Pushing me so far, here I am without you,
Drink to all that we have lost,
Mistakes that we have made,
Everything will change,
But love remains the same
~Love Remains the Same by Gavin Rossdale
4 Days Later
Tennessee
“Has anyone ever told you that you have two left feet?” her eyes gleamed in amusement.
His lips turned up at the corner into a small smirk, “Are you saying that I do?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know honestly. It’s just that you keep stepping on my toes.”
He felt his cheeks heat slightly, but he tried to keep his composure. She saw his embarrassment and quickly tried to remedy the situation, “It’s not bad, really, I’m just surprised.”
“Surprised?” he asked.
“From everything that I’ve seen you in, you seem to be a pretty good dancer,” she explained.
The one thing he didn’t want her to think was that he was a bad dancer. She was phenomenal compared to him, but that still didn’t stop him from trying to impress her, though he knew he shouldn’t. He couldn’t explain the battle within him. This girl was captivating. The way she moved, the way she smiled, the way her eyes sparkled as she spoke – everything about her was mesmerizing.
“I’ll admit I’m a little off,” he said sheepishly. It was only the second day of rehearsals and the couples dancing for ‘Everything but Mine’ was slowly becoming a chore. The other routines where he was far apart from her were a piece of cake, though she had been distracting, but having to actually touch her was an entirely different story. He couldn’t focus. His mind was hazy.
“Something wrong?” she asked sincerely.
“Come on you two, pick up where you left off!” Caitlin yelled from across the room. Brian and Leslie both turned their heads to the sudden interruption, the other guys and dancers dancing in their view. Brian raised his hand in acknowledgment and then turned back to Leslie. He immediately took her hand to twirl her towards him to start off the routine. She collided with his body and they both stopped, their faces only an inch apart from one another.
He found it frustrating that she seemed to be going through the steps like she had done them a million times before instead of just the dozen. He was struggling to not only remember the steps, but to perform them accurately. It wasn’t helping that the music wasn’t playing to match their steps. Caitlin and Charm’s method for this routine was to pile drive the steps into their heads before actually running through it with the song. It didn’t make much sense to Brian, but he guessed it was better than having to stop and restart the song over after every time someone messed up. Surprisingly, their progress was better than he thought it would be.
“Nothing’s really wrong,” he admitted. He dunked and twisted her body backwards, rolling it against his. He continued on with the steps, trying his hardest to stay clear. The heat from her body was intoxicating. Every whip of her hair made his insides churn. God, why was this happening to him? He couldn’t understand it.
“It’s just that you make me nervous,” he finally stated.
Her eyebrow furrowed as she came back to him, “Nervous?”
“Yeah… nervous,” he didn’t want to delve any deeper. He couldn’t. He wondered if she understood the kind of ‘nervous’ he spoke of.
Leslie’s face was unreadable as she moved beside him. She seemed contemplative, and unhappy at the same time, as if she wanted to say something in return, but wasn’t sure if she should. She was hesitating.
He twirled her again, seeing Charm out of the corner of his eye giving AJ some tips, demonstrating certain dance moves that he had messed up on. Just then, Brian’s foot collided with Leslie’s once more. They both stopped and Leslie quickly spoke up, trying to be encouraging, “Don’t worry about it. Remember after the turn and the jump, you go to the left instead of the right.”
Brian nodded once, accepting Leslie’s hand that she held out to him. They started from where they left off, Brian humming a few of the words to himself to get back into rhythm.
They were silent for a few moments. Leslie’s gaze was averted away from his, but when she finally made contact with his eyes once more, he could see that she was struggling with her innermost thoughts. She pursed her lips as she dipped and spun, once again coming back to Brian’s awaiting arms. Leslie finally responded, her voice uneasy, “You make me nervous too.”
Brian’s heart soared.
“Brian!”
Brian looked down at the head of brown hair that twirled away from him, his expression becoming one of puzzlement. Blonde highlights didn’t glint back at him. The intensity of the girl’s skin didn’t send tingles over his fingertips.
