrae from the small of my back all the way into my neck. I took a deep breath and continued humming.

Nick was staring at me over the bed.

I went back down into the first position, my nose to the floor almost, braced on my elbows to keep from actually face-planting, and started singing scales in my lowest register.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Nick asked, “Yoga? Jesus.”

“This is part of my therapy for my vocals,” I sang in a monotone of the same register, still warming that part of my lower voice.

Nick continued watching as I sat back up and opened my jaw as wide as it could, closed it, opened it, closed it, then started wagging my tongue,la la la la-ing, each time I opened it.

I felt weird doing it with an audience. Leighanne had done the exercises with me at home, not that she needed it but it felt better if someone was going to be in the room that they did it with me, not just staring at me. I closed my eyes, trying to block out his gaze. If it wasn’t so important that I do it every night, I would’ve skipped it until I got home just to avoid this awkwardness. But that wasn’t an option.

Part of me wished that he had succeeded in talking Jen into the separate rooms after all.

“How the fuck is this helping your vocals?” he asked, “All you’re doing is gurgling and flailing around.”

“It helps awaken the nerve endings,” I explained. I rubbed my neck and bobbed my Adam’s apple up and down, humming.

“It sounds like a friggin’ ritual to awaken the dead,” he replied.

“Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” I stretched my neck out as far as it would go, letting sound come out as I did.

“Jesus,” Nick shook his head, “How much money do you pay the therapist that told you to do that? You sound like a fuckin’ llama.”

I stopped. “Will you please not make fun of this? It’s hard enough doing it without you comparing me to barnyard animals.” I glowered at him. “It’s the only thing I can do to try to help it, okay? Sorry if it’s bothering you or whatever.”

Nick rolled his eyes and stood up, “I’m gonna go for a walk. You do your therapy. I’ll be back.” He turned off the soccer game and grabbed his jacket as he went for the door, leaving me laying on the floor, alone.

Chapter Six


Nick

The truth was, I couldn’t stand the thought of Brian’s voice being broken.

That’s why I had to get out of there. That’s why I made fun of his therapy exercises. Because I didn’t wanna admit that they were necessary.

I balled my fists and shoved them deep into my coat pockets as I walked down the street, the wind biting my nose as it whipped between the city buildings. The lights were glowing, strings hanging over the street in zig-zags, like man-made stars in the urban atmosphere. I walked quickly, partly to save myself from the cold and partly because I felt like if I slowed for even a second the fear that threatened every time Brian’s voice cracked would catch up to me.

I remember the first time I noticed it.

We were on stage somewhere in Asia - Japan, maybe Tokyo? - during the Unbreakable tour, and he was singing I Want it That Way’s opening verse and his voice wobbled. Just a little wobble, nothing like it’s been doing since, but it made this weird shiver go up my spine, like I’d sensed the future from that broken sound or something. I’d looked over at him, concerned because Brian never missed a note like that, and he looked just as concerned as I did.

It scared the shit out of me because of everything in my life the only thing that I’d consistently been able to have faith in was Brian. I mean sure he’d let me down over the years - yes, I’d spent the last decade slowly growing further and further away from him, but when it really came down to it he was still there, he was still Brian, whatever he’d done to break my heart didn’t matter because he was. But the worse his voice got the less Brian he was becoming.

I never told anyone, including him, but of all the voices of all the singers in all the whole world, his is my very favorite.

There were nights, when I was on the drugs and alone in Los Angeles, when I’d sit in my garage, my car running on battery, with his album on repeat, rocking my way through a crash off a high. I thought of it like being in an egg; his voice was all that was keeping me alive. It felt like I wasn't alone. In a way it was like he was there, even in the time when he most definitely would not have been there, when he disapproved of me the very most. With that CD, his voice had comforted me through a lot of restless, fearful nights as the pains of coming down from a high or going through withdrawals wrecked me.

It was the only way to hold onto my friend.

And now that voice was disappearing.

Now that voice was reduced to bleating like an animal while flailing about on a hotel room floor.

I couldn’t fuckin’ stand it.

So I walked.

I stepped into a little shop and bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Lauren would kill me if she knew but damn it if she was really that worried about it then maybe she shouldn’t have sent me off to Europe by myself with nobody to watch over me but Brian, who wasn’t gonna pay enough attention to me to notice if I smoked or not. I lit up on the sidewalk outside the store and took a long drag, watching people walking by and the cars zipping down the uneven streets.

By the time I finally headed back to the hotel, exhausted from walking and worrying about Brian’s voice, he was asleep, the TV on, halfway through The Karate Kid, in French but with English subtitles. I turned the TV off and got onto the bed, still dressed, tossing the cigarettes and lighter onto the nightstand with my phone.

I stared at the ceiling, hands folded on my chest, afraid that if I closed my eyes I’d have the same nightmares all over again. I took a deep breath and glanced over at Brian on the next bed…

”Nick?”

I woke up the next morning, after Brian slamming the door in my face, and I was laying on the couch in the living room of the band house. I’d slept there. My mom was probably having a fit, considering she had no idea I’d left the apartment back in Tampa in the first place. Brian was standing over me, staring down at me. “Did you stay here all night?” he asked.

”Yeah,” I murmured.

”What’s going on?” he asked.

I was about to answer when Leighanne came through the door, dressed in a really short bathrobe that only just barely reached her thighs and strained to hold her boobs in. Her hair was a mess. “I’m so not finished with yo-- oh, Nick. Hi.” Her face turned red.

“You’re still busy, I see,” I said to Brian.

“Well… no. I mean yeah, but I can take a time out for you, if you need me.”

I wanted to tell him what was wrong but somehow in the morning light it was so much harder than it would’ve been the night before, if he’d just listened then. So I choked on the words and I couldn’t tell him what had happened… what I’d done.

“Nevermind,” I said, “It ain’t important anymore.”

“Are you sure?” he looked worried.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said with a shrug.

He stared at me, waiting, but I didn’t give him the answer because by that time I’d decided that he didn’t deserve it.

That’s when I woke up for real.

It wasn’t even an hour after I’d fallen asleep.

I sat up and realized I’d never even changed out of my clothes. Brian was still sleeping. I rolled over and saw the cigarettes and lighter on the nightstand. I grabbed them and carried them into the bathroom, kicking my shoes off as I walked, and locked myself in, turning on the shower faucet and the humidity fan and lighting up in our nonsmoking room.





Brian

“Have you been smoking?”

Nick shook his head.

We were in the back of the car again, on our way to a morning TV talk show, and I know Nick’s coat smelled like cigarettes. I made a face as I sniffed his shoulder. “Yes you have, too,” I argued. “Nick, those things are so bad for you, c’mon. It’s bad enough AJ smokes still, don’t you start that shit again, too.”

He sighed.

I shook my head. He wouldn’t listen to me anyway. If he wanted to smoke, he was gonna smoke, and probably all the more just because he knew I didn’t approve. He was stubborn that way.

At the TV studio we were shown inside to a green room, where there was an assortment of breakfasty foods. Mostly croissants and scones and that sort of thing, which Nick passed up on. I ate a croissant while we waited. When they finally came to get us for our segment, we followed the TV personnel up to the stage where the gray-haired host was waiting for us in his fancy buttoned suit and tie and silver wire frame glasses. The audience started screaming the moment we walked onto the set.

I looked at Nick. He looked exhausted. “Did you sleep at all last night?” I asked him quietly while we waited for the show to come back from commercial break.

He glanced at me and I noticed that his eyes were red and a little puffy underneath them. He scrunched up his nose. “I dunno,” he answered with a shrug, “Not a lot. But I’m a’ight.”

I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t. I thought about telling him I knew he’d been having nightmares, but I didn’t want to upset him.

“I guess, just a little… I dunno… like,” he paused, thinking of a word, “Despondent, I guess.”

“Despondent?”

I had a feeling he didn’t know what the word meant and I was about to suggest he Google it when the lights came up on the set, returning from commercial. The host was introducing us in French and then a set director beckoned us forward to the hot pink couch reserved for guests.

“What the Backstreet Boys are only two?” laughed the host as we approached. “Brian, Nick,” he named us as we sat down. “Where are Howie, AJ, and Kevin?”

Nick did not slip into character as easily this time as he had at the radio interview the day before, though, so even though the host - whose name was something very French like Pierre or something - was looking right at him, he still didn’t answer. So I jumped in.

“We figured it would be a great opportunity to have a Frick & Frack adventure,” I said, grinning.

Nick nodded thoughtfully, chewing his lower lip.

Okay, so we were getting quiet Nick today. Which meant doing the interview was going to be up to me. This was exactly what I’d been afraid of when Howie, AJ, and Kevin had originally said they weren’t coming along on the promo run. All is good and well for Nick to say that we were going to “split the work”, but the fact of the matter is Nick’s a diva who sometimes gets in these moods. He’ll get broody and silent and refuses to speak during interviews, setting his mouth in a straight line and just listening as the rest of us took up the job of answering in turn. Usually, there were four of us to pick up his slack when he got in those moods, though. Now, it was just me and him.

“The Backstreet Boys movie it is released in America, isn’t it?” Pierre Or Whatever asked. “What has been the reaction of your fans so far?”

I glanced at Nick, hoping he’d buck up, but he didn’t.

“Well, they seem touched by the film,” I said, “Excited to see it.” I really wished Nick would chime in, but he remained stoic beside me.

“What made you decide to open up to your audience like this? Was it hard?” Pierre looked at Nick, obviously wishing that he’d answer the question.

I took a deep breath, a pause to give Nick the opportunity if he was going to answer, then, “We’ve always tried to stay transparent and honest with our fans. When I had my heart surgery, when AJ went to rehab… We stayed open with the fans. So we just wanted to give them the opportunity to see the stories...behind the stories, I guess. That’s what the movie was about. Like more details. More emotions.”

I looked at Nick again.

C’mon Nick. Don’t make me do this alone, I thought.

“It’s band history,” he said.

That’s it.

That was all he was going to throw out there?

Pierre stared at him, waiting for more, but when Nick didn’t offer it, he asked, “For instance, how you got together and the roots of your music?” he smiled.

“Yes,” I replied, “All the things that happened and people who influenced us and the drama rising from that. We were betrayed by some of our first supporters.”

Nick stared at his feet.

“Betrayed?” Pierre looked interested at this word.

I was about to go into detail when Nick spoke up, “We also talked about your vocal muscle dys-whatever.”

I looked over at him.

Pierre raised an eyebrow, “Excuse me?”

“Muscle tension dysphonia,” I supported, though I was confused why he’d changed the subject so abruptly. We fumbled through a series of questions about the MTD and the therapy I was doing for it, while Nick sat silently.

Then Pierre started asking about the plans the Backstreet Boys were making. It was hard because I didn’t want to lie, making it sound like I planned to be there. I wished Nick would have answered. “The Backstreet Boys are staying busy,” I sad. “2015 will be a big year.” I nodded.

Pierre Whatever kept asking questions until finally the segment was over and rambled out the details of the movie release in French. Once the show went on commercial, he thanked us for our time and we were shown off the set by the director.





Nick

“What the hell was that?” Brian was pissed.

I sighed as I dropped into the back of the car.

“You couldn’t say anything?”

“I said shit,” I argued.

“Like ten words,” Brian argued, “Maximum. What happened to you being all defensive, complaining about it being both of us that were saddled with work when the other fellas decided not to come?”

I ran my hand through my hair, annoyed, as the car pulled away from the curb. “Dude, I told you, I didn’t sleep and I’m really despondent feeling today. I’m having an off day.”

“Despondent does not mean what you think it means,” Brian snapped.

“Yeah huh,” I argued.

“Define it.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s not the definition.”

I rolled my eyes as Brian set his jaw and turned away.

“Not like it’ll kill you to fucking answer some questions,” I said, staring out the window.

“I just thought this was about both of us answering questions is all,” Brian snapped. “I’m pretty sure that guy wanted to hear your opinion on the movie, too.”

I turned to glare at him, “It’s not like anything I say matters anyway, right?”

Brian looked flabbergasted. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” he stammered.

“Nobody gives a shit about anything I got to say,” I accused.

“What? Seriously?” Brian looked livid, “Seriously? All anyone gives a shit about is what you got to say!” He pointed, “You always get everything your way.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

“You heard me!” Brian yelled. His hand was still pointing aggressively at me. “You are spoiled.”

“Spoiled? Spoiled?!”

“Yes! Spoiled!”

I clenched my jaw. “I am not the spoiled one,” I snapped. “You are.”

Brian’s eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”

“You and your stupid dyfuckia or whatever… you can’t even sing right and you’re still in the band and getting vocals and kicking me out of hotel rooms so you can sit around making barnyard noises --”

“Kick you out? I did not kick you out.”

“You didn’t stop when I made it clear that you were getting on my nerves,” I replied.

“I told you! I have to do that or I’ll lose my voice! Do you want me to lose my voice?”

I couldn’t even think about it. My heart sped up at just the thought of it. I stared at him, unable to fathom a response. So, instead, I turned away and refused to speak again, afraid I’d say something I’d regret.

When the car rolled up to the back doors of the next TV station we were filming a segment for, we both reached for the door handles, but before I could push my way out of the car, Brian snapped, “Just stay here if you aren’t going to talk.”

So I did.





Brian

“I’m going to kill him,” I said into my phone a moment later. The moment it became obvious that Nick was seriously not going to follow me into the interview, I called Kevin, who picked up on the third ring.

“What happened?” Kevin asked. So I recounted the interview with Pierre Whatever for Kevin’s appraisal. He listened in silence until I finished the story, then he asked, “So what’s bothering him?”

“Maybe it’s the stick that’s lodged up his ass?” I suggested.

Kevin sighed, “No Brian,” he said. “You know Nick better than that. You know he doesn’t just act crazy for no reason. When Nick acts like a diva, there’s a reason. Something’s bothering him. You need to talk to him and find out what’s up and you know it.”

I sighed as I was shown into the green room backstage and settled into a director’s-style chair where set assistants started touching up my face with powder and whatever to adjust for the lighting on set. “I don’t know if I have the patience for his bullshit, Kev,” I complained.

Kevin was quiet. I pictured him shrugging. “You know it’s the only way to fix it. Ignore it and he’ll get worse.”

We hung up and I sat there as they finished prepping me to do the interview, stewing. I hated that Kevin was right. I hated that I hadn’t realized it myself. I hated that I didn’t want to find out what was wrong with him. I wanted him to grow up and be a man and tell me in a normal way that something was bugging him if, indeed, something was bugging him. Instead of being an asshole because he was despondent, he should just tell me what was wrong.

By the time I finished with the interview and went back out to the car, I was even more frustrated by Nick than ever, and he was still staring out the window in silence. I sat down and buckled myself in, staring at him as I leaned back into the seat. He carefully kept his face turned away from me.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally.

Nick turned to look at me, his eyes redder than before and I wondered if he’d been crying. “It’s all good,” he muttered. Then, shocker of all shocks, he continued, “I’m sorry, too.”

Chapter Seven


Nick

Brian and I didn’t exactly kiss and make-up or anything, but we were at least civil the rest of the afternoon and I even found it in me somewhere deep to attempt to act more lively at the rest of the appearances we had to make after that. I dunno what made him suddenly come back and apologize, but he did, and I knew it was probably not the easiest thing in the world for him to do so I went with it. One night of a civil truce didn’t sound like a terrible idea.

If only such a thing was possible.

Since we were moderately getting along, we got a crappy pizza on the way back to the hotel and agreed, after much flipping through the channels, to watch the French-with-English-subtitles version of the fourth Harry Potter movie, which Brian seemed to be enjoying a lot more than I was. By the halfway point, I was bored and full and I sighed, rolling onto my back to look up at the ceiling, surrounded by pizza crumbs.

Brian shifted on his bed to look over at me, “You okay?”

“Yeah, just tired of reading the movie,” I replied, closing my eyes. “You know my attention span.”

Brian sat up, muting the TV. “What about, like, in general?” he asked. “You seem like something’s bugging you lately.”

There’d been a lot bugging me lately, actually, I thought, not the least of which was being stuck with Brian in a foreign country. But even excluding that, there had been a lot going on. I was feeling pressured from a lot of angles and sometimes it’s easier to stay strong when you internalize that stuff, keep it private, like the fewer the people who knew about what was bothering you the less real it was.

“I’m okay in general, too,” I said.

Brian leaned against the headboard of his bed. I could feel his eyes studying me, contemplating me. He leaned forward and grabbed a slice of pizza then sat back, ripping bites from it with his hands. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right? And I won’t tell anyone?”

I looked over at him. “I’m okay. Really.”

“No man is an island Nick,” he said, “That’s all I’m saying.”

“An island?” I asked, not understanding what he was saying.

“Like alone,” he clarified. “You don’t have to deal with whatever’s bothering you alone.”

“I’m not alone,” I said.

“There’s ways to be alone with people all around you,” Brian said.

I stared at him, unsure where he was going with this or if this was some reference to something in my life that was going on. Maybe it was a joke that I just didn’t get?

Maybe he thought I was lonely? Like I used to be before I met Lauren?

“I’m married, dude, remember? I ain’t alone.”

“I don’t mean like that,” he said.

I was confused.

“I mean like emotionally, like your feelings. I know it’s been awhile since we’ve talked much, but I’m here for you, regardless. You can talk to me about anything - even stuff you maybe can’t talk to Lauren about.”

I sat up. “What? I fuckin’ love Lauren, I can talk to her about anything.” I glared at him, “Don’t you be hating on her.”

“I’m not hating on her,” Brian said, “Lauren’s a great girl. And you’re the one that brought her up. I’m just saying that ---”

“Fuck you,” I said, not waiting for his explanation. “I love her and we’re happy together, whatever anyone seems to think about us, and I don’t gotta take this bullshit.” My relationship with Lauren and it’s real-ness was a hot button topic for me because of my mother and because of all the shit she’d been putting me and Lauren through. I felt like I was constantly jumping through flaming hoops like a circus dog just to prove that she and I were legit and loved each other. I’d jump through any hoop for her, though, because I loved her. And if Brian wanted to come in with his fuckin’ hoops, then so be it. I’d jump them too. My blood pressure rose like a rocket. I could literally hear my heart pounding in my ears because, while I expected this crap from my mother, I did not expect it from Brian. “I can’t believe you,” I added, standing up, “At least my woman still has all her original parts, unlike yours.”

Brian’s eyebrows almost shot off his head. “Whoa - wait, wait, wait! You are so taking this the wrong way,” he stammered, holding up his palms, “Calm down a second and listen --”

“No, I will not calm down no second,” I said, “You get so pissed off when I say anything about -- about Boobjob Barbie,” I shouted, employing the name I’d called Leighanne back in the day, “ I’m not calming down ‘cos you talk shit about my woman and you gotta answer to me just like all the times I’ve bad mouthed Leighanne and hadda answer to you. This is a two-way street baby!” I waved my hands, indicating the two directions of my metaphorical street.

Brian’s face reddened the moment the words Boobjob Barbie fell from my mouth. “I’m not talkin’ shit about Lauren,” his voice grew louder as he spoke, “If you’d clean out your damn ears and listen to me instead of --”

I threw my pillow across the room at him, cutting him off mid-sentence. I grabbed my sneakers from by the bathroom door, tugging them on and yanking at the laces. “I hear you just fukin’ fine,” I yelled, “Judging me… thinkin’ you’re better than me… like there’s something wrong with me and you know the fuckin’ cure and oh look at you, fuckin’ Brian, his holiness… of course you know the cure, you’re a fuckin’ -- fuckin’ miracle working god...” I waved myself into a sarcastic bow and ended it with a flourished flipping up of the middle finger.

“I don’t think I’m better than you,” Brian argued, getting up and coming over to the doorway as I shrugged into my coat. “I mean you’re not great at listening, but --”

He was right… at that moment, I wasn’t listening.

I headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” I said.

“Nick, it’s 2am.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care,” I replied.

He grabbed his own coat off the hanger as I pulled the door opened and stepped into the hallway. “Wait, Nick… Wait.” Brian came rushing out behind me. “You can’t go out alone at two in the morning in a foreign country, are you insane? Nick…”

I walked faster.

“Nick, c’mon, don’t be an idiot.”

“Go the fuck away… You aren’t gonna stop me.” I shoved the door open for the stairs because I knew I could go down the stairs faster than Brian could. An elevator he’d end up in the same car as me and being closed in such a small space with him was basically the definition of hell. The stairs, I might be able to out speed him.

Brian rushed after me, “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you aren’t,” I snapped.

I was down several steps, he just caught the door as he ran after me. “Yes, I am,” he called, his voice echoing in the stairwell.

“Leave me alone!” I yelled.

“I thought you weren’t alone,” Brian’s voice was venomous.

“FUCK YOU!” I yelled, and I felt great about how it sounded as it reflected off the walls and bounced back at me, like a prism. The words surrounded us in echoing splendor. I felt like the words were more powerful in there.

But they didn’t stop him from following me, so I guess they were less powerful than I needed them to be.

I broke out the door at the bottom of the stairs into the streets of Paris, under those same zig-zaggy lights as I’d found myself the night before. This was becoming a pattern: me wandering the streets at ungodly hours. However, Paris is not New York, at least the area we were staying in wasn’t, and it is a city that sleeps. The streets were clear, silent cars belonging to residents of apartments over businesses lined the streets and the zig-zaggy lights seemed to be on a dimmer.

It was fuckin’ freezing outside. And snowing just a little bit, which was probably what made the lights seem dim. I shoved my hands as deep into my pockets as I could, and I knew that whatever fit I was throwing out here couldn’t last very long or I’d freeze to death.

Brian came out behind me as I stood there, contemplating what to do now that I knew how cold it was. I was trying to come up with some graceful way to go back inside without denting my pride too much. “Fuck it’s cold out,” Brian choked the instant he exited the stairwell.

“So go back inside,” I snarled.

“Not without you.”

I rolled my eyes and started walking.





Brian

My nostrils were frozen on the inside, I was sure of it. I would’ve given anything for a scarf. I zipped my coat up as far as it would go, trying to nest my face into the collar of it, but it was still colder than all hell outside. I trotted along behind Nick, trying desperately to keep up, but he was power walking and his legs are so long that I gotta take two steps to every one of his and it felt like I was jogging at the North Pole.

Nick kept walking resolutely, further and further from the hotel. I wanted to give up, but I didn’t want him to be able to say that I’d given up. I wasn’t even sure how we’d gotten to where we were from where we started. All I’d tried to do was talk to him and somehow it had spiraled so fast so far out of control… I hated how Nick never let me explain the things I said when he took them wrong, how he always assumed he just knew what I was saying or what I meant by things. He never took into account how different we were now that we were older, that maybe he didn’t intuitively know everything about me the way he used to, and I didn’t intuitively know everything about him the way I used to, either. I didn’t know how to walk on eggshells with him anymore.

At one point I’d been so skilled at dodging eggshells with him that it was effortless.

Now I felt like an ox in a china shop.

“Nick,” I whined because he was slowing down a little and I knew he had to be tired of walking and cold, too, we’d been out in it for ten minutes now and the frigid temperature was coming through my jacket now and the streets were starting to be dusted with snow and the only people we were passing were sketchy, with skull caps and squinty eyes. “Nick, c’mon, let’s go back to the hotel.”

“You can go back yourself if you want to,” Nick snapped.

Honestly, even if I wanted to by then there was no way I could’ve. We’d turned several times and I’d been preoccupied with thinking and trying to keep my nose warm so I hadn’t even noticed where we were going.

“Nick, c’mon,” I tried again.

He stopped short and I almost walked into him. For a second, I thought maybe we were going back, but he was only pausing, looking around us, and then he bolted forward quickly. I hurried after him, slipping on a little bit of ice under the light dusting of snow and only just catching my balance by putting my hand on some car. It’s alarm went off and I darted away, looking up only in time to see Nick ducking into what looked like a bar or a club across the street.

I sighed and, glancing back nervously at the honking/flashing car alarm, I went after him. At least it’d be warm inside, I hoped, and I hurried up the steps and followed him in.

The second I stepped through the door, though, I wished to hell that I knew the way back to the hotel. Of all the places in all of Paris that Nick could’ve ducked into he’d managed to find the seediest bar I’d ever seen. Creepy people sat at tables all around the room and there were girls dancing on tables with very predatory men standing around watching as their half-dressed bodies moved against each other, grinding. I looked around desperately for Nick, but he’d somehow managed to go in and disappear among the other patrons of the bar seamlessly and I couldn’t see him.

I dodged and ducked my way through, trying to keep my eyes averted because this was exactly the kind of place that I’d never, ever be at in my wildest nightmares. This was the kinda place a guy like me goes to if he wants to get the shit beat out of him. My throat constricted and I moved so I wouldn’t bump into this guy who was shouting loudly at another guy, about to start a fight with him. I just managed to sidestep around them as they collided and the fists started to fly. I made it to the bar itself somehow and sat numbly, my heart racing as my eyes darted around the room.

I’d given up this sort of scene for a reason. I didn’t belong here. I didn’t have the slightest clue how to even pretend that I belonged there to try to camouflage myself. So I sat there, sticking out like a sore thumb. If only it was Nick looking for me then our problems would be solved because I felt like every single person in the whole bar was staring at me, laughing, thinking I was out of place.

I knew I saw Nick come in here, but for the life of me I couldn’t see him anywhere. What if he’d ducked back out as soon as I’d come in? What if he’d gone back to the hotel without me? Would he give a damn if I didn’t show up? Would he come after me? Why didn’t we get Drew or Mike to come with us on this little excursion? There wasn’t enough time to, I reminded myself, because Nick had left so quickly, in such a huff, that there was no way I could’ve done anything but shrug my coat on and run after him.

Suddenly the big guy from the fight was by my side, trying to get at the bar, and in his process of getting closer, he pushed me and I slid right off my stool into the next guy, knocking him a bit off his stool.

The guy I’d fallen into stood up, yelling something in really low, thick French. I hadn’t a clue what he said. I stared up at him, wide eyed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - I - I slipped.”

“Stupid Americans,” he spat. Literally spat, his saliva wad hitting the floor to the left of my feet. I stared at it as it oozed and spread itself out on the dirty wood floor.

I looked back up just in time to see his fist coming toward me. I closed my eyes and waited for the hit.

But it didn’t come.

I opened my eyes and found myself staring into Nick’s back as he caught the guy’s fist with his palm, his fingers folding around the guy’s hand. “Oy, asshole, back the fuck off, it was an accident,” he said.

I swallowed. It felt like my heart was in my throat, like if I didn’t swallow it down it would jump out of my mouth and land in the pool of that guy’s spit.

The guy didn’t apparently give a shit if it was an accident or not, though, because he just shook Nick’s grip off his fist off and swung again. This time for Nick. And this time, Nick didn’t react fast enough to stop it.





Nick

One second I was staring into this French guy’s livid face, and the next I opened my eyes and I was laying on my back a dirty bathroom, staring up at Brian’s face.

With one eye.

Because the other one was swollen shut.

The entire left side of my face hurt.

“I don’t know,” Brian was stammering, “We walked here, I don’t know.” He looked down and saw my eye was open. “He’s awake. Oh thank you Jesus. Nick, where are we? What’s this place called?”

“Fuck,” I groaned and I closed my eye again.

“Nick, Drew needs to know if he’s gonna come find us.”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my phone. I squinted at it from my one eye. My face was throbbing. I pulled open maps and clicked on it to show my location and held it up for Brian. Brian babbled street names off to Drew and hung up. “He’s coming to find us,” he said.

I struggled to sit up, my stomach turning. I rolled onto my knees and hurled into the toilet we were sitting by. “Fuck,” I groaned.

“Are you okay?” Brian sounded terrified.

“No,” I answered, still spitting the last of the vomit out of my mouth.

“I can’t believe you took that punch,” Brian commented. He pulled several squares of toilet paper off the roll and folded them neatly, reaching over and swiping it across my face, cleaning my mouth. It hurt when he got to the left side and I twitched, pulling away. “Sorry,” he said.

“I can’t believe I took it either,” I mumbled.

Brian’s voice was quiet, “Why did you?”

I stared into the bowl, at the remnants of pizza floating around in swirling patterns that if it hadn’t been puke might have been pretty. I wondered if this was how disgusting art trends started, like the guy that pisses into jars and sells them for millions of dollars.

“Nick?”

I glanced over at him, every motion I made felt huge, like there was an ocean in my head rushing side to side. “I might wanna stab you with a spork shive but nobody else is allowed to fuckin’ hurt you,” I muttered.

Brian sighed and shifted so he was squatting, leaning against the wall of the bathroom. “A spork shive, huh?” he asked.

“Man’s most feared weapon,” I muttered, “Available only at participating KFC restaurant locations.”

