Chapter Twenty-Four
I brought Nick's stuff along with me to Italy. The flight was long, but I had Leighanne beside me so it didn't feel as bad as it could've. When we reached the hotel in Sanremo, Leighanne went to the hotel room to take a shower, and I waited in the hallway for Nick, who had come on a different flight than us, to arrive. When he stepped out of the elevator, I charged down the hall towards him, eager to make up.
"I brought your bag with me," I said, holding it out to him. Nick took it without responding and pulled his keycard out of his pocket, checked the number, and matched it to a door. I trotted alongside him. I said hopefully, "I thought maybe we could shoot some hoops. I even got details about a court a block away from here for us..."
"I left my ball in Los Angeles, remember?" Nick asked.
"I'll buy a new one," I suggested.
"I'm tired Brian, okay? I just landed. Maybe later." He stepped into the hotel room and closed the door behind him, leaving me in the hallway awkwardly.
I sighed and turned back to my own hotel room, feeling almost abandoned. I sat down with a heavy sigh on the edge of the bed and stared down at my feet. Leighanne came out of the shower, sopping her long, blonde hair with a towel. "Did you find Nick?" she asked, head tilted.
"Yeah," I answered, my voice flat.
Concern crossed her face, "Is he still mad?"
"I guess," I answered, "He just didn't care. I even offered to shoot hoops with him." I looked up at her. She stuck out her lower lip in sympathy. "I just wish he understood. I didn't know I was doing anything wrong, I just --" I shook my head.
Leighanne lowered next to me and the scent of her body wash and shampoo filled my nose as she wrapped her arm around me and hugged me to her. I turned into her, the smell comforting, and breathed deeply. "I'm here, baby," she whispered, "I understand."
"I need him, you know?" I asked.
"I know."
She sat and held me for a few minutes and I let her until I started to get a hold of my emotions and I realized how weak I was looking, so upset like this. Not crying, mind you, but still emotional. It looked stupid, I looked pathetic. I pulled away and stood up. "We should go sightseeing or something," I said decisively.
Leighanne watched as I went for the guest services book on the desk across the room. "Aren't you tired?" she asked.
"Yeah but we're in fricking Italy," I answered. I flipped through the pages, "We should really experience it while we can. So Italian restaurants are probably listed under just plain restaurants huh?" I joked. "I wonder if McDonalds is under like American Restaurants or something."
"Well if we're going out, I better finish my hair," she said, getting up and going back into the shower.
I looked through the guest book until I'd found a restaurant with an interesting description and dialed out on the room line. There was a knock at the door and Leighanne came out of the bathroom, putting on earings, and opened the door. "Hey Nick," I heard her say cheerfully, "How are you?"
I stretched the phone as far as I could until I could see Nick in the hallway. I waved.
His face looked peturbed. "I --" he shook his head, "Forget it. Here. Give Brian this." He held out a bag, then turned and left the doorway.
"Nick?" Leighanne stepped out into the hall, looking after him, but he didn't respond, and I heard his room door slam a moment later. She came back in, holding the bag, eyes wide with nervous energy.
I hung up the phone without placing the reservations I'd been planning to make, and Leighanne handed the bag to me. It was a gift bag, blue with neon green letters that read Happy Birthday! across it. I sat on the bed and opened it slowly. Inside was a picture frame with an old photo of Nick and I, chopsticks woven through our hair, making funny faces at the camera. Kevin was in the background looking on disapprovingly. I remembered the moment vividly. We'd been at a Chinese food restaurant in Chicago and we'd been talking in funny voices and laughing like crazy. I closed my eyes, my hand shook. I looked into the bag and pulled out a second item - a wind up R2D2 toy.
"That was sweet of him," Leighanne commented.
I nodded, my throat closed up, and stared at the picture - at our smiles. We'd been so confident then. Confident because we were pop stars and best friends and our band was our family and we were on top of the world, capable of anything. We'd been carefree.
"Do you still want to go?" Leighanne asked.
I looked up. She'd gotten dressed in blue jeans with a big sweater that hugged her just right, her hair in a pony tail. She looked pretty. I forced a smile, put the picture and the R2D2 on the desk, and stood up. "Yeah, yes. I do."
We got our jackets on, and I opened the door and stepped into the hall while Leighanne was getting her purse. AJ suddenly came bounding out of the hotel room Nick had gone into, eyes wild and nervous, "Did you hear?" he asked, frantic.
"What?" I asked, "Everything okay?"
"There were tornadoes, a shit load of tornadoes," he said, "Back home. In Kissimmee. Like fifty people or something are dead and there's a shit ton of destruction. It happened last night after we left."
"Seriously?" I ducked back into the hotel room, followed by AJ.
Leighanne backed out of our way as we blew by. "What's going on now?" she asked.
I flipped on the TV set.
"Tornadoes," AJ said, "All the fuck over Kissimmee."
"What?" Leighanne leaned down to look at the TV, too, and her jaw dropped as a woman spoke in Italian abou local news. There was nothing about the tornadoes.
I looked at AJ, "Where did you hear about this?" I asked.
"Johnny, he was just talking to Lou," he said.
"Wait, Lou's not here?"
"No he stayed back, some legal thing."
"So it's just us five and Johnny?"
"Dude, there's like a hundred tornadoes that struck home and you're worried about the bison?"
"What?"
