This was going to be it, this was the tour, this was the year, she was gonna tell him. She was going to be bold, straightforward, honest and truthful about it for the first time in five years. She would not be afraid, she would not back down, she would not let her emotions get in her way.

            “Amy!” She almost melted at the words and when she saw that smile, oh, her little heart. Well, there’s always next year…

            Amelia Yurikovich stood at the baggage claim, waiting for her best friend to arrive. She yawned loudly, trying not to admit how tired she was from the previous night’s party. She’d just finished a six month tour with a band and had flown directly from that tour to this one. She heard a yell from across the room and saw one of her best friends streaking towards her.

            “Can you believe it! Another fucking tour and yet I still have no friggen clue as how to operate the switch board!” Lucy Faustenberg screeched, her arm around her best friend’s neck, pulling her close. She was a tall, powerfully muscled black woman with shockingly blond hair a total contrast to Amelia who was barely five feet tall, petite, brown haired, very Russian and therefore totally pale.

            “I got the switch boards, you handle the back up singing thing,” Amelia replied laughing.

            “The singing thing? The singing thing? Honey, didn’t you apply yet?” Lucy asked, eye brows raised to a precarious height on her forehead.

            “I thought about it, but I’m really better on stage management, you know.”

            “You mean you’re better at hiding out backstage.”

            “I didn’t say that!”

            “Then you need to tell Kestin that you want to be a back up singer. We got room honey, and I’m telling you, the bunch we got this year is worse than before. Think Dancing With the Stars singers crossed with American Idol winners,” Lucy did a jazz hands motions and horror flashed across her face as she walked down the terminal with Amelia to the baggage claim.

            “Ouch,” Amelia replied with a grimace.

            “You’re telling me. I don’t know how they manage to do it every tour, but they drag in the sorriest bunch I’ve ever heard. You honey, you should be back up. We need the soprano! I’m only good for so much, then send in falsetto man, and he sounds worse than Justin Timberlake getting kicked in the balls.”

            “I’m not good for much, Luce, that’s why I stay backstage.”

            “Honey, really, I’m not talking about a recording career or anything, but you got a voice, you should use it. Hell, I don’t think I’d want to be out there, doing that shit, and really, I can’t write to save my life. I like to sing, so do you, just go for it.”

            “Eh, sorry, you know my rules, I never go after what I want,” Amelia laughed at her own predicament.

            “You gonna say something this time or spend the whole tour as a bipolar?” Amelia looked at Lucy bewildered.

            “What?”

            “You get all happy for a while when you get to spend some time with the guy, then you freak out because you don’t want him to figure it out, and then you’re all upset because you’re that close to him and can’t or won’t tell him, do I need to continue?”

            “No, I think you laid out my inhibitions quite well, no need to continue,” Amelia snorted.

            “It’s true, you can’t lie to me about that. You like the guy, god dammit you love the bastard and you won’t open your mouth and tell him.”

            “You’re being a little harsh, don’t you think?”

            “No, cause I’m sick of listening to you bitch about it. Five years sweetie, it starts to add up,” Lucy said holding up her hand to illustrate the five years.

            “Just get your luggage and shut up,” Amelia said as they took a spot at the conveyor belt to look for Lucy’s bags.

            “What is the worst thing that could happen, honestly, tell me that?”

            “Worst thing? Um, lets see, it would be the most embarrassing moment of my life and he would be embarrassed, and just in general, what if he just thinks I’m some love sick freak?”

            “You are some love sick freak, honey, a drooling, stalking, five year, hold onto the stupid note he gave you, stolen glances, excuses to spend time together, need to get it off your chest, love sick freak.”

            “By the way Lucy, you’re fat, stupid, ugly and unattractive,” Amelia snapped.

            “Hey, I calls ‘em likes I sees ‘em. There, grab that one.” Amelia grabbed the banana yellow duffel bag and yanked it off the belt.

            “Do you think that I have even a chance with him?” She couldn’t help it, she had to ask.

            “Meals, for the millionth time, yes! Girl, go on, make your move, the man is yours for the taking. He hasn’t been on a date since you met him, what does that say to you?”

            “That he’s busy.”

            “Oh shut up. There, that one.” Amelia went after a matching yellowing backpack.

            “I just mean, I don’t know, I don’t remember what I mean. Anyway, let’s change the subject, t minus twenty seven hours and thirty one minutes before I have to deal with that again,” Amelia said, checking her watch.

            “I really don’t want to hear it Meals, really. If you’re so worked up about it, maybe you should switch to the Christina tour, so you won’t have to deal with all this stuff. But you better decide quick.”

            “I don’t want to work on the Christina tour, she’s got an entire circus, literally, I don’t have time enough to learn the concert crap.”

            “Oh please, you took on Britney’s last tour, the night before her first concert. You jazzed that thing up in a matter of seconds, don’t give me that!”