Brian laughed, shaking his head. “Guy knocked all the sense out of your brains,” he said quietly, but the way he said it I knew he didn’t mean it. Quite the opposite, it was almost a thank you.

“Didn’t have much to knock out,” I replied, but the way I said it was almost a you’re welcome.





Brian

Drew and Mike both came and they got us out of the bathroom and led us past Nick’s assailant out into the street where a taxi was waiting for us. The car whose alarm I’d set off was now silent and dusted with snow once more.

“What were you two thinking? Going out at two in the morning to a place like that without us?” Drew asked.

Mike just shook his head like he was somewhat used to things like this from Nick.

“Just needed to blow off steam,” I said, looking at Nick.

His face was already discoloring. It was going to be the color of a ripe eggplant by the time that bruise finished rising. I felt a lump in my throat. That could’ve been my face, my jaw that hurt, my eye swollen shut.

I felt grateful and guilty at the same time.

Nick leaned back in his seat miserably.

Back at the hotel, Drew and Mike helped us upstairs to our rooms, where we realized that neither Nick nor I had remembered our room keys and Drew went down to get a new one for us. Mike stood there, basically holding Nick up. “So how’d the fight go?” Mike asked. I could tell it’d been killing him not to ask before now, but Drew was sensible and more interested in the facts of why we were there than the gory details of what happened.

Nick replied, “He looks worse than I do.”

This wasn’t true, of course, since Nick hadn’t even gotten a swing in before the guy laid him out cold, but I didn’t say anything.

The guy had been ugly enough that it was true anyways. Even with a bruised face, Nick could’ve beat him in any beauty pageant.

When Drew came back up, the two of them got us into the room and Drew went on a long winded tirade about not leaving the hotel without them at two in the morning and then they left to go back to their own room.

Nick lay on his bed on his back like a slug.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said for the second time in twenty-four hours. “I don’t know how that fight we had got so far out of hand so quickly. I swear to you I didn’t mean any of the things you thought I said. I know that what I was trying to say was coming out wrong. I just wanted you to know that I’m here for you, like the old days.” I paused. “I didn’t mean to get you punched.”

Nick looked at me through his one eye. “You mean you didn’t hire that guy to be there to try to punch you so I’d step in and get punched myself?” he joked. He smiled with half his mouth. “Dawg, that would be a really involved way to get back at me for being an asshole. ‘Cos that’s what I was being.” He sighed. “I thought my balls were gonna freeze off when I was walking.”

“Oh man, me, too. It’s like five degrees outside according to the phone,” I said.

“No wonder,” Nick laughed.

I laughed, too, and it felt good for us both to be laughing again together. As it faded, I folded my hands in my lap and stared at him for a long moment. “Whatever happened to us?” I asked.

Nick shrugged. “I dunno.”

“It used to be easy, didn’t it? You and me?”

Nick nodded.

“I miss being your best friend,” I confessed.

Nick’s half smile returned, “You still are.”

My heart strings tugged inside me. “Even though I’m a dick?” I asked, smirking a little.

“Yeah, even though you’re a dick,” Nick said.

I laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“No I mean for whatever I did back then that made you pull away,” I told him.

Nick stared at me.

“I always wondered what it was,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t have pulled away on your own. I know it was my fault, whatever it was, and I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to say that for years, but… I’ve never…” I stopped talking.

Because I realized Nick was crying.

Chapter Eight


Nick

“Nick?” Brian sounded surprised.

“Somethings in my eye,” I lied and I tried to get up to go to the bathroom to lock him out so I could let the cloudy feeling in me float off without him staring at me but I got dizzy the second I moved and I laid back on the bed. “Fucker at the bar gave me like a concussion or something,” I groaned. “I’m not crying.”

“I didn’t say you were,” he said.

But we both knew he knew I was.

Brian moved to stand up and looked down at me. Looking up at him, it was like I was laying on that couch in the band house all over again and my nightmares were suddenly reality once more. I felt my throat seize up even more than it already was.

“Fuck. I hate crying, I hate everything to do with crying.”

Crying is a weakness, my father used to yell that at me whenever I cried when I was little. I’ve cried very frugally since then.

“Nick, it’s okay to cry.”

“No it isn’t,” I said. My throat was fire. I shook my head, “Fuck.”

He frowned.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like you did that night,” I replied.

“What night?”

“The night, Brian, the night,” I said. I struggled to roll away so he wouldn’t look at me and managed only to roll myself right off the bed and onto the floor with a thump. Brian dropped to his knees beside me and helped me right myself. I put a hand on my face where the bruise was smarting from having hit the carpet on the way down.

Brian sat down, facing me, my back against my bed and his against his, the space between the two beds not even enough for either of us to fully stretch our legs out. He stared at me for a long moment and he said slowly, “What night, Nick?”

I couldn’t look at him. I stared at my knees, at the way they bent in front of me, my feet pressed against the bottom of Brian’s bed. “It’s stupid, kinda, really,” I muttered. And suddenly it did seem stupid, stupid that I’d hold onto a grudge against him for so long when, really, it wasn’t even Brian who had done anything at all. He didn’t even know why it was such a big deal. How could he? I had never told him. I cleared my throat.

“Tell me, nick,” he urged.

I closed my eyes and shook my knee with nervous energy. “It was when my parents divorced and my mom had moved me and the other kids to that shitty apartment house in Tampa, remember? The one with the dishwasher AJ said sounded like if Jabba the Hut had a stomach ulcer?”

Brian laughed breathily at the memory of the comment. “Yeah, I remember that place.”

“Well we didn’t have enough money, even for that shitty place, ‘cos alls we had was my $75 a week and she claimed she couldn’t work ‘cos she had to drive me to and from Orlando all the time to earn that and stuff and I felt like shit… ‘cos she made me feel like shit. I was just a kid and I was the main income for my family, and that’s hard and I felt like I didn’t do enough and you know how much we were doin’ back then.”

Brian’s voice was low, “Yeah. We were hardly ever home.”

“I know, but it wasn’t enough.” I opened my eyes again, but still couldn’t bear to look at him. “So… so this night, I went to Lou’s house. I took the bus all the way from Tampa without even telling my mom, and I get to his place and he lets me in. It was like ten at night by the time I got there and he asks me what I’m doing out so late alone and I told him about my family, how - how we were - were goin’ to bed hungry and shit and how the apartment was - was all we could afford…” I felt like there was a force tightening around my throat, pulling my lungs closed.

Brian’s eyes were on me, I could feel ‘em.

“I asked him for - for more money,” I tightened the corners of my mouth, trying like hell to hold back the emotion that was building up inside me. Every fiber of my being was having to push energy toward getting the words out because desperate little hands of fear were trying to hold it back, to keep me from telling Brian the truth.

“What’d he say?” Brian asked.

My mouth had never been so dry in all my life.

I paused, biting my lip, letting courage build up in me. I looked up and my eyes met Brian’s for the first time since I’d started speaking. A hundred things passed between us… all the words I didn’t know how to say, the words my heart wouldn’t let me say.

“He said there were ways I could earn more money.”

Brian shook his head, his jaw dropping, “No… No.” He paused, just staring, absorbing the information I couldn’t speak. “Did he... hurt you?” Brian’s voice was only just barely above a whisper.

I felt my stomach turn and I looked away from Brian, at the floor, at the pattern of the carpet. “I left as soon as I realized… what he meant,” I said. The tears wouldn’t stay in my eyes now.

Brian’s voice shook. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried,” I choked.

“When?”

“That… that night,” I squeaked. My throat was so tight, and my whole face felt all red and blotchy. “I ran all the way to the band house from Lou’s, trying to get to you to tell you what was going on… It was important, I told’ja it was important but you were… with Leighanne… and you were - were busy… but I needed you, I needed you and you weren’t there, the first time ever you weren’t there when I needed you. I hated her for it and I hated… I hated you for it.”

There were tears in Brian’s eyes now too. He closed his eyes and took in a shaking, emotional breath.

“I didn’t know what else to do, Brian,” I cried, “So I just hated you for it.”

I felt so stupid, sitting there, crying like a little kid.

“I’m sorry, Nick,” he said thickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”





Brian

My heart had never felt as broken as it did sitting in that hotel room, learning that Nick had nearly been molested, right under my nose. I felt like I’d failed him. It had been my responsibility to keep him safe and I hadn’t done that. A cold creeping sensation filled me from the bottom up as Nick’s tears fell across his bruised face.

So many things very suddenly made sense about the past, like a beacon of light, suddenly everything it touched made sense. Nick hating Leighanne, Nick being angry with me, pulling away, spiraling into depression, becoming addicted to drugs and sex and falling apart. His need to be seen, his need for getting his way, being a workaholic, all the things that had infuriated me about him over all these years. It all made sense.

Nick had never had a reliable father figure in his life. All these years, I’d thought of myself as having been Nick’s father figure, but I hadn’t been. I had betrayed him at a time when he needed a father the very most, like all the other father figures he had in his life (his paternal father, Lou, me, even Kevin eventually had let him down by leaving the band when he’d gone too far into drugs and alcohol). No wonder he had animosity towards me.
I’d been a horrible friend (slash father figure) not to see it all along.

Especially when the rumors started when Lou had been arrested, when Ashley Parker Angel and the guys from *NSYNC and various other boy bands Lou had started spoke out, I should’ve known then because when we talked amongst ourselves, though Nick denied it, he was very quiet about it. Had he been sitting there during that moment of private time between the five of us, thinking of that night, internally struggling with whether to tell us about what Lou had suggested or not? Had he decided not to because nothing had actually happened, though the emotional scars were still throbbing painfully from the mere idea that Lou had laid the opportunity on the table?

He was quiet now, too.

He might be taller and bigger than me but when he did that he still kinda looked like a little kid as he sat there all bleary eyed and red-faced.

“It’s my fault,” he said quietly.

“It’s not your fault, Nick,” I said.

“It is,” he said. “This whole thing between you and me… it is my fault because I never told you. I just expected you to… to know, I guess. I didn’t give you a chance to fix it.” He shrugged. “And I’ve been such a dick to you about your voice,” he mumbled, “But… it’s only ‘cos it scares me. You asked me the other day if I wanted you to lose your voice, and the answer is I don’t. It’s the last thing I want in the whole world, the thought of it scares the bejeebus out of me.”

I licked my lips. “It scares the bejeebus out of me, too,” I said.

Nick ran his hand through his hair. “We’re both just scared ain’t we?”

I nodded. “We are,” I answered. I sighed and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling.

“You’re right about one thing. I can’t imagine what it’d feel like to be you, to be the one going through it,” Nick said quietly.

I took a deep breath, “It kinda feels like if Superman was put on a Kryptonite IV.”

Nick frowned, “That would suck.”

“It does suck.”

Nick thought for a moment. “There’s gotta be a way to fix it. Your voice I mean.”

“The doctors just say I need to work on the therapy,” I said with a shrug.

Nick chewed his lower lip. “Yeah. That therapy.”

I looked at him thoughtfully. “I’m sorry I let you down, Frack,” I said.

“I’m sorry I held a grudge on you for like twelve years,” he answered.

I reached over and shook his knee with my palm. “We’re gonna be okay, kid,” I said.

Nick nodded slowly.

“Your face is the most brilliant shade of purple I’ve ever seen,” I added, tilting my head to get a good look at it.

Nick’s smile spread slowly, “Do I look like a fuckin’ Spartan warrior or something?”

“You’re a regular Agamemnon,” I replied, getting up. I held out my hand to help him up. “Let’s put some ice on that thing before your whole face looks like a pool toy.”

Nick laughed and I attempted to pull him to his feet, but he’s a lot bigger than me and my help was less necessary than it was comical, and he pushed himself up from the floor by leaning against the nightstand.





Nick

There was an unexplainable weight that was lifted off my shoulders after our talk. We walked from the hotel room to the vending and ice machines and filled a handtowel with ice cubes, which I held against my face. It stung at first, but it was a relief, too. I felt like once the bruise was cleared up that all the problems of my whole life would be gone with it.

Well, except one.

I sat in bed long after Brian had fallen asleep, my computer open, tongue in cheek in concentration, looking up Brian’s condition. If Superman had a kryptonite problem, then, damn it, I was going to find a way to fix it. In my Google search, I saw all the exercises he’d been doing the other night - stick your tongue out as far as possible, massage above your thyroid, hum, learning to yawn on command… But there was a lot of information about the condition. For example, in addition to being something that’s caused by respiratory and esophageal issues, it’s also a learned condition, meaning it was something that could be developed over a long period of time misusing the vocal chords.

I chewed my lips.

In 2009, when we were in Japan to film our music video for Bigger, Brian had caught the Swine Flu. He’d been out for weeks with this bad ass flu that had fucked with every possible part of his body. I thought about it and, though the problem had been developing prior to that point, it had gotten considerably worse since then. It’d been happening since the Unbreakable tour, really, but only really bad since the H1N1 had crawled into Brian’s system.

We’d all abused our vocal chords, really, I thought. Over the years since we’d started, we’d all overused our voices for months - years, even - on end, not really practicing the vocal rests and silence periods the way that professionals are recommended to do. We were too damn busy, honestly, to ever indulge in those kinds of breaks.

Actually, after researching more about what Brian’s condition was exactly and what caused it, I was kinda surprised that all five of us weren’t suffering from it by now.

The good news was this though: if it was something he’d learned to do… wasn’t it true that it was something he could unlearn to do?

I glanced over at Brian where he lay, sleeping peacefully, head rolled to one side, eyes wobbling in REM sleep. Years had been stolen from us, I thought, by the things we’d been through and the things we never said. Well, no more. It was time to fix the things that had been broken.

And we were gonna start with Brian’s voice.





Brian

When I woke up in the morning, Nick wasn’t in bed.

“Nick?” I called, my voice breaking mid-word. I cleared my throat, turning my head back. It was always groggy first thing in the morning. “Nick?” I tried again, sitting up.

He came out of the bathroom and my first instinct was to cringe because his poor face was so swollen and bruised. I felt bad. “Oh man that looks bad,” I said.

“I know,” he replied. He shuffled over to the bed and sat down with a sigh, “It’ll get better though. At least today’s an off day and tomorrow’s all radio.” We were driving the five hours to Frankfurt, Germany later that day - just Nick and I, Mike and Drew were flying, this was thanks to Jen’s grand plan to help make Nick and I be friends again. I wondered if we sent her a picture of us getting along again if she’d book us a flight, too.

“Video killed the radio star,” I mumbled. I reached for the room service menu and flipped it open, looking at the options.

Nick cleared his throat, “So I decided something last night.”

“What’s that?” I asked, looking up.

“I decided I’m gonna help you with your therapy,” he declared.

“You are?”

“Yes.”

I stared at him for a moment. “How?”

“I researched it last night,” he said, “And it says it’s a learned condition.”

“Right,” I nodded slowly, wondering where he was going with this.

“So… so I’ma help you unlearn it,” he said. He waved his hands at the menu, “Order tea with honey, ‘cos we gotta lot of work to do,” he said, and he got up. “I’ma take a shower. I want bacon. Lots of bacon. Lauren ain’t around to tell me no.” I watched as he disappeared into the bathroom.

I ran my hand to my throat once the door closed.

I’d been planning to tell Nick about me leaving the band during our ride to Germany. But suddenly my mind was filled with mental images of Nick helping me to reclaim control on my vocals. If I could control them… then I wouldn’t need to quit the band. I could stay working with the Backstreet Boys, stay touring, stay singing. I could back all the things I felt like I’d lost over the past several years since the muscle tension dysphonia had developed and I’d be free again… free to be me again… free to be Brian again.

I nodded slowly, wrapping my mind around the idea that maybe last night had been nothing shy of a miracle. Maybe that creeper at the bar had done more good than harm, whatever Nick’s face might look like. Maybe everything could go back to the way it was, years ago, when we were happy and touring and Frick & Frack. Maybe the glory days were about to return, finally, after years and years of praying for a second chance.

I called down to room service and ordered Nick the biggest plate of bacon you ever did see.

Chapter Nine


Nick

We left around noon after we’d eaten breakfast and hung out in the hotel for a bit. We dropped Drew and Mike off at the airport on the way out of Paris, then it was just me, Brian, and the open road ahead of us as we drove northeast toward Frankfurt. The sun was out, shining off the snow that lined the freeway, but Brian was driving so I was free to lean back in my seat, sunglasses on, and ignore the blinding reflection of light on ice crystals.

I ran my hands over the auxiliary output cable I’d strung from the car’s stereo to my iPod and flicked my thumb over the menu on the player. I was constructing a playlist of songs I knew Brian knew. I had a very vague plan for how to begin my personal take on Brian’s therapy and this was one of the first steps. I’d get him to sing in a place where he was less stressed, like there was no pressure, just to be sure that it wasn’t entirely stress related. Then, we’d move on to some of the exercises his therapist had taught him, just in a more Nickified way. I’d teach the guy how to sing all over again if I had to, the same way I’d been taught when I was a kid.

I had read this really cool article on Google the night before about these twins in Boston who participated in a singing therapy program to help repair brain damages after one of them had a stroke. The kid hadn’t been able to speak for over a year ‘til someone up there realized that singing and talking were very different neurologically, and decided to give it a whirl getting the kid to sing. Lo and behold, singing was possible even when speech wasn’t because it was controlled by a different part of the brain. Maybe, I’d reasoned, we could teach that part of the brain to be stronger than the part that didn’t properly control his vocal chords anymore. And if Lauren had taught me anything, it was that strength comes from repeated training, from doing something. You can’t sit around and theorize about it. You gotta do it.

So I pressed play.

Brian looked up as the first bars of Thriller filled the car as we shot up the Interstate, a look of excitement gleaming in his eyes.



An hour and two McDonalds stops later, we were jamming down the highway still, a cup clasped in Brian’s hand as he gripped the wheel with the other and I chewed on a handful of fries as I danced in my seat to the beat of Wham!

George Michael, eat your heart out you bastard, I thought, ‘cos Brian and I were killin’ it.

“You take the grey skies out of my way-ayyy,” Brian sang, bopping his head.

“You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day,” I slid through the notes, popping fries at the end.

“Turned a bright spark into a flame,” Brian continued, “My beats per minute never been the same….”

“'Cause you're my lady,” I sang to him.

“And I'm your fool,” Brian answered.

“It makes me crazy when you act so cruel,” I grinned over at him, “Come on, baby --”

“Let's not fight!”

“We'll go dancing--”

Then our voices blended:

“Everything will be alright!
Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that high
Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin’ on going solo
Wake me up before you go-go
Take me dancing tonight…”

Brian tilted his head back, fully immersed into the moment, and belted out, “Wanna hit that hiiiiiiiiiiiigh…”

I grinned as he continued on singing the next repetition of the chorus by himself. I stared at him as I chewed the little crunchy fries at the bottom of the bag (you know, the best ones). His voice didn’t crack at all as he sang carefree as anything, hands beating against the steering wheel, his eyes dancing with excitement, face flushed. I licked the salt from my lips.

Maybe this would be even easier than I’d thought.

He looked over when he realized I wasn’t singing. “Hey, why’d you stop for?” he asked, reaching for the volume knob. “We were doing good.”

I nodded, “Yeah we were,” I replied. “You were.”

Brian thought about it for a moment, “Well I mean I’ve made it longer than a song without it breaking before,” he pointed out.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But still. It’s a start.”

Brian nodded, “Yeah.” He hesitated, then he grinned over at me a moment. “Thanks for… for deciding to help me,” he said after a few moments. “I mean, it’s been getting -- well it’s been hard,” he admitted, “I mean, picturing, you know, going on with my voice like this.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about --”

I shrugged, “That’s what friends are for,” I said. I patted him on the back and turned to toss my empty fry package into the little trash bag we’d started on the floor as the next song started.





Brian

Nick was just so damn proud of himself that when he interrupted me, I couldn’t go back to finish my sentence. I’d been about to tell him what I’d been thinking about. Just incase it didn’t work out and I did have to leave the band after all he’d have some time to get comfortable with the idea. But how could I bust his excited, egotistical bubble? He just looked so pleased… his smile was so wide… and it’d been such a long time since I’d seen him smile like that…

So on we drove, singing along to various pop songs that he’d loaded onto his iPod. Everthing from Maroon 5 to Katy Perry to Neil Diamond and back again. We sang about phone booths and fireworks and blue jeans all the way to Germany and when we crossed the border, Nick and I stopped at a rest area to go inside the little welcome building so he could use the restroom. I stood outside and stared at one of those little kiosks of brochures as he went, picking up random booklets and flipping through the tiny pages, looking at pictures of various tourist attractions.

My phone vibrated and played an old country song that reminded me of Kevin, his ringtone. I cleared my throat, “Hey,” I greeted him, staring down at a brochure about a cathedral in Berlin that boasted itself as a WWII historical site.

“Hey,” Kevin’s voice was slow.

Slower than usual, I mean.

“What’s wrong?” I asked because whenever Kevin talked slower than usual, even, there was something wrong.

“Nick got into a bar fight?”

I hesitated, “Well. Not exactly a bar fight,” I said, pausing. “I mean, he got punched in a bar, and I guess it was the result of a - a kind of fight, but -- not like… a lot… really. Why?” I realized what was weird about Kevin asking that, “How did you know about that?”

“The news,” Kevin answered. “It’s on the news. Apparently some photographer witnessed it. Nick comes off as a real asshole the way the story’s told. Adds beautifully to the -uh- alleged threats he delivered last week.”

I sighed. “It wasn’t like that,” I said, defending Nick.

“You know how the media is,” Kevin replied. “Anyways. You might wanna tell him what’s up before someone else does or he finds out on his own. His mother’s been talking to E News. They posted some shit about her saying he needs anger management classes, saying this is how his father started out before he got abusive.” Kevin’s voice was tense.

I ran my hand over my face, flattening my nose and groaned as my lips pulled tight under my palm. “Damn it,” I muttered. Nick’s good mood was as good as out the window with this new information.

He came out of the bathroom and started walking toward me, his eyes still sparkling with amusement from our ride thus far. We still had a couple hours to go. “Look, Kev, I gotta go,” I said. “But I’ll tell him.” I hung up before Kevin could answer because the last thing I needed was Nick overhearing anything we were saying. I shoved the phone into my pocket.

“Who was that?” Nick asked. He glanced at the brochure I was holding and made a face.

“Kevin.” I answered. Then, to change the subject, I waved the brochure at him, “Not a fan of the fancy church visit?”

“God would fuckin’ smite me if I walked into a church,” Nick answered, heading for the door of the welcome center, “Instant lightening bolt to the heart.” He mimicked stabbing himself in the heart and made a noise something like I imagine a strangled cat would sound like. I assume it was supposed to be an electrocution sound effect but it got lost somewhere in translation.

I stood there looking down at the brochures in my hand for a moment, even as Nick went out the door into the cold, where his breath floated away from his mouth in a cloud. My mind spun over what Kev had told me. Nick came back to the door. “Dude, B-Rok. You comin’?”

“Sorry.” I shoved the brochures back into a random slot on the kiosk and rushed out after him.





Nick

It was my turn to drive and Brian was sitting in the passenger seat. The radio was nothing but a dull hiss of static background noise on the speakers turned down so low we could barely hear it. I held onto the wheel, stealing quick glances at Brian’s hunched form in the next seat as he stared at his hands on his knees.

“You a’ight?” I asked him, “You’ve been quiet since the welcome center.”

“Yeah-huh,” he replied. He paused, still staring at his hands.

“Are you sure, dawg?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yep, uh-huh,” he nodded.

I sniffed. “Well then, please tell me what exactly is soooo fascinating about your hands then, will ya?”

Brian looked up, confused, “What?”

“You’ve been staring at your hands for about a half hour now,” I answered.

“I have?”

“Okay, what the hell is wrong?” I asked, “Seriously?”

Brian licked his lips. “Okay. I’m gonna tell you about something, but you gotta not freak out, okay?”

“Okay…” I was a little scared. I obviously was not gonna like whatever it was he was about to tell me or else he wouldn’t have attached this disclaimer to it. I braced myself.

“So. Kevin called,” he said.

I nodded slowly, “Okay.”

Brian stared at me a moment. “Okay. So there was a photographer at the club last night. Your, uh, the -- the fight - that was on the news.”

I groaned, “I must look like a pussy.”

I went down so quick. It hadn’t been so much of a fight as much as a brutal ass beating.

Or face beating as the case may be.

Brian cleared his throat, “Not exactly a - pu-- wuss, no,” he said, editing my language.

I glanced at him.

“It was kinda spun to be a little more… uh… well, like… I guess they made it look like a more, uh, involved fight.”

I raised an eyebrow. “They made me look good?”

“Well. Not good...”

“Brian, cut to the chase, please,” I said.

“Your mom toldenewsyouneedangermanagementtherapy,” he spit the words out all strung together like one big long word. Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious ain’t got shit on Brian’s new word.

All I managed to pull out of it was your mom.

I pulled the car over, though. I could feel my muscles tightening. Cars whizzed by us as we slowed on the shoulder of the highway. “Excuse me?”

Brian took a deep breath, “Your mom told E News that you… you might need… anger management therapy.” He cringed.

I ran my hand through my hair.

“Nick, her opinion doesn’t really matter, though, right? Like the fans know she’s full of… of bull, right? So why’s it matter,” his voice was desperate for me to agree.

I shook my head and turned to face the wheel. “Well fuck,” I cussed and I pressed my forehead to my white knuckles, which were gripping the wheel. “Fuck.”

Brian frowned. “You okay?”

“No I’m not fuckin’ okay, for Christ’s sakes,” I snapped. “Fuckin’ my mother’s always gotta be doing some shit ass thing and --”

Brian frowned.

“Yanno what, fuck. This is bullshit.” I shook my head, “Anger management my ass. I’ll fuckn’ anger management anybody wanna say that crap to my face.”

“Not exactly the strongest argument against the accusation,” Brian mumbled.

I scowled.





Brian

Nick stayed quiet for over ten minutes following that. I sat there fidgeting, feeling awkward in the silence. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t tell if the tension radiating from Nick was aimed at me or a general anger at the world, so I didn’t quite dare to speak. I was afraid to ruin our almost-one-whole-day-without-fighting streak. It sounds stupid but that was kind of a monumental streak for Nick and I at the time. A whole day without us fighting was like a year in normal people time.

I thought back to times back in the day, when Nick would be mad at me and I’d diffuse it and we’d end up sitting and laughing instead of fighting. I needed something like that to do now. But honestly, I wasn’t really sure, even then, what it was I did that cheered Nick up so well. Back then, I really had been kind of like a Nick Whisperer, like all his girlfriends always thought. But those were different times and also most of the things I could recall specifically doing involved stuff like random cartwheels, backflips and what not, none of which I could do in the interior of a moving vehicle.

I swallowed back some of the anxiety.

Nick sighed and shifted his hands on the wheel, his eyes glistening with frustration.

I reached for my ipod from my backpack and started sifting through songs on it until I found what I was looking for. I plugged it into the AUX cord Nick had left hanging over the rearview mirror when we’d gotten out at the welcome center. I plugged in my player and turned the volume up a little. Nick glanced at my fingers on the dial of the radio, then shifted his eyes back to the road.

I hit play.

Why do you build me up, build me up Buttercup baby just to let me down?

The music blasted through the speakers.

I stared at Nick.

He stared ahead.

I cleared my throat and jumped in a couple lines in.

“Worst of all… you never call baby when you say you will,” I sang, “But I love you still! I need yooou… more than anyone darrrlin’...”

He wasn’t biting.

Or singing, for that matter.

“You know that I have from the start…” I continued, “So build me up, buttercup, but don’t break my heart…”

Nick reached for the volume control, turning the music down again. He paused, glancing back and forth between me and the road. “Do you think she’s right? Do you think I need therapy? Am I fucked up?”

“No,” I replied quickly.

Too quickly.

Nick frowned, “You didn’t even think about it.”

“I didn’t have to,” I answered.

He sighed. “Brian, why --” he mumbled, but then he paused, contemplating whether he was gonna finish the sentence he’d set out to say.

“Why what?”

Nick chewed his lip. “Nevermind.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, “New rule between us. We talk shit out. No more letting things simmer for twelve years. We talk about things. We’re gonna be those guys. No secrets, no hiding things, no lies. We tell each other everything. Deal?”

Nick’s smile spread slowly, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Tell each other everything.” He nodded, “Deal.”

“Okay. So now why what?”

Nick took a deep breath, “Why can’t my family just either love me or, if they hate me why can’t they leave me alone?” he asked, glancing over at me.

I contemplated the question a moment, not wanting to give him a form answer like forget them or whatever. I looked over. “Maybe… maybe they only think they hate you. Maybe… maybe they love you deep down but they hate themselves too much to know it and they can’t just leave you alone because… because they don’t want to. Because they need you.”

Nick gripped the wheel tighter.

“The same reason we never left each other alone?”

