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Chapter Nine


"I have never felt more thankful for a seat on a plane than I do right now," I groaned out the words as I sank into the window seat on our flight from Quebec City to Los Angeles. We literally hadn't stopped moving since the waking up the morning before. We'd gone from the stage to the van and arrived just in time to catch a TV appearance and a radio appearance, then gone right to rehearsals, meet and greets, and the show, back to the van, to the airport, where I was now practically worshipping the seat I'd landed in.

"I know," AJ said, sitting next to me, "Fucking hell my dogs are barkin'." He was referring to his feet. He took his shoes off and started rubbing them.

"Could your feet smell any worse? Seriously?" Kevin was on the far side of AJ.

Yes, that's right. Howie's greatest nightmare had come true. He was two seats ahead of us with Nick, who, even from two rows away, I could hear chattering away in a tone that I recognized as unstoppable. I almost felt bad for Howie except I also knew that tone meant he was overtired, which meant as soon as the plane took off, he was going to power down and sleep the rest of the flight.

"Oh like your feet smell like roses," AJ snapped.

"They smell better than yours," Kevin replied.

I leaned back against my seat and pulled the little blind down on my window and closed my eyes and I didn't wake up again until we'd landed in Chicago and Kevin was shaking me awake telling me it was time for a layover. "I'm impressed, cuz," he said, smiling, "You slept through the take off and the landing."

I apparently had been wrong about Nick's tone on the flight because he was still chatty as we exited the terminal. Howie beelined away the moment we were on the concourse of O'Hare. "Howie, where ya goin?" Nick called after him, but Howie was determined to escape and looked like he was competing in the next great american race and there was no stopping him. Nick frowned, "Is he pissed at me? Brian, do you think Howie's pissed at me? Why would Howie be pissed at me? Did I say something that would piss Howie off?"

"I think Howie's just tired," I answered.

"I'm tired too, are you tired Brian? That was so crazy all that stuff we've done huh? That's so crazy," he was rambling on as we turned together, walking through O'Hare. Kevin and AJ casually went the opposite direction, too, abandoning me with Chatty Carter. "I feel like we ain't stopped moving since like before New Years, don't you feel like that?" he laughed hyperly, "I mean we haven't stopped working in the whole year. Isn't that funny? Its only been seven days but we haven't stopped working in a whole year. Well seven and a half."

"Yeah."

"Because it's the middle of the night you know so there's a half a day."

"Yes there is," I answered. We were passing a jewelry store. I paused. "C'mon."

"Have you ever thought about how weird time is?" Nick was saying, "Because I was on the plane. If time was water it wouldn't stop flowing. It'd be like a river. A river full of numbers. Wouldn't that be weird? You know, the binary code or whatever it's called? In a computer thingy? And it just runs and flows all over the place like water... Time should be a river..."

I was looking into a case of engagement rings as Nick was rambling, not even noticing what I was doing. There were a bunch of rings, but none of them were right at all, so I turned and walked back out of the store, followed by Nick.

"...which is why I think the Rugrats don't age, you know? It's another whole dimension that cartoons exist in. Like Wiley E. Coyote and them, you know? They can do the same things over and over again and not really age and..."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

We got coffee - "make his decaf," I told the barista after Nick had ordered and bounced away to the counter the drinks came out at - and headed back for the waiting area by the terminal. Kevin, AJ, and Howie were already there. Nick went frolicking off towards them when he spotted them, and Howie had an oh crap look on his face. I walked a little slower than I normally do to give my ear a break. I'm pretty sure Nick hadn't stopped talking the entire 45 minutes we'd walked around.

On the second half of our flight, he finally did crash, sitting next to me again. His head plowed into my shoulder and he was out 'til we reached Los Angeles.

It was midday on January 8th by the time we actually landed on the ground in California and dinner before we got out of the airport and on the road. We went to get food and then headed to the hotel that Lou and Johnny had booked. The next day was AJ's birthday, so we were going to have the day off and I couldn't wait. As we sank into bed that night, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. Nick was right - we hadn't had a day off, really, since Christmas. I thought about it and I had literally either been on a plane or working or both every single day since Christmas Day.

On AJ's birthday, I woke up to find Nick's bed already empty, a note on it saying there was a basket ball hoop across the street and him and AJ were gone to play. I knew he'd left the note hoping I'd wake up and go running over there but honestly I didn't feel like running around a hoop after an orange ball, so I took a shower and went and knocked on Kevin's hotel room door. "Hey," I said, when he opened the door, his hair all messed up from having been asleep, "I figured since we have the day off we could start the ring shopping."

"Sure," Kev nodded, "Let me get dressed. 'Bout fifteen minutes." He disappeared and I went down to the lobby and got a coffee and stood outside watching Nick and AJ across the street playing basket ball. Our whereabouts had somehow gone unknown by fans so I was left unbothered, but I did see a couple paparazzi carrying heavy duty cameras lurking around the outside of the chainlink fence, snapping photos of Nick and AJ.