            “Aside from that, I already signed on, plus, I don’t want to run away from Leighanne and you, you guys are my best friends.”

            “I’m glad we’re in there somewhere. Anyway, what tour did you just get off from anyway?”

            “Red Hot Chili Peppers, it was a good tour, long though. I hope this tour is a little shorter.”

            “I know, I haven’t seen you in person for nearly seven months and we live in the same town.”

            “So sorry, I have to work you know.”

            “Have to, or want to. It keeps you out of Miami for long stretches at a time, where another certain person lives.”

            “Get off it will you?”

            “But you won’t. You got to make a decision honey, either make it or break it, otherwise I’m gonna break your neck!”

            “I got this one,” Amelia recognized Lucy’s third and final bag, another large banana yellow duffel bag, with a large red stain along one side.

            “That was the best party,” Lucy remarked, looking at the bag and smiling.

            “You mean where you drank sangria until you were so drunk that you tripped over your own feet then puked all over your bag?”

            “Yeah, that one.”

            “You are insane. So what is on the agenda for the night?”

            “Getting as drunk as possible before we have to deal with the prudes and the recovering addicts, that’s what.”

            “Sounds good to me.”

            “Do you miss doing that stuff in college?”

            “What, the partying, the drinking all the time?”

            “Yeah, that, and the fun stuff, dating, hanging out, even going to class, learning something once in a while.” This took Amelia by surprise. She shouldered one of Lucy’s bags and motioned for them to go towards the door.

            “I guess you could say that. I mean, that was fun, you, me, Leighanne, sharing that crappy suite on campus, but we had it, eight straight semesters, the crazy girls on the third floor, suite 108, Lenard Hall. Going to see Leigh in every single play, inviting Brian over to play poker and watch them play kissy face. Drinking with the neighbors, who was it, Jimmy Lee and Andover, playing the guitar, singing Spanish songs with British accents, guessing at the words most of the time. Yeah, I do in a way. But I don’t miss working in the dining hall, or scrounging up change to call home, or wondering if I’d ever have a job in music and business.”

            “That was loaded, I didn’t know I was asking so profound a question. Taxi!” Lucy called, thrusting her arm out into the cool November air of the New York streets.

            “Hey, you asked. Besides, you know you miss all of that crap too, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me.”

            “Yeah yeah, I know.” They got a cab and it wasn’t long before they got to their hotel that was a Backstreet Boy Tour free zone until the next evening, something that Amelia was glad for. 

            They got settled in their room where they would be for the next week while they rehearsed for the upcoming tour. It was Amelia’s fourth tour with the Backstreet Boys, she’d done the “Never Gone”, “Black and Blue”, “Millennium”, as well as Nick’s solo tour and AJ’s Johnny No Name shows with Lucy in tow. The rest of the time she worked tours for the other J records clients as well as anyone who offered her a gig. She’d managed stage for Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, O-Town, Nsync, Green Day, Hilary Duff, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Simpson while she wasn’t taking care of the Backstreeters. It was one week in New York for rehearsals, then the first show at Madison Square Gardens and off to start the tour.

            She wasn’t ready to see AJ again, she wasn’t ready to deal with him every day for the next four months. It was precisely the reason why she stayed out of town on business so that she could avoid him. But, in that process, she also ditched Lucy who lived in Miami.

            So how did she fall in love with a man that couldn’t tell she loved him? That’s the easy part. It started on the first tour she ever worked with them. She met him and spent so much time together in the first week that they were affectionately named by the rest of their friends, “the dynamic duo” before the end of the month,. They spent so much time together that it was impossible for them to realize that there were other people on the tour. They talked about everything, read the same books, rented movies and even shared a suite on occasion. When she was looking for a place to live, he suggested Miami and even got Howie to find her a house just down the block from his own.

He would come over almost every day when they weren’t on tour, he was always around. After three years of being friends with him, she just couldn’t stand the closeness all the time so she started working more and more. She wasn’t home as much but when she was, he was around, and he was there, always watching, always smiling, always there but unavailable.  She didn’t mean to fall in love with him, but she did and she was scared to death to tell him.

When they got to the room Lucy jumped on the phone to room service to bring up drinking supplies while Amelia slung their luggage unceremoniously into the closet. Once that was accomplished she dragged out Lucy’s CD collection from her backpack and began to look for drinking music.

“I got a bottle of red, because I know you like it, a bottle of zin and a bottle of Yellow Tail. Also a six pack of beers, tequila and all the equipment, rum, coke, for, you guessed it, rum and coke, Bacardi, and vodka and orange juice for the hangovers were gonna need to dull down in the morning.”

“Sounds good.” Amelia replied, shuffling through the CDs.

“Throw on the BEP’s, that’s drinking music. Say, didn’t you just do a tour with them or something?”