Nick laughed, but it was a heavy laugh, filled with emotion. “Jesus Christ, Brian,” he said, shaking his head. He looked over at me. “Maybe.”

“I mean don’t engage them, but… maybe it’s the candle in the dark. Maybe it’s a sign that there will come a day when you’ll all understand each other again. Maybe.” I shrugged. “Just don’t let their harshness ruin you.”

“Like you didn’t let mine?” he asked. He shook his head, “You couldda quit the band like I told you to do. But you didn’t listen to me. You stuck around. And I’m glad.” He smiled brilliantly.

I bit my lip.

In retrospect… that’s when I should’ve told him.

Then none of the rest of it would’ve happened.

Chapter Ten


Nick

It was late, almost midnight, and snowing a little by the time we got to the hotel in Germany. As I parked the car, Brian leaned forward to roll his eyes up at the dark grey sky, a nervous look on his face. “I’m glad we got here before this weather rolled in,” he commented.

I nodded fervently.

Once we collected all our bags and headed inside, we were given one room to split yet again - not a big surprise. We shuffled up the elevator and down the hall with all our crap strung over our shoulders. I pushed the hotel key into the room door and then into my mouth as I kicked the door open and walked into the room. Brian followed me, “Good Lord, we need to turn the heat up in here,” he muttered, feeling the cool air in the room.

I nudged the light with my shoulder and stopped short. Brian slammed into my back. “Fuck,” I said, dropping the hotel room key and my luggage.

“What?” Brian asked. I felt him lean against me on his tip-toes to look over my shoulder. “Uh oh,” he said once he saw what I’d seen.

One king-sized bed in the middle of the room.

“Fuck no,” I said and I walked quickly to the desk where a phone sat under the glow of a lamp. I pressed the zero button for the front desk.

As the phone rang, Brian wandered in and sat down on the edge of the bed, biting his lip and looking at me with hopeful eyes. The front desk guy answered with a thick German accent. “Uh yeah, sorry… Do you speak English?” I asked.

He answered in German, but put me on hold. I hoped that meant he was getting someone that did speak English.

I sighed and waited, looking over at Brian as ran his hands over his thighs, tapping his fingers on his jeans, smiling uncomfortably at me. Neither of us wanted to actually look at the actual bed.

A moment later the front desk guy came back on the line, “I am sorry,” he said in a broken, thick accent. I had a feeling he was using like his cell phone or something to read off a translation service. “The English speaker will be in the morning here.”

“I need another room,” I said, “Tonight.”

He paused.

“Room. Two beds. We need two beds.”

“I am sorry,” he repeated.

“Dude, I need a room with two beds.” I pulled my own phone out and opened Google translate. “Uh… zwei betten? Ein… weiterer raum?” He spewed off way too much German for me to even start to try to spell into the translator. I smacked my forehead. “Bitte. Zwei betten.” But he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. I sighed and hung up. I looked at Brian.

Brian nodded, knowing without me saying what happened. He chewed his lower lip a second. “Well,” he said. “It ain’t like we haven’t slept together before.” He paused. “In… in the same bed, I mean.” He’d flushed at the mere words.

Like I didn’t know that, being 50% of that equation.

Only Brian could fucking embarrass himself like that.

I bit back the urge to make a fuck buddy joke.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said.

“Yeah, not the end of the world,” I agreed. “We can make this work.”

“Yeah. Of course we can,” he agreed.

“Yeah.”

We both sat in our respective seats for a couple minutes, then he rolled himself up to his feet. “Anyways. I’m gonna… put on sweatpants or whatever.” He went over and started rooting around the bags. I stared at the bed, my eyes wandering over the span of it. King size beds are usually pretty big. At that moment, it looked about the same size as a saltine cracker.

Brian disappeared into the bathroom.

I snapped a picture of the bed and texted it to Lauren.

Oh are you suggesting some sexting babe? she replied.

That’s where me AND BRIAN are sleeping tonight, I answered.

There was an inordinately long pause between my response and her starting to type again. One bed? Together? she typed.

Yep.

Okay I know you guys are bonding and stuff but…this is much.

I KNOW!!!!! I typed.

Well. Whatever it takes to bring yall closer and stuff. She said and sent a winky emoji.

The fuck is that supposed to mean? I asked.

Just be safe is all.

I typed out, Seriously do not even joke about such things.

Brian came back out of the bathroom. He looked awkward, carrying his jeans, which he shoved into his bag again. He paused, hovering by the end of the bed. “Well, bathroom’s yours,” he said, picking up the room service menu and scanning it with his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. I went and brushed my teeth and changed my t-shirt and all that stuff. I stood in the bathroom a moment too long, staring at myself in the mirror. I took a deep breath. It really wasn’t the end of the world, I told myself. It was just a cherry on top of a pretty shitty sundae of bullshit that I’d been served up. My face still looked discolored and the whole thing with my mom was weighing over me. “Anger management,” I muttered, rubbing some wrinkle cream I’d stolen from Lauren onto my forehead and around the corners of my eyes. “If I needed anger management I’d be downstairs ripping somebody’s jugular out for making me sleep with Brian,” I said to myself. I leaned closer to the mirror, “Fucking look in a mirror you wanna talk about needing therapy mom…” I stepped back and inspected myself, deciding not to think about the whole anger management/mom being a bitch thing anymore. “Looking good, Carter,” I told myself. I was ready for the night.

When I went back into the room, Brian was laying on the bed, on top of the covers, on the left side. I stood at the corner. “Push over, man,” I said.

He looked up at me, “This is my side.”

“The left is my side at home, though,” I complained.

“I can’t sleep on the right,” he said.

“Neither can I,” I argued.

Brian was chewing on a Red Vine. God knows where he got it. I wondered if the vending machine had Red Vines in it. And if it did, what other American treats would be there that I could get away with binge eating in Lauren’s absence? Then I realized I needed to refocus on claiming my side of the bed.

“Well, I’m older than you.”

“So be more mature and take the other side,” I replied.

“I was here first,” Brian answered.

“I took a punch for you.”

He hesitated at that one, then with a groan rolled onto the right side. “Spoiled,” he muttered as he went.

I sat down on the left and reached over, grabbing the package of Red Vines off his chest. “Old man,” I said.

“Baby,” he said, taking the pack back after I’d taken half the strips out.

“Asshole,” I muttered, taking a bite of one of the Red Vines.

Brian snuggled his head into the pillow under his neck, stretching his feet toward the end of the bed and watching the TV, which was playing a futbol game on repeat. He chewed the licorice in silence.

I grinned to myself because back in the day we’d had little insult hurling moments like that all the time. It wasn’t about starting a fight. It had a weird almost bonding sort of vibe to it, despite the harsh words we were saying. I dunno why, it’s one of those things that I think chicks don’t do but guys just kinda get it. Kinda like when chicks call each other bitches or sluts for no reason.

I chewed mine, too, also silent until a shitty call happened in the game and we both reacted with a curse at the TV. Brian threw one of the strips of candy at the screen. “What the fuck was that?” he demanded of the TV, and I laughed at him, mostly at the fact that he’d dropped an F-bomb in a casual manner.

Brian grinned over at me as I cackled.

“This ain’t so bad,” he commented.





Brian

It was hotter than hell in the hotel room when I woke up. I blinked into the pillow, snuffing in a dusty, foreign scent. I groaned and went to toss the blankets from me when I realized I wasn’t under blankets. I was under Nick.

He was spooning me.

I jumped up and he flipped off me, rolling almost off the bed, but catching himself just before he fell over the edge as I backed to the window, my hand groping for the thermostat on the heater under the sill. “The fuuuuck,” Nick groaned, recovering from his rude awakening. His hair stood up in ridiculous tufts from every angle.

“You were spooning me,” I snapped.

“Was not,” Nick groaned, his voice muddling together in a blur.

“Yeah, you kinda were,” I answered. My voice broke as I said it and I frowned and ran my hand over my adam’s apple.

Nick rubbed his face with his palm. “Ugh.” He covered his eyes. “Jesus it’s like a fucking furnace in here.”

“I just turned the heater down,” I told him.

On the TV, the futbol had turned into some kind of late night sports talk show or something. Three guys were laughing at a screen showing a pig running with a soccer ball. I turned the TV off, staring at Nick as he dropped back into his spot on the bed. He looked over at me. “Dawg, get back in bed.”

“Are you gonna keep your paws off me?” I asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he answered.

I crawled back onto the bed slowly, pulling the blankets over me this time as he stayed over them. It was hotter than hellfire under there but it was better than being felt up by Nick. I rolled so our backs were touching.

I thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he asked, “Completely seriously… Do you think I need anger management therapy?”

I thought about it. “I mean, you do have a temper,” I replied.

He was quiet. Then he shifted, rolling so he was on his side, facing me. I rolled onto my back and stared up at him from the pillow. “But, like, I get angry over, like, normal stuff, right? Like stuff I should be angry about?”

I shrugged. “Most of the time.”

Nick contemplated this. “I’ma try to be less angry about stuff.”

“I mean it couldn’t hurt,” I replied.

“Thanks B.” He rolled back over and snuggled onto the pillow on his side, back to me. Then he reached over and turned off his lamp, plunging us into darkness.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.





Nick

I poked Brian’s shoulder.

He nuzzled deeper against the pillow.

So, I poked him again. “B-Rok,” I whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Wake up,” I urged him.

“Why?”

“‘Cos it’s mornin’.”

He took a deep breath through those big ass nostrils of his and rolled onto his back, groggy and bleary eyed. He stretched slowly… then his eyes drifted closed again.

“Brian. C’mon, we got interviews soon,” I said, “And we gotta do your vocal therapy stuff before we go. Wake up.”

He opened his eyes and stared up at me, more alert this time. “You’re really gonna do the therapy stuff with me?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I swear. C’mon. Get up.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m up.” He sat up on the bed, groaning as he went.

I got up and got the cup of hot tea I’d made him from the desk and put it in his hand. “Here,” I said, “Mint green tea with honey.” He took it. “It’ll help loosen up your throat,” I explained, like he didn’t already know that.

“Thanks,” he said, breathing in the scent of it.

I grabbed my own cup from the desk and sipped it, sitting in the hardback chair and looking over at Brian, one leg crossed over the other as we sat there drinking tea like a couple of old British women or something.

When we finished, I took the cups and piled them on the room service tray, which I slid out into the hall by the door. Brian was crosslegged on the bed, holding his toes in his hands when I turned back. I sat on the bed, too, facing him at the other end of it, and crossed my legs also. I raised my eyebrows. “I’m ready,” I told him. “Are you ready?”

Brian looked like he wasn’t sure. “I’m ready.”

“Okay.” I said. I took a deep breath. “So. What do you do first?”

“Well, um, we start by, um, waking the muscles up a little bit... “ I watched as he brought his hands up to his neck, right under his jaw on both sides and massaged the muscles there in tight circles, his fingers migrating slowly forward around his throat. I mimicked him. My fingers felt clammy and a chill went up my spine as I roamed my fingertips towards the front of my neck and back under my ears again in little motions, just like he was doing. It felt weird sitting on the bed doing this stuff with him, but I swallowed back my fear of looking weird. After all, anything I was doing he did first and there wasn’t anybody else to see us there.

Finally, after I was sure my neck was gonna be bruised from all the massaging of the neck muscles, Brian said, “Okay, um, next is warming it up inside. We gotta hum the scales, kinda… like this…” He tilted his head back as far as it would go, eyes closed, and hummed high to low then low to high, moving his head back and forth from hanging all the way back to hanging all the way forward ‘til his chin touched his chest.

As we sat there all humming and stretching and leaning and massaging, I realized why Brian was so self-conscious about this stuff. It sounded and felt pretty stupid, like even though it was just me and him in the room I felt like there were people pointing and laughing at me. I felt really bad for actually having pointed and laughed at him the other night, whatever my excuse was. There was nothing funny about this. It was moderately humiliating and, for a professional singer, it was pretty humbling, too. It felt a lot like the first time I went to a gym with Lauren, back when I was fat, and I was trotting on the treadmill for like a tenth of the time she was spending on the machine next to mine. I was still out of breath ten minutes later when she “called it quits” because she felt bad making me stand there watching her. I remember looking around and feeling like everyone was looking at me and making fun of me, asking themselves why in hell Lauren was with me when she looked so good and I looked so dumb.

The therapy really did stretch my vocal chords, though. I could feel the wind moving through my throat as it vibrated in and out, exercising my most precious muscles. I could tell that they really must be helpful with Brian’s condition -- especially since Brian’s voice got steadily stronger and stronger as we worked our way through the steps. So even though it felt stupid to be sitting there, bleating like goats, singing scales, massaging ourselves and all that, I didn’t regret doing it because it was helping.

When we finally got to the end and Brian looked at me, expecting a reaction.

I suddenly had a lot more respect for what he was going through and the work he was doing to fix it.

“That was good,” I said to him, and he smiled. “Was it good for you?”

Brian laughed and grabbed a pillow, hauckin’ it at me, “Don’t ask me that after waking up in my bed, man!”





Brian

“Dude that was the loudest fuckin’ fart I have ever heard,” Nick hooted. We were sitting in the back of the car, on the way from a radio station to a magazine interview, and we were laughing deliriously, falling over in our seats. Mike and Drew stared at us from their seat as Nick tumbled over laughing, legs flailing into the air. “Oh my fuck did ya hear it man? Did you hear it?”

“Yeah, holy shit,” I was coughing I was laughing so hard, “How could you not? I swear to God, somewhere, somebody just went into the lock and hold position thinkin’ the next atomic bomb landed!”

“Lock and hold,” Nick wheezed.

The poor fan who had won the radio contest had been betrayed by her own body during the photo and let out a gaseous honk so loud it might’ve broken the sound barrier just as the shutter clicked. Somehow, Nick and I had held in all the fart jokes ‘til after the girl left, her cheeks red and praying, I’m sure, that we hadn’t heard it.

“I thought I was going to die,” Nick choked the words out, “I didn’t wanna embarrass her. I was dying inside, though.”

“I know,” I laughed, “I could tell. Your face. I almost laughed just looking at you.”

“If you’d even so much as breathed in a laughing-like-manner I would’ve lost it, man,” Nick giggled hysterically.

Mike and Drew exchanged a look as we had this whole conversation. Then Mike broke in, “What the hell happened to you two?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Drew chimed in, “You’re like -- getting along.”

“Really well,” Mike added, nodding.

Nick regained his composure slowly, leaning up, still wheezing a little. “We talked,” I replied. “Got some stuff worked out.” I looked at Nick with a smile.

“Yeah we’re like friends again and shit,” Nick said, nodding.

“Well. It’s good to see,” Mike said with a smile.

It was good to feel, too. I hadn’t felt so close to Nick in a decade as I did right then. Not because of the fart jokes, I just mean in general. We were doing really good. Between the talk we’d had in France and the time on the drive to Germany and that morning, doing the vocal therapy exercises together, I felt like it was the old days when Nick and I were inseparable. I hated to admit it, but the evil plot the fellas had of sticking us together for a whole promo run alone had really worked. The stars had aligned for us and we’d managed to work on issues long buried. He was really my Frack again. I had this warm, comfortable feeling that filled me up, head to toe, like I’d been missing a piece for ten years and finally that piece had been replaced where it belonged.

We should’ve done this years ago, I thought.

The car pulled up to the magazine’s office and came to a stop. Drew and Mike climbed out and Drew held the door open for us. “Hopefully, nobody lets one rip in here,” I said, scooting across the seat and getting out, restarting Nick’s giggles as he climbed out of the car behind me.

Chapter Eleven


Nick

We were so busy all day doing all the interviews and whatever that I completely forgot to have our room changed out and that night Brian and I ended up sharing the same bed again. We’d also forgotten to leave the heater running while we were out. I wiggled my feet under the sheets, the heater humming loudly. Brian was sitting in the desk chair, his hands over the heater vent like a homeless dude in a back alley over a trashcan fire. “It’s fucking cold,” I complained.

Brian rubbed his fingers together. “It’s winter,” he said.

“This is why I live in Florida and California, where Winter doesn’t happen,” I commented.

“It isn’t exactly a regular occurrence in Georgia, either,” he replied.

I rubbed my legs together, like a cricket or something, trying to generate body heat via friction. “If someone set fire to me right now I’d be like thank you,” I commented.

Brian chuckled.

“If I died and went to hell right now, it’d be heaven,” I added dramatically. I pulled the blankets up over my head.

“You ain’t goin’ to hell,” Brian said. His tone was casually serious.

I peeked out from under the covers. “Course I am,” I answered. “You’ve said so yourself.”

He looked over at me. “What?”

“You’ve said I’m goin’ to hell a ton of times,” I repeated.

Brian looked surprised, “When?”

“When I was using,” I answered simply. Brian leaned away from the heater, though his hands were still stretched toward it. His face is screwed up with confusion. “When, though? I don’t remember ever saying that to you.” The expression on his face and the tone of his voice isn’t one I know how to describe.

“I dunno,” I replied. “There’s been a couple times. Mostly during that hiatus before Never Gone, when I was using really bad and doing my solo stuff and you went all like uber-Christian. Robo-Christian.”

Brian frowned.

“There was one night in New York, we all went out, just before Kevin left the band. It was raining out. We were at that club - that one Howie liked back then. I think it’s closed now…”

Brian’s eyes glazed as he tried to remember what I was talking about.

“...and I was grinding with that girl on the dance floor and AJ was drinking that beer - the last beer, remember? Before he relapsed that time for like a weekend?”

The memory finally came to him - I could tell the way his eyes lit up at the words. He looked at me in surprise. “I thought you were beyond wasted, I can’t believe you remembered that night at all,” he admitted.

“I mean I was knockered,” I replied. “I only remember, like, bits and pieces, but… I sobered up real fast when you told me I was gonna go to hell. That’s, like, the ultimate insult to a Christian, ain’t it?”

Brian took a deep breath and stared down at the heater vent.

“Another time was when you wanted me to go to that Christian music festival you were doin’ at Disney and I was like no, and you asked why, and I said because Christian music is shit and you got pissed and told me off.”

Brian frowned.

I shrugged. “It ain’t a big deal. I mean, half the time I’m not even positive if I believe in Hell or Heaven. They’re kinda vague beliefs for me. I mean, I wanna believe it, but sometimes my brain just… I dunno.” I waved my hands. “But yeah, you’re the one that told me I’m goin’ to hell.”

“I didn’t mean it,” he said, “Obviously I didn’t even remember it.” Brian sighed, “I’m sorry I’ve been so judgmental.”

“S’all good,” I replied.

He shook his head, “Really, it’s not. That’s not what being a Christian looks like. I’ve been a bad representation of it.”

I shrugged again, “About on par for all the experiences I’ve had around Christians,” I commented.

Brian was still shaking his head, “Still not right. Maybe we’ve all been a bad representation.”

“Maybe,” I replied. I pulled the blankets back up around my chin and stared up at the ceiling. “Still, though, like I said, right now hell wouldn’t be entirely unheavenly.” I smirked.

“Hopefully the heater will warm it up in here soon,” he answered, getting up and pushing the desk chair back into the desk. He came over, “Now I’m gonna get under the covers, too, but you gotta, like, stay over there on your side.”

“As cold as it is in here?” I replied, “We’re so gonna end up spooning just to stay warm. And besides, don’t lie, you like it.” My voice dipped suggestively and I wiggled my eyebrows at him with a smirk.

Brian laughed, “In your dreams, Carter.”

“In yours, Littrell.”





Brian

By the next morning, day one of TV interviews in Germany, Nick’s face looked much better. I was glad he wouldn’t have to go on a bunch of shows with that awful bruise he’d acquired and I could tell he was relieved, too. Answering questions about it had become really awkward throughout the radio interviews - during which Jane Carter’s accusations had come up during every conversation about the fight.

We left the heater on this time when we left the hotel, having learned our lesson about turning it off the night before.

We even did the vocal therapy exercises first thing in the morning before taking off for the day, just the same as we’d done the morning before that. Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt like my voice was cracking less during the interviews while I was speaking. Maybe I could get my miracle after all, I thought. I was trying really, really hard not to get my hopes built up too high, but it was hard because things were going so well, I couldn’t imagine them ever turning sour.

I forgot how easy it was to be around Nick when we were getting along, and how much fun we used to have. My stomach hurt from laughing half the time. I felt young again, which sounds silly but it’s true. I’d been going through a major mid-life crisis sort of feeling lately as my 40th birthday approached, especially with my voice being all messed up. Nick and I getting along felt like I was eighteen again and everything just felt better - righter.

During a break between shows, we scarfed down food in the back of the car and Nick asked the driver to bring us by this park that we used to shoot hoops at. He led the way across the park, laughing his head off as he went, the tail of his scarf flipping behind him as he ran. The ground was wet and there wasn’t anybody on the courts, but we struggled to jump the little four foot chainlink fence and ran around, playing one-on-one with an imaginary ball, arguing about whose imagination was cheating until we were out of breath and sweaty from running around like maniacs.

Nick’s face was flushed from the cold and the exertion as we climbed back into the back of the car. He grinned over at me. “Hey, thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Just us gettin’ along and stuff,” he answered with a shrug. “I missed this.”

“Me, too,” I agreed.

He smiled, “Next time we’re here, we bring a b-ball and shoot hoops like the old times,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll come to Frankfurt on the next tour, once we get the album recorded and stuff.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “I’ll whoop yer ass just like I used to.”

“I ain’t fat like I used to be no more, ‘Rok,” Nick said shaking his head, “You ain’t got the edge on speed like you used to.”

“I can still shoot with mad skills,” I answered.

Nick’s eyes gleamed with the prospect of competition. “You’re on,” he said.

The rest of the day carried on with the same positive attitude. We got dinner at a pub and shared a couple rounds of beers while we ate with Mike and Drew, talking in loud voices and even played a couple rounds of darts with a group of guys that were hanging out there. We stumbled into the hotel room late, singing Bon Jovi in falsetto vocals, our buzzes starting to wear into sleepiness.

We were back-to-back in bed, just about to fall asleep, in fact, when my phone vibrated on the nightstand and I leaned over to look at the screen.

It was a text message from Kevin.

We need to talk.

I put the phone back down, too tired to deal with serious Kevin. Nick was already snoring quietly behind me. I pulled the blankets up over my shoulders and nestled my head into the pillow with a yawn and one last stretch of my limbs. Whatever it was Kevin needed to talk about, it could wait.





Nick

I woke up to the sound of Brian throwing up.

“Bri?” I sat up, running my hand over my eyes, sweeping the sleep from them. “You a’ight?” I asked, shuffling to the bathroom door and leaning against it with one ear, listening for an answer.

“I’m all right,” he called back after a pause.

“You sure?”

“Uh hhhuh,” he groaned.

“You sick?” I asked.

“No I just like kneeling in front of toilets as a hobby,” Brian replied sarcastically.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I paused. “You don’t think it’s contagious do you?” This was vital information to me, seeing as I’d been sharing a mattress with the guy for the past couple nights. If I was gonna get sick, I wanted a warning about it ahead of time.

“I dunno,” he answered miserably.

I frowned as I backed away from the bathroom door. I sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced at the clock. It was still an hour before we had to get up. I thought about just laying back down and going back to sleep since we still had interviews all day, but then I heard Brian retching again.

I grabbed my wallet and went out into the hallway, down to the vending machine alcove and I got a ginger ale from the machine and headed back to the room, pouring it out into one of the complementary plastic cups from the desk before barging into the bathroom with it.

Brian’s face was buried in the toilet bowl as he knelt doggy-style in front of it. He looked up, all watery-eyed and red-faced as I walked in. “What’re you doin’ Frack?” he asked.

I waved the ginger ale at him and put it down on the back of the toilet cistern in front of him. “Taking care of you, what’s it look like?” I asked. I snatched a face cloth from the towel rack and ran it under cool water in the sink.

“I don’t want you to get sick, too,” he advised.

“Yeah, well,” I replied. I squeezed out the towel. “Probably it’s something you ate.”

He answered by throwing up again.

It felt awkward, but I sat down on the edge of the bath tub beside him and brought the cool cloth to the back of his neck as he threw up, rubbing his back. “Dude, if you ever tell anybody about this I’ll keel you,” I said, impersonating Howie on the last half of my sentence.

Brian chuckled into the toilet.

He sat up and I wiped his face a little with the cloth as he squatted there in front of the toilet, blinking, trying to regain composure. “It’s gonna be a’ight,” I told him. He nodded. I grabbed the ginger ale, shoving it into his hands, “Drink this. I wouldda got you a straw, but there ain’t any here. It’ll help settle your tummy.”

“Thanks,” he said, sipping the soda slowly.

We sat there in silence as Brian drank the whole cup of soda and I ran my hands around the edges of the cloth, staring down at it as I moved it between my fingers.

“You’re gonna be a good dad someday,” Brian commented after a few minutes.

I looked up at him.

“You’re such a gentle spirit.”

I snorted. “Me? Needs-anger-management-therapy me?”

“Taking-care-of-your-best-friend-when-he’s-sick you,” Brian replied, shaking his head.

I smirked, “Oh I swipe a cloth over your face and you think you’re my best friend now, huh?”

“Well, you’re mine,” Brian answered, not getting the humor in my tone.

“I’m kidding, B, you’ll always be mine, too,” I answered. “Even when you weren’t you were.”

Brian laughed tiredly and it turned into a yawn.

“Okay that’s it, mister, bed time,” I stood up and pointed out of the bathroom in an authoritative way.

Brian stood up, “Alright, alright.” He flushed the toilet and I followed him out into the room and watched as he got into bed. “What’re you doing?” he asked when I didn’t get in bed, too.

I’d started pulling my clothes out of the suitcase. “Well… I mean, I gotta go do all our interviews,” I said, “Gotta get up in like fifteen minutes anyways now, I might as well just get ready now.” I shrugged. Brian sighed and started to get up. “What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Getting up,” Brian replied.

“Ohhh no you don’t,” I said, waving my hand at the bed, “Get back in there, mister, you’re resting. I’ll do the interviews.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah alone,” I replied. “I’ll be a’ight. I’ve done a solo interview before.” I laughed, “And besides, I kinda had it comin’, I made you do that one by yourself in France, remember?”

Brian dropped back onto the pillow with a relieved expression on his tired face, “Oh yeah,” he said, “You’re right. You did. Good luck with that.” He chuckled sleepily. “Thanks for not makin’ me get up, Frack,” he said as he melted into the pillow, mumbling something.

“Just feel better, Frick,” I answered. “We’ll do your vocal therapy when I get back. ‘Cos you ain’t gettin’ out of it, so this better not be an elaborate plan to ---” I paused. Brian was already asleep. “Well damn, that was quick,” I commented.





Brian

I felt even worse when I woke up. Every muscle in my body felt like Jell-o. I groaned as I rolled over, sweating half to death, though I was fairly certain that the heat wasn’t on high enough that I should be sweating. My stomach turned and I groaned again, closing my eyes and holding still, hoping everything would stop turning if I stopped moving. I wasn’t sure what had woke me up, it was dark in the room - Nick had pulled the shades before leaving, and completely silent. I breathed heavily, just staring down at my pillow shakily.

My phone vibed on the nightstand with a voicemail. I must’ve missed a call. The ringtone was probably what woke me up, I realized.

Slowly, trying not to disturb my queasy stomach, I reached for the phone and pulled it across the nightstand to me. It was Kevin. “Ugh,” I moaned. I still didn’t feel like talking to him. I pressed my face into the pillow. I didn’t want to be awake. I closed my eyes.

But Kevin called back.

I groaned yet again and swiped my finger across the screen. “Kevin?” I asked, my voice came out all thick and froggy.

“When the hell were you going to tell us?” he asked.

I kept my eyes closed. “Huh?” I asked. Did he mean about me being sick? I wondered, because I only just found that out myself…

“You’re quitting?”

“Quitting?” I felt so shitty my brain wouldn’t wrap around the word’s meaning at first, so I just repeated it like a mocking bird.

“Quitting the band?” he asked.

My eyes popped open. “Where’d you hear that?”

“This fucking contract we all got in our email?” he snapped, “The one from Jen outlining current and future royalties as of your departure?”

Despite the room rolling out of control, I jumped up and rushed to the desk. I felt nauseous, but I wasn’t sure if it was from being sick or the implications at hand. I opened the lid to my computer and stared at the screen as it lit. My hands were shaking as I clicked on my inbox icon and it hopped, loading.

“When were you gonna tell us, man?” Kevin asked. This time, he sounded more hurt and sad than angry.

“I wanted to talk to Nick first,” I stammered.

Kevin’s voice was defeated. “Of course you did.”

My inbox opened and I stared at the email from JSo on top. New Contract pending Brian’s departure, please look this over and we’ll talk in the meeting next week when Nick and Brian return from Europe.

