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Chapter Ten


The house was insane. The only way to make it crazier would be to plate the thing in solid gold. He had a huge marble staircase the moment you walked in, and chandeliers and the walls were lined with Backstreet Boys memorbila like platinum singles and little shelves with awards encased in glass.

The living room was inset to the floor with this square of built in cushions for a couch, covered with enough throw pillows that a person could drown in them. A huge screen TV lined the wall with a surround sound system that he bragged had speakers hidden even in the cushions of the seats so that you could feel them in your very muscles when you watched a movie. "You should come by and watch Fast and the Furious sometime if you don't believe me," he said with a chuckle.

He led me through an ornate kitchen with granite counter tops, and a game room with actual arcade style games lining the walls, and out onto a back stone breeze way that opened wide with a series of french doors to a stone staircase, overlooking a span of lawn. The lawn seemed to stretch on and on and on right to the edge of the beach where a slice of pale white sand met the ocean tide. The lawn was perfectly landscaped, the stone leading away from the staircase cutting it symmetrically in half, with a somewhat narrow pool in the center. Statues of various sea creatures lined the length of the pool, and several lounge chairs dotted the pool's edge under large palm trees that provided shade. It was like something out of a Bora Bora resort catalogue.

I stared out at the pool and the ocean and the green of the backyard, and Nick took the stone steps we were standing on two at a time and stood in front of the pool. "So here's my vision for the party," he said, waving his arms, "Lights. Big search lights. Maybe in a couple different colors... and they're sending these big beams of color up into the sky... and... You know those arches made of balloons? One of those... in pale, almost metallic pearly white... You know the color I mean, don't you?" I nodded. "And those are stretched over the pool here at regular intervals. Maybe four or five of them. With Chinese lanterns strung around so that it gives this whole backyard almost a bubbly feeling... And we'll have champange. Lots of champagne..." he walked further down the length of the pool, and I followed, mainly because if he went much further I wouldn't be able to hear him, "And waiters will walk around with plates of finger foods and champagne refills... and loud music. Thumping music. It'll be piped in from huge speakers... Right there... and there... and there... and there..." Nick spun, pointing in the corners of the yard. He turned to me. "Do you see it?"

I did. And it had a price tag the size of the moon. I looked at him, "It's going to be expensive to set up what you're describing," I said.

Nick shrugged, "What better do I have to do?" he asked, smiling. "I think it'll be nice to have a good party like that." He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and looked around, "Yeah... And Cora will like the balloons," he added, looking up overhead like he expected the balloons to be there already.

I stared up, too.

He shifted his attention suddenly, shaking his head as though to clear away the mental image of the balloons. "Maybe we'll put a little bridge-like stage over part of the pool, too," he suggested, waving his hand in a low arch. "Maybe some kind of performers could be on it. Like a dancer or a singer or something."

I nodded, "Okay."

"Maybe you should be taking notes?" he suggested, eyeing me. "This is important, you know."

"I know. I'm good." I tapped the side of my head. "I remember details, remember?"

Nick grinned, "That's why I hired you." He pointed at me, winked, then turned to look up at the house. He let out a sigh, "Ohhhhh," he hummed, shaking his head. "I know it's a lot," he said, "I know it's excessive. You must think I'm some kind of spoiled rich guy..." He paused, I think so I could deny the claim. When I didn't, he turned toward the ocean view, squinted against the sun, and said, "I bought this place for Cora and I, you know."

"You did?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yeah..." he turned a little bit and waved at the beach, "I used to live down that way, and this one day we were walking the beach and we came around that bend there and she saw it and she let out this shriek and said I want to live there someday, with you and I went out the next day and bought the place." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "For her."

I stared at his back, at the wrinkles in his t-shirt, and the way his hair fell across the back of his neck. "Does she know you bought it?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "But I don't think she realizes I bought it because of her, because of what she said." He looked down at his feet. "Sometimes, I feel like she can't even see me," he muttered.

Something about the way he'd gone from an attitude of absolute, complete confidence as he'd described his party vision to this quiet, mumbling person that stood before me now... something about that made me feel profoundly bad for him. "I can't imagine anyone in the world could not see you," I said.

Nick laughed a little, a sad laugh. "You'd be surprised," he said. He looked back at me and his eyes were the exact same color as the ocean behind him. "I mean sure everyone in the world sees me. They see Backstreet Boys me, they see the me that I project, that they think I am. The me they want me to be... the stubborn child star all grown up and struggling with what fame means now..." He took a deep breath, and a teeny tiny smile eeked onto his face, "But I dunno, there's a part of me that it seems like nobody sees, this part that I really... deeply... desperately want to be seen." He looked me right in the eyes. "You know what I mean?"

My mouth felt dry. I reached out and put my hand on the side of a stone dolphin to keep from toppling over. I nodded.

"I really want Cora to see me," he concluded, and he turned away and the trance that'd been caused by his gorgeous blue eyes was broken and I sucked in oxygen and regained my composure.

"What if she doesn't ever see you?" I asked.

Nick shook his head, staring out at the water, "She will. Cora's the one."

"If she hasn't seen you," I said, "How do you know that she's the one?"

Nick turned to look at me. "She'll come around. She'll see me. She'll leave him. This party will help." He paused, took a deep breath and turned back to face me. "So... what do you think?"

"About Cora seeing you?"

"No, about the party."

"It... sounds like a great party," I said.

Nick grinned, "Great. Lemme know if you need help organizing it or whatever. Let me get you my credit card..." and he jogged away toward the house.

I blinked. "You want me to organize this all by myself?" I called after him.... but Nick had already ducked through the french doors and into the house, leaving me alone in his backyard.