When Kevin came downstairs, we called a cab from the lobby and climbed in, harassed only a little by paps that took photos of us ducking into the yellow car. Kevin asked the cabbie to take us to the nearest galleria and we were off. I've always thought that was funny, how some people call malls gallerias and some call them malls. The cabbie drove like a maniac through traffic to a point that I had to stop watching where we were going.

Once we'd escaped from the yellow death cab and tossed the driver the money with a small tip because, you know, we'd almost died and all, we headed across the galleria's food court. We stopped and got drinks before we went too far. The high skylight-filled ceiling kept the interior of the mall bright and open feeling, despite the crowdedness. Funny enough, being a Friday morning, this was probably somewhat slow.

"Do you know what kind of ring you wanna get her?" Kevin asked, sipping his Pepsi.

"I'm not sure," I answered. I'd opted for an orange-banana smoothie, which I swished around in my hand as I walked.

"I'm not either," Kevin replied.

We spent the morning ducking in and out of jewelry shops, looking at diamonds and discussing things like cuts and band colors and all sorts of things of that nature. We figured out quickly that we both had expensive taste in rings, though. One of the rings Kevin had looked at had been really cool and he was like, "This might be the one", and then the jeweler had looked up the price quote on it and informed him it was $50,000. Kevin almost choked up a hairball. "What the hell?" he gasped, "That's more than I've made in the last two years."

It was? I thought about it, my mind winding through the last year, doing math quickly. How much had I made in the last two years, since Backstreet had really started taking off? I furrowed my brow. I was coming up with roughly $58,000 in my head. But that's impossible. With all the shows and albums we'd sold? How the hell had we made so little? That's less than $30,000 a year. Which yeah is a lot better than the $5,000 a year I'd made at Long John Silvers in high school, but shouldn't that have been a lot higher? I was obviously forgetting something somewhere. I decided I'd look over my earnings again later and figure it out more accurately.

But yeah, anyways, we were both picking out really expensive rings by accident, and I realized I was going to have to be willing to part with a dangerous amount of money. It was going to drain my savings account that I'd started, hoping to buy a house. Which meant to get Leighanne a house I was going to have to start saving even more to make up for the cost of the ring. I wondered if she'd rather have a fund started toward a house when I proposed or a ring?

Knowing Leighanne she'd be heartbroken without a ring. I mean yes, she'd be happy with the house, but she was one of those girls who had dressed Barbies and Kens in wedding clothes since she was a little girl, who probably dreamed of wedding rings and proposals since she was old enough to know what those things represented. Not giving her a ring would be not fulfilling a dream that a girl only gets to live once. So even if it meant more saving on my part, more work, it was worth it. I wanted everything to be perfect for her, to be everything she'd dreamed since she was eight years old.

When we'd exhausted the mall's jewelry stores, Kevin and I sat down in the food court and ate lunch. He sighed as he gnawed on a teriyaki stick he'd gotten, and I picked at a tuna fish sub. "Well this was unsuccessful and discouraging," Kevin muttered. "I wish I had the money for that one ring, it was perfect. Kris would've loved it." He shook his head and scooped rice into his mouth. I hadn't seen a single one that was worthy of Leighanne. We agreed that we'd go again when we had a day off in West Palm Beach in a couple weeks, and again in New York City if we hadn't found anything by then.

"We should probably find something for AJ," I said, glancing back at the mall.

"Yeah," Kevin agreed.

We went and found AJ a new portable CD player and headphones and a couple CDs that we just tossed into one bag and wrote from both of us. Fans had taken to calling us "KFC" (Kentucky's Finest Cousins), and so that's what we signed the card.

When I got back to the hotel room, Nick was sitting on the end of the bed, playing Donkey Kong on his Super Nintendo. He looked up when I entered the room, and I heard the game make that doodledoo sound as it paused. "Why didn't you come shoot hoops?" he asked, his voice sounded hurt. "Where were you?"

"Kev and I had to go out to the mall," I answered.

Nick frowned. He glanced at the bag I held. "What'cha buy?"

"AJ's birthday present."

"Oh yeah." Nick frowned harder. "I forgot."

I gave him one of the CDs Kevin and I had bought to give to AJ. I figured Kevin wouldn't mind. Nick took it and stared at it. "I don't have anything to wrap it in," he whined.

"A paper bag and silly string," I teased him.

Nick grinned.

An hour later, Nick had massacured the phone book that was in the drawer of the nightstand and used all of a roll of tape, except for the four pieces of tape I'd used to keep the bag Kevin and I had bought closed. It looked like a yellow tinted tape ball in a vaguely CD-shape. Only Nick.