“How’d he take it?”

My heart sank.

“I… I didn’t get a chance to talk to him yet,” I admitted.

But that was a lie. I’d had plenty of chances, tons of opportunities had presented themselves. I just hadn’t taken any of them. I’d put it off and put it off and now it was coming back to bite me in the ass. I shook my head, staring at the email.

“Why the hell not?” Kevin demanded, “Aren’t you two getting along still? You said you worked it out.”

“We did,” I answered, “But -- I mean, I didn’t want to -- to ruin it, I guess. It was nice just getting along with him, I didn’t --” I sighed. “Shit.”

Kevin sighed, too, “I mean, he’s gonna find out now, once he gets this email.”

“Maybe he won’t get the email before he gets back,” I hoped.

Kevin was quiet.

“Kev?”

“It’s not just the email you gotta worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t y’all have interviews today?”

“Yeah. I’m sick, he went without me…” I looked at the clock, “He should be back soon.”

“Well, AJ texted me before I called you,” he said. “I hadn’t checked my email yet, it’s still early here, but Perez Hilton cracked the story overnight and then this morning TMZ called AJ looking for a comment... The media knows already. Somebody let it leak.”

I ran my hand over my face. “I’ll talk to him the second he walks through the door tonight. Maybe foreign media won’t have picked up on it yet,” I said.

Kevin took a deep breath, “For your sake -- and Nick’s -- I hope not.”

Chapter Twelve


Nick

“Coffee?” A young set assistant leaned in, holding out a steaming mug with the show’s logo on it. She smiled.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the mug from her. She scrambled away, hugging her clipboard to her chest.

The host, a man named Stefan, came out and settled himself down behind the big chunky desk. He adjusted a bunch of knick-knacks on the desk, including a small print of the BSB The Movie poster on a tiny stand. He held out his hand, “Hallo again,” he greeted me. We’d just come from the green room where we’d been eating little sandwiches made with pretzel bread before being whisked away to prep for the show.

“Hey,” I answered. I put the mug of coffee down on the edge of his desk.

The set was bright green with a big purple couch. Something you’d never see on American TV. This show - the last one I was visiting before heading back to the hotel for the night - was desperately trying to be the new Wetten Dass, a show that once trended on social media because people felt it should change it’s name to #WhatTheFuckIsHappening. I’d declined playing one of the new show’s “games”, despite the host insisting that we’d have a blast playing Feuerb�lle Tischtennis, which, according to Google Translate, means fireball ping pong.

Stefan was staring down at his cell phone as the last minute preparations were done, a make up team rushed out and smooshed powder onto my forehead because of a light shining off it, and the cameras moved to optimal opening sequence positions. Just as the director started the ten second countdown, Stefan looked up from his phone with hunger in his eyes. “Is it true?” he asked.

“Eight…”

“Is what true?” I asked, confused.

“Seven… six…”

“About Brian?” Stefan answered.

He looked shocked.

“Five… four… three…”

“What about Brian?” I asked, my heart racing. Had something happened back at the hotel? I glanced behind me to where Mike stood just a couple feet away at the edge of the set, my eyes narrowed in concern. I’d been anxious all day to get back to the hotel to check on Brian. I’d texted him a couple times throughout the day, but I hadn’t heard back. I’d assumed he’d just been asleep, but now… what if there was something wrong? Wouldn’t Mike know? Wouldn’t he have told me?

“Quitting the band?” Stefan asked.

“Two…”

“What?” I responded, turning back to him quickly.

“One!” The director silenced, pointing at Stefan.

Music filled the set and Stefan uncrossed and recrossed his legs, shifting his focus from one camera to the other, a big smile sliding over his mouth as he dropped his phone onto his desk. “Good evening viewers,” he started, grinning at the frame of the camera, our conversation lost. “Tonight we have Backstreet Boys Nick Carter here on the set and some other great visitors and games lined up…” He proceeded to chatter on about his lineup for the show and all the hooligans he had planned.

I couldn’t rip my eyes off Stefan’s mouth, though, my brain trying desperately to process the words that had just come out of him. Quitting the band? Brian? Brian quitting the band? My heart was pounding so hard I practically could hear it. I definitely could feel it in my brain more than I could feel it in my chest.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed one of the set assistants waving at me and I realized how fuckin’ awkward I probably looked, sitting there on the couch just staring at Stefan like a mad man. I grabbed hold of the mug and sipped the coffee she’d brought over, desperate for anything to keep the muscles in my face busy.

Obviously he was wrong, I thought. Brian would’ve told me if he was quitting the band. Especially with how well we were getting on the last couple days and all the things I’d told him. This isn’t the kind of thing he’d let me find out on TV. That’s the kinda shit my family would pull, but not Brian. Even at our worst Brian never would’ve neglected to tell me something like this.

At least that’s what I sat there telling myself as my heart clenched in my chest and Stefan talked away to the camera, introducing the movie and the details about it’s release and all that in German before turning to me. I put the coffee down, my hands shaking a little. I wanted desperately for him to just ask the usual questions about the movie - the same ones I’d been answering alone all day. I’d give him the answers he wanted, the director would yell cut, we’d be done for the night and I’d go back to the hotel and Brian and I would laugh about the bullshit rumor that Stefan asked me about and we’d set it right the next day.

Instead, Stefan said, “So, Nick, just before beginning the show, I found some shocking news out just now.” He pulled his phone over to himself, and read, “‘According to sources close to the Backstreet Boys management team, contracts have been written up and sent out to the members of the band containing details about the departure of Brian Littrell and future dispense of royalties. Comments from the band management team confirm the dispense of the contracts but refuse to comment on the cause of Littrell’s departure.’” He looked up. “When did this happen?”

I stared at him.

“Uh, very.. uh recently,” I answered. I ran my hand over my chin.

“How do you feel about Brian’s choice to quit the band and how do you think this will differ from when Kevin quit?” Stefan asked.

“I’m… just… I’m shocked,” I stammered. I shrugged. “I haven’t really considered the, uh, the differences or.. whatever.. we’ll, uh, figure… it, uh, out. I guess. I’m still trying to get my brain around, you know, the, uh, the fact of it.” I wasn’t sure what the hell to say. I didn’t even know what the fuck to think. Words were coming out of my mouth but not particularly coherently. I felt like a trick monkey just babbling nonsense.

Stefan leaned forward, “I’ve already seen the Backstreet Boys movie, obviously, when it screened for the promoters,” he said in a conspirational sort of tone, “And I’ll tell you what, the one thing on the mind of all us promoters was that fight between you and the guys during your A&R meeting. Especially when you and Brian were fighting.” He looked eager. “Do you think Brian’s strained relationship with you has anything to do with him deciding to leave the band?”

“I dunno,” I answered with a shrug.

“Okay,” Stefan seemed let down by my lack of juicy answers and leaned back. “Well I have this exclusive new clip from the movie for you guys, so check this out and we’ll be right back with more from Nick Carter.”

I didn’t even wait for the clear signal. I just dove into my pocket for my phone, pulling up my inbox, my throat constricting as it loaded and, as promised, I had an unread message from Jen Sousa containing an attachment. “Fuck,” I whispered, staring down at the message.

Stefan was being dusted with powder.

A set assistant came over and was about to put more on me, but I waved her off. I stood up. “Stefan, I’m sorry, I gotta go.” My mouth felt dry.

“What?” he looked up.

“I’m sorry.” I turned and hurried off the set. Mike looked shocked in the wings as I rushed toward him, “Get the car,” I demanded and he turned and hurried ahead of me down the hallway, headed for the back exit of the TV studio.

“What about the interview?” Stefan called after me.

“I owe you a raincheck,” I yelled back.





Brian

I was pacing.

“Nick,” I recited to myself as I walked, “I gotta talk to you and it’s really important and it can’t wait. I need you to understand that a lot’s changed in the last couple days… No, that’s not right.” I shook my head, sighing in exasperation. “Okay. Okay. Nick… In the years past I’ve made a lot of mistakes -- no.. Ugh.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Why’s this gotta be so hard?... Okay. Frack. I’ve changed my mind now, thanks to hope you’ve given me this week, but before we left LA I’d talked to Jen about -- no.” I shook my head.

The words had to be perfect.

When the door opened, I looked up, still unprepared, yet there he was. He took off his jacket and hung it and ran his hand through his hair. “Hey,” I said, “Nick. I gotta talk to you and it’s really important and --”

“No fuck -- you definitely do need to talk to me,” he answered, his voice sharp, spinning to face me so fast that it made me jump in surprise. His face was contorted into an angry expression. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, holding up his cellphone. On it was the email from JSo with the contract attached. My face flushed. He tossed his phone onto the bed and shook his head. “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me. You said we weren’t gonna keep shit from each other no more, just to get me to talk, meanwhile you’re sittin’ there on this, not telling me shit. You know, now that I think about it you ain’t told me nothin’ since we made that little fuckin’ pact or whatever. You just used that to get me to tell you shit you wanted to know. Like I’m a fuckin’ lil kid or something.”

“No, Nick, I didn’t do this on purpose, I - I’ve been trying to tell you, but I didn’t have a chan--”

“YOU DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE? THAT IS BULL SHIT!” Nick’s shrill yell cut through my words like a wrecking ball. He turned and punched the wall of the hotel, his fist denting the drywall. My jaw dropped. “Ow, fuck,” he snarled, jumping back from the wall and shaking out his fist. His knuckles were bloody.

“Are you okay?” I reached out my hands in concern to see the damage done.

“Fuck you,” he snapped, pushing me away. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me.”

“Nick…”

“No!” he yelled and he pulled his hand away and turned away from me, “Jesus Christ, Brian, just -- just go the fuck home to your fuckin’ wife and your fuckin’ kid and your fuckin’ little barking cotton balls and be all fuckin’ perfect and shit down in fuckin’ Georgia being all like sipping sweet tea and selling fuckin’ t-shirts with Leighanne’s fuckin’ plastic face on them and leave me the fuck alone.”

I blinked. I was pretty sure he’d just broken some kind of record for the most F-bombs dropped in a single sentence.

“And you know what, I can’t take fuckin’ -- fuckin’ this --” he waved his hand at the one bed in the room and turned around, “I’m getting another room.” He grabbed his jacket off the hanger so violently the hanger snapped at the hook and fell to the floor in two pieces. He kicked them out of his way and stormed out the door.

“Nick! Wait, please.” I rushed after him, snatching the room key off the top of the TV set before following him out into the hallway. “Don’t do this. Let me explain, will you please?”

“There ain’t shit to explain, Brian,” he snapped.

“I was scared to tell you,” I whined. He took the stairs. He always took the stairs when he was angry because he thought I couldn’t keep up with him on them. He was right. I was practically running, gripping the banister for dear life and he was just trotting down them. I struggled to keep up as we went down, down, down headed for the lobby. “Nick, you’re my best friend. I was afraid how you’d react if I told you I was quittin’. I wanted to tell you first. I told Jen not to tell anybody until after I told you.”

“You’ve had a fuckin’ week to tell me,” Nick yelled. His voice echoed in the stairwell.

I was reminded of him yelling, cussing me out in the hotel back in France.

If only I’d told him then.

If only I’d told him when we were driving here.

If only I’d told him any of the thousands of other times I’d almost told him.

“Nick, please. You gotta understand.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I begged, “Please. Please just -- just stop and listen for a second.”

He shoved the door to the lobby open at the bottom of the steps and I ran after him. “I’m done Brian,” he said, “I don’t let people treat me like shit anymore like I used to. I deserve to be respected and you don’t respect me. You never have. You just do whatever you gotta do to get what you want outta me and keep me happy and quiet or whatever. You never gave a shit about me really did you?”

“What? Of course I give a shit about you,” I said. “Why would you think that I --”

“BECAUSE YOU LEAVE!” he shouted, “YOU ALWAYS LEAVE!”

“I --”

“So just do what you do best, Brian. LEAVE.”

“Nick.”

“LEAVE!!!!”

I stood there, my throat constricted, as he stormed out the doors of the hotel and into the street. He paused, breath coming out in clouds from his mouth just outside of the door, looked left, right, then turned left and disappeared from view.

My heart shattered.

I closed my eyes and tears slid down my cheeks. “God damn it,” I muttered, and I turned and went back up to the hotel room, my hands shaky. When I slid the key and stepped inside, I walked over to the bed and sat down.

That’s when Nick’s phone vibrated on the bed behind me and I realized he’d left it behind in the hotel room.





Nick

I’d meant to get a new room, but he’d fired me up so much I just wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t near Brian. I was so mad I couldn’t even form words. I balled my fists in my pockets and walked as fast as I could until I was absolutely certain he wasn’t following me and then I allowed myself to slow down to a normal pace.

To think I’d actually spent the day worrying about that asshole, whether he was feeling better or not. I’d even thought about maybe stopping to see if there was any place that had stuff for soup that I could bring him to make him feel better on the way home. And then Stefan had just broken into my world in the most earth shattering terrible way with the truth about Brian.

I felt like I’d been tricked into thinking Brian and I could be best friends again, like he gave a fuck about what had come between us, like he’d been trying to get better. I wondered how hard he’d laughed at my attempts to help him with his vocal therapy, if my feelings about us being friends and the stuff that had happened to me with Lou and stuff was just a joke to him, if he thought I was a baby for crying. I pictured him texting Leighanne and laughing about me. I pictured her cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Fuck’em both, I thought. Fuck’em both.

I walked along, steaming mad, until finally I just felt tired. I slowed and sat down on a city bench and took some deep breaths, allowing myself to recenter. After a couple moments, I stood up… and realized I wasn’t sure which direction I’d come from. I reached for my phone in my pocket… but it wasn’t there. Frantically, I patted myself down, trying to find it, but it wasn’t there anywhere.

“Shit,” I murmured, looking around. It was freezing and only getting colder and I was on this road that had like no signs of life other than myself. I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, rubbing the wool of my coat to warm up.

I felt so lost.





Brian

I waited and waited and waited, just staring at the wall, staring at the door, staring at his phone. Every time I heard footsteps in the hallway outside I got up and opened the door, but it was never him. It was always like some cleaning lady or another hotel guest headed for their rooms. I’d close the door and sit and wait more.

I fell asleep waiting.

I woke up the next morning and there was still no Nick.

I felt sick in a whole other way that morning than I had the morning before. I rubbed my hands across my knees and just prayed and prayed he was okay, that the time he’d taken over night had cooled him down and everything would be all right. Maybe he’d wake up this morning and understand and everything would be all right between us again.

I didn’t do my vocal therapy that morning. I was too anxious to find Nick. I got dressed and went to the lobby where Drew and Mike were sitting, eating breakfast. I walked over to them, “Where’s Nick?” I asked at the same time that Mike asked the exact same question.

We both stared at each other for a long moment.

“He’s not with you?” Mike asked.

“No,” I replied, “We… we had a fight. He left. Went for a walk. I think he got another room.”

Mike sighed and pulled out his phone, “I’ll text him, find out what room he’s in…”

I shook my head and dropped Nick’s phone on the table. “He left this behind.”

Mike stared at the phone. “Oookay, well that’s not very Nick-like, he must’ve been some kinda pissed off. What’d you do now?” he chuckled, “Did you put the toilet paper in the thing wrong? He shits bricks over that.”

“Who doesn’t?” Drew smirked.

“I quit the band,” I said.

They both looked up at me.

Mike cleared his throat, “I’m gonna go see if the desk can tell me what room he’s in,” he said, and he got up quickly, and walked to the desk in a hurry, concern suddenly etched in the lines on his face.

Chapter Thirteen


Nick

There were girls speaking German in low tones, whispering. My head was throbbing. Light was threatening to invade my squeezed-tight eyelids. I didn’t want the light getting into my eyeballs, I felt like they would burn alive at the contact. I groaned and covered my face with my hands and several squeals and German words fluttered around me at the movement.

Where the fuck am I? I wondered.

“Nick?” a tentative voice asked. “Nick - I am sorry, my poor English - you are feeling better today?”

The voice was really close to my face.

I opened my eyes, knowing as I did I was gonna regret it. There was a girl staring at me, her eyes wide with worry. I stared back at her.

Oh. My. Fuck. What have I done?

Panic set in and despite the smouldering headache that was making my brain feel thick as oatmeal, I sat up and looked around. I was in an apartment, on a couch with a floral print to it, under a blanket. On the wall there were pictures, like black and white photography style pictures, and there were posters from various eras of BSB-dom in frames integrated with the classy photography. There was the girl that had spoken to me and three others sitting on the edge of another couch across the room. Two of them had on BSB t-shirts, the third one had on pajamas. I looked down at myself, I was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and I could see my coat tossed over the back of a chair by the door.

I looked at the girl who had spoken to me, “Where am I? Who are you?”

“My name is Marnie,” she said, her voice thick with an accent. She was wearing just a plain white t-shirt over jeans. She smiled at me. “We are fans of Backstreet Boys. We met you at the bar last night? You needed a ride, so we offered, but you could not know your hotel name and you did not know the phone number to call Brian because of the speed dial.”

I ran my hands over my face. I remembered none of this.

“You were very drunk,” she added.

“We save you!” squealed one of the ones in the BSB t-shirts on the couch. Her accent was completely different.

“This is Stephanja, she is from Italy; and Maria; and that is my roommate, Polly,” Marnie said, pointing at each of them in turn. “We went to see you yesterday at the television studios and then out to drink together and was very surprise to find you there, so when you need the help, we help you.” She smiled.

It could be worse, I told myself, I could’ve got picked up by some serial killer psychopath who would’ve used me for scrap parts in his latest Frankenstein-esque masterpiece. I could’ve ended up mugged or some other crazy shit. I could’ve ended up sleeping on the street on that bench - which was the last fully clear thing in my mind, by the way. At least I’d apparently been well taken care of.

“Nothing, uh... like, happened, right?” I asked nervously.

They looked at each other and spoke in quick German. Finally Stephanja asked, “Do you mean the sex?”

I nodded, “Yeah -- no sex, right?”

Three of the girls giggled manically. The one in pajamas, who I assumed was Polly, was the exception. She looked only mildly interested in what was going on. I guessed she was probably invested in this more as a side effect of being Marnie’s roommate than as an actual fan. “None of the sex happened,” Stephanja said once she’d gotten her giggles under control.

Maria’s cheeks turned red, “Nur in unseren Tr�umen.”

The girls all started giggling again. This time even Polly laughed. “What?” I asked, “What’d you just say?”

“She said only in our dreams,” translated Marnie with a laugh. “You are very handsome and we like you so much, but this you know already.”

Backstreet Boy Nick Carter Me would have known how to respond to that, but as it was I was hung over and not in the Backstreet Boy Nick Carter Me frame of mind so I had no clue what to say. “Uh… thanks, I guess,” I answered awkwardly.

They giggled.

“I need to get back to the hotel,” I informed them. I reached for my wallet and dug around for the room key to the hotel. If I’d been thinking straight the night before, I would’ve thought to look at the key to tell me what hotel I was at then, but clearly, I hadn’t been thinking straight at all or I would never have ended up where I was. “Do you know where the Jumeirah is?” I asked, holding up the key so they could see the logo incase I was hacking the pronunciation.

“Yes, yes,” Marnie smiled, “We will take you there, if you would like.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I replied.

“Could we have the picture first?” Stephanja asked hopefully.

I had to look like shit. I mean I’d been drinking to the point of oblivion after having walked God knows how far across a foreign city while fuming mad after a fight with Brian after like ten hours of interviews. All that without a shower or a glance at a mirror or anything. My hair probably was limp. But whatever. “Sure, yeah, if y’all want a picture, that’s cool.”

The three girls squealed excitedly and talked in rapid German. Polly got up and left the room a moment while the other three came over and squeezed in around me on the couch, two of them grabbing my arms to snuggle in close against my sides and the third leaning over her friend to get closer. Polly came back with a big fancy camera and I had a suspicion that the framed photographs on the walls were probably her creations. She aimed the camera at me, “Say the cheese,” she said.

“Cheese!” the three girls yelled and I mumbled and the flash went off three times and Polly looked at her LCD screen and the other three scrambled off the couch to inspect the picture she’d taken, all squealing in delight at it.

“Now we take you to the Jumeirah,” said Marnie, a big grin on her flushed face, “And we say forever more that we save Nick Carter.”





Brian

There was a knock on my door.

“Please God, let it be Nick,” I begged as I rushed for it, “Please let it be Nick.” I pulled the door open to find Drew.

“We found Nick,” Drew said.

I let out a breath I’d been holding. “Is he okay? Where is he? I need to talk to him --”

Drew held up his palm to stop me. “He’s okay. He was out all night, some fans picked him up and took him home with them because he was drunk, and he just got back to the hotel a few minutes ago. He’s in with Mike and he doesn’t want to talk to you. We already tried to tell him to come talk to you.” Drew looked apologetic.

I frowned and walked back into the room, sinking onto the bed with a frustrated sigh. Drew followed me, standing a couple feet back. He rocked on his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not as sorry as I am.” I looked up at him, “I can’t believe how bad I’ve messed things up. I didn’t mean to hurt him like this.”

Drew sighed. “It’s a shame, y’all were getting along better than I’ve seen in a long time,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

Drew hesitated. “Look… Brian… I, uh, I came down here ‘cos the flight to Amsterdam is in a couple hours… Nick says he’s not going. It’s a one day press run, he says he’ll catch up with us in London. He’s not feeling good, he said.” Drew looked so uncomfortable.

“Nick’s not coming?”

Drew shook his head. “He’s going to fly straight to London, I guess.”

I felt like I was crumbling. “But the interviews…”

“He says you can do a day of interviews alone, since he did one and he’s not feeling good.” Drew looked apologetic.

I sighed. Nick was right, I did owe him a day of solo interviews, but I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to go to Amsterdam at all. I needed to talk to him and I’d been hoping that I could talk to him on the plane.

“So uh… let’s pack your stuff, and I’ll pack Nick’s stuff and we can get ready to head to the airport…” Drew suggested.

I nodded, “Yeah. Okay.”





Nick

Mike wouldn’t let me go home. I wanted to go home. I texted Lauren but it was the middle of the night in the US, so she didn’t answer. I just wanted to go home and see her. I wished so hard that she’d just come with us, then maybe none of this would’ve happened because I wouldn’t have spent as much time alone with Brian and he wouldn’t have had time to lie to me so much. It wouldn’t have bothered me a week ago if he’d quit the band because I wouldn’t have had the illusion that we had a chance to be best friends again. A week ago, I would’ve been like good riddance if Brian tried to quit the band. All I wanted in the world was to feel that way again, instead of feeling betrayed.

I imagined I had a machete sticking out of my back with Brian’s fingerprints all over the handle.

Drew brought my luggage back from Brian’s room and put it in a pile by the door of his and Mike’s room. They had two beds. I couldn’t believe I’d let the hotel railroad me and Brian into sharing one all week when obviously they did have rooms with two beds - right on the same floor, even. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to Amsterdam?” he asked as he put the last of my bags down.

I nodded. “I’m positive.”

“Okay.” Drew hung around the door. He shared a look with Mike, then he said, “Nick, Brian’s really sorry.”

“Fuck him,” I answered. “And you, too, if you’re gonna be his little minion. If he was sorry then this wouldn’t have happened at all. He wouldda told me before I got on that show and looked like a total dumbass for not knowing.”

Drew sighed and shook his head, but he didn’t fight with me. “Okay, well, we’re going to Amsterdam,” he informed us.

“Leave Brian there while you’re at it,” I said.

Drew frowned.

“Safe flight, man,” Mike called from behind me, where he was putting his stuff into his suitcase.

“Thanks,” Drew replied, and he turned and left the room.

Mike sighed as the door closed and he zipped his suitcase. “Maybe by London you’ll be ready to talk this out with him,” he suggested.

I shook my head, “It’s over. I’m so done trying with him.”

Mike shrugged, “If we all gave up the moment things got hard, none of us would have any friends at all.”

“With friends like that who needs enemies?” I said, shrugging. “Besides, it’s not like I’m the one that hasn’t poured heart and soul into this. I told him shit I’ve never even breathed in the presence of another human being before, ever, not even Lauren.” I sighed, “And he didn’t tell me anything. Not even this. I just… I feel…” I shrugged. No words were coming. No words described what I felt. So I didn’t finish the sentence.

Mike frowned. “Well… we got a while before the flight to London,” he said.

I nodded. “I’m gonna take some aspirin and take a nap,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said. He grabbed the bottle of pills from the desk by him and tossed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said. I shook a couple pills out of the bottle and palmed them into the back of my mouth, took a gulp from the water bottle I’d been nursing all morning, and crawled onto the bed, turning to face the wall, staring at the blankness of it and thinking that’s how I felt now… blank.





Brian

At the airport I kept waiting for Nick to run up and say he’d changed his mind, that he’d thought about it and decided to come to Amsterdam, that he understood that I’d been screwed by management just like we had a hundred times in the past. I kept checking the world clock on my phone too, waiting for it to be time that I could call home and talk to my wife. She’d have advice on what to say to Nick to make things better. I would probably have to wait until after we’d landed in Amsterdam to keep from waking her up, though. I had already sent a strongly worded note to Jen about how upset I was that she’d sent out the contract without warning me or waiting for me to tell her I was ready for the fellas to know what I’d been thinking about doing. I knew it would be awhile before I got a reply to that, too.

We boarded the plane and I pulled my seatbelt tight across my lap, staring out the window, my forehead resting against the wall of the plane while Drew buckled in next to me. I worried what Nick was thinking about me, and whether I’d ever be able to make all this shit up to him. I couldn’t ease my mind even a little bit. It was like a constant drum beat bump-bump-bumping away in the back of my brain.

Drew nudged me. “Hey. Man. It’s gonna be okay,” he said. “It’ll work out, it always does.”

I nodded because I knew that’s what he wanted me to do but in my mind I wondered if this time wasn’t the time when it wouldn’t work out.

The very last passenger on the plane rushed in and had blonde hair and for a wild moment, I thought it was Nick, but it wasn’t. We took off and I felt my stomach go queasy because we really had left Nick and Mike behind and the higher the plane flew over the city the more I realized it wasn’t miles that was distancing Nick and I at this point. I sighed and pushed the window shade down, leaning my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep just to get the thinking to stop.

I did sleep in the end, but it was punctuated by a nightmare. I dreamed Nick was drowning and when I tried to offer him my hand he pushed it away and gurgled that he didn’t trust me to pull him out. I woke with a start to find the flight attendant moving through the aisle asking if anyone wanted a drink. I snatched the menu quickly from the pouch on the back of the seat ahead of me and when she got to me I ordered a scotch. Drew looked at me like I had seven heads. “You’re gonna drink?” he asked, incredulous.

“I need something to calm my nerves,” I explained.

“You okay?”

I shook my head.

“Brian, it really is going to be okay,” Drew said. “I think Nick just needs some time to cool off. It’s a pretty big bombshell he’s been hit with. But you know Nick. He’s resilient.”

“He holds grudges,” I countered.

“Not against you,” Drew said.

It occurred to me just then that the complexities of the Frick & Frack relationship were so deep that maybe even the people who observed it everyday had no idea how messed up we really were underneath all of the facade of what we allowed the world - the media - to witness of us. We’d done so well faking it for all these years that even someone as close as Drew - a protector who stood by day and night - would have no clue when we were faking and when we were real. It broke my heart that Nick and I had perfected the act of friendship so well.

It shouldn’t have ever been an act, I thought. If we’d just stayed honest from the start then maybe he’d know now that the last few days hadn’t been an act, that, for me, they’d been real.

The flight attendant came back with my drink and she handed it to me with a napkin underneath it. I dropped the tray and put the napkin down before swallowing half the glass in one mouthful. It burned as it went down, but I felt my nerves loosen almost immediately. I took a deep breath.

I had to find a way to tell Nick how I felt, how much things had changed in the last few days, how much his friendship meant to me, and how sorry I was for hurting him. I would do anything to take it all back to the start and tell him the truth from the beginning. I would’ve told him that night at the restaurant, before he spilled the chili cheese fries all over Kevin.

When I’d finished my scotch, I sent the glass back with the flight attendant and I forced myself back to sleep. Thankfully, the alcohol had numbed me just enough that this time when I fell asleep it was dreamless.

Chapter Fourteen


Nick

In the airport terminal, I turned to tell Brian something funny I thought of and then I remembered he wasn’t there.

On the plane, I kept my iPad out for the ride and once we were in the air, I turned it on, opened the email and downloaded the contract from Jen. I scrolled to the bottom without even reading it and signed it with my fingertip on the touch screen, then sent it back to her without a second thought. If Brian wanted to leave then he should just go and stop hanging around holding the rest of us back, I thought. Or told myself to think because I wasn’t really thinking that. It was just my stubbornness thinking it. I felt rebellious and bad ass sending off the response to Brian’s departure with such a cavalier attitude like I didn’t give a fuck.

