Nick and Bree stopped at a truck stop diner on the last stretch to the Grand Canyon where a waitress with frizzy purple-grey hair and Latino heritage had asked if they "habla espanol" before asking in broken English what they wanted to eat. Nick had ordered pancakes and Bree had gone with scrambled eggs and ham, then the waitress waddled away, leaving behind two steaming cups of coffee in front of them on the table. Nick watched Bree pour in precisely two and one half of the cream cups, and then add two regular sugar packets, and one supplement and stir counter clockwise. He laughed.
"What?"
"It just keeps throwing me off how much of the Littrell idio-sin-crazies were handed down to you. Genetics is a bitch."
Bree was pretty sure he meant idiosyncrises, but she didn't want to be rude in correcting him. Instead, she let her cheeks flush and asked, "What? Is this something my dad used to do, too?"
"Yeah, and I always teased the shit out of him because what the hell is the point of using a fake sugar when you use two reals?"
"It saves calories." Bree shrugged.
"Like you need to save calories," Nick replied with a slight eyeroll.
"Maybe I do," Bree responded.
"Did you know there's only like five - if that - calories in a packet of sugar?"
"Seriously?" Bree looked at a packet but it didn't contain any information. "I thought they were required to put nutrition info on the packages of stuff like this now?" she asked, rolling it in her palm.
Nick laughed, "Do you seriously see the size of it? Where would they put it?"
"They could do a fold out," she replied, holding it up and pretending to unfold a map. Nick laughed. "Baylee says I could go into advertising like he did because I'm creative," Bree said.
"Yeah? That'd be fun," Nick commented off handedly.
"Sure," Bree shrugged, "I guess." She started ripping the empty sugar packet.
Nick leaned back into the booth and studied her a moment, leaving little shards of paper. "You want to do your writing, huh?" he asked.
Bree looked up. "Yeah."
"Then that's what you should do."
"I guess."
"No seriously, life is way too short, you need to follow your heart and all that girly, pep-talk stuff."
Bree laughed, "Pep talks aren't girly."
"Sure they are."
"Nawh, what do you think it's called when the coach talks to a football team before they go out to play, huh?"
"The battle delcaration," he announced in a voice that sounded like a viking with a sore throat.
Bree had been about to take a mouthful of coffee when he answered and she very nearly spit it across the table at him, only just barely managing to keep her mouth closed. "Oh my God," she gasped as the giggles erupted.
Nick made a noise that sounded like a pirate with a sore throat. "Arrrrgh."
"Stop," Bree gasped through giggles, "You're crazy."
Nick smirked.
The waitress returned at that moment with two steaming plates of breakfast on a tray that balanced precariously on her upraised hand. She unloaded it, and dropped a salt shaker and a tiny cup of maple syrup onto the table in front of them, and waddled away with the promise of returning with more coffee.
Bree looked across the table at Nick. "Thank you," she said solemnly.
Nick was pouring syrup onto his food. "For...?"
"Talking to me like I'm a grown up," Bree replied, "And for respecting me enough to tell me about my Dad." She took a deep breath, "People always think I'm crazy when I say this but, I just feel such a deep connection to him somehow, even if I didn't meet him, and I just want to know who he was, you know?"
Nick nodded. He was studying his food, carefully avoiding her eyes. "You're welcome," he muttered, before chowing into his breakfast.
The phone was ringing in Nick's house, the tone splitting the silence like a knife. It bounced off the walls and returned to the phone's cradle. It's Nick, leave me a message. Beeeep!
"Nick?" Leighanne's voice echoed from the answering machine. "Nick, you better be not-answering becaus you're driving my daughter to the airport, that's all I have to say." She paused, "Call me when you get back."
Nick parked the car in an empty space by the gift shop of the Grand Canyon - the one where Brian had bought Amanda that crystal eagle. Nick stared out the window at the store front, which resembled a hacienda. To one side was an old fence that had once served as a pen for the burros that they'd rode into the depths of the canyon. The store had a fancy new neon sign hanging over the door and a weather worn flag that declared they were open. Bree was staring over his shoulder. "Gift shop?" she asked.
Nick nodded wordlessly.
"Did my dad go here?" she asked.
Nick nodded again.
Bree opened the passanger side door and climbed out, "Well what're you waitin' for?" she asked, grinning as she slammed the door behind her.