“Brian!” the voice yelled again.
Brian let go of the girl and turned his head towards the sound of his name. His eyes made contact with Charm. She looked at him frustrated, her hands on her hips, “What’s going on with you today?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Everyone had stopped dancing. Charm made her way across the stage, “You’re acting like you haven’t done this routine a million times before. You should know this like the back of your hand. This was only supposed to be a quick run through before tonight’s show.”
“I do know the routine,” Brian said defensively.
Charm cocked an eyebrow, “Sure as hell doesn’t look like it. You were going through the motions, but you missed a few of your steps, and…”
Brian blocked her out, looking over her shoulder to the guys standing to the side. They were all breathing heavily, staring at him expectantly. AJ looked concerned but exasperated, Howie was busy wiping his face off with a towel, trying to seem unperturbed though it was obvious he was, and Nick, well, Nick just looked pissed off. Not like that was any different than lately though.
“Are you even listening to me?” she exclaimed.
Brian flinched, “Of course I am. I missed a few steps,” Brian waved his hand absentmindedly.
Charm narrowed her eyes, “Are you sick? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine, really, it’s just that,” he glanced to the girl standing next to him. Who was she? He hadn’t seen her before then. She must have been an alternate. “It’s just that I’m not used to… to…”
Brian looked at her apologetically.
“Alice,” the girl said quietly, noticing that he was obviously prodding for her name.
“Right. I’m not used to dancing with Alice,” Brian declared.
“That’s ridiculous,” Charm spat out. “A dance partner is a dance partner. I know you and Leslie had a certain rhythm down, but…”
AJ coughed loudly, trying to divert attention away from what Charm was saying. Brian flinched. Charm rolled her eyes, continuing on, raising her voice slightly, “But it shouldn’t affect your performance now that she’s gone. So stop daydreaming and do your job Brian.”
She turned on her heel then and stalked off to the side of the stage, motioning for the music to come on again.
Brian felt like a moron. Had he really been that out of it? He knew that he was daydreaming about Leslie, but he didn’t know it was affecting the way he physically operated. Granted, he’d been dreaming of her every night since the day she had left, and it was clear that the more time that passed, the more he thought of her, but he didn’t know it could take over his entire consciousness.
Shamefully he welcomed these bouts of fantasy and memory. It was his way of being with her again, though these flashbacks were only half hearted. Memories and daydreams were limited and cloudy, but he still found pleasure in them. He jumped around from the early days when he was first getting to know her to when they were at the height of their so called “relationship”. It just so happened that the run through for that night’s concert would trigger the first time he really thought Leslie may be reciprocating the same feelings as he was with her. He remembered the fear and excitement of such a prospect.
Charm just didn’t understand, but then again, he didn’t expect her to. Leslie was his partner in more ways than one. He knew how her body moved, just like she knew his. He knew how she would respond to his subtle touches or the slight shifts from one foot to the other. She could read him, and that made them both better performers. This girl, Alice, he didn’t know her. He didn’t know anything about her. She was foreign to him. He was out of his comfort zone. It was no wonder he was missing some of his steps.
“Take it from the top!” Caitlin yelled.
Brian took the girl’s hand reluctantly, mumbling ‘Sorry’. She smiled lightly at him, and he could tell that she was nervous. Not nervous in the way that Leslie and Brian were initially nervous with each other, but nervous as in slightly afraid. He wondered what she had heard and what she had thought. What kind of judgment had she passed? He wished more than ever that he could read minds.