Because you don’t give a fuck, I told myself.

But I did give a fuck.

I stared out the window as the earth got smaller and further away. It occurred to me as I stared out at the place I’d just been, that would forever be the place where I heard Brian was quitting the band, that there was more than just miles that was between me and Brian now.

My iPad blinked an error message at me. I was on airplane mode, so it couldn’t send the document to Jen and the contract had defaulted to my drafts folder. Whatever, I thought, I’ll just send it when we land. I shoved the iPad into the pouch on the back of the chair in front of me and I grabbed my headphones and put on some music and turned it up as loud as my ear drums could stand.

When we got to London, Mike nudged me awake. We walked through Heathrow mostly anonymous. None of the fans had a clue I’d be getting there today, so we weren’t attracting as much attention as we normally would’ve. I grabbed my bags and Mike led the way out to the curb where he got a taxi to bring us to the hotel downtown. We checked into a room and despite the fact that Mike thought we should share, I insisted on getting our own because I just wanted to be alone and I didn’t wanna get tricked into sharing with Brian when he got there the next day. I’d done the last of my sharing with Brian.

Once the door closed and I was completely alone, I turned the deadbolt and laid down on the bed, my phone on the mattress beside me and closed my eyes.

My phone vibed and I rolled onto my stomach to look at it. It was Lauren. “Hey,” I answered quietly. I put her on speakerphone so I didn’t have to actually hold the phone up to my ear.

“Nick, honey, I’m sorry. I just talked to Rochelle and she told me what’s going on. Are you okay?” Her voice was full of worry.

The moment I heard it I couldn’t hold it back anymore as the emotion welled up in my chest. “No,” I croaked.

“Aww, baby…”

I curled my knees to my chest and gasped in oxygen as hot tears slid across my cheeks. “Fuck,” I moaned.

“Did he tell you why he was leaving?” Lauren asked gently.

“No,” I cried, “No. He didn’t tell me at all. I found out on - on TV… on the show… the… the host… he asked me… that’s the first I heard about it and then I got the contract from Jen… in an email… Brian never said nothin’...”

Lauren sighed. “Ohhh,” she breathed. Just the sound of her on the other end of the phone was soothing. Just being connected to her made me feel less alone. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

“I just… I feel like shit ‘cos… we were… I thought we were friends again and then… then he just… He told me we weren’t gonna keep no more secrets.” I rocked myself a little on the mattress. I wished more than anything that Lauren was actually there. I wanted it so bad I could almost feel her hand rubbing my back. I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in a couple rapid breaths that sounded like I was choking on sobs or something. I sounded like a seal.

“Baby… you gotta breathe… It’s gonna be okay,” she said thickly.

“I can’t help it, Boose, he was my first really best friend and --” I shook my head, tears were literally making the pillow under my head wet. “I can’t picture --” I closed my eyes.

“What can’t you picture, honey?” she asked.

I hugged the pillow under my chin and moved so I was looking down at her picture, like I was looking at her real face. “I can’t picture him not being around. Even when we were fighting at least he was there. I feel like he’s really, really giving up on me.”

Lauren was quiet a moment, letting that all process, then she asked, “Is he giving up on you or is he giving up on himself?”

“I dunno.”

“Which bothers you more?”

“I don’t want him to give up on me,” I said selfishly. But even as I said it, I knew I was more scared that if Brian quit the band he’d stop trying to save his voice. He’d give up, let it go to shit, and he’d get a job at like a school teaching music or like little kid basketball or something. He’d be mediocre and I wanted better than that for him because whether I was his best friend or not he was still my best friend. “I don’t want him to give up on himself,” I admitted.

Lauren said, “Maybe he doesn’t wanna give up on you or on himself, either. Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you.”

I shook my head, “He had the contract written up, Lo. This has been coming for a long time. This isn’t some jump decision. He had time to tell me, he had tons of chances, and he just didn’t. It’s like he wanted it to hurt. Maybe he did. I’ve been a dick. Maybe this is him repaying me for being a dick. Am I a dick?”

She sighed. “You’re not a dick.”

“I am though.”

“Nick, you’re not a dick.”

“Can’t you please, please come to London?” I pleaded, “I need you.”

Lauren’s voice was soft, “I can’t, Nick, I’ve got things going on here I need to be here for now.”

“You were gonna come originally, just tell everyone to hold up,” I begged.

“Baby,” she said in that tone that said you know I can’t do that for her.

“It’s like practically an emergency, though,” I whimpered.

“It’s not an emergency,” she said gently. “You just need to talk to him and get this all aired out.”

I sighed.

“Baby, I gotta go, I’ll call you back later to make sure you’re okay, though. Why don’t you get some kind of food that you know I won’t approve of and watch some TV and relax? You’ll feel better. Tonight we’ll get on the computer and play some games or something together on the livelink, okay?”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. I didn’t wanna tell her the disgusting amounts of bacon I’d already eaten on this trip without her approval.

“I love you baby.”

“I love you too,” I said thickly.

When Lauren hung up, I laid there on the bed staring at the sheets until I fell asleep with the tears still dried on my face.





Brian

It was sleeting in Amsterdam.

The gray of the weather reflected my mood.

We were in Amsterdam for such a short period of time that I didn’t even technically have a hotel room there, just a van that was going to cart us around all day. Even my luggage had stayed behind at the airport.

On the way to the radio station, where I was about to do the first of the five interviews that Nick and I had been scheduled for that day, I called Leighanne. She took three rings to answer the phone. “Hey Husband,” she greeted me, her voice cheerful. I could hear the tones of Baylee’s acting rehearsal in the background.

“Hey,” I answered.

“How’s things over there going?” she asked, “Have you and Nick killed each other yet?”

I took a deep breath. “Well… I don’t know if you heard but Jen sent out the contracts for me leaving the band and there was apparently some coverage on like TMZ or something about it. They asked Nick about it on live TV and we had a pretty big fight. He was pretty angry.”

Leighanne was quiet a moment, “You hadn’t told him yet? Brian, you’ve been with him a week, how had you not told him yet?”

“Because I’m a stupid, stupid idiot,” I groaned.

“You aren’t an idiot,” she said with a sigh. Then, “Well. Maybe a little. You should’ve told him the first chance you got.”

“Yeah…”

“At least now you’re almost done and soon you can come home and be with us,” she pointed out. “I know Baylee’s looking forward to you coming home. He’s really excited that you’ll be around more.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I chewed my lower lip.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well… In the last few days, Nick and I have been working on my therapy exercises together and I feel stronger than I did before. I feel like maybe --” I paused. I knew she didn’t want to hear this, that the selfish side of her wouldn’t want me to finish the thought.

“You’re reconsidering, aren’t you?” she asked.

I swallowed, “I think I am.”

Leighanne sighed, “It’s okay, husband. Like I told you from the start, it’s your choice. I’m not going to make it for you. Nobody can make it for you. Just you.” She paused. “So is Nick still helping you with your therapy?”

“Nick’s in London.”

“Where are you?” she asked slowly.

“Amsterdam.”

Leighanne laughed, “For just a moment I thought maybe you were going to come up behind me just then and surprise me,” she said.

Part of me wished I was there with her. It was where I belonged, really, after all. I wondered if Nick wouldn’t be better off finishing this press run by himself, if he’d rather if I left and went home and didn’t turn back, didn’t second guess my choice to leave. After all, the contracts had been sent out and now all that was left was signing them and making it legal.

Maybe it really was for the best after all.

“Nope… still in Amsterdam.” The car was pulling up to the station and I could see crowds growing thicker the closer we got. “I gotta go, hun,” I told her, “I’m almost to the first interview. I’ll call you later. Love you.” I hung up quickly and put the phone in my pocket, leaning closer to the window to look out.

Drew was staring at me from his seat, I could feel his eyes on me. I glanced back at him. He gave me a weak sort of smile and turned away when I looked.

There were a ton of people outside the radio station. They beat on the outside of the van with their palms and cried as we drove past, the windows too tinted for them to see if it was me or Nick or both of us in there. Girls were holding up signs for Nick and pressing them to the window. I thought about taking a picture of a couple of them and sending it to him but I figured he was probably still too mad to take a text message from me, so I didn’t.

I should’ve expected it but I was still surprised when the first question out of the deejay’s mouth was, “Are you really quitting the Backstreet Boys? Rumors are flying like crazy and some are saying Nick Carter confirmed it yesterday during an interview in Frankfurt?”

I cleared my throat. “I… I don’t know if I am or not,” I answered.

“You don’t know?” the deejay chuckled, “How do you not know?”

I shrugged, “I just don’t.”





Nick

I woke up sore and feeling like shit. I groaned and looked at my phone. AJ had called seven times, left three voicemails, and twelve text messages. “Jesus, McLean,” I grumbled, reaching for the phone and swiping my thumb across the screen to look at what he had to say.

What do you think about all this Brian quitting bullshit?

How are we gonna get him to stay?

Nick

Answer me

Dude we should like sit Brian’s ass down and remind him how fuckin awkward it was when Kevin was gone… I hated that shit. He can’t leave.

When did he tell you by the way?

I’m really pissed off he didn’t tell all of us at the same time.

NICK

NICK

Cmon this has got to be killing you as bad as it’s killing me. help me plot Operation: Keep BRok.
Ro says I need to give you a chance to sleep or whatever and that you’ll answer when you can. So… you better answer when you get this or I’ll fuckin fly to London and beat your damn ass down.

If he does quit…. we’ll keep going right?

I sighed. Of course AJ was freaking the hell out. He did this when Kevin quit, too. He launched extensive plots to keep Kevin from leaving, starting with a refusal to sign the contract until Kevin had personally gone to him and pleaded with him to sign it. I hoped he didn’t stage a coup like that this time. I didn’t think I could handle months of AJ pitching fits over this. I just wanted a quick, clean break. If Brian was gonna go, he needed to just go and not drag this shit out.

That was part of why I went to London instead of Amsterdam with him. Part of me hoped he would decide to just go home instead of coming to London. Part of me hoped I never saw him again.

My throat tightened at that thought. No. No I didn’t wish I’d never see him again, I thought. Just incase the gods of fate and irony and shit were listening. Suddenly I was afraid his plane wouldn’t make it to London, like I’d jinxed him.

My phone vibed.

It was AJ again.

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned into the phone, “You’re like a fuckin’ disease that won’t go away.”

“Sorry Princess,” AJ said, “I can’t handle this shit.” I could tell by the way he was talking that he was standing somewhere, smoking. “What are we gonna do?”

“We aren’t going to do anything,” I told him.

AJ snuffled into the phone. “What do you mean we aren’t gonna do anything? Of course we’re gonna do something. Brian can’t quit. What the fuck would we do without Brian?”

“What would we do?” I asked, “Well, for starters, we’d be able to perform our songs live without his fucking voice breaking.” The words were harsh. They burned my mouth even as I said them and I closed my eyes, angry with myself for having said them. It was that damn temper of mine. Maybe my mother was right, maybe I did need anger management therapy. I was too quick to snap.

“Wow,” AJ said thickly.

“Sorry,” I sighed, “I’m just frustrated.”

“You think?”

I ran my palm over my face. “He didn’t tell me. I found out on live TV, AJ. At least y’all weren’t on TV when you found out.”

“Shit,” he muttered.

“Yeah.”

AJ licked his lips, “I saw the clip. You took it in stride.”

“I dunno how. I don’t even remember what I said. I went out drinking after. I woke up in some fan’s apartment the next morning --”

“You what?”

“I didn’t sleep with her, she just gave me a couch to sleep on. I guess. I dunno. I don’t remember. AJ, I dunno what I’m doing. I just wanna go home. This whole trip has been shit. We’ve constantly been fighting and then this.”

AJ sighed. “I don’t want him to quit the band, man,” he said after a long pause.

“I mean, if he wants to quit, then let him go.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I already sent the contract back to Jen,” I bragged.

AJ was quiet for a long moment. “Wow,” he mumbled.

“He doesn’t wanna be here so let him go.”

“I guess.”





Brian

Every interview went the same way. They all wanted to know if I was leaving and every time I just said I didn’t know. Fans were crying when I walked by, holding up signs asking me not to go. My heart went out to them, but I wondered if they knew how much stronger the Boys would be without me, if they realized what kind of toll this stuff was taking on me. If they knew how angry Nick was with me, maybe they’d understand more.

I rested my head in my hands, doubled over in the backseat of the van on the way back to the airport after a full day of interviews.

Drew’s voice was low, “How long would you stay before you left?” he asked.

“I dunno,” I replied. “I haven’t even decided if I’m leaving yet, haven’t you been listening to me all day?” I demanded hotly.

Drew held his hands up apologetically, “I’m just asking, man. I need to know how quick to find a new client is all.”

The words made me twinge with guilt. Another casualty in my path of destruction I was wrecking.

At the airport, Drew and I separated on the concourse and I went to get dinner. I carried my bag of greasy food back to the gate and settled myself into a chair by the window, staring out at the airplanes as they took off and landed through the cloudy, icy weather. I worried they’d cancel our flight to London as I ate the sandwich and fries I’d bought, but they didn’t and by the time they called for seating, Drew had showed back up and we boarded the flight together.

I stared out the window at the ice clicking off the plane’s wing and closed the window before I could work myself up into a nervous fit.

Just as I was about to turn my phone off, I got a text from AJ.

If you need to leave, I’ll understand… but please make sure it’s what you really want before you sign the contract. I sent mine in. I won’t do to you what I did to Kevin. But know that I wanted to.

I sighed.

I’ll think before I act, I promise, AJ, I texted back.

That’s all I’m askin’ for, he answered.

I clicked the phone into airplane mode and I shoved it into my pocket and leaned back against the seat. I looked over at Drew. “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier,” I said.

“No worries, man,” Drew answered, “We cool.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I feel like I’m just hurting everyone,” I explained. “I just want what’s best. That’s it. That’s all I want.” I shook my head, “I just want everyone to be happy.”

Chapter Fifteen


Nick

Mike texted me first thing in the morning. Rise & shine.

I groaned and rolled off the bed and grabbed a t-shirt from my suitcase without looking to see if it was one I’d worn yet or not. It was wrinkled really bad, but I didn’t really give a damn, so I kicked on my sneakers and shoved my wallet and my phone in my pockets and headed into the hallway. Mike was leaning against the wall beside my door with a couple Starbucks cups in his hand. He waved one at me.

“You are a mother fucking savior,” I said, taking the cup.

Mike laughed, “I thought you’d like that. You won’t like what I have for you next, though.”

I frowned.

He led the way down the elevator to the lobby and out to the sidewalk where a van waited. Some fans were already pooled around the van, knocking on the windows, calling Brian’s name. I stopped in the doorway and took a deep breath. Mike looked back at me, “C’mon,” he said, “You gotta face him again sometime.”

I followed Mike across the sidewalk. Fans turned and squealed when they saw me, a couple of them shrieked shrilly. Mike held my coffee cup for me while I signed a few CD covers and took a couple pictures, then Mike whisked me into the van and I slid into the seat next to Brian. I turned to get my cup back, “I definitely need this,” I said taking another big sip.

“Hey Nick,” Brian said. His voice cracked. He pursed his lips, “Damn it,” he muttered.

I said nothing.

The van pulled away from the hotel slowly so as not to mow down any of the ladies, and we zoomed through London toward the morning talk show’s studio. I focused on my coffee, though I could feel Brian fidgeting in the seat next to me. We’d been in the car a good ten minutes, stuck in morning traffic on a roundabout, when he looked over. “I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” I said.

Brian looked down, “I know you don’t wanna hear it, but you need to hear it,” he said. “I only wanna do what’s best for you --”

I shook my head, “No. Just stop. Just stop saying bullshit things to me. I don’t need anything from you, especially not excuses. The bottom line is that you lied to me about our friendship. I know now that it means nothing to you.”

He stared at me.

“Look, if you wanna quit, just be honest, that it’s what you want and it’s what makes you happy. You aren’t quitting because you think it’s what’s best for the band,” I said, “Which, by the way, it is.”

Brian nodded.

“We’ll be able to finally sing what we want without you getting on our ass about keeping it clean. We can get some nasty beats going on that shit, funk it up a little bit. We’ll drop a hit single in no time without you there in the A&R meeting to fuck it all up with your I don’t like the chorus and whatever. And we’ll be able to perform live without sounding like shit.”

Brian was still nodding.

“How’s that for fuckin’ honesty?” I finished.

“It’s good,” Brian said, his voice thick, eyes watery, threatening to cry.

“Good.”

The car pulled up to the studio and I shoved the door open, practically tripping in my rush to get the fuck out of the car. I could not handle it if he cried. So I stormed by the cluster of fans pressing against the barricades leading into the building, Mike rushing after me as I ignored their calls. I heard them freak out as Brian got out of the car, and I didn’t slow down even a little bit.

Mike took a deep breath, “You know you didn’t mean even half of that bullshit you just said to him,” he said as we walked down the hallway.

“I meant every word,” I snapped.

Those were the last words that we said to each other on the trip. The next three days in London went by exceedingly slow, between being in the hotel room alone and being toted off from place to place with Brian by my side. We didn’t even talk to each other during interviews, we only talked to the host. It made for some extremely awkward moments and tension so thick that people were commenting on it on all the social media networks. Fans were trending #TeamFrickAndFrack on Twitter to try to get us talking again, but I refused to be the first one to break and Brian stayed just as silent as ever.

The flight home I demanded to be seated somewhere away from Brian, so me and Mike ended up on one side of the crowded airplane and Brian and Drew on the other. I felt bad for Mike and Drew, getting stuck in the middle of all the bullshit. They looked tired and who could blame them they’d spent two weeks trying to get oil and water to mix, basically.

The plane landed in New York for our connecting flights. Mike waved as he bolted away for his connecting to Florida and I stood on the concourse with my carry on bag, a good two hours before I needed to hunt down my flight to Los Angeles. Drew came up behind me, “Hey,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“What’s up?” I asked. I looked around - Brian must have already walked off to his flight to Atlanta because he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Drew took a deep breath, “I know what Brian did was really screwed up and I know you’re hurt, but you should really think before you completely throw what you two have away over it.”

I hesitated. My throat ached.

“Just think on it, okay? That’s all I’m saying.” Drew let his hand slide away from my shoulder, then turned and started walking away. “Safe flight, Nick,” he called with a wave.

I waved back.





Brian

I had dropped my bag by the terminal door and I was pulling it back onto my shoulder. I scurried to get to the concourse, but Drew and Mike had been in a hurry and they were already gone. I looked around for Nick and saw him a ways down, back-to me, carrying his bag and reading his phone. I thought about going after him but why? It wasn’t like we were going to say anything to each other. So I just stood there and watched him until he disappeared among the scramble of travelers ahead of me.

The flight from New York to Atlanta was long, I couldn’t sleep, so I did the crossword puzzle in the in flight magazine and played Candy Crush on my cellphone until we landed at Hatfield Jackson. Leighanne was waiting by baggage claim. I’ve never been so glad to see her in all my life. I rushed over, dropping my carry on to the floor and wrapping my arms around her, pressing my face into her shoulder. She patted my back, “Aw husband. C’mon, we’ll get you home.” She helped get my bags off the carousel and we piled them onto a trolley and headed out to the car, where we loaded them up into the backseat.

I wondered if Nick had gotten home yet, if he’d made it safely, if Lauren had picked him up from the airport, if he’d told her yet what happened, if she hated me now, too.

We drove north through the city, stuck in traffic for about forty minutes, but it didn’t matter, I was just glad to be somewhere familiar to me. The Christian music station played quietly on our car stereo and Leighanne talked about how the last two weeks had been for her and Baylee. She’d made sweet tea for me and had dinner all planned and a myriad of other things, I’m sure, but the jet lag and the emotional exhaustion of the week took over and I fell asleep, slouched in the seat.

It was raining by the time we got home and the weather forecast was saying possibly an ice storm could hit by the morning. I felt like the crappy weather was following me around the world, like I had a permanent black cloud hanging over me. We ran across the yard, splashing through the rain to the front door and before she opened it I leaned over and I kissed her. She looked up at me, “What was that for?” she asked with a trill in her voice.

“For being the only person that doesn’t hate me for quitting Backstreet Boys,” I told her.

She stared up at me, “So you’re really done? You really quit?”

I fought with the depths of my guts for just a moment, then said, “Yes, I think so.”

Leighanne wrapped her arms around me. “You’re very brave,” she said.

“Brave?”

“Yes.”

“For quitting?”

“For making a choice that wasn’t easy,” she replied. “You would’ve been brave either way, just so you know. This isn’t me endorsing either particular direction over the other. I’m just saying I’m proud of your bravery.” She smiled sweetly up at me.

“I feel like parts of it was made up for me,” I admitted, “Because of my voice and because of the contract being sent out prematurely…If Nick and I had stayed getting on like we were for a bit of it there, I might’ve reconsidered.” I shrugged.

She studied me a moment, “Well how do you know y’all won’t get along again?” she asked. “What if he shows up right here on this doorstep asking you to be his friend again, it’s not like you’ll say no. What of the contracts then? What if you regret your choice? Is there a clause to get you back into the group if you decide that?”

“Besides AJ’s perpetual open door reminders that will start the moment it’s official?” I joked, referring to AJ’s early daily reminder to Kevin that the door was always open if he wanted to return. Unlike Kevin, I thought, I would not be needing AJ’s open door policy. I wasn’t ever going to turn back once I left.

Especially now that I knew Nick thought the band would be better off without me. Deep down, that had been my biggest fear, the force that was driving me to consider leaving. I didn’t want to hold the guys back. Nick had confirmed for me that it was true. It was no longer about what I wanted, it really was about what was best for everyone.

I realized as I followed Leighanne into the house, both of us wet from the rain, that maybe I didn’t believe in miracles anymore.





Nick

AJ picked me up at the airport.

“Lauren,” I joked, “It’s been awhile but your looks went to shit, Boose.”

AJ snorted, then in a high pitched voice that was meant to mimic Lauren’s, “Bitch don’t make kick you in the balls.” He paused. “Would Lauren say that?”

“No. But she could so beat me up if she wanted to, I swear to God,” I laughed. “So what the hell man, I was supposed to get me some after plane love and I get you? Where’s Lolo?”

“Lolo was asked to film a TV spot for that sports drink shit she’s been working with,” he started.

“Fitmiss? She got a Fitmiss TV spot? Holy shit that’s fuckin’ awesome! Why didn’t she tell me about it?” I asked, excitement for my woman building up in me.

“Because you were feeling like shit or whatever, she didn’t wanna brag all over your sorry ass,” he replied. AJ watched one of my suitcases go by on the carousel. “Dude you gonna grab your shit or what? I’m not a fuckin’ valet.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” I grabbed the next one and lugged it to the trolley. “She shouldda told me about it anyways,” I whined, going back to the Lauren-got-a-Fitmiss-tv-spot conversation.

AJ shrugged, “What can I say? She’s batshit crazy about you. Anyway, she told me to come pick you up and to bring you home and she’ll meet us there.”

I nodded, “Well. Thanks,” I said.

“Yeah.” He paused, “OK so seriously, also it was kind of that I volunteered. She asked Howie to do it really. I told Howie to punk off cos I wanted to talk to you about this Brian shit.”

“AJ,” I grunted, lifting my biggest bag, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

We pushed the trolley, walking toward AJ’s car. “I know you don’t, but -- I mean, shit man. We gotta talk about it. Do you really think we could keep going without Brian in the band? He’s kind of the core voice. What about we are five and all that?”

“Howie was originally supposed to be the Brian of the band,” I pointed out. “Howie can get the vocals he wants this way. It’s actually better for the dynamic. And we don’t have to be all like worried about what the Christians will think of us. None of the rest of us give a damn what people think. Brian’s been holding us back that way. We can get dirty. Our fans like dirty.”

AJ shrugged.

I chewed my lower lip as we walked across the street to the parking garage and paid the parking fee. We loaded my shit into the trunk of AJ’s SUV and I paused, leaning against the suitcases. I looked at him. “I really miss the old days.”

AJ paused, his hands on the hatchback door over our heads. “Me, too,” he answered. “Before all of the bullshit we caused.” I knew he meant literally we, me and him. Because at the root of all of the fighting, of all of the anger, all of the brokenness, lay the pieces of bombshells of the drugs and the drinking and rebelling and things that we’d done. He drew in a deep breath, “You and me, we always have been, like, the ones that cause problems, then we’re the ones that kinda… kinda fix’em together. That’s why I thought you’d go in with me on the Operation: Keep BRok idea, but…” he let all that deep breath he’d taken in out in a heavy rush. He shrugged. “I dunno, I mean he’s your best friend, I just thought you’d want him to stay.”

I stared at the ground, telling myself not to cry again. I’d done too much of that already, mostly when nobody was looking but it was still emasculating even when I was by myself. I shook my head, “No, AJ, he isn’t. He hasn’t been for a long time, we were just really good at pretending for the cameras is all.” I backed out from the trunk of the SUV and pushed the trolley away to a little corral as AJ slammed the hatchback door.

He stood there watching as I walked back to him.

“How long were you pretending for?” he asked when I was almost there.

I stared at him.

“How long were y’all pretending?”

My mouth was dry. I shrugged.

“Tell me. Seriously, man, I need to know ‘cos I gotta know how much of my life is a fuckin’ mirage. ”

“Like 1996,” I said.

AJ looked like I’d just cut him open and ripped out several of his intestines and stomped on them on the ground. “‘96?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.” He turned away, pulling cigarettes from his pocket as he went and got into the car, slamming the door without even waiting for me. The engine roared to life and I walked slowly over and climbed into the car, too, as AJ was unrolling the window to let the smoke out. I stared out the passenger window as he backed up.

“So it’s all been a lie?” he asked. “All this time?”

My throat hurt so much. I felt tears falling down my cheeks. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t do anything but sit there crying as Los Angeles loomed into view.





Brian

I’d printed out my copy of the contract and I was sitting in the office room of our house, behind the mahogany desk that Leighanne had furnished it with, staring at the lawyer’s letterhead and the crisp contrast of black letterforms on sharp white paper. I’d been there for an hour or more, just staring at it, going over everything in my mind.

I was remembering the first time I met the guys… I’d landed in Orlando after leaving Kentucky in a pretty big rush and Kevin had picked me up to bring me to the old warehouse that Lou Pearlman had been holding rehearsals at with them. “I gotta stop by the bus station,” Kevin told me, “Nicky had to take the bus over ‘cos his mother had to work today.”

“He can’t drive?” I’d asked.

“Nawh, he’s only thirteen,” Kevin laughed.

“There’s a thirteen year old in this band?” I asked, “Seriously? Kev, how can you think this is going anywhere?”

Kevin shook his head, “Wait ‘til you hear us. It’s like velvet in your ears.”

He drove through the convoluted streets. I’d only been to Orlando maybe twice in my whole life, both times for Disneyworld back when I was a kid. Not that eighteen isn’t a kid still, but like a real kid. I’d wanted to go the year I had my heart trouble when I was little and we cancelled plans because I’d spent the next like year and a half in the hospital, so the moment I got out my parents had made sure we came down as soon as I was healthy enough.

Kev had pulled up to the bus station. It was about twenty-million degrees, hot even for Florida in April but extra hot for a Kentucky boy who was used to the rainy lukewarm sort of Aprils of home. The sun reflected off the mirrored windows of the station. Out front was a few rows of benches and on one of them sat a gangly mess of a kid wearing baggy clothes and a backwards ball cap over his wildly untamed blonde hair. He saw the car pulling up and he grabbed a backpack off the ground and ran to the car, his sneakers a little too big for his feet and almost falling off. None of his clothes matched properly. He flung the back door of Kevin’s car open and threw the bag in and climbed in behind me. “Hey,” he said. Then he looked at me leaned forward as Kevin pulled away from the curb. “Hey I’m Nick,” he greeted me, staring at the side of my head.

“Hey,” I said, “Brian.”

“Whoa man your accent is like whoa. Say somethin’ else.” He grinned widely.

“What?”

Nick laughed uproariously, leaning back in the seat and holding his stomach, “Oh my God you’re so great.”

I looked at Kevin.

He shrugged.

“Does your accent happen when you sing?” Nick asked.

“Will you buckle your fucking seatbelt please back there before I get a ticket? You’re paying it if I get stopped.” Kevin snapped.

Nick sat up and we heard the belt scrape and click into place. “Does it?” Nick persisted.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

Nick giggled.

I looked at Kevin again.

“Hey Nicky, knock off being annoying before you scare my cousin back to the hills of Kentucky will ya? Christ,” Kevin said, looking in the rearview mirror.

“I ain’t being obnoxious,” Nick whined. He leaned forward, doubled over, making the seatbelt stretch as far as it could, his chin just barely reached the edge of my seat. “I brought my basketball ‘cos Kev said you like b-ball. You like b-ball right? Lou’s got this great hoop, we can play.”