Nick sucked in a deep breath and swung his door open, sliding out into the dry Arizona heat. He shoved his hands into his pockets and followed her, trotting across the parking lot toward the small building. He glanced at the empty burro pen and wondered where the beasts were. He wondered how long burros lived - if the animals that had swayed and wobbled their way down the canyon walls carrying himself, Amanda and Brian were still in the present tense or if they'd gone the way of Elmer's Glue.
Then he got wondering if they made glue out of burros like they do horses.
"Nick, c'mon!" Bree's voice carried across the lot, excited.
Stepping through the door, a little bell chimed throughout the store and a woman behind the register, whose long dark hair made him think she must be of Blackfoot descent, called out, "Hello!" He smiled, waved, and followed after Bree, who was practically skipping into the shop. Inside was the same cheesy merchandise that Nick remembered from the first time he'd been in the store. Plastic animals, cedar boxes with lithographs of wolves and bears and stuff on them... Little glass cacti, plastic snow globes, shot glasses, baby spoons, and touristy t-shirts. Bree laughed and pointed at a postcard that showed a cartoon of a burro carrying a ginormous tourist down into the grand canyon.
When Bree found a shelf of books on the history of the canyon and local Native American folklore, Nick wandered by her and continued on looking at everything in the shop while she flipped through the books excitedly. He found the display of glass animals and inspected them. There were no eagles. He would've been tempted to buy it just because had there been one. But something else caught his eye at that moment and he migrated to the right of them, to a framed newspaper article by the door.
Squinting at it, he realized it was a print out of the Pop Stuff Online article that Amanda had written about their stop in Arizona sixteen years ago, accompanied by a photograph of Nick hugging the neck of a burro as they began their descent into the canyon.
Brian Littrell and Nick Carter, the duo quickly becoming known as "The Traveling Backstreet Boys" (yes that's a reference to the creepy Travelocity gnome), were photographed yesterday horsing around at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Wait - those aren't horses!
Looks like Nick Carter overcame his fear of the equine breeds to impress his girlfriend, Amanda Golde, over the weekend!
Too bad the Backstreet Boys are still being as stubborn as burros and continue hide the reason behind the cancellation of their 38-stop New Beginnings World Tour!
Check out Pop Stuff Online's exclusive photo gallery to get a peek at Nick's awkward ride down the South Rim! And as always, keep checking back with Pop Stuff Online for the latest updates on the 10-40 of your favorite Traveling Backstreet Boys.
Bree was suddenly at Nick's side. "What's this?" she asked, leaning over his shoulder. He moved so she could see.
"Amanda wrote it," he said.
Bree looked at him. "Fear of equine breeds?"
"Kevin had a psycho horse." There was no way in hell he was re-explaining the tale of the evil horse that had laughed at him. No way in hell.
Bree laughed, "I didn't know horses could be evil."
"This one was."
"Burros aren't technically horses."
"They're cousins or some shit."
"Did you know that a girl donkey is called a Jennyass?"
Nick blinked at Bree for a long moment. "What?"
"You know how a boy donkey is a Jackass?"
"I thought that was a TV show."
"What?"
"Never mind, it was before you're time."
"Um, okay." Bree gave Nick a funny look, then switched back to the educational moment. "No, boy donkeys are called Jackasses and female donkies are Jennyasses."
"That's really weird."
Bree laughed, "Sorry - just a random fact I saw on Wikipedia once that kind of stuck in my brain."
"Why in the hell were you looking up donkies on Wikipedia?"
"Baylee and I used to look up the origin of swear words when my mom wasn't around," Bree confessed.
Nick laughed, "I used to write them on Kevin's forehead on the tour bus. In pernament marker." He grinned. "Once I drew a --" he'd been about to say penis but realize he was talking to Brian's daughter - his sixteen year old daughter - and stopped mid-sentence and ammended with "--a cupcake."
"What?"
"I drew a cupcake on Kevin's forehead."
"A cupcake?"
"Yeah." Nick's face was flushed.
"Is that code for penis?" Nick walked away to avoid answering and Bree laughed hysterically as she trotted after him. "Oh my God, what did he do? Kevin's kind of uptight, isn't he? Was he always?"
"Always," Nick nodded vigerously.
Bree laughed. "What'd he do?"
"I thought he was gonna kill me. He yelled like a ninja when he saw it in the mirror. Took days to get it off."
"You were kind of badass when you were younger, huh?"
Nick laughed, "I was a whole lot of bad ass."