Brian forced himself to focus, demanding that his mind not wander off again. He sang the lyrics of the song to keep his mind occupied as he danced with this new girl in his arms. She was shorter, more petite. It didn’t feel right. She was a good dancer, that much was clear, but she was no where near as good as Leslie. Leslie was a natural. Her body flowed with the music like water, but Alice was different. She wasn’t as smooth, she wasn’t as trained. It threw Brian off. He knew Leslie was special, but this girl dancing beside him was reminding him all too clear of what he had lost. He half expected her to morph into Leslie. He waited after each turn she spun for Leslie’s golden hair to fall over her shoulders, for her chocolate brown eyes to shift into the softest blue that had ever existed, and for her nervous smile to transform into the lips he had loved to kiss so deep. None of these things happened and when the song ended, he was grateful. He had to get away from these memories that kept invading everything around him.
“Better, much better!” Charm announced, glancing at Brian momentarily. “I know it’s been a long couple of weeks but keep focused.”
“Can we go now?” Nick grumbled.
“Just gotta do a quick mic check and then you can,” Caitlin replied.
The dancers made their way off the stage, talking animatedly amongst themselves. The boys congregated at the head of the platform, snatching up some mics, immediately tapping them to make sure they were on.
“Check, check, one, two,” Howie breathed into the microphone. Brian fiddled with his mic, noticing Nick’s very quiet behavior. He had been sullen and distant ever since it had all happened, but at least he had been angry before. That anger had seemed to diminish. Brian found it disturbing that it had sizzled so quickly. He still had the cuts and bruises to prove just what Nick’s rage could do. It was barely enough to have make-up cover them. He’d only had a few questions regarding what had happened, and Brian would simply respond that a basketball had collided with his face… hard.
Brian had half expected Nick to be giving him hell constantly, but he never said a word. Not anymore at least. He seemed defeated and lost, and the guilt and hurt were excruciating for Brian. He felt terrible, but what could he do to make it better? There was nothing he could say, there was nothing he could change. Brian would much rather have Nick screaming at him all the time than him just standing there in deafening silence. It’s like all the happiness in the world had been sucked out of him, with no way to return.
Brian eyed him sadly, wanting so badly to say something. Not only did he miss Leslie, but he missed Nick. He was the one guy he had the most fun with, the one guy he could talk to about anything. He was his best friend, and he had lost that. He seemed to be losing everything lately.
Nick hummed into the microphone then, starting up the harmony. AJ and Howie quickly followed suit, Brian taking up the rear. They stood in a half circle, beginning to sing ‘Just to Be Close’. Brian closed his eyes and tried to go back to a time in the early days when they were all happy. Where they would all be standing next to each other like they did now, singing the same song, smiling at one another. Things were so much simpler then.
Suddenly, as Brian began to sing his part, his microphone cut off, and there was an obnoxiously loud screeching coming from the speakers. Everyone else faltered, finally coming to a stop when they heard a loud voice demanding that the microphones be turned off. More screeching followed, “Turn them off. OFF! What’s so hard about that?”
They all looked ahead onto the arena floor, immediately noticing Ken, the tour manager, rushing down the isles, past all the chairs. He was frantic, waving impatiently at the sound booth, repeatedly telling them to turn the microphones off. His assistant was trying to keep up with his fast pace.
The screeching had finally stopped and he was scrambling on top of the stage. All four men stood planted, unsure of what to do. For Ken to interrupt sound check and rehearsals meant that something big had happened. But what?
It was then that Brian noticed what was in Ken’s arms, and his heart immediately stopped. It couldn’t be what he was thinking, it just couldn’t. It had been nearly two weeks since the party, and another four days since Leslie had gone home. All was quiet, so why now? Why NOW?
Ken looked from one face to the other, before landing on Brian. Ken’s jaw tightened, and Brian looked away, feeling Ken’s uncomfortable stare bore into him. Brian was panicking inside.
“Do you know why I’m here?” he asked.
“Obviously not,” AJ stated carefully.
Ken’s eyes flashed. All four of the guys were uneasy then. They had never seen him this way.
Ken stepped forward then, his arms swinging out, the contents in his arms slamming against the floor. They spread out across the stage, the front pages glistening in the spotlights.