Kevin sighed. “Nick --”

“No, dude, Kev, b-ball sounds awesome,” I said.

Nick had grinned like the sun.

Now, sitting in my office, I stared down at the contract and ran my hand over my chin.

The door opened and Leighanne came in carrying a glass of her sweet tea with a straw sticking out of it. She set down a coaster on the desk, then the tea on top of the coaster, and sat down on the edge of the desk, looking down at the contract for a moment. She pulled her long blonde hair over one shoulder and pushed her glasses up her nose. “How are we doing in here?” she asked.

I sighed, “The same as I’ve been for the last hour.”

She picked the contract up and flipped through the pages, the very corner of her lip caught between her front teeth. I stared up at her and leaned back in the chair, taking the glass of tea with me to sip as I watched her look through it. When she was done, she laid it back on the desk as neatly as I’d had it. She looked at me. “Why don’t you take a break and come downstairs? Baylee was hoping you’d go shoot some hoops with him in the yard. It’s the first really warm day we’ve had in awhile, I think he’s getting cabin fever.” She smiled. “I need to go grocery shopping, is there anything you want me to get while I’m out?”

I nodded. I put the tea down on the coaster, looked at the contract. Then, in a rush of not overthinking things, I grabbed a pen from the holder, flipped the contract open and signed on the line with a flourish. I dropped the pen onto the desk and slid the contract into the manila envelope I’d already pulled out and addressed. I pushed the little metal closures down and handed it to Leighanne. “Stamps,” I said.

She took it and turned it over in her hands, staring down at it. I grabbed my glass of sweet tea and finished it without using the straw. I put the glass back down on the coaster and headed to the door.

“I’ll be outside if you need me,” I said.

She nodded.

Chapter Sixteen


Nick

Kevin was pacing. He was making me uptight. I stared at my shoes. Howie was next to me on the couch and AJ was sitting on the arm of the couch to my left. Kevin’s sneakers squeaked as he walked back and forth across the wood floor. He had the contract in his hands, reading it, his lips moving as his eyes skimmed words, the pages hanging over the end. I flipped the hood of my sweatshirt up, leaning back against the couch cushion, staring up at the ceiling through the bit of my hair that had fallen over my forehead in the motion of my hood.

We were at a Kevin’s house in Los Angeles, holding the first sans-Brian band meeting. Kevin had called before I even got home the night before, while AJ was weaving through traffic. He’d wanted to hold the band meeting then, but I’d insisted on going home and seeing Lauren because I didn’t think I could handle much more before I saw her. It’d been with reluctance that Kevin had agreed to hold off for a few hours. “First thing in the morning, Carter,” he’d said as he hung up, “First thing, I mean it.”

Lauren had swallowed a lot of her excitement about the Fitmiss TV spot, so when I asked her about it she’d been giddy to talk about it and gone on for some time about it the night before. I was thankful for the distraction. I hadn’t wanted to talk anymore about Brian and the Backstreet Boys and the hell that had been the press tour. I think she knew that, so she didn’t bring it up at all. It was bad, though, how depressed I felt about it. When we went to bed, I actually had gone right to sleep without trying to get her to have sex with me or anything. Even when she came to bed in nothing but one of my old t-shirts, which is like the most sexiest thing ever, I still just wanted her to hold me ‘til I fell asleep. She rubbed my back just like I’d wanted all the time when I was in London.

Now I was at Kevin’s house, just like I promised, first thing in the morning, and the sun was coming through these yellow curtains that Kristin put on the living room windows, reflecting off Kevin’s white baby grand piano and making a reflection on the ceiling. A bird or something flew by the window and it’s shadow blocked the reflection, mirroring it on the ceiling.

“Well the contract’s fair enough,” Kevin said, finally finishing reading it. I heard the papers flip back into order. “How many of you signed it already.”

“I did,” AJ answered quickly.

I raised my palm lazily.

Kevin sounded surprised, “AJ? Really? You did?”

I rolled my eyes over to look at AJ. “Yeah,” he said. He sighed. “I told B-Rok I did, and I told him to think about it before he sent his in ‘cos this is bullshit, but… I know it was crap what I did to you when you tried to leave and…” AJ glanced at me, then back to Kevin, his lips tight, “If Brian wants to go, then we should let him go.” He didn’t sound fully convinced.

Kevin was looking at me, I could feel his eyes on me even without looking at him.

“I say good riddance. He’s a dick anyways,” I murmured, moving so I could see Kevin’s face as I said the words. The dismay people were giving me about my carelessness in the matter was the only thing that was fueling me to keep the charade up. The shock factor.

Kevin frowned.

He didn’t seem as surprised as I’d expected. I was disappointed.

He turned to Howie, “Did you sign it?”

Howie shook his head, “I thought we were going to talk about it before we signed anything,” he said, “But I guess we just sign things now without talking.”

“I wanted to fuckin’ talk about it,” AJ jumped on the offense quickly. “I wanted to but Nick didn’t wanna talk about it and --” he sighed, “Shit, Kev, I need a fuckin’ smoke.”

“There’s a perfectly good deck out there if you wanna go smoke you can be outside.”

“It’s cold outside,” AJ complained. It was cold for LA. Warm compared to the temperatures in Europe Brian and I had been in for the last two weeks though.

Kevin shrugged, “That’s the price you pay for smoking.”

AJ grumbled, but he didn’t move to go out on the deck, either.

“I think we need to talk about this, like really seriously, because we need to figure out how this is going to work without Brian, if it’s going to work without Brian. Because if Brian leaves we need a contract for us, we need to figure out the business strategy.” Howie chopped one hand across his palm. “It’s important that we plan for this stuff. Like that’s one fifth of the money we need to produce, that’s more money up front for albums and videos and stuff like that we need to put up. That’s one-fifth more money we need to produce for tours and stuff like that.” He paused. “We need to talk about leads and style. This isn’t just losing a member, it’s losing a part of who we are as Backstreet Boys and we didn’t make a plan last time this happened, when Kevin left. Guys, it was a mess, you remember? And I said then, I said we need a plan and we did not do it.” He shook his head. “And those albums, they were good music but nothing much happened for the band in that time, we didn’t do too good, remember? We hemorrhaged money following This Is Us, that’s how we ended up in NKOTBSB. Well. I hemorrhaged money, since I put up a majority of it,” he said pointedly. “Guys. We need a plan. I don’t want bad business this time if we’re gonna do this.”

AJ slid into the tiny space between me and the arm of the couch with a groan. He just barely fit. I slid toward Howie to balance out the space between us all so we weren’t cramped.

Kevin stood before us. He rubbed the back of his neck and started pacing again.

“God damn,” I muttered and I leaned my head back again, this time tugging my sweatshirt so the edge of the hood covered my eyes even.

“First of all. Do we know for sure Brian wants to do this?” Kevin asked.

They all looked at me.

I looked around at them, rolling my head on the cushion, “Jesus you guys, I don’t know anymore than you do.”

“You spent the last two weeks with the guy, you gotta know something,” Howie urged.

“I don’t gotta know anything,” I said, “He spent the last two weeks lying like a cheapass rug to me, saying shit like we were friends --”

“You are friends,” Kevin intoned, his voice Barry White deep.

I shook my head, “No we aren’t. We haven’t been for a long ass time.”

“See that’s the shit that scares the bejesus out of me,” AJ said. “Twenty years is a long time to pretend to be best friends. Aren’t you guys tired of it?”

“I’m exhausted of it,” I snapped, “That’s why I want him to just go already. He doesn’t wanna be here, he doesn’t wanna try and do his vocal therapy and get better and give a damn about any of us, then he doesn’t need to be pretending to be anymore.”

We sat in silence that seemed too loud to speak in.





Brian

Leighanne came out of the house while Baylee and I were still shooting hoops in the yard. She had the manilla envelope in her hand. She paused by the car, her keys in her fist, watching as I lifted Baylee up so he could slam-dunk the ball and we made raaahhh noises under our breath to replicate a cheering crowd going wild. I put Baylee down and jogged over to her, trying not to look at the envelope. “You going?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. She reached up and smoothed my wild-from-playing hair. Baylee was shooting in the background, the ball making that sharp slapping sound as it hit the backboard and the cement. That sound brought back so many memories to me, I could feel my chest crushing from the weight of them. She held up the envelope, forcing me to look at it. “Are you sure you want me to send this?” she asked.

“Positive,” I replied.

She studied my eyes for a long moment, like she wanted to see the truth written in them, but I’d become really good at keeping unsaid words out of them when I needed people to just believe the things I said. My poker face was flawless. Leighanne nodded and tossed the envelope into the car with her purse. “What kind of cereal do you want, Bay?” she called.

“Cocoa puffs,” he shouted, foisting the ball toward the net. He hit it this time and the net rocked with the force of the ball going through it, “SWISH!” he shouted, running around, arms spread wide like an airplane, “FIRST CLASS!” he swooped by Leighanne and I at the car, hair blown back in the air as he ran.

He reminded me of Nick. This was a celebratory dance Nick had taught him years ago playing ball with him by the tour buses.

I took a deep breath. “Send it priority,” I told Leighanne, and ran back to grab the ball from where it had rolled into a bush by the door as Baylee continued running around making airplane noises. “And buy me some Mac & Cheese,” I called. “Like from the box!”

Leighanne got in the car and Baylee stopped running to wave at her as she backed down the driveway. “C’mon, LeBron,” I called his attention back to the basket ball.

“On my way Jordan,” he called back, and he swept back toward me, arms still wide like a plane.





Nick

We had descended into anarchy in no time at the meeting. It’d been literally a solid half an hour of AJ yelling we couldn’t let Brian leave, me yelling I wanted him to get the fuck out, Howie shouting he wanted more vocals this time, and Kevin yelling over all of it for us to shut up and talk respectfully. We all left with the assignment to sign the contracts if we hadn’t, reflect on the idea of the four of us working together as a quartet and what that would look like, and reconvening two days later with lowered voices and cooler tempers.

I drove home frustrated, my fists balled around the steering wheel.

When I got to the house, Lauren’s car was gone, she had a photo shoot for the magazine ads to go with her TV spot for Fitmiss that she was going to do while I was at the meeting. I slammed through the door and the dogs and cats scattered, afraid of my anger, disappearing into various rooms of the house. I went to the kitchen and dug through the cupboards, searching for any alcohol we might’ve had left over somewhere, but Lauren had cleaned us out completely. I sighed and grabbed an orange juice from the fridge, which was not even close to alcohol but unfortunately was the only thing we had. I poured it into a tumbler and drank it the way I’d wanted to drink something harder, knocking it back in quick mouthfuls, trying to imagine my way into numbness. It didn’t work.

Everything was going to shit, I thought, and it wasn’t fair. I’d tried really hard to be really honest with Brian. I got my face all busted up for him, I told him about Lou, I opened up to him and he couldn’t even tell me the biggest news ever.

If it had been the first time that Brian hadn’t bothered to tell me something before someone in the media told me then I might’ve been more inclined to believe that he’d been trying to tell me but it wasn’t.

There’d been other times.

Like when Baylee was born and I found out from a radio deejay that Leighanne had had the baby. Brian had called AJ and Howie and Kevin, but not me. When I’d asked him why he’d said because he knew I was on my solo tour at the time and he didn’t wanna bother me. I’d resented Baylee for years because of that.

Brian had acted exactly the way my family always acted. I thought about when I found out about Leslie from someone backstage that heard from Twitter and not from a phone call from my family. I thought about when I found out Angel was getting married on Instagram when fans were congratulating her. Just recently when BJ had a baby and fans were congratulating me on being an uncle again. The same way they had when Alyssa, Leslie’s baby, had been born. The way they’d told me about my half-brother whose name I never remember because I’ve only met the kid like once and he’s like ten or some shit like that now.

Brian knew about all this shit and about how much it broke my heart not to be included in a personal way. He knew how much the incident with Baylee had upset me, too.

Yet he still let it happen again.

I put the glass down so hard it broke and I picked up the pieces from the counter, throwing them in the trash. One sliced open my index finger on my right hand and blood started going everywhere. “Fuck,” I moaned as I swept the last of the shards in the trash, my blood dotting the counter, the floor and the trash bin. I grabbed the dish cloth and ran it under warm water, then wrapped it around my hand and went upstairs to the bathroom to find the first aid kit.

I was digging through the bathroom closet for it when I heard Lauren’s voice, “NICK? Holy shit, NICK?”

“I’m upstairs,” I yelled.

She ran up the steps and broke into the bathroom in a panic, “What happened?!?” Her eyes were wide.

“I’m okay,” I said, “I just can’t find the first aid kit. Calm down.” I had the cloth balled around my hand. It was stained red already.

Lauren moved me to sit on the closed toilet lid. “I come home and find blood all over the place… and you tell me to calm down,” she muttered, opening the cupboard under the sink, which I didn’t know actually opened. I thought the little doors were just decoration. She pulled out a tupperware with all the first aid things in it and opened it. “Is it deep? Do you need stitches?” she asked.

“I broke a tumbler,” I said.

She frowned because I hadn’t really answered her question and pulled my hand out to look at it. It was a nasty cut, but it didn’t need stitches. She cleaned it out with an antibacterial wipe and I bit down on my lip as it stung. “Hey, how come we don’t have any alcohol,” I demanded.

“Because we agreed not to keep any in the house because you drink it when you’re pissed off over stupid shit,” she reminded me. “I take it your meeting didn’t go well,” she said, squeezing neosporin onto the cut.

I shook my head.

Lauren sighed. She wrapped the wings of a bandage around my knuckles. “There you go,” she said, “Good as new.” She threw away the packaging and the cloth and started picking up the pieces of the first aid kit. I stared at my wound. She glanced over at me as she closed the kit. “I think you need to call Brian.”

“No.”

Lauren sighed. “Well, come downstairs anyways. I brought home Sushi to cheer you up.”

“I like sushi,” I said.

“I know you do, that’s why I got it for you,” she laughed, tucking the first aid kit back under the sink, “And for any future traumas you may have. The first aid kit is under the sink.” She stood up as I stood up, too, and tucked a stray hair behind my ear, “For the record, it’s under the sink in Nashville and Key West, too.”

I kissed her and she slid her hands in my hair to the back of my neck as our lips pressed against each other. When we pulled apart, she looked up at me, her face flushed. “You take good care of me,” I told her.

She smiled.

“We should go to Nashville,” I said, “I need a break from LA and the guys and everything.”

Lauren nodded, “I’m done with my Fitmiss stuff for now so we should go. A break sounds good.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” I said, “I have another meeting with the guys.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll book us a flight tonight.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Also, we should have some sex tonight.”

Lauren laughed, “There it is. I was wondering when you were gonna get fresh with me.” She leaned in and pressed her lips to mine again.





Brian

I was sitting in the parlor, which I called the den but Leighanne called the parlor, at the piano, tapping keys slowly. I knew I recognized the melody I was striking, but I couldn’t place it. I just kept playing the notes over and over, staring down at the ivory and black, at my fingers moving across them. Baylee had gone upstairs to work on studying his script once we’d tired from playing basketball. The sun was setting, turning the sky orange and pink over the trees outback, dying the room with amber light. I’d taken a shower because my muscles were sore from the basketball. Other than that imaginary game with Nick in France, I hadn’t played much ball in a while and I forgot how much my body ached after playing. Ached in a good way.

“I mailed it,” Leighanne said, coming into the room. I didn’t hear her get home, so I was surprised to see her. I stopped tapping the keys. “Priority, like you wanted,” she said, handing me the tracking and delivery confirmation slips. I held them for a moment, then laid them on the piano and started tapping the keys again. She nudged her way onto the bench next to me and watched my hands moving. “So what’s next?” she asked.

I shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“How long until this is all finalized?”

“However long it takes to take the guys all to sign it and send it in. I know AJ already did.” I shook my head, “And I’m sure Nick did,” I added with a scoff.

Leighanne rested her cheek on my shoulder. “Maybe we could think about adopting a baby or something,” she suggested quietly.

“Maybe,” I answered offhandedly. I didn’t want to be making any life-altering plans right now, I felt too fragile for anything like that. At the moment, all I wanted to invest myself in was the plinky-plonky sound of the notes rising out of the piano - even if I couldn’t remember what the tune was.

“I always loved this song,” Leighanne said. “I don’t understand why y’all didn’t release it.”

I looked over at her, “What?”

“This song,” she answered, “It’s beautiful. Turn the radio on I don’t hear a song,” she sang quietly, boosting my memory.

That’s right, that was what it was. We’d watched the clip of us messing with this song over and over again during the promo in Europe, no wonder it was stuck in my head. The simple notes fell from my fingers over and over again. “And everybody said we won’t last forever, I just wanna know if we’re still together… turn the radio on, I won’t hear a song… hey, hey … heyyyy… I waited my whole life... here in the spotlight, why can’t you see me? Ah... Stars froze in darkness, eyes filled with sadness, why can’t you see me?” My voice broke and in frustration, I brought my hands down too hard and hit an off key and the piano hummed with the resonating wrong note. I reached for the lid and closed off the keys and got up off the bench.

“Brian,” Leighanne called, but I didn’t stop or turn back.

I was out back in the yard when she caught up to me.

I was staring at the trees that lined the back yard, leading off into a small thicket of woods where Baylee and I had built a fort a few years before with leftover pallets that some bricks had come on when we had some landscaping done. During summer you couldn’t see the fort from the yard because of all the leaves but with everything dead and gone now it was easy to see, it’s cover down, exposed. I felt like that, too.

I heard Leighanne come up behind me, her feet quiet. She stopped a couple steps away and just stood there without saying a word, just being there. I licked my lips. “It’s frustrating,” I admitted, “Because everyone thinks I have this perfect life. Nick thinks I have this perfect life,” I corrected, “And in a lot of ways I do. I have you and Baylee and -- well, I had Backstreet Boys and that was the dream. I’ve seen miracles happen.” I shook my head, “But sometimes I wonder what the --” I struggled, “What the hell God is playing at, taking my voice away from me. He gave me this - this gift and…” I swallowed, trying to keep steady, trying not to let the emotion take over my words, “And now he’s just taking it away, and I just… I feel weak because it feels like it’s all in my head and I should be able to just… just sing, like I always have, but I just can’t and it’s not fair. And it’s hard and nobody understands that it isn’t easy to have a perfect life, it isn’t easy to be - to be good enough.” I stayed staring at that stupid fort and the stupid dead trees all around it as the light started fading off into dusk. Soon the fort would be hidden again but only by the dark.

She put her hand on my shoulders, “You know, it’ll happen less if you do your therapy more like the doctor told you to,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” I asked.

“Of course it matters,” she said, “Even without the band. It matters to you.”

I nodded.

“Come inside, it’s getting cold,” she commanded, “And look at you, you don’t even have shoes on.”

I looked down at my socks.

“C’mon.”

I turned and followed her back into the house. “I’m gonna fix up Baylee’s fort this summer,” I said as we stepped inside.

“He never uses it,” she pointed out.

I glanced back at the fort as I shut the door.

“Then I guess we’ll just let it be,” I said.

Chapter Seventeen


Nick

Kevin’s dining room table was cleared off except for four canary-yellow legal pads, each accompanied by a perfectly sharpened pencil, and four mugs of steaming water steeping tea. I stood in the doorway as AJ and Howie sat down and Kevin was fetching the contract from upstairs, where he’d been sitting reading it all night. I sat next to AJ because I felt like he needed to feel like a team and for some reason he’d picked me to be on “his side”, plus it was kind of like Kevin and Howie were the businessy guys and me and AJ were the fuck it let’s have some fun guys.

Kevin came back in and put his iPad on the table, the contract pulled up, the actual printed copy of the contract next to it. He settled himself in, “Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. He had a spoon in his hand, too, he must’ve grabbed while he was up and he used it to stir the tea in his cup, then tapped it against the edge of the glass.

“Before we start, I gotta be out of here by noon,” I said, “Lauren and I have a flight to catch.”

Kevin looked at me over the edge of a pair of glasses he’d put on. “Okay,” he said, displeased, “That doesn’t give us very much time.” He looked down at the legal pad and took a sip of his tea as he picked up the pen laying at his place.

“Ground rules,” Howie spoke up, “No yelling. I move if we start yelling we need to get up and take a walk.”

“Seconded,” AJ said, “I fucking hate the yelling.”

Kevin nodded, “Agreed. This is a place of love and respect and we’re going to treat it as such.” He looked at me pointedly.

“I’m not yelling,” I said.

“Yet,” he mumbled and he reached for the contract. “Okay, so… here we go. Brian’s leaving, we agreed yesterday that we’d let him. Howie, did you send in your copy?”

“Not yet, but I will if we all agree on that.” He looked around at me and AJ.

“We already signed,” I pointed out, “Obviously we’re fine with it.”

Kevin cleared his throat, “I think we need to maintain the open door policy that was in place for me when I left,” he said.

“YES,” AJ exploded.

“Well that was enthusiastic,” Kevin said as I rubbed the ear AJ had just yelled into. He wrote the words open door policy for Brian on his legal pad. Like we wouldn’t remember that we’d said that. He laid his pen down across the legal pad. “Real talk guys. Do you all think we can even pull this off without Brian?”

We looked around at each other.

“I’m gonna be straight up here. I was mostly background vocals when I left. We’re talking about losing a lead vocalist here. We’re talking trying to figure out how to remix all of our songs to cover for this. Whole verses.” He looked around at us, “I know nobody else wants to say it so I’ll be the one to say it, that’s a fuck of a lot easier to do when all the person’s doing is backgrounds and a couple verses here and there like I was doing before.”

“Howie could do a lot of Brian’s stuff,” AJ said.

Howie chewed his lip. “Not like Brian can.”

“Well no, fuck no, no offense or nothin’ but nobody can do Brian’s parts like Brian, but you could,” AJ said, shrugging. “You have the range and tone for it.”

“What about the fanbase?” Kevin said.

AJ leaned back in the chair.

“That was worrying me also,” Howie said. “Brian’s like one of the popular ones. The only hit worse to our fan base we could make would be if --” he stopped. Their eyes all went to me.

I raised my eyebrow.

“I think the fans will stick with us,” AJ said. “We still have Nick. And we aren’t unpopular, guys,” he added, smirking at Kevin and Howie.

Howie nodded.

Kevin licked his lips and scratched his chin. “I think we’re probably looking at losing a lot of fans over this.”

Nobody said anything.

“Just being realistic,” he added. “I mean a lot of fans are fans because of Brian and wouldn’t be as interested in the four of us playing without him. Look at sales of our solo albums compared to group albums.”

AJ grabbed his pen and started doodling.

“So are you, like, against us continuing without Brian or something?” I asked point blank.

“Not against it,” Kevin answered, “I just think there are risks. Serious risks.”

“I think we can do it just fine,” I said, leaning forward, “We’ve done it once before, we can do it again. We regroup, change the style to fit the new sound, and we bust our balls on tour. We lower prices on tickets for a little bit, get them coming for the low money, once we build the confidence back up, we can readjust pricing. We get some good designers, good stylists, pay a little upfront for a nice stage. I think we’ll be fine. We have die hard fans, y’all, they ain’t gonna leave us.”

Kevin took a deep breath.

“And we keep the open door in case something changes,” AJ said hopefully.

“And we keep the open door,” I said. Though I didn’t believe for even a moment that we’d ever need it to be open.

Kevin looked around at us. “So we’re in this then?”

Howie nodded. So did AJ. “We’re in this,” I said. Then I paused, “And… I have another ground rule to add.”

“The meeting’s over Nick, we don’t need anymore ground rules now,” Howie laughed.

“Not for the meeting,” I said, “This ground rule’s for us. All of us.” They looked at me expectantly. “No lying,” I said, “No secrets. No grudges. We be honest, up front, truthful. All the time. No more faking it. If we’re pissed at each other, we be pissed at each other. If we can’t stomach the look of each other’s faces… we fucking say so. We don’t say we’re friends if we aren’t. We’re real.”

The guys all agreed.





Brian

I woke up in the morning early and made breakfast before Baylee and Leighanne woke up. Leighanne came down first and we sat in the kitchen eating and sharing the newspaper until Baylee came down and joined us. Baylee talked hurriedly about some video one of his friends had Instagrammed him the night before. I listened intently to his story until the phone rang and Leighanne went to go answer it. When she came back, she said, “Brian, it’s for you.”

“Hold that thought, Bay,” I said getting up. “Who is it?” I asked her.

“Jen,” she replied.

I glanced at Baylee as Leighanne handed me the cordless home phone, “I’m gonna, uh, take this upstairs,” I told her, and I hurried out of the room and up the stairs in the foyer toward the office. I raised the phone to my ear as I jogged up the steps. “Hey Jen.”

“Hey,” she said slowly, “So. You got the contracts.”

“Uh huh.” I pushed the office door open and stepped inside, “We certainly did. What was up with releasing them early? I told you I wanted a chance to talk to Nick first.”

“Brian we gave you like a month to talk to him. You kept putting it off. Then we stuck the two of you into a single hotel room for a week and you still didn’t tell him,” Jen replied with a sigh to her tone, “I couldn’t keep waiting for ever.”

I sighed, “You could’ve told me before you sent it.”

She was quiet.

“I dunno, forget it. The fight was just a matter of time anyway, I guess. It’s not like Nick and I were going to be magically repaired overnight, I don’t know what I ever believed for a moment we could be. I was foolish, I guess.” I took a deep breath. “Anyway. I sent my signed contract out yesterday. Priority. It should be on your desk in a day or two.”

“Okay,” Jen replied, “I was only waiting on yours and one other one, most everyone sent them in already.”

“Eager to get rid of me, I’m sure,” I said.

Jen’s voice was sad, “I don’t know about that Brian. Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I’m sure the guys would be okay with just forgetting the contract was ever sent out.”

“I’m sure, Jen. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that it’s better for the band this way.” I sat down behind the desk and spun the chair to look out the window. “The fellas think I’ve been holding them back.”

“What? Nobody thinks that, Brian.”

“Except they do.”

“Who said that?”

I was quiet for a long moment.

“Nick doesn’t really think that,” she said.

“Jen, it doesn’t matter, okay. Just… let me know when you have all the contracts, okay?”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” I started to go to hang up, but before I could Jen spoke up again.

“Brian, there’s an interview I need you to do in Atlanta tomorrow.”

“Jen, I’m not a Backstreet Boy anymore,” I said.

“You are until I get all five contracts,” she reminded me. “And besides, they wanted to talk to you about you leaving and all that anyway. Consider it your last interview. Otherwise your real last interview will be one of those awkward things you did in London with Nick.”

I ran my hand over my forehead. “Okay. Where is it?” I asked.

“I’ll send you the info in an email,” she answered.

“Okay.”

We hung up and I wandered back downstairs. Baylee was in the parlor practicing the piano and Leighanne was cleaning up the kitchen. I came in and put the phone back on it’s cradle. “So what’s up?” she asked, putting the last of the dishes into the washer.

“Jen has an interview lined up for me tomorrow.”

Leighanne raised her eyebrow.

“Last one as a Backstreet Boy,” I said. “They wanna talk about me leaving the band and whatever. She’s sending the info.”

Leighanne poured the soap suds into the little cup and closed the washer. “Are you okay?” she asked gently.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She looked like she doubted it, but if she did she didn’t press the issue and let me have my moment of denial.





Nick

“I feel better already,” I said, grabbing Lauren’s hand. It was the morning and we were in Nashville at the Farmer’s Market on the north side of the city. She had a whole basket full of vegetables she’d bought already, and now we were wandering through the crafty end of the market, just browsing since it was so relaxing. Somewhere, there was live music and some kids were playing around with a hackie-sack. I pulled Lauren closer. It felt good not to be thinking about the Backstreet Boys or Brian or my mother or any of the bad stuff going on, just being a guy out with his pretty wife on a nice day in the South.

Lauren smiled and squeezed my hand. We were passing the food court and a lot of great smells wafted towards us. I took a deep breath of what smelled like vegan burritos and looked around for the vendor from which that scent was coming. “Ohhh!” Lauren said suddenly, “Kintsugi.”

“We just had sushi yesterday,” I reminded her, “Remember? Naked sushi?”

She laughed, “No, honey, kintsugi isn’t sushi. C’mere.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the food vendors. I looked back longingly as she led me to a table full of vases, plates, bowls, cups, jewelry, and all kinds of other stuff made out of broken glass with big veins of gold. I raised my eyebrow. “These are beautiful,” she breathed, looking over the stuff.

An elderly Japanese woman came around a corner and saw her looking, “Do you like?” she asked, her voice thickly accented. She grinned at Lauren, “Half price.”