“Nah, I was offered, but I took up Hillary Duff’s tour instead. She was a cute kid, not a bad set either. Relatively simple concerts really, that’s why I took her instead. Plus, she was paying more. That’s always a bonus.” Amelia popped the CD into the player as Lucy went to the closet to get some more comfortable clothes.

“So what are you going to tell Mr. Fancy Pants this time?” Lucy asked.

“About what?”

“About why you decided to skip town and take, yet another tour, when he asked you to go on a trip with him. He wanted you two to go to Japan together. For shit sake honey, he’s been learning how to speak Japanese just for that purpose!” Amelia balked at this information. He’d given her a Japanese phrase book for her last birthday and she’d never even cracked it. She’d freaked out about the idea of going somewhere with just him, that’s why she had signed up for the Chili Peppers tour so fast.

“He was calling me, looking for you so that he could finalize the dates. Didn’t he tell you that?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly talk to him, while I was on this tour,” Amelia cringed and waited for Lucy to throw a CD case at her head, which inevitably followed.

“Hey, no more two disc sets, they leave a mark!” Amelia whined, rubbing her head where Lucy’s copy of Michael Jackson: History had made contact with her head.

“You haven’t talked to him in six months! What is wrong with you?” Lucy shouted.

“I was busy, I didn’t have time!”

“Didn’t have time? You are always on tour, you never have time! Don’t give me that crap. You really messed up on this one Amelia, you love the guy, so you push him away, that’s not exactly gonna work you know.” Lucy stood, hands on her hips as she shook her head at her friend.

“Look, Lucy, you don’t want to hear about it anymore, I’m fine with that, I won’t talk about it anymore. Besides, I’m sick of talking about it. Really, you don’t know what I’m going through, so it’s useless to talk about it. So lets drop it. I won’t bring up AJ anymore, as long as you don’t,” Amelia got up off the floor and went to get the door for room service. She tipped the bellhop and brought in the cart.

“All I’m saying is that if you’re not gonna tell him, and you’re still gonna be his friend, that it’s not fair that you treat him this way. He doesn’t understand why you treat him like that and if he doesn’t know, then it is really not fair.”

“I’m not gonna talk about this anymore. We’re done, we’re moving on, I’m not talking about him.”

“Amy, come on,” Lucy tried, walking over to the cart where Amelia was pouring herself a glass of red wine.

“Don’t call me Amy, all right, just let me alone. I’m not talking about it.” She walked away from the cart with her wine and took a seat on the couch, kicking off her shoes. Lucy got herself a glass of wine also and followed her friend.

“Why can’t I call you Amy?”

“Because, he calls me Amy. No body else can call me Amy.”

“Oh, so we are back onto him then?”

“No, we’re not.”

“Look, Melia, just say it out loud for once, let yourself hear it. It won’t sound as bad as you think it does.”

“No.”

“Meals,”

“No! I just won’t. He isn’t gonna know. So let it go at that.”

“So, you don’t love him anymore?”

“No, of course I do. I love him, okay? I love Alexander James McLean! I’ve loved him since I met him five years ago, and I probably always will, and I won’t get over it. Okay, are you satisfied?” Amelia looked over at Lucy and saw that she was smiling.

“What?” Amelia snapped.

“It’s just nice to hear you admit it. Seriously though, and not to be mean either. What is it that made you fall for him?” Amelia rolled her eyes.

“We’ve been over this, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, but we’re getting hammered, so we probably won’t remember this in the morning.”

“Good point.”

“So, spit it out.”

“All right, all right, let me see.” Amelia turned to face Lucy, both hands cradling her glass of red wine.

“When I met him, he just had this personality, this way of, I don’t know, genuinely being happy to meet a new person. He made me feel so welcome and I wasn’t afraid to get to know him. I’ve never met anyone and right away liked them. I mean guys, you and Leighanne, that’s totally different.”

“I know, you’ve never trusted men.”

“Anyway, besides the fact that he is handsome, of course, the tattoos, I’ve always gotten a kick out of them. It’s amazing the way he can express himself like that.”

“And you wish you were brave enough to express yourself, right?”

“I express myself!”

“Not as boldly as he does. But keep going.”

“Okay, well, he’s not afraid to mess up. Like one time I was watching him and the guys practice harmony. And he would miss this same part again and again. So much that he finally stopped the guys and figured it out with all of them listening to him struggle and work it out it until he had it right. I’d be too embarrassed to do that.”

“Even though you can sing, and play guitar.”

“So what? I do that as a hobby.”

“That’s your excuse.”

“So, going on.”

“Right, keep going.”