There was silence, and then a muttered, “Shit,” from AJ. Howie’s hand immediately went to rub his forehead, his eyes staring wide eyed at the ground. Nick didn’t say a word, but crossed his arms over his chest, averting his gaze. Brian could only stare, dumbfounded. His worst fear had just come to pass.
“I guess this was inevitable,” Ken broke the deafening silence.
“How… why…” Howie was shaking his head in disbelief. “Why did it take so long…?”
“Probably had to check their sources. There were too many people there for it not to get out, but this,” Ken stepped forward and prodded a few of the magazine covers with his foot. “This picture is what sealed the deal. When this got out, it was over. It proved all the rumors true.”
Brian felt sick to his stomach. He had been so naïve to think that just because the tabloids hadn’t printed anything sooner that they wouldn’t be printing anything at all, but there it was. Ken had collected numerous magazines and tabloids, along with blog site print outs, and nearly all of them displayed a compromising picture of Brian and Leslie on the streets of New York, their arms around each other, their lips locked.
Headlines and descriptions yelled out across the pages:
Backstreet Boy Cheats!
Backstreet Sex and Lies!
The True Story Behind the Night That Broke a Boyband Apart
Leslie Baker who? Nick Carter’s girlfriend jumps ship to bandmate Brian Littrell!
Nick Carter beats Brian Littrell Senseless!
The list went on and on, and the more Brian saw, the more heated he became. All color had drained from his face. What must be going through everyone’s minds? Could they be screaming inside too?
“I thought that we could keep this quiet, and I thought we did. I thought we were in the clear, but it blew up. This shit is everywhere. There’s no doubt that not one single fan hasn’t seen or heard about this yet.”
“What do we do?” Howie whispered.
“You tell me,” Ken said.
Brian slowly felt the trickle of eyes turning to him. All eyes but those of Nick. Brian was flabbergasted. He didn’t know what to do or say.
That damn picture glared up at him from several magazines. How had he been so stupid? He had been so preoccupied with saying goodbye to Leslie that he didn’t stop to think that there could be fans or paparazzi around. But he had been so sure that no one was paying attention. He was utterly blind, and now what? Had he fucked up their careers for good? How were the fans going to respond? What do they tell people?
It was all so overwhelming. Brian felt the room spin around him. His mind immediately sprang to Leslie. How was she going to react to this? What was her family going to think? Shit, what was his family going to think? He gulped hard, croaking, “I don’t know what to say.”
No one responded.
“Guys, I didn’t know… I thought…”
“You thought what?” Howie asked. “That no one was watching? When was this even taken?”
Brian opened his mouth to respond but quickly shut it when Nick spoke up, “Four days ago.”
Everyone was stunned that he had spoken up. All eyes had turned to him. He looked so incredibly sad. He licked his lips, “The day she left.”
“How do you know that?” AJ asked gently.
“Because I was there,” he stated matter-of-factly. Brian’s stomach churned. He was there?
“There?” Brian breathed out.
Nick’s eyes flashed to Brian, and for the first time in days, he saw some of the old anger flickering.
“Did you do this?” AJ asked the obvious question running through everyone’s minds.
“Of course I didn’t fucking do it!” Nick burst out.
AJ immediately threw his hands up in surrender, “Okay, calm down, I just had to ask.”
“That’s fucking ridiculous. I was there, but I didn’t take a goddamned picture,” Nick said defensively. “We were staying at the same hotel.”
How could Brian not have known this? Jesus. He was a bonafide moron.
Nick’s voice lowered, “I had gone downstairs to see her leave. I wasn’t going to talk to her… I just, I wanted to see her.”
This last part was barely audible. It was clear that he was embarrassed.
“And then Romeo here showed up,” he sneered.
“Nick, I didn’t-“ Brian spoke up, absolutely mortified at what was coming to pass. The entire encounter with Leslie was running through his mind. The hugging, the kissing… Nick had seen all of it.
“Know?” Nick asked. “Of course you didn’t fucking know. You don’t think about anyone but yourself lately.”