Lauren was looking at a big bowl, the ripples of gold and bits of glass like big swirls on the inside. It looked like it was made out of broken pieces of a couple bowls and reconstructed so it had this odd, wonky sort of shape to it. “Isn’t this gorgeous, Nick?”

I blinked at it, “Uh… sure.”

She grinned, then turned back to the woman, and asked her something in Japanese. The woman’s smile broadened and she answered and the two of them talked for a couple minutes. I always felt stupid when Lauren spoke Japanese, like a big dumb dog she was dragging around with her. I chewed my lower lip. Finally, the woman started wrapping the bowl in paper and Lauren pulled out her wallet and handed her a hundred dollar bill. She got a twenty back.

“Eighty fuckin’ bucks? For a broken bowl?” I whispered loudly as the woman put the money in a little lock box and handed Lauren the bowl in a bag.

“It’s not broken,” Lauren replied. She turned to the woman, “Domo arigato,” she said, bowing slightly, hands clasped before her.

“Mr. Roboto,” I whispered as Lauren pulled me away. She whacked my arm playfully. I laughed, “I’m sorry.”

Lauren shook her head. “Be polite,” she said, but I could tell she was amused.

“Yeah polite to the woman that just sold you a bunch of broken glass,” I laughed.

“I told you, it isn’t broken. It’s kintsugi. It’s Japanese art.”

“It sounds like a sushi roll.”

“It’s not a sushi roll.”

“But it sounds like a sushi roll.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “You’re such an ass.”

“I ain’t an ass,” I replied.

“A grammatically incorrect ass.”

I laughed, “Baby, tell me about your broken bowl art.”

Lauren grinned, unable to resist talking about a part of the Japanese culture she loved so much. “When something that is cherished breaks, the Japanese don’t just throw it away, because things like bowls and plates and cups are so important in their culture. A tea cup can hold the spirit of it’s user, it can tell fortunes, things like that. They cherish the spirit of things. So they don’t just throw it away, that would be disrespectful. Especially if it’s something that’s been handed down generations. So they repair it by soldering the pieces together with gold. Pure gold. It’s called kintsugi, which literally means gold joinings.” She grabbed my hand again, “I just think it’s poetic… taking something broken and putting it back together again. And they use gold because the breaks are just as precious as the rejoining of the pieces. They want to preserve the brokenness as much as they want to heal it. The gold shows where it was broken so that they can never forget how it broke.” Lauren looked up at me, “Isn’t that beautiful?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I guess, if you like broken shit.”

Lauren laughed, “Well I like you, don’t I?”

“Touche,” I laughed, leaning in and kissing her forehead.





Brian

Leighanne drove me to the interview the next day after we dropped Baylee off at school. I didn’t have to be there until ten, but we didn’t want to end up stuck in traffic and late so we left early. We were quiet all the way into the city, the music just playing on the stereo like background noise. I stared out the window, thinking about how much everything had changed in so short a time as the skyline came into view.

“Are you nervous?” Leighanne asked.

“Not really,” I answered. “I probably should be.”

She reached her hand over and squeezed my knee comfortingly. “I’m here for you husband,” she said.

“Thanks,” I replied, and I took her hand from my knee and held it in my own.

At the station, we went inside to the soundbooth where the deejay was on a commercial break for the show the show. Leighanne took a seat on some folding chairs behind me as I pulled the guest earphones toward myself. “Morning Don,” I said, greeting the deejay as I got them onto my head.

“I’m looking forward to getting to talk to you,” he said, smiling. “So when we get back on air, I’m going to do a quick intro to the segment then I’ll welcome you to the show, I’ve got some questions, you’ve got some answers, we play the Backstreet Boys single, and we’re done. Sound good?” he asked rapidly, Chandelier by Sia coming to an end on air.

“Sounds great,” I nodded.

He smiled and reached for his microphone, pulling it near as the last strains of the song faded out. “That was Sia with Chandelier. Traffic’s doing okay so far out there, looks like there’s a little congestion going south toward the airport and 21, but for the most part the roads are moving at the posted speed… We’ve got a nice weekend on deck here, some warmer weather coming our way, et cetera et cetera. Anyways, on to the show. I have a special guest here with me in the studio, but first let me just get this one thing off my chest real fast… So basically if you haven’t seen Show’Em What You’re Made Of, the Backstreet Boy’s documentary movie, you need to see it ASAP. You missed the in theater premiere last month, but there’s still hope for you yet, the movie is for sale or rent on a bunch of outlets, like iTunes and Amazon and Hulu and Youtube and all that. I’m tellin’ ya, this film isn’t just for the fans of Backstreet Boys, it’s actually a really interesting story.” He paused a moment, looking at notes in front of him on the desk. “Seriously. And to talk about the whole experience here in the studio, I have Brian Littrell, former member of the Backstreet Boys.”

The word former stung like being slapped across the face. It left a foul flavor in my mouth hearing it. I swallowed back a rise of bile that had crawled up my throat at the very sound of it.

“Brian, welcome.” Don turned to me.

“Thanks,” I croaked.

“I gotta tell you, honestly, I was a little skeptical going into the theater last month to see the movie. I wasn’t expecting it to be good, I kind of thought that you guys were your typical run of the mill manufactured music venture, that you were all from privileged backgrounds and the whole nine yards… I was really surprised some of the things we learned about all five of you, about the band itself. Like what a tool Lou Pearlman is, for example.”

I laughed nervously. I mean yeah, we all knew Lou was a tool, but after hearing what he’d tried to do to Nick my opinion of the old prick had only worsened. I’m not the type that wished people negativity, but I honestly hoped that one day Lou Pearlman would find himself in Hell burning with his fellow demons. I didn’t really want to talk about Lou Pearlman. I was likely to say something like that outloud.

“I think the most shocking part was how real you kids were in the film, not a lot was edited out. The good, the bad, and the ugly. For example, the scene on everyone’s mind. The fight at the A&R meeting between you and Nick. I’m sure you’ve answered a lot of questions about this already, but… Nick’s anger was just so strong at that point. Do you agree with the allegations from his mother this week that he needs anger management therapy?”

“No. Absolutely not,” I answered quickly, a protective feeling rising up in my gut, “Nick’s mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Yes, Nick has a temper, but it’s not as bad as she’s made it out to be. She wouldn’t know. She hasn’t talked to him in years. She only uses his name to gain attention for herself.”

“Sounds like a winner,” Don laughed.

I nodded, “Oh you don’t know the half of it.”

“There’s speculation going around, too, that the fight with Nick might be the driving factor behind your choice to leave the band,” he explained. “Did the fight with Nick have anything to do with your choice to leave? Is there anything that might make you stay?”

I looked down at my hands on the desk between us for a moment.

I was about to answer standardly… a way that he and the fans would want to hear… when it occurred to me that just because Nick wouldn’t talk to me did not mean that I couldn’t talk to him here and pray he’d actually hear what I had to say.

So… I took a deep breath.

“Nick’s not the only reason. I’m not saying that fighting with Nick wasn’t part of the choice. It certainly was. We’ve been fighting a lot, for a long time, and it’s not fair to the fans who think we’re something that we haven’t been in years… almost decades. But it’s not entirely the strain of that relationship. In fact, that was only a tip of the iceberg. As you saw in the film, I’ve been suffering from a muscle dysfunction that messes with my vocal chords and that makes it really hard to perform live and live performance is a huge part of who the Backstreet Boys are. The therapy… well, it’s a struggle and I’m not sure that it’s fair to any of us involved to keep me on when I’m holding the band back. There’s a lot of growing that Backstreet Boys can and will do in the future, and all I can do is just pray that maybe one day I’ll get a hold on my vocals enough that I could return to the band. If they’d have me…” I paused. “As for anything that might make me stay… I don’t know.” I shrugged, “I don’t know that I have any hope left to reconsider.”

“Really?” Don sounded surprised by my candor.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised myself..

“Yes,” I answered. “It’s been such a long struggle… sometimes I forget what hope even looks like. Before the press run in Europe, I’d already talked to management about possibly quitting, I just needed to tell Nick before it happened officially. I went to Europe on the press tour thinking it would be somewhat easy to tell him... but it wasn’t.”

Suddenly… a feeling welled up in me, one that I hadn’t even realized I’d been feeling until that very moment… but in that moment, I also knew that it was exactly right: “I felt too ashamed to tell him.”

“Ashamed?” Don probed.

I nodded. “Ashamed of giving up after all this time. Nick always kinda… I dunno. I always felt like I needed to set a good example for Nick, like I needed to be the big brother-slash-father that he never got at home from his real family.” I shook my head, “It sounds stupid, but I - I know Nick looked up to me when we were younger and… I don’t know. He used to - to make me feel like he thought I was a superhero or something, like back in the day. And… I don’t know. It’s hard, telling someone that Superman can’t fly, that underneath it all he’s just an ordinary man. I guess I’ve always been afraid to let Nick see that I’m not the superhero he thought I was when we were younger. I’ve always been afraid to let Nick see me in the broken places.”

My throat felt tight.

“But in Europe, when I - I let my walls down a little bit… I told Nick one night, when he asked me about my vocal issues, I told him, I feel like Superman on a Kryptonite IV… and the look in his eyes…” I sighed. “He looked… so… desperate to help. And he did. He helped me. Nick gave me hope like I hadn’t had in a long, long time…”

Don was nodding as I spoke.

“I -- I was reconsidering leaving the band then. Because of that hope he gave me. That was before the contracts were handed down from management. They didn’t tell me they were ready, didn’t ask me if I’d talked to Nick or any of the guys yet, didn’t have me review the contract privately before telling them… and of course the contracts leaked, too, to the media. It was all very overwhelming.” I paused again, thinking. “I meant to tell Nick first. But honestly before the contracts dropped… I… I wasn’t going to follow through with quitting.”

“What changed?”

“The contracts. When they dropped…” I shook my head. “I realized in the aftermath that the hope I had was… was probably false and that it was all in my head and really, after all, the band will be better without me. The band’s well being, my friends’ careers, that’s what matters in the end. More than how I feel. I - I initially quit out of selfishness, because I couldn’t handle it anymore, but when I signed my contract and sent it in, I was only thinking of the fellas. If they’re better off without me, then I want them to be better off without me. I want the band to be strong and to prosper, and I want each of them to be happy. I want Nick to be happy. That said… I can’t think of a single reason to reconsider.”

Chapter Eighteen


Nick

Lauren put the kintsugi on the shelf above the TV in the living room so the next day, as I was sitting there playing Halo, my eyes kept wandering up to it. I put the game on pause at one point to take a sip of my blueberry-pomegranate smoothie and I realized my eyes were tracing the gold twists wrapping through the glass, holding it all together. The bowl really was ugly as fuck, I thought, but since Lauren had explained about like why it was all broken and stuff it kind of looked a little cool, too, I guess. Like even though it was ugly it was also beautiful. I couldn’t think what, but something about it kept drawing my eyes to it, making me think about how Lauren had explained it. Something stirred deep in my guts each time I looked at it.

I’d restarted Halo and been playing for a few when suddenly the TV turned off.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed, looking around.

“There’s your attention,” Lauren said, tossing the remote she’d evidently stolen from beside me back to it’s place on the cushion.

“What?”

“I was talking to you,” she replied.

“I heard you,” I lied.

“Okay. What did I say?” she asked smugly.

“Uhhh…”

“I said that I’m going to bring this box up to the attic,” Lauren said. She was holding a box we’d filled with the stuff that had been on the shelf the kintsugi now occupied. She’d thrown some of it out, but I’d managed to whine my way into keeping a box full of stuff at least. Lauren was a clean-and-purge sort of person while I was a hoarding pack rat sort of person. “If I’m not back in ten minutes assume some of the piles of shit up there fell over and crushed me,” she said pointedly.

I nodded, “Boose, I promise if you ain’t back in ten minutes I’ll strap a whiskey barrel to Nacho’s collar and send him up after you ‘til the proper authorities can be notified.”

Lauren laughed. “Right. Like you’ll even notice I’m not here while you’re focusing on whatever game that is.”

“I will!” I said.

“Maybe,” she said, “You could come upstairs with me and we could work on getting rid of some of th--”

I have never been so thankful for a phone ringing as I was at that moment. I glanced at my phone. “Boose, it’s Howie. I gotta take this.” I waved the phone.

Lauren’s lips went tight, “You are some kinda lucky,” she accused, but she had amusement in her eyes. She carried the box away.

I answered the phone quickly. “Yolo Howard. What’s up, man?” I glanced to make sure she wasn’t listening in still, “Your timing was… impeccable.”

“Nick --” Howie’s voice was rushed, “I just emailed you a link - it’s a youtube video - you have to listen to it. Right now. Right now.”

“Okay,” I said slowly but Howie had already hung up.

“Well damn,” I muttered and grabbed my iPad off the coffee table to open my email. A notification came up that I didn’t read before clicking into Howie’s note. The link uploaded and my eyes scanned the title of the video. “Yeah. No.” I said, turning my attention to my phone to call Howie back.

“You didn’t watch it that fast,” Howie accused. “It’s longer than that.”

“Brian Littrell opens up about Backstreet Boys departure on Star 94 Atlanta,” I read out the title. “No. I don’t want to hear anything that he has to say.”

“Just listen to it,” Howie said. “It’s from a radio interview he did this morning. It lasts maybe three minutes, if that. You owe him that much, don’t you?”

My voice was heated, “No - I do not. I don’t owe him nothin’. He owes me like twenty years worth of honesty.”

Howies was quiet a moment before saying, “That’s kind of exactly what it is, Nicky.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Just listen to it.”





Brian

When we got home from the radio interview, I’d gone right up to the office and closed myself in, sitting in the chair behind the desk and staring out the window at the trees. Jen had said this interview would be the last one I’d do as a Backstreet Boy. I wondered if that meant she officially had all the contracts except mine, which was dependant on the US Postal system. On the way home, everything had suddenly taken on a very final sort of feeling and I’d needed time to process it - alone.

This one part of me was really tense, too, because somewhere deep down I’d almost sort of expected Nick to text me about the interview and I hadn’t heard from him yet. I kept compulsively checking my phone to make sure I didn’t miss it. But there was nothing.

There was no real reason to make me believe he’d heard it. It was a local Atlanta radio station, not even the biggest one in the area no less, and I didn’t have a clue where in the country he was or if he was even in the country anymore (LA, Nashville, Key West? Some other random destination with Lauren?).

I twisted the chair left to right, anxiety churning through me.

I was silly, I thought, tossing my phone onto the desk, to think that a few words on a radio station would be powerful enough to save a broken friendship.

I stood up, unable to stay sitting any longer, and leaned against the window sill, enjoying the feeling of the cool air coming off the glass. I pressed my forehead against it, eyes closed for a moment before reopening them. They landed on Baylee’s old fort out there and I thought about when Leighanne said he never used it and the feelings that had conjured. The longer I stared at it, the more those feelings returned and finally, I just couldn’t stand it any more.

I turned and quickly thundered down the stairs to the front door and went outside, my feet hurried, my breath crystallizing in the chilly air outside as I went over to the shed. I pulled the shed door open and rooted around inside among all the tools and sports equipment and lawn stuff until I found what I was looking for, then quickly carried the baseball bat with me out into the woods. Leaves crunched under my feet, and I felt borderline insane as I sloshed through a couple muddy patches, dirtying my sneakers as I went. I got out to the old fort and with every single ounce of my soul I swung the baseball bat in an almighty wind-up backed by all the frustration and anxiety that had been building and building in me for -- well, evidently for twenty years.

The moment the bat connected with the old fort’s walls it collapsed, the pallets so weathered and mildewed that there was barely any backbone to the structure. I stood there over it, holding the bat, breathing heavily from the exertion of it, my muscles tensed and heart racing in my chest cavity. I felt so angry, I felt unjustified by the pathetic collapse of the stupid fort. I’d thought when I’d gone for the bat that knocking the thing down would make it better, but it hadn’t, it had actually only made it worse.

The next thing I knew, I was swinging the bat at random trees around me with all my might, my fingers shaking from the vibration of the bat as the trees refused to give, but just the feeling of the connection making me feel better. “Stupid,” I yelled, “Stupid. Fuck. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Not … fair...”

“BRIAN!”

I stopped swinging the bat at the sound of Leighanne’s voice. She was standing a few feet away, staring at me with this terrified look on her face. “What in the world are you doing?” she demanded once she’d gotten my attention.

I dropped the bat to the ground, suddenly aware of how insane I probably looked.

“I don’t know,” I croaked.

She picked her way over, careful not to step in any mud, and grabbed my hands, “Come inside,” she said.





Nick

Lauren came back downstairs almost an hour later. I heard her footsteps echoing all the way down. “Nick… I found something that you might be interested in,” she said, coming into the room. She was holding a small box. “It was under a bunch of other stuff up there and --” she stopped talking when she saw my face. “...Nick? Are you okay?”

I looked up at her numbly.

“Honey?” she hurried to my side by the couch, her face paling as she came. “What is it?”

By that point, I’d watched the video of the snippet of Brian’s interview a couple times. It was one of those grainy in-studio cameras and all he did was sit there holding his hands over the headset’s earpieces, like he thought he needed to hold them in place or something. He leaned into the microphone as he spoke. Lauren watched as the video played, as Brian talked, going on about how Superman can’t fly and all of the things he’d said, his words so raw they stung. ”I want Nick to be happy. That said… I can’t think of single reason to reconsider.” The deejay said a lead out to a commercial break and on the screen, Brian looked down at his lap and brought one hand from his headset onto his face. Then the video ended.

Lauren stared at the screen, her jaw dropped a little. She looked at me when it ended. “Wow,” she said.

“I know,” I answered. “Howie sent me the link. That’s what he was calling about, to tell me to watch it.”

She leaned back, her arms around the little box she’d carried down.“What do you think about it?” she asked.

I shrugged because I hadn’t quite decided yet what to think about it.

“Well,” she said slowly, “Maybe… maybe this will help.” She held the box out to me.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking it. I pulled the lid off the box and as I did, I remembered the box, even before I’d looked inside. The box had been filled on a night in 1998 when I’d been drunk from about five of those little bottles of alcohol that I’d stolen out of a hotel room minibar during the tour we’d just finished. Brian and I had plans but he’d called and cancelled because he was tired, a side effect I learned less than a month later of him needing a heart surgery but he hadn’t told us yet, so it just sounded like a lame ass excuse at the time, especially since I’d heard Leighanne in the background.

I’d been angry because he was blowing me off all the time back then. He never wanted to play basketball, and he was always hanging out with Leighanne, even on the tour she started coming along and suddenly he wanted his own room with just him and her in it and I was stuck rooming with AJ and he was getting mad because me and AJ were getting into trouble a lot together and I felt like he was judging me all the time, trying to be my father instead of my friend. And it was rocky ground anyway because I’d already decided I couldn’t trust him because of that night with Lou and everything. I was still going through stuff at home and trying to ignore any of the suggestive things that Lou said to me about knowing where I could go if I needed help.

I remember brewing, worrying about all that stuff the night I filled the box, a hurricane of emotion, I’d walked around my room collecting things that reminded me too much of a friendship that I’d decided was really, truly dead to me.

That’s what was in the box.

I reached in and grabbed a little Nerf basketball set that magnetized to metal doors that we used to set up in our hotel rooms back when we shared them. We had a lot of fun with that thing. We used to tumble all over each other, banging into walls, falling to the floor in a heap of laughter as we fought over the stupid foam ball, wrestling until one of us had won. There was my old Frack hat in there. I wondered if he still had his Frick hat. A VHS copy of Dumb & Dumber, our favorite movie back then. We watched it so many times that we knew every line by heart and when we didn’t have a tape player we would just sit around reciting it, laughing even harder at each other than we did at Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. There was lots of stuff like that, old momentos of our friendship, and as I sifted through it I felt like my heart was gonna pop.

Then I found a Polaroid picture.

My throat tightened and I put the box on the coffee table next to my iPad, staring at the picture.





Brian

I checked the tracking number on my contract about a hundred times throughout the day. It took most of it before it finally said that delivery had been completed. I stared at the word delivered and the timestamp for a long time when it finally said it. I memorized the time: 16:24:44. Four twenty-four-almost-twenty-five in the afternoon eastern time. That was the time when I had officially become a former Backstreet Boy, I told myself.

Leighanne had dragged me inside from the woods and sat me down in the kitchen at the table and made a sandwich and gotten me a drink because that was one of her ways of comforting and calming people down was making them eat food. I’d sat there feeling just so numb and empty after breaking apart the fort, like a ghost of myself somehow. We’d ended up splitting the sandwich while we talked about anything but what I’d just done and what it meant. I was thankful she didn’t ask because I didn’t really know, other than this nagging feeling that had been ebbing at me that somehow in my head the fort was me.

I’d gone back up to the office after because I’d wanted to email Jen and confirm that all the paperwork was good and I was, indeed, completely finished with the band. I felt like I needed the words in writing from her before it was absolutely done. I mean yeah I had the delivery confirmation and that had basically been all we’d been waiting on but I needed her to say it was over before it could be completely over.

As I sat there, waiting for her to reply, I thought about how strange it was that less than a month before if I’d had time off I wouldn’t have been able to get everything done that I wanted to do. Time off was a precious commodity, something there was never enough of. But now it was like there was nothing to do in the time I had, and it stretched on forever and ever all daunting and huge and wide open. It was strange feeling, having a clear schedule ahead of me, no looming tour dates or trips out of the country, no trying to plan and organize every tiny detail of life around the possibility of needing to fly to LA or New York or wherever to record or do an appearance or any of that.

Leighanne pushed open the door. “I’m going to pick Baylee up from his rehearsal,” she said.

“Okay,” I answered.

“Do you want to come with me?”

“I’m waiting on an important email,” I answered, waving my hand at the computer.

“Okay,” she answered. She smiled, though I could tell she was worried about me. “I’ll be back in a few. I’m not going anywhere else. Just to the school and back.”

“Okay.”

“Love you husband,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I replied.

She left, but I felt like it was reluctantly.

I listened as she went downstairs and the front door closed, then strained to hear the car engine, but I couldn’t hear it from where I sat, but I imagined her backing down the driveway anyways.

The moment I was sure she was gone, I cleared my throat.

“Do ra me fa so la ti do… do ti la so fa me ra do… do ra me fa so la ti do…” I started doing my warm up, going as low as I could and then as high as I could on the scales. I stretched my neck side to side, massaged my throat like I’d been taught by my therapist, my heart racing at the thought of doing my exercises for the first time since Nick and I had sat on the hotel room bed doing them together. “Do ra me fa so la ti do… do ti la so fa me ra do… do ra me --”

An email alert popped up on my computer screen and I stopped mid-scale and stared at the little bubble.

I clicked it slowly.

I felt like my entire life was leading up to this moment. I knew that it would load and there would be one sentence there that would change everything in my entire life. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I let up the mouse click and it loaded. I counted to twenty-five, trying to calm my nerves.

When I opened my eyes, I told myself, it would be official. But not until I opened my eyes. So I kept them closed for a long moment, thinking about all the times - good and bad and in-between - that had led up to this moment. I thought about all the fights and the laughs, the tour buses, the fans, the arenas, the awards and setbacks. I thought about what it meant to be a Backstreet Boy and what it meant to no longer be one.

And finally, when I was sure I was ready for it…

I opened my eyes.

Hey Brian…
I did receive your contract today, thanks for sending it priority. I’m still waiting on one more contract from the guys, though. I’ll call him and see when I can expect it. I’ll give you a call when everything’s submitted.
Jen.

Chapter Nineteen


Nick

I was still in a trance, staring at the Polaroid when the phone vibrated against my knee.

“Nick… you gonna get that?” Lauren asked gently.

I reached for it on auto-pilot. “Hullo?” I asked as I swept my thumb over the screen to answer the call. My heart felt strange, heavy and kinda squeezed in my chest from all the emotions coursing through me. My voice came out funny.

“Nick? It’s Jen.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture in my hand.

I wondered if Brian remembered when it was taken.

I certainly did.

“Nick?”

I’d almost forgotten Jen was on the line. “Uh-huh?”

“I’m calling to check in,” she said, “Brian’s been getting kind of antsy to get the contracts filed and his departure finalized. I’m just wondering when I can expect yours?”

I blinked, unable to wrap my mind around what she was saying to me. My brain felt like mush. “My what? My departure? I’m not quitting.”

“No… your contract,” she said.

“I sent my contract to you,” I said dumbly.

“I have Brian, Howie, AJ, and Kevin,” Jen replied. “Is it in the mail?”

“No,” I said. “I emailed it to you. I was the first one to email it to you.”

“Actually, AJ was the first one that sent it to me,” she argued, “I remember because it was really strange, given past experience.”

“No, Jen, I swear… I sent that. Check your email, you must’ve missed it.”

Jen was quiet. I could hear her clicking around on her computer. I looked at Lauren, whose eyes were questioning me silently, and then back at the picture. My heart started pounding. “No, Nick, I definitely don’t have that from you. I just double-checked.”

“Jen, I swear to fuck I sent that already,” I argued. I leaned forward, balancing my phone on my shoulder, not wanting to put the picture down and grabbed my iPad off the coffee table again. My hands moved quickly, swiping across the screen to my email. That notification I kept ignoring popped up… reminding me I had a message in my drafts waiting to be sent…

Suddenly I remembered… my iPad was on airplane mode when I tried to send the email. I was gonna send it when I got to the airport.

My iPad. Was on. Airplane. Mode.

I never sent the fucking contract.

“Oh my God,” I choked.

“Nick?” Jen asked, “When can I expect the contract from you? Brian’s not officially done until you’ve sent it in and we get the contracts finalized.”

“I… I’ll work on it,” I answered, and then I hung up quickly before she could say anything more. I chucked my phone onto the cushion beside me and looked at Lauren, slack-jawed and wide eyed.

“What is it?” she asked.

I stared up at her, processing the information I’d just been given.

I looked back at the photograph in my hand. “I never… sent in… the contract.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

What does it mean? I thought to myself.

I looked up at Lauren. “It means…” I felt shaky all over inside and out. “It means…” my eyes fluttered around the room and landed on the shelf above the TV, on Lauren’s bowl. “Kintsugi.” I leaped up. Lauren just barely caught the iPad before it flew to the floor. “It means kintsugi!” I yelled.

Lauren looked at me like I was crazy.

“Kint - fuckin’ - sugi!” I shouted, waving the picture in her face. I bolted for the stairs, still clutching the Polaroid in my hand. It suddenly occurred to me I had a lot to do.

“Nick, where are you going?” Lauren called, confused.

“Upstairs,” I shouted back, “I gotta print the contract and pack.”

“Pack?”

“I gotta go to Atlanta.”





Brian

I was anxious all night, waiting for the phone to ring.

When Leighanne got home with Baylee, we ate dinner and watched TV, though I couldn’t tell you a single thing that we watched.

I felt like a prisoner waiting on a sentence.

A life sentence.

“Brian,” Leighanne said, nudging me, “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yeah,” I nodded numbly, suddenly realizing that the TV was off and the only light in the room was the one flooding into the living room from the stairs because I’d tuned out so long that they’d given up and gone to bed on me.

“I’m worried about you,” Leighanne confessed as she followed me up the stairs, “The way you’re acting is scaring me. I love you, and I don’t like seeing you like this. Maybe you should call Jen and tell her you don’t want to quit the band after all.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head.

“Why not?” she asked. We’d reached our bedroom and she closed the door behind us and went to turn down the blankets on the bed.

I sighed, “Because, the whole point of me leaving the band is that it’s better for them,” I replied. “They can make better music without me.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Leighanne said strongly.

I shook my head. “It is true,” I said, “They can produce music that will sound the same when they sing it live. There won’t be any worrying about whether my vocals hold out on us. There won’t be anymore producers asking them in whispered voices what’s going on with me. If there’s one thing for certain, Leighanne, it’s that I’m not doing this for myself. I can’t back down from doing what I believe is right.”

“But this isn’t something trivial, husband,” she argued, “It’s not like giving up chocolate for Lent, it’s like giving up your life.” She sighed as she crawled into the bed and started rubbing lavender scented body lotion up and down her arms.

“And theirs, too,” I pointed out.

Leighanne sighed.

“I’ll get it together,” I said, sounding a lot more confident than I felt. “It’s just going to take time, you know, but I’ll be okay in the end. I’ll be fine. I just gotta get there is all.” I pulled my jeans off and tossed them into the laundry hamper, shrugging my sweatshirt off and laying it on the chair. I got in bed, boxers and a t-shirt, and laid down, one arm stretched up behind my head, the other wrapped around Leighanne as she leaned into me. “I just have to figure out what’s next,” I murmured.

She pressed her head against my chest. “You’re strong, I never doubted if you’d be okay or fine. I want more than okay, fine for you, Brian,” she said. “I want amazing. I want breathtaking. I want you to be truly happy.”