We went downstairs to the lobby when Lou knocked on the door, and we all headed out in a herd to a restaurant AJ had picked out, where the waiters and waitresses came out clapping and singing happy birthday to him. Paparazzi snapped pictures from the tables surrounding us, and a fan came over to ask for autographs and wish AJ happy birthday. The four of us sang Happy Birthday to him, and everyone in the restaurant stopped to listen, then clapped at the end, and AJ opened his presents, and got frustrated by all the tape Nick had used on his.

I told Kevin that Nick had paid me back for the CD, even though he hadn't.

When we got back to the hotel, I saw Nick glance sadly over his shoulder at the basket ball court across the street as he climbed out of the van. He started in toward the lobby. I took a deep breath, "Hey Carter," I said, resisting every nerve in my body that was screaming for me to shut the hell up.

"What?" Nick asked, gloomy.

"Go get your basket ball, I'ma whoop your ass." A grin spread across his face and he bolted to the elevator.

The other guys headed upstairs, Howie patted my back and said I had balls for spending so much time with Nick. I went across the street to wait for Nick at the court. I sat on a bench and stretched, bending forward and twisting side-to-side to loosen my muscles. Unfortunately, none of those things loosened my chest muscles, which was the tightest part of me. I had been hoping that having a day off would loosen them up, but they hadn't.

I'd been through two bottles of aspirin since Christmas, and my chest was constantly tight. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to think about possibly going to get checked, I thought to myself. Like before things got worse or whatever.

Nick came bounding back across the street, ball held aloft, a big grin on his face. He started dribbling the moment he got into the court. "I'm so ready," he announced, "I'm sooo gonna kick your ass tonight!" I watched as he dribbled and threw the ball toward the net, slamming the backboard but missing the net by a mile. The ball rolled away and hit the fence wall. He ran after it, bent forward, his big hinney in the air, feet slamming the pavement, hair hanging wildly off his head.

I stood up and go my game face on.

Nick and I started playing, scurrying around the court, dribbling the ball, haggling over it. He fired several shots that missed the net by miles, and I'd wait, steal the ball from under him, jump up and grab hold of the basket, and slam the ball into the net, holding onto the rim before dropping back to the ground. After showing off like that for a good ten minutes or so - just because it was fun - I started playing to let Nick have a fairer chance of winning. He was biting his tongue in concentration.

I was winning 4-1 when it happened. I was dribbling the ball, and Nick was hunkered down behind me, trying to reach around me to steal it, and I was about to break away from him when the entire world went kinda blurry a little and all I could hear was the boom, boom, boom of the ball striking the pavement and Nick's heavy breathing in my ear, and everything else seemed far off and smudgey, like someone had done a charcoal drawing and rubbed all the elements together in a hazy, in-need-of-prescription-glasses sort of way. I dropped the ball and it rolled and hit the foot of the bench I'd been sitting on. My chest felt tight and I knelt down on the pavement.

"Bri?" Nick's voice was concerned. "Brian, are you okay?"

"I need to go in," I choked.

Nick grabbed my arm and hoisted me up, helping me across the street to the hotel and onto the elevator. Everything still felt blurry and strange. We got in to the room and Nick lowered me onto the edge of the bed, where I closed my eyes and rubbed my chest with the heel of my hand. "What can I do?" Nick asked, his voice scared and eyes wide.

"I have aspirin, on the sink..."

Nick ran in and got the pills, and came back, fumbling with the cap and balancing a cup of water in the fold of his elbow. I took the aspirin and drank the water and stared down at the fibers of the carpet, wishing they'd hold still and stop spinning and blending together in strange patterns. It took a while for the weird feeling to pass, and when it did I was so freaking exhausted I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to. I laid back onto the bed without even undoing the blankets or nothing, still absently rubbing my chest.

"Did you have like a heart attack or something?" Nick asked, hovering.

"No I'm fine, it was just a - a weird feeling," I answered.

"Maybe you should get checked," Nick suggested.

I shook my head, "I'm fine," I replied.

"Okay." Nick sank into his own bed, and silence fell over the room.

I wondered what a heart attack felt like. If that was anything like it, then I never wanted to have one ever. What a terrible way to die, I thought, in a blurry world like that. I stared at the ceiling. I really did need to see a doctor, Nick was right, and I'd thought it at the court before this all had happened, too. I knew what I had to do, but I really didn't want to do it. I didn't have time to see any doctors anyways.

I decided I'd talk to Lou the next day about getting one of the next couple of afternoons off from rehearsals so I could go to get checked.

"I left my ball outside," Nick muttered into the dark.

"We can go get it in the morning," I suggested.

Nick was quiet for a long moment. "Nawh," he said, "It's not like we'll ever use it again."



Chapter End Notes:
Thank you to RokofAges75 for helping to fix a historical inaccuracy in this chapter!! ..The original version included a reference to The Matrix, and doh! that movie didn't come out until 1999! Woops!