“It wasn’t my intention-“
Again Nick interrupted him, “I don’t care what your intentions were. The fact that you still had the nerve to go see her when the shit had already hit the fan is beyond me.”
“Why didn’t you come outside?” Brian stumbled over his words. So many thoughts were running through his head.
“And do what? Beat you senseless again? There was no point,” Nick explained. He hesitated with his next words, “And I couldn’t do that to her.”
“But you could have said something to me after,” it was as if Brian wanted to be punished, and truthfully he did. He was begging for it.
“I could have, but I’m tired. There’s only so much you can feel before you go completely numb. I gave up. What was the point of fighting anymore?”
Brian was speechless. AJ bent down and picked up one of the magazines, staring down at it angrily, he muttered, trying to divert the attention back to the explosion that had just come to pass, “Fucking vultures. Why this? We haven’t been a high priority in the media in years so why now?”
“Because it’s a scandal,” Ken interjected. “Tabloids eat this shit up. The public eats it up.”
“Guys, I’m sorry,” Brian said softly. “I didn’t know… I can’t believe…”
“Brian, shut up. We don’t need your apologies. We just need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do. The fans are probably going ape shit, especially since it’s the golden boy over here that got fucked over,” AJ jabbed his thumb in Nick’s direction.
Nick glared at AJ, “Shut the fuck up AJ.”
Under other circumstances, AJ would have shot back with something that would have just driven on an argument, but AJ knew his boundaries, and he wasn’t about the push them, especially because he knew that once Nick found out he had known about Brian and Leslie for quite some time he was going to have to deal with one enraged Carter.
“Come on guys, this is serious. Nick, I’m not undermining what’s happened to you at all. It sucks, it really does. And Brian, I’m not completely ignoring the fact that you’re struggling with this whole situation too, but God dammit, I’m a part of this group too, and I don’t want to go down this way. I’ve worked too long and too hard for this to be it.”
“So what?” Ken asked.
“We have to lie,” AJ said determinedly.
“Lie? How do we lie about this?” Howie snatched the magazine from AJ’s hand and wagged it at him. “It’s pretty damn clear that everything that’s being said isn’t a lie.”
“We say that Nick and Leslie broke up, and Brian and Leighanne broke up a couple months ago, and it was just being kept under wraps. Then we can say that Brian and Leslie started dating, and that it was okay with Nick, but that they broke up too…”
Nick’s jaw was clenched tight as AJ spoke, and suddenly he was walking away from them. He didn’t say a word. AJ looked after him in puzzlement, and Howie breathed out, “Jesus AJ.”
“What?” AJ asked, oblivious.
“Nick, come on man,” Howie called gently. “Don’t walk away.”
Nick spun around then, his arms gesturing wildly, “Do I not even matter!?”
Everyone flinched, and he continued, “Seriously! You’re talking like this whole fucking thing is objective! My heart was torn out AJ. The woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with is no longer here and why? Because my best fucking friend couldn’t keep it in his damned pants. How hard is that for you to grasp?”
“Nick, I wasn’t-“
“Just leave it! I don’t care,” Nick spat. Brian shifted uncomfortably. This was turning into something way worse than a nightmare.
“Do and say whatever you want, cause I’m done. I’m done caring. If you want to go with a retarded story like that, then so be it. I won’t fight it. I’ll go along with the damned thing, but figure it out, because I need to move on from this. It’s taking over my fucking life and I’m over it!”
With that Nick turned on his heel once more and left the stage. AJ, Howie, and Brian all looked at each other uneasily.
“I didn’t mean to come off as insensitive,” AJ mumbled.
“We know,” Howie said.
“But does he?” AJ asked, motioning his head in the direction that Nick had left in.
“He’s known you long enough to know that you don’t have much class,” Howie tried to kid.
AJ rolled his eyes, “Funny D, real funny.”