“And he’s just so, easy to be around. I never felt like I had to be anyone but myself around him. I didn’t have to pretend to be the gracious goody two shoes scholarship recipient, the dutiful perfect respectable Russian daughter, the doesn’t matter that I’m the pretty but poor girl, the girl that is not friends with a black girl and a Baptist because her parents raised her to only to befriend other Russians. I was able to be, me. Just plain old Amelia May, and that was plenty for him.” Lucy caught wind of a bit of Amelia’s old accent, which only came up when she was upset or emotional. It was a signal to Lucy that the subject was getting touchy.

“Your parents certainly didn’t object to my being black once I introduced them to my father, Hector Faustenberg, Mayor of Lexington and one of the most famous Lawyers in the US, did they?”

“That helped. It’s a good thing though that Leigh lied and said she had a Russian great grandmother or something. My mother still believes she met her at some point,” Amelia shook her head and laughed.

“I never realized how much that meant to you Meals,” Lucy took a sip of her wine and looked over at Amelia, she was still brewing.

“There’s a lot of stuff that got to me. Stills gets to me. Every time I go home, it gets to me. That’s why I almost never go home. I show up once or twice a year, get the lecture that I’m too old to not be married and having babies, I should be grateful for being brought to America, grateful for getting a scholarship. Grateful for an offer to be married to an old family friend. If I’m such an ingrate, I ought to be burning where I sit.” Amelia gulped her wine.

“They really did find a husband for you?” Lucy asked incredulously.

“Yup. He’s fifty. Good and rich too. You’d swear we were back in the fifteenth century. What’s the point of me getting that scholarship and going to college to get a job if I’m supposed to throw it all away to be married to the first guy that comes along?” There was more Russia in her voice than Lucy wanted to tell her about. They better get back to the conversation at hand before things got ugly. And when Amelia talked about her parents, things got ugly.

“Anyway, AJ we’re talking about here.” That got Amelia to shake out of her trance.

“Yeah, AJ. He accepts me for me. And he’s just got this sixth sense when it comes to me. He always can figure out if I’m upset, or I had a bad day, or I just need someone to sit there while I cry like a blubbering moron. He’s just a beautiful person. I couldn’t imagine a person that brave to go through what he’s been through, and still be so wonderful and open.”

“Is that one of the reasons that you haven’t told him?”

“Is what one of the reasons?”

“That he was fresh out of rehab when you met him?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“Well, maybe you were worried about him, maybe you didn’t want to push him too fast.”

“I guess so. I never did want to burden him with a relationship, not after all he’d been through.”

“But there’s one thing that you’re missing.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s been five years, what have you been waiting for? I doubt he’s still using rehab as an excuse why he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“I’m so used to not admitting it, I don’t know what I’d do if I actually told him.”

“Let me ask you something. If he knew, and he felt the same way, what would you do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only dreamt about stuff like that.”

“What’s your dream like?”

“It’s not much of a dream, but I wake up, and he’s in bed with me, like he’s always been there or something. Then he wakes up saying, ‘Morning Amy Doll’ and puts his arms around me. Then, just when he’s about to kiss me I really wake up, and I’m shaking all over and I can barely breathe.”

“That’s really sweet,” Lucy smiled.

“Yeah, and I’ve had that dream about a thousand times. And every time I have that dream, AJ shows up the next morning, he must have, I don’t know, bat radar when it comes to that dream. I feel so awkward around him after that.”

            “You always feel awkward around him anymore. He’s starting to wonder why you’re so weird sometimes.”

            “He is?”

            “Yeah, that’s what I mean about not telling him. He doesn’t understand why you ignore him.”

            “I haven’t exactly been the best friend to him, really, I haven’t.”

            “No, you haven’t.”

            “Do you think, I mean, and I know I’ve asked you this a hundred times before, but I want a real answer this time, no tricks, no laughing, nothing like that. If I told him, I mean really told him the truth, do you think that he would freak out?”

            “Meals, I’m only gonna tell you this one more time. AJ is your best friend, he loves you, maybe not in the same way, but he really cares about you. I’m sure that he’d be surprised, but I do not think, not for a moment, that he would freak out or push you away. AJ would never purposely hurt you like that, not in million years.”

            “How do I get the courage to tell him? Cause I don’t want to be like, you know, sixteen again, having someone give someone else a note for me, you know what I mean?”

            “I know sweetie, but you got to tell him, and soon, otherwise you’re gonna go nuts, or we’ll kill ya, okay?” Lucy asked, smiling.

            “Yeah, I know, I know.” Amelia laughed and took a sip of her wine.

            “So are you gonna tell him?” Amelia took a deep breath and looked up at Lucy.

            “Yeah, I am. Cause I can’t do this tour with him being around all the time. And I can’t keep pushing him away for a reason that he doesn’t even know about. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to me.”

            “That’s my girl, that’s what I like to hear.”

            “Yeah, and now I’ll I need is the guts to actually go through with it.”

            “Why do you think I ordered the Bacardi?”