I wanted to say then you need to pray for a miracle, but I didn’t.

I didn’t believe a miracle was coming.





Nick

I didn’t give myself time to think. I just printed the contract, scribbled my signature and a quick note on the Polaroid and threw them both into a manilla envelope. I kissed Lauren goodbye, promised I’d be back by morning, and backed out the driveway with sweaty palms. I felt reckless and desperate, like I was losing my mind just a little.

I’ve always liked driving at night, liked the way the headlights look reflecting off the paint on the road and the signs, the eerie feeling like you’re the last person on the earth as your car moves alone on it’s journey. It’s quiet, driving alone at night, and it gives you time to think or to sing along with the radio, isolated from the rest of humanity. It’s soul cleansing.

And I definitely needed my soul cleansed.

I drove south on I-24 through Tennessee into Georgia, where I switched to I-75 in Chattanooga. I felt scared and excited at exactly the same time, with no real knowledge of what I would say or do when I got to his house. I’d just put the thing in his mailbox, I’d decided at one point. Then at another I’d decided I wanted to tell him about kintsugi, another I told myself that I’d rip the contract up in his face. Or maybe I’d just leave it on the doorstep and ring the bell.

None of the scenarios in my head had any words for me to say to him though.

Well, except for two words… I’m sorry.

Five hours at slightly over 70 miles an hour and I was pulling off the exit and weaving through backroads until I saw his mailbox in my headlights, the reflective numbers glowing in the dark. As I put on my blinker to turn into his driveway, I noticed that the clock on the dashboard said 12:48, which meant it was almost two in the morning with the time zone change between Nashville and Atlanta.

I pulled up to the front of the house, fully intending on just leaving the envelope on his doorstep, but when I got out of the Jeep and walked up to the house, I just had this strange feeling wash over me that I needed to see Brian and tell him face-to-face. So, before I could overthink it or change my mind, I pressed the doorbell firmly, still unsure what I would say when he opened the door.





Brian

I was laying in bed, wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. Leighanne had fallen asleep hours ago. All that was left was me and the dark and the pale glow of the moonlight filtered through the sheer yellow curtains in our bedroom window. I wanted to be okay with everything that was happening, I wanted to be the selfless guy who does whatever it takes to make the lives of his friends better. But it hurt, deep down in me, I felt like I’d been betrayed by life, by God himself. Tears pooled in my eyes as I lay there, rolling arbitrarily down the sides of my face. I didn’t bother to wipe them away, not wanting the movement to awaken my wife.

There’s other things in life besides singing, I told myself. You have been given other gifts. Other talents.

Maybe God was taking away my ability to sing so that I would focus more on those other gifts. Maybe this was his way of nudging me to be closer to my wife and my son, to be more involved in my personal community. I could still sing at church, I could join a choir. I could teach others how to use the gifts of music that God had given them. I could still do music. I just couldn’t do it on the scale that Backstreet Boys demanded I did. I’d been given twenty-two years of that particular gift. Maybe it was just time to let it go.

I looked over at the clock on the night stand. It was almost two in the morning. I closed my eyes.

At first, I thought I was dreaming the sound of a car engine rumbling outside, the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. But the sound got louder as the vehicle came closer up the long stretch and then the headlights reflected through the window as it turned in the loop around the fountain out front. Taillights as it came to a stop bathed the room in red glow. I moved slowly, sitting up in bed and rolled so my legs swung over the edge. I grabbed my sweatshirt from the chair, shrugging it on as I walked in my stocking feet and boxer shorts to the window to look out.

There was a white Jeep in the driveway.

“What the hell…?” I muttered.

Then the doorbell rang.

The dogs were barking from Baylee’s room and Leighanne groaned on the bed as the bell rang again and again. She muttered, rolling over, her eyes squinting at the moonlight. “What’s going on?”

“Somebody’s here,” I replied. “Stay here, I’ll go check it out.” I hurried down the stairs, zipping up my sweatshirt as I went, flipping on the lights. The bell was being rung manically, over and over and over, almost in a panic mode. I paused on the way to the door and grabbed an umbrella from the stand in the foyer and paused, the bell ringing three times as I took a deep breath and opened the door, umbrella at the ready to protect myself if needed.

Standing on the step was Nick.

I blinked in surprise.

“Nick?”

He looked scared to death. He stared at me, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water. Then he struck his hands out and in it was a manilla envelope. “I don’t know how to say it,” he said, “So… here.”

“What is this?” I asked, taking the envelope from him. I opened it and peered inside.

“My contract,” he said. “My signed contract.”

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“Because,” he said, “It’s the last one. If you wanna quit… submit it. Send it to Jen tomorrow. If you don’t…” he shook his head, “Then… then don’t. But… it should be your choice. Not mine. If you do this, it should be for you.”

He didn’t say anything else.

He just turned and walked back down the path to his Jeep.

“Nick, why the hell are you doing this?” I demanded, taking a couple steps out into the cold night air. The cement of the stoop seemed to zing the bottom of my feet right through my socks.

He paused by the car door. “Because…” he stopped mid-sentence and thought for a moment. Then: “In issue 583, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Superman walked into a room full of golden kryptonite to save everyone he cared about.”

I could barely breathe.

“Some people said, when the comic was released, that he was dead… but it turned out all he needed was for someone to move his body to the Fortress so that his Kryptonian cells would have time to regenerate.” He shrugged. “He just needed some therapy and someone to believe in him enough to get him there.”

Tears were burning my eyes.

Nick got into his car.

I was too stunned by his words to speak, even to stop him from leaving. So I stood there, watching, as his tail lights faded and disappeared from view down the driveway.

I turned the manilla envelope over and the contract slid out.

And something else, too.

A Polaroid had fallen to the ground. I bent down to pick it up, my eyes roving over it in the light spilling from the open door behind me. I could remember the moment it was snapped so clearly in my mind, like it was seconds ago instead of decades.

Chapter Twenty


Nick

What if Brian made the wrong choice? What if he didn’t think about it at all and simply sent off the contract to Jen without a blink of an eye?

I clutched the steering wheel of the Jeep, my knuckles tight.

Did I make the point clear that I didn’t want him to leave?

“Breathe, breathe,” I verbally reminded myself, “Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.”

I’d come to a stop at the end of his street at the stop sign, just trying to coax myself to get a grip on my emotions.

Headlights shone through the dark, cutting the night behind me and reflecting in my rearview mirror. I reached out and pressed my emergency flasher lights on and waved my hand for the car to go on around me. But they didn’t. Instead, they pulled up behind me and then their flashers came on, too.

Brian walked up to the passenger side door and got in, leaving his car behind, blinking away in the dark. He sat there a moment, taking deep breaths, rubbing his hands together, like he was cold. I reached down and turned the heater on so the warm air came out of the vents and he pressed his hands to them.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment..

“How’d you know I stopped?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I was going to drive to Nashville.”

I looked down and fiddled with the keychain hanging from the ignition. “Why?” I asked finally.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said after a couple moments. “I didn’t know how to tell you when I thought you wouldn’t care, when we were broken apart like we were and I didn’t know how to even more once we were starting to get put back together.”

“Kintsugi,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s not sushi, don’t worry.”

Brian stared at me.

I realized I was gonna have to explain it. I wasn’t sure I could as good as Lauren had.

“It’s like when shit’s broken. There’s this art from Japan, they like stick it back together again with gold, and it’s like… it’s like us, I guess. Like we were broke and…” I didn’t know what to say next. Were we fixed? Were we healed with gold? Was one night driving five hours down an interstate really enough to undo all the damages of almost twenty years? Or was it a gesture that was too little, too late? I looked up at Brian, at the way the street lamp seemed to outline his face. I shrugged because I didn’t know what else to say.

Brian took a deep breath.

And silence fell between us once again.

More headlights came up behind us in the road and then there was a flashing blue light - a cop. Brian sighed, “Damn it.” He turned and pushed his side door open and got out of the car.

I gripped the wheel as I watched him walk around the back of the car in the glare of his car’s headlights and the blinking yellow hazards.

Finally, I pushed the door open and got out, too. The cop was walking up alongside Brian’s, his radio clipped to his shoulder like in the movies. “Is there a problem?” he asked as he sidled up, his accent thick.

“No sir,” Brian replied. “We’re okay.”

I nodded.

“Accident?” the cop looked at my car’s bumper for damages.

“No sir,” Brian answered.

“We were just talkin’,” I said.

The cop looked at me then back at Brian. “Well. Okay. Move along, though, there’s plenty of places y’all can talk at that ain’t the middle of the street, blocking traffic,” he pointed out. I wanted to ask what traffic, exactly, were we blocking but I kept my mouth shut. He walked back to his police cruiser, glancing into Brian’s back seat as he passed by it, like he expected to see a ton of drug paraphernalia just laying around in there. Then he nodded his head at us and walked the rest of the way back to his car. He didn’t pull away, though, just kept his lights glaring at us, like he was waiting to see us leave.

Brian turned to me, “Come back to the house,” he said.

I shook my head. “I gotta get back to Nashville.”

But even as I said it, I knew I was going to go home with him.

“C’mon,” Brian insisted.





Brian


Leighanne had already gone back to bed when Nick and I got to the house so the rooms were all dark. I led the way through to the kitchen. I’d put the contract he’d brought down on the table and he stood in the doorway, staring at the envelope. “You want a drink or anything?” I asked, grabbing a glass for water out of the cupboard myself.

He shrugged.

I waved at the fridge. He awkwardly stepped over and looked inside, his eyes scanning the shelves until he found a package of juice boxes that were Baylee’s and he grabbed one and sat down at the table, ripping the straw off the back and poking it through the lid. There’d been a time I wouldn’t have had to offer. Nick would’ve just walked in and pulled the fridge opened and helped himself to anything he wanted.

I sat down across from him as I drank my water.

We both stared at the contract.

Nick looked up at me, his blue eyes wide and wondering.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I answered the question that glistened in them. I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I shook my head, my throat tightening. “I really want to stay,” I explained, “But I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to weigh you guys down.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Nick said quickly.

His words surprised me.

“I don’t want you to go,” Nick repeated. He leaned forward and put his hands on the envelope holding the contract, “I never wanted you to go. I didn’t realize it, I was too busy guarding myself, but whatever I said, I didn’t mean it, and I don’t want you to go.”

“But what about my vocals and the live shows?” I asked, “What about recording this new CD and having to think about that and the producers and the fans making comments and --”

“Fuck’em, Brian, fuck them.” Nick stared at me, his eyes glowering. “We’ve made it work before, we’ll make it work again. They know now, ‘cos of the movie, they understand better what’s happening. They’ll be supportive. You know our fans, they’ll be supportive, Brian. They will. And if they aren’t, then fuck them. You’re a Backstreet Boy, Brian, you’re a Backstreet Boy and it ain’t gonna ever be the same without you and I can’t picture it without you and I don’t wanna. You’re my best friend, whatever’s happened between us, you’ve always been my best friend and I don’t wanna lose you. So if you need help with vocal therapy and stuff then I’ll help you, I’ll fly my ass here every fuckin’ day if that’s what it takes, just to do the exercises with you in the morning. We’ll sit outside and bleat like goats ‘til the sun goes down if that’s what you need, I don’t give a fuck, Brian. Alls I give a fuck about is if tomorrow you’ll be there.”

I stood up because the emotion building inside me from all those words was too much to hold onto sitting down. I paced the length of the kitchen. I could feel Nick’s eyes on me, even when I was back-to him. I pressed my palms against the door frame, looking out the sliders into the backyard. I stared out into the bare trees, illuminated by the moon, where the fort had stood before I’d knocked it down.

“I know you don’t really wanna go Brian,” Nick said.

The words surprised me and I turned around. “How do you know? Maybe I’m just sick of the whole thing.”

“Because it wouldn’t have been so hard to tell me if you really thought it was the right thing,” he replied.

I contemplated that.

“You would’ve been like eager to tell us, because it wouldn’t have felt like a negative, you would’ve really believed you were doin’ what you hadda do and that it was really a good thing, so whatever you thought you told yourself, it didn’t work. You don’t really think it’s best for the band or you would’ve told me and the other guys a long time ago. Before going to management. Like Kevin did.”

“Maybe,” I said. He was right. I’d been convincing myself that it was the right choice. I wasn’t sure I believed it at all or if I’d just talked myself into it.

Nick stared at the juice box in front of him on the table, spinning it between his fingers. “Say you won’t go, Frick.”

I took a deep breath.

“Please.”

For a moment it was easy to forget that years and years had passed. Sitting there at the table was just the twelve year old kid I’d met in 1993, who just needed somebody to give a damn about him because he wasn’t getting that at home. Sitting there was the too-much-too-fast nineteen year old whose ego’s bark was bigger than it’s bite, who loved the attention, craved it even, yet wasn’t sure if he deserved it - despite the attitude he seemed to field. Sitting there was the twenty-something who’d needed me, who I’d turned away from way too many times to be fairly called a best friend, who, despite it all, had called me his best friend just the same.

I walked over and grabbed the manilla envelope, dumping out the contract and the Polaroid dropping onto the table between Nick and I. I grabbed the contract quickly by it’s corners and ripped it clean down the middle.

A smile spread across Nick’s face slowly, creeping from the somber look of pleading he’d worn a moment ago into a wide grin. “Yeah?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah.” I threw the ripped contract into the trash, ripping it even smaller as I threw it away, an excitement building in my chest that burned like open flame.

I hadn’t felt the feeling in a while but I recognized it:

It was hope.





Nick


“Uncle Nick?”

I blinked opened my eyes and found Baylee staring at me with confusion on his face. He was in pajamas, holding a bowl of colorful cereal and the TV remote. He put the cereal down on the coffee table in front of the couch, where I’d fallen asleep the night before after Brian had ripped up the contract and insisted I stay over night. I rubbed my eyes with my fists, the brightness coming in scorching them. “Hey Baylee,” I mumbled.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to talk to your dad last night,” I replied. I sat up, groggy still.

This was apparently answer enough for Bay because he climbed up into the space I’d just unoccupied and turned the TV onto some cartoon and grabbed his cereal. I sat there a moment, feeling my hair standing up at odd angles and watching the show with him as he crunched away on the cereal.

Even though waking up in Brian’s living room should’ve been evidence enough that I hadn’t dreamed the night before, I still had to pull myself to my feet and go check. I left Baylee there in the living room as a little purple dog was ranting about pickle flavored ice cream or something and went out to the kitchen.

Leighanne was standing at the stove, cooking. She glanced over at me as I walked in. “Hey, there you are, I was wondering where Brian put you up at.” She smiled.

“Just the couch,” I answered.

“Did Baylee wake you?” she looked concerned.

“Nawh,” I lied, “I was already awake.”

“Oh good,” she said, smiling still in that way that I’d always just assumed was fake. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she just smiled like that. I wasn’t sure. “Brian’s just taking a shower,” she told me, her voice all chirpy. “He should be down in a minute. Do you want breakfast?” She flipped the egg she was cooking.

“Sure…” I replied.

I looked at the trash bin, then inched closer to it and tapped my toes on the lever that would open it as inconspicuously as possible. Laying in there, under an empty Trix cereal box was the pieces of the contract.

He’d really done it. He’d really ripped it up.

I lifted my foot off the lever slowly so the lid went back down on the bin.

She looked over with a question in her eyes.

“Sorry,” I said. “I - I thought I might’ve dreamed that he threw the contract away,” I explained. Somehow I felt weird about letting Leighanne catch me looking in her trash can, even if I did have a good reason.

She didn’t say anything, just turned back to cooking.

I took a deep breath.

“So.. um… I know we ain’t got much like in common…” That was the understatement of the year. “...but uhm… Well, we do have one pretty major thing in common. Brian.”

“Yeah... ?“ she nodded, turning to face me, a look of interest on her face, although she still looked unsure where this speech was going.

I wasn’t entirely sure myself.

I rubbed my arm, uncomfortable. “So… um… like, maybe… maybe we could, you know, make a better effort with each other in the future?”

She was assembling a breakfast sandwich with english muffin and the egg and some bacon. She contemplated my words and slid the sandwich onto a plate and put it down at an empty spot at the table before turning to face me. I expected almost for her to deny there’d ever been anything between us, like we’d always been friends the whole time and she’d never said bullshit about me and I’d never said bullshit about her, either. But I knew better - there had been a wall there, and it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. I knew the fans had seen her say stuff before about me. Probably stuff I deserved, honestly, but still.

Leighanne nodded, “I think we could make a much better effort with each other. Both of us,” she added, like she knew what I’d been thinking. She reached out a hand and put it on my shoulder, locking eyes with me. It was a little uncomfortable, her awkward eyes and that smile again, but I could feel the sincerity in it this time. I smiled awkwardly under her stare until she turned back to the stove. “Eat your breakfast sweetie,” she said. “There’s orange juice in the fridge.” She cracked two more eggs on the edge of the pan.

I felt strange as I was grabbing the orange juice out of Brian’s fridge and pouring myself a glass. I sat down and took a bite of my sandwich. Everything was coming together, everything was healing, one little step at a time, and I felt like maybe everything would be okay in the end after all. Maybe I wasn’t gonna lose my friend, whatever I’d always believed.





Brian


As I stood in the shower, my palms pressed to the wall, feeling the hot water spray my face and run in lines down my back, I ran my mind over everything that had happened the night before. I was stoking the flame of hope I’d kindled the night before. I wanted it to burn bigger, brighter, I wanted it to fill me up, consume me. I’d been in such a dark place for so long, I was ready to burn it all down and emerge new and bright like a phoenix from the ashes.

When the water ran cold, I got out and dressed and headed downstairs. Baylee was in the living room watching cartoons and eating cereal as I walked by, and I heard Nick’s laugh echo from the kitchen. I turned that way and hovered a couple steps from the doorway in the dark of the living room as I saw Nick and Leighanne sitting at the kitchen table, glasses of orange juice and plates of food before them, talking and laughing together.

Another miracle? I thought. For the longest time I hadn’t believed I’d even get one miracle. Suddenly, I was being showered with them. I had never seen Nick and Leighanne sit peacefully together without me there to mediate. But here they were. She was telling him about a wardrobe disaster she’d had, back when she’d first started designing clothes and she’d handsewn a piece that had started coming apart at the grocery store. The story had him in a giggling fit that I hadn’t heard the sound of in years.

Leighanne looked up and spotted me. “Husband,” she said, smiling as I stepped into the room. “Breakfast is on the stove.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

I got my sandwich, and they fell silent until I’d sat down at the table, too. I took a bite of food and chewed slowly.

“So what’d you do?” Nick asked, still regaining his breath from laughter.

“I went to the customer service desk and I asked ‘em if they had a stapler and --” she mimed stapling up her whole hip and waist to her bust.

Nick laughed, slapping his palm to his knee, “Oh shit, dawg, you did?”

Leighanne nodded. “Actually, it inspired those jackets I designed with the zipper up the side here.”

Nick’s laughter was still coming out when he looked up at me as I collected my food and sat down, afraid to make any sudden movements and break whatever spell they’d been placed under. Certainly some kind of voodoo magic was at work here. I glanced between them.

Leighanne got up to clear away her plate and ran her hand over my head, smoothing my hair, “You had some cowlicks in the making,” she explained as she put the dish into the sink and started washing it.

“Thanks,” I answered. I looked at Nick. “We’re okay still?” I asked him.

He nodded, “Definitely.”

“You call Lauren?” I asked.

“Shit, no. I better go do that.” He jumped up. “Be right back.” He rushed out of the room.

Leighanne shook the dish of excess water and put it into the draining rack by the sink. She wiped her hands on a dish cloth and turned to face me. “So.” She said, reaching down and picking up the Polaroid that was still on the table. She looked it over carefully a moment, running her thumb over Nick’s note at the bottom, then put it back down, turned to face me. She raised her eyebrow, “You threw the contract away.”

I finished chewing the bite of food I’d just taken and set my sandwich down on the plate. I nodded slowly as the food made it’s way down my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “I ripped it up first.”

She stared into my eyes, reading me. “Good,” she said. She smiled, “You made the right choice. I can see it in your eyes.”

It felt good to hear her say that. It was the first absolute statement she’d made. She turned and left the kitchen, leaving me sitting there with the Polaroid to keep me company. I stared down at it.

It’s gonna be okay, I realized.

It really is going to be okay.

Epilogue


Nick

A couple weeks passed since I took that midnight drive to Georgia and the plane Lauren and I were on was just touching down in Los Angeles. I gripped the arm rest between us tight, my fingers curling around it, knuckles turning white, braced for the bump of the landing gear on the tarmac. I took a sharp inhale and the plane skid to a stop. Lauren looked over at me, an encouraging smile on her lips as she ran her fingers over mine.

I swung our bags onto my shoulders as we exited the plane and made our way down the concourse of LAX, headed for the luggage claim. My eyes scanned the crowd around us. We were collecting our luggage at the carousel when I heard him.

“Hey Frack!”

I turned around and felt my mouth break into a smile. This little part of me had worried that, when we’d made these plans, he wouldn’t be here after all. But there he was, wearing one of the t-shirts Leighanne had designed and those big stupid pink shoes of his and I felt so much better. Just like that.

“Hey!”

He stepped up and we slapped each other’s hands in a pattern that we hadn’t done since I was a teenager, our fingers wiggling and wrists limp.

“Are you going to help me with these bags?” Lauren asked pointedly.

“Oh yeah. Right, right. Sorry.” I quickly dove after a bag that had passed us by as she was dragging one of the others off the belt.

“Basically he’s useless for that,” Brian teased, a grin flickering across his face.

Lauren sighed, shaking her head.

I hauled the bag back to where we were standing, “I just get distracted is all,” I defended myself.

Brian laughed.

I caught the next two bags without anyone telling me to and we added them onto Brian’s trolley and rolled our way out into the lot where we had a car waiting to take us to the house. Brian was coming, too. We only had one night before taking off on the tour, there was no point in him getting a hotel room so he was staying with me and Lauren.

At the house, I helped Lauren unload the luggage from the cab and drag into the foyer of the house, then kissed her cheek. “We’ll be back in a couple hours,” I said.

“Okay,” she answered. “You’re so not getting out of unpacking, though,” she said with a sly smirk.

“I wasn’t trying to,” I lied. But I could tell by the way she laughed that my face had given me away.

Brian and I piled into my car and I pulled out of the driveway. He was quiet beside me, staring down at his hands. I glanced over at him as we drove down the freeway toward Kevin’s, where we were having a band meeting. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, nodding. “I’m okay.”

“You’re quiet,” I pointed out.

Brian took a deep breath. “I’m nervous, I guess.”

“Nervous why?”

He shrugged, “I mean, I never told the guys about the contract, either. I didn’t even come out to LA to explain it to them after the email went out. What if they all hate me?”

“They don’t hate you,” I answered.

“I know that deep down,” he replied.

Kevin’s house loomed big and clean in front of us as I pulled into his driveway a few minutes later. Everyone else was already there. Brian led the way up the walk to the door. We weren’t even all the way there when the door burst open and AJ, Howie and Kevin spilled out into the yard around us.

“Thank fuckin’ God,” AJ barked as he jumped down the steps and wrapped his arms around Brian, “Don’t you ever do that shit again, ‘Rok, don’t you ever.”

“Nice to have you back, welcome,” Howie said, much more straight-laced than AJ had been.

Kevin looked like he might cry. Figures. Kevin cried over everything. “Welcome back, cuz,” he said, pulling Brian into an awkward half-hug, patting his back with a couple heavy thumps.

“Yo Nick,” AJ said, waving at me as we moved to go inside.

“Yo,” I answered.

Inside, Mason rushed by with Max, carrying a bag of oversized Legos, and Kristin greeted us all and promised to bring some drinks in a few minutes. Kevin led us into the same dining room we’d sat in the last time we’d done this, when we’d all agreed to let Brian go if we had to, and we fell into the same seats except for one major difference. Brian was sitting to my right, and AJ bumped a seat further down on the other side of Brian.

Kevin pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket, where they’d been folded, and he settled himself down into the chair at the head of the table, glancing around at us as he adjusted the chair itself in distance from the table. He had a folder sitting down there already, which he opened and stared down at a document sitting in there. “So here we are,” he said, looking around at us. “Here we are.” He cleared his throat. “I had a new contract written up,” he said, “One that states Brian will, in fact, be staying with us, despite prior contracts.” He put the papers down on the table and pushed it to the middle, as though to tempt us all into signing it.

“Give me that shit,” AJ said, standing and reaching over Brian to grab for the contract.

I shook my head, “Uh uh. I sign it first,” I said, grabbing a pen from the middle of the table. I flipped the pages to the back and quickly scrawled my signature across the line next to my name with a flourish. I looked at Brian and slid it to him. “Your turn, Frick.”

Brian took the pen I was offering from my hand and added his name to the contract, too, before finally allowing AJ to have his turn with it. He looked up at me and I had a feeling that we were both thinking the same thing - about how important and symbolic it had been that, if even for just a moment, that contract had held both our signatures and ours signatures alone.

After Howie had scrawled his name, he slid it to Kevin, and Kevin’s scrawling name finished the contract. He flipped the pages back down to close the contract and he nodded, looking around the table. “There we go,” he said. Kevin lowered the glasses from his nose and looked at me and Brian, shaking the frames at us like parent might do to kids they were scolding, “You two --” he said.

“We’re good,” Brian replied.

And it was true. In the past couple weeks, Brian and I had done a lot of talking on the phone. We’d even Skyped so we could do his therapy exercises together in the morning, just like I’d promised I would do. He was getting better and the two of us hadn’t been so strong in decades. Maybe even ever because for the first time ever I didn’t see Brian as some kind of god, he was just a guy who was my best friend. I didn’t have unreal expectations - something he’d confessed in me had always put pressure on him. Finally, for the first time in a long time, we were really, truly good.





Brian

Thirty-something hours later and we were overseas, backstage and changing from one set to the other, our clothes flying every which way in the dressing room. We were almost done with the show already, and I could hear the fans’ voices echoing through the halls. I just stared around at the four other guys, in various stages of getting ready to get back out to the show. I couldn’t believe that I’d really thought that I could leave this life. Just being back here, just breathing in the smell of the sweat and the stage, I knew there was no way I ever could’ve been contented without it.

Nick was leaning against the door, tugging his pants on, cussing because they were a little tighter than he remembered them being. Maybe all that bacon on the promo run had caught up to him after all.

We went back out on the stage and the lights came back up and shone on us. They were warm, which was good because it was an outdoor arena and the night air had cooled it down quite a bit. I had chills, too, that had nothing at all to do with the nip in the air, but everything to do with how close I’d been to letting go.

Nick came bounding over to me, flinging his arm around my shoulders. They had played a clip from the movie while we’d been under the stage changing our clothes. He grinned as he let his arm dangle across me, his microphone practically touching his teeth, as he said, “BRok. BRok. I’m so glad you’re here. AIN’T Y’ALL GLAD BRIAN’S HERE, Y’ALL?” he shouted this last part and I shook my finger in my ear, pretending he’d deafened me with his yelling. He laughed and tugged me into him so my face was pressed against his chest in a headlock. “I fuckin’ love you, man,” he said.

“I love you too man,” I said, holding the mic up to my mouth, which was dangerously close to Nick’s arm pit at this point.

He snickered and released me and I waved my hand in front of my face, “Dawg you need some… some deoderant or somethin’ up in there, cos…” I pretended to pass out, throwing myself onto the floor of the stage so my legs flailed. The fans cracked up as Nick buried his nose into his own under arm.

“I don’t smell, Frick, don’t you be startin’ no false rumors.”

“That ain’t a rumor son,” AJ intoned from across the stage.

“You ain’t smellin’ like no damn roses yourself, ‘J,” Nick retorted as I scrambled back up to my feet.

It felt good, freeing, to be engaged in this on stage banter again.

Then the strains of I Want It That Way came from the speakers, breaking up our silly chat, just as AJ and Nick were about to force Howie to sniff both their armpits in a who’s-smelliest competition, Kevin giving the lot of them the Dirty Brow from the side of the stage where he was busy touching palms to every fan he could reach.

I looked up, my eyes catching sight of the thousand of flash bulbs going off all over the arena. There seemed to be millions of them. “Back. STREET. Boys! Back. STREET. Boys!” They were chanting. And suddenly, I was so vividly reminded of my own dreams that I felt frozen, standing there in the center of the stage, my fingers curled around my microphone, afraid that it would happen again, like it always did…

But Nick came running back as the strains echoed towards us and he flipped his stinky arm over me once again, leaning in close so he could hold his microphone up to my mouth, too, a big ol’ grin on his face.

“You are…. my fire, the one… desire…”

Not a single crack.

Or maybe lots of cracks.

Just repaired with gold.

“Believe… when I say…” I smiled back at Nick. “That I want it that way.”