It was obvious that AJ felt bad. He definitely didn’t mean to belittle Nick’s feelings. He had only got caught up in the moment, trying to find some sort of story they could feed to the press to smooth this entire thing over. He didn’t mean anything by it. He knew what the situation really meant to everyone involved.
“What do you think Bri?” Howie asked.
Brian was beyond stressed. His head was pounding painfully and he longed to get away from everything. This was entirely too much to handle.
"About what?"
“The story AJ came up with. Do you think it’s believable?”
“No,” Brian admitted. “And I don’t want to lie.”
“I don’t either Brian, but what other options are there?” Howie asked.
“We just don’t comment. We go on like nothing has happened,” Brian suggested.
“But that’ll look like we’re inadvertently saying the entire thing is true,” AJ countered.
“But it is true,” Brian said.
“No shit, but what’s going to hurt us more? Staying quiet or telling them a different story?” AJ asked.
“I won’t lie,” Brian stated firmly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” AJ sighed.
Brian opened his mouth to retort but Howie quickly spoke up, “They’ll gotta believe it though. If all of us say the same story and keep up with it. There’d be no other reason for them to doubt us,” Howie tried to reason. He knew that if Brian didn’t agree to the story then they couldn’t go through with it.
“I won’t lie,” Brian’s voice rose. “And neither should you. If we give that cock and bull story it’s only a matter of time before the truth behind that comes out too. This is my fault and I deserve to deal with the backlash. If we just stay together and reassure the fans that we aren’t breaking up, then this whole thing will have to blow over.”
AJ and Howie locked eyes, and a silent communication drifted between them. Brian was right. They’d only be walking into another shit storm. Howie sighed, giving in, “Fine Bri, we won’t lie.”
“So what about Leslie?” Ken asked suddenly.
Brian's head snapped up at the sound of her name, “What about her?”
“What is she going to tell the media?”
“Good point,” AJ nodded.
“She won’t say anything,” Brian declared.
“How can you be so sure?” Ken asked doubtfully.
“Because I know her, and she wouldn’t say anything. And even if she did, she would look to see what our story was and just agree to it, but the chances of her even talking to the media are slim to none. She’s not like that.”
Ken didn’t want to push the subject any further. After a few moments of silence, he spoke up again, “So that’s it then? I’m just supposed to say no comment other than that you’re not breaking up and are working through a few problems?”
All three of the guys looked at one another, and then nodded. Ken sighed, “Alright then. Leave it to me.”
Ken turned to leave, leaving the three of them alone on stage. AJ and Howie looked at Brian worried. How was this going to pan out? It was nerve wracking. If Brian had been told eight months earlier that this would be happening, he would have laughed hysterically, but it was happening, and it was his fault. He felt like a monster for not only hurting Nick, but for dragging Howie and AJ down with him. The fact that they weren’t strangling him right now was astounding. He didn’t deserve friends like this. He couldn’t understand why they were so accepting of the situation.
He had fucked up, plain and simple. He had lost Leslie, he had lost Nick, and now he was going to lose most of his fans, and for what? For not being able to keep it in his pants like Nick so gracefully described? No, that wasn’t it. It was far from it. But how does he explain that to anyone? They wouldn’t understand.
For the first time, Brian wished that he had a different life - one where he was just some high school PE teacher in Kentucky, single, and happy. He wouldn’t have to deal with what was coming now. This sort of trouble wouldn’t even be a possibility in that other life.
AJ started walking off the stage, Howie springing into step behind him. Brian drifted behind the both of them, his thoughts running wild.
He closed his eyes, trying to find a place where he could be comforted and calmed. It was no surprise to him that two glistening eyes smiled at him within the darkness.
He sighed, wishing more than ever that Leslie were there beside him. He wasn’t strong enough to endure this alone, but endure it alone he must. He had no other choice. He had created this, so he must end it. So he opened his mind and heart wide, welcoming in the backlash that was about to ensue, while all the while trying to keep her close.
