It was during an important meeting that Baylee's cell phone rang. He sighed, seeing the caller ID, and excused himself from the table. The hallway was still and smelled like popcorn. He held the phone to his ear, "Bree, what's going on?"
Bree's voice was tearful, "I miss you," she cried.
Baylee leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his bushel of blonde hair. "I miss ya'll too."
"When are you coming home?" Bree asked.
Baylee took a deep breath, "I dunno, Bree, okay? I'm really busy. I've got this huge client I'm pitching an ad to today and --"
"I want to live with you in the city," she pleaded.
Baylee shook his head, "You know that isn't an option, Bree, mom needs you."
"Mom doesn't need me," she snapped, "Mom doesn't understand me. She hates me."
"She doesn't hate you," Baylee argued.
"Yes she does, she barely can even look at me."
Baylee sighed. "It's his birthday this weekend," he explained. He'd been trying not to think about it himself. It was a thorn in his side, something that had been keeping him up at night, like a dull ache somewhere deep in the left side of his chest. "She's just upset because of that." Bree's tears were thick, he could hear it in her shuddering breaths. "It's not your fault," Baylee whispered, "It's just a really hard time for her." And for me, he added in his head, but he managed to repress it. "You look so much like him, you know? It's just that. It's not you."
"I just wish things were different," Bree gasped.
"So do I," Baylee admitted, "But they aren't, so you just gotta hang tough, kiddo."
Bree, who was sitting on her bedroom floor, leaning against the wall beside her window, hugged her knees to her chest. "Nick got arrested again."
Baylee glanced at the meeting room, saw his manager shaking hands with the client and everyone gathering their things, and said, "Yeah I read that." He sighed. He was going to get chewed out for stepping out of the meeting - he knew it. "Probably for the same reason. You know him. Every year."
"I feel like I'm the only person that doesn't get depressed around this time of year," Bree confessed.
"You barely knew him," Baylee pointed out.
Bree felt like she'd been doused with ice water with those words. What she knew of Brian was no more than what the average Backstreet Boy fan had known back in the day. She knew him as the smiling face in the videos on the Internet, the one whose laugh was so much like her own, and whose eyes were like looking in a mirror. But she didn't know the family stories, the things only his closest friends had known. Nobody wanted to talk about things like that. Nobody wanted to remember him long enough to tell her.
"Bree, I gotta go," Baylee said in a hushed tone, "I'm supposed to be wrapping up a meeting right now. I've got to get back in there."
"Okay," Bree mumbled.
Baylee knew he'd upset her, but he didn't know what to do to help her out, so he muttered, "I'll try to get home this weekend, okay? Tell mom I said hi and I'll call you guys later. Or tomorrow. When I get a chance."
"Right," Bree said, knowing he wouldn't call until she called him again. Baylee never called or came home. He always had a reason, an excuse, some pressing matter he had to attend to. "Bye."
"Bye Bree," Baylee said, hanging up, his focus turning to an irate boss and away from the painful, haunted feeling that had surged up inside him.
The alarm clock was chirping somewhere in the room, like a loud, off-key cricket. Nick groaned and pulled the blankets over his head, rolling onto his back and stretching his legs out into the dark. "Shut upppp," he growled at it, as though it could understand vocal commands. His eyes blinked open, the early afternoon sunlight piercing through the blinds. "God," he groaned, reclosing them. He struggled to sit up, a woozy, morning-after haze clouding his senses. He heard the little plane-sized liquor bottles clicking, glass-on-glass, as his weight shifted the mattress.
He tripped over the vast array of magazines, newspapers and books that cluttered the floor of his bedroom on his quest in following the chirping alarm clock. Folded back to the article they'd been purchased for, the magazines all smiled up at him from the ever-aging author photographs, the never-changing byline Article by Amanda Golde typed neatly under each headline on the spreads. He'd read each and every article, always clutching a bottle of his liqour of choice as his eyes skimmed big words and concepts he barely understood through the oncoming stupor, and stared into the mesmerizing green eyes. Sometimes, he thought he could still smell her perfume, but more often than not he realized he was actually smelling a sample from an inserted article, and actually could not remember the way she smelled anymore.
The alarm clock's chirping finally ceased, and Nick let out a breath of releif, dropping it back onto the equally cluttered desk where he'd found it. He stumbled back across the room to the bed and lowered himself onto the mattress, staring up at the ceiling, assuming the position he planned to stay in for the rest of the afternoon.
He was nearly back asleep when the phone rang. "What the hell?" his voice rang out from under the blankets he'd pulled up over his face, and he sat up quickly - too quickly, every ounce of hangover rushed to his head - and grabbed his cellphone from the nightstand. He stared at the caller ID for a solid minute before he got his bearings and clicked the answer button without actually speaking.
"Nick? Nick did you pick up?" Amanda's voice was gentle, but far-away. It was older, too, with inflections that he'd never heard before. He could hear people chattering in the background, accented by a dense hum. She was at her office. He glanced at his window, at the clouds going by, imagining what the office might look like, what her view might be like. "Nick, it's Amanda." She paused.
As much as he wanted to speak, he couldn't.
"I saw the news," she whispered quietly, "I know what happened. I just wanted to know if you're okay. I know this weekend is Brian's birthday, and... well, I know how hard that weekend is for you."
Nick was picking at a stray thread on the blanket that covered him. His heart was breaking slowly into pieces even smaller than it already was in. He licked his teeth behind his lips and felt his lower lip tremble.
Amanda sighed into the phone. He recognized the sound - it was the one she made when she leaned back into a more comfortable position, it was the sound of her settling in. "I have all day, you know," she said, "To wait, I mean."
He didn't answer.
"I'll wait all day for you to talk to me, Nickolas," she warned.
He leaned back into the pillows, still silent, and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Somehow, just knowing she was there helped more than all the millions of words that he could've said.
