Chapter Thirty-Two
Nick was moody when he finally woke up. He helped us continue the web search for a little bit, but announced after an hour that he was going to go explore Houston for awhile and he left. "He just really wants you to be Kevin," Brian said after the door had closed behind him. I turned and watched Nick cross the parking lot.
I sighed. "I feel like no matter who I am, I'm gonna end up hurting somebody," I said.
Brian frowned.
We gave up after a couple further hours anyways, and the guys went into the venue to do soundcheck, hoping that Nick had returned and was inside waiting for them. I apologized and opted to stay on the bus. I laid in the bunk and stared up at the ceiling of it, thinking, trying to force myself to remember.
There had to be some sensible reason for everything that had happened. First, Leighanne had seemed familiar to me while I was working at the grocery store. Second, telling Marty that I was from California had happened naturally enough that it sounded like the truth and, third, when I researched it and LAX came up, the photo of the airport had given me a feeling that I'd equated with home. However, four, when I actually got to LAX it didn't feel as homey as I'd expected, familiar though, especially, five, at the bus stop where I'd had that memory of feeling freedom. Six, something about the mention of Ann Richardson and the word mom had stirred inside me a feeling. Some emotion that I now decided would be labelled as homesickness.
There had to be a story there, there had to be something in those six things that explained everything, didn't there?
When nothing came to me, I decided to think about everything I knew about Kevin and see if anything came up.
He/I joined the Backstreet Boys when they first started out. He/I was living in Orlando at the time, working for Disney as an actor, playing Aladdin. He/I recruited Brian for the band, and somehow fell into the role of the father-figure for the younger two, Nick and AJ, while becoming Howie's business partner/trainer. He/I had fathered the hell out of Nick and AJ and finally left so they could grow up, evidently after having had a massive blow out with Nick, which he apologized for. He/I had returned to the group years later after visiting them in the Bahamas during a cruise. He/I disappeared a few months later, in November. I turned up in Atlanta in November, and a body with his wallet appeared in New York several months later.
Some story was there, too, between November and the appearance of the wallet. Whether it was my story or Kevin's story or if the stories were one and the same was beyond my scope of knowledge.
The bus door opened and Brian's voice filled the room, "Hello?" he called.
I stuck my head out the curtain of the bunk. "Yeah?"
"Aunt Ann called me back and she's coming to Atlanta," he said. "I didn't tell her about you..." he paused, "Do you think I should have?"
I thought about it a moment, "In a way," I said, "But in another way I don't think so. Because I mean if she's supposed to decide if I'm me or not, wouldn't it be better if she did without any preconceived notions of what she might find when she got here?"
"True."
"How'd you get her to come without telling her about me?" I asked, "Just out of curiosity."
Brian shrugged, "I just told her it was an important show."
"Oh."
"I was talking to Jenn also," Brian said slowly, "About the other day at your house in LA?"
"What about it?"
"The way you played that piano..."
"You told her about that?"
Brian flushed, "I told everyone about that. It was really impressive. Anyways, I um - I asked her if you could kind of - have some time to - you know... play it. During the show."
"What?"
"I thought having some stage time might help you remember being on the stage as Kevin, and that it wold be really nice if you played your piece during the show," Brian spit the words quickly.
"But I don't have a piano."
"We do."
"But I'm not even sure I could replicate what I played that day..."
"Then play any old thing," Brian said, "You just have such a passion for the piano, I could tell when you were playing it..." he paused, "You've always had one but it was so strong the other day."
I took a deep breath, trying to picture myself on stage in front of all those crazy people that the Boys called fans. I couldn't imagine it, couldn't imagine the feeling of being in front of all of them, the center of attention. But Brian's eyes were so bright and pleading that I couldn't say no. There was simply no way to. "Okay fine," I said, "I'll do it."
Brian grinned, "Awesome."
"Just don't blame me if I suck," I added.
"You won't suck." Brian thumbed at the door, "I gotta get back in there... We'll have the piano tomorrow so you can practice and do soundcheck and everything," he said.
"You were confident I was gonna agree to that, huh? You already have the baby grand being shipped?" I teased.
Brian smirked, "I just knew I wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer."
After Self by Pengi