"Lou - he's a bison, Nick and I call him the Bison now behind his back. I called my mum and she's okay. I was gonna tell you to call Leighanne but she's here so yeah. Anyways I gotta go tell Kev and Howie so they can call home." AJ bounded out of the hotel room.
Leighanne frowned, "I hope everyone's okay."
"Do you wanna call anyone?"
"Is it okay if I do?" she asked.
"Of course." I waved toward the phone.
Leighanne called a couple of her friends just to check on them; she got in touch with two, and the third's phone line was knocked out due to the storm. We went to dinner, though now it was weighted down with worry about the events going on back home, and Leighanne worried about her third friend. Midway through the meal, she still had a blank, worried expression on her face as she stared down at the bowl of pasta in front of her.
Not much had changed several days later, the day of the actual music festival. One of Leighanne's other friends called and confirmed the third friend was okay but that her home had been destroyed and she was staying at a shelter for the time being, and Kevin and Howie heard from Kristin, who was okay, and Carol, who was missing her cat. Meanwhile, Nick had managed to avoid me for most of the time, and only grudgingly accepted my sincere thank you for my gift. He wasn't interested in playing ball or even getting coffee together, and he glared at Leighanne with a look that he usually reserved for Kevin only more intense - an expression somewhere between annoyance and hatred.
Especially when he noticed the ring on her hand as she handed him a bottle of water.
We were backstage at the Sanremo Festival, awaiting our turn to go on stage, and I nudged Nick. "You know, we have to be friends again sometime," I said.
He shrugged, "We don't have to," he answered.
We went out onto the stage on cue, my mouth dry from the cold edge to his words. I couldn't help but stare at him, trying to tell him telephathically that I was sorry for everything and that I missed him.
It was hard doing some of the dance moves in thigh-length trench coats that we'd been put into at wardrobe, and during the Chair Dance routine at the end of As Long As You Love Me, and I almost tripped and fell into Nick, who responded by swinging his chair back too far and clipping me slightly. I glowered at his back as we carried the chairs off stage.
"What was that for?" I demanded.
"What was what for?" he asked, though I knew he knew what I was talking about.
We all poured back onto the stage and were stopped by one of the hosts, who started doing a quick interview with us. Of course one of the first things she asked was, "Who among you is already engaged or married and who is single?"
Kevin and I kinda shared a glance as he surveyed us. We had yet to tell Lou. This was not the place nor the time to make the announcements, so he turned back to her, wrapped a friendly arm around her, and said, "We're all available," in his low, Kevin voice. Howie and AJ echoed him.
"We ain't all," Nick said under his breath, only loud enough I could hear him.
Luckily nobody, including the hostess, heard Nick's comment. Nerves charged my system and I started goofing off. When she asked what we thought about the gifts fans threw on the stage, I proceeded to snatch a tiger off the floor and make goofy voices while Kevin droned on beside me, giving actual answers to her questions. I turned and shook the toy at Nick, but he didn't even crack a smile. Such was the level of annoyance I'd reached. I kept absently playing with it as the interview went on, wagging its tail and winking to the fans who were pointing and screaming.
After a couple more awkward questions, which Kevin answered, we launched into the next song.
When the show was over, Nick shoved by me on his way backstage. "Seriously, what the hell is his problem?" Howie asked, who came up behind me as Nick stormed off.
I sighed, "He's still mad at me."
"He's mad at everyone," AJ added.
"Well he needs to stop acting like a tool," Kevin said, shaking his head.
But Nick didn't stop. He refused even to go to dinner that night. We sat in the restaurant around the huge table the staff had pushed together for us and ate, talking, with a conspicuously missing voice among us. "Did he say why he didn't come?" I asked, leaning over to AJ.
AJ shrugged.
"I didn't think Nick was capable of passing up a meal," I joked.
"I guess you really pissed him off then huh?" AJ replied dryly.
Through the rest of the trip, Nick refused to speak to me except when he had to - on stage and in interviews. By Friday, when we were all boarding our planes homebound he'd said maybe a total of five or six things to me, and not a word more to Leighanne.
Leighanne and I flew from Sanremo to Kentucky, and it was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean that my nervous energy shifted from whether Nick would ever forgive me to how my parents would react to Leighanne and I being engaged. I couldn't sleep on the flight, I sat in the seat fidgeting. Leighanne turned to me, "Why don't you read a book?" she asked.
I looked through my duffle bag until I found the copy of Batman that Nick had given me at Christmas and I flipped it open and started flipping through it, staring down at the illustrations, my mind spinning around and pinging off of various worries. I snuck to the rest room and took a couple aspirin, splashed my face with cold water, and tried to practice breathing.
The dull ache in my chest reminded me of the whole other myriad of stressors going on as I ran my hand down the center of my chest. My heart seemed to be crawling up my throat and pounding there, and I closed m eyes
"You okay?" Leighanne asked when I returned to my seat. I hadn't thought I was gone all that long, but evidently long enough that she woke up and noticed I was gone and managed to worry.
"Yeah I'm okay," I replied.
"Nervous about your parents?" she asked.
I nodded.
"It's gonna be okay," she said, smiling.
We'd landed and were walking into the airport when I took Leighanne's hand. "I um haven't had the chance to um --" I looked down at the ring.
"You haven't told them yet?" she asked, surprised.
"Not exactly," I replied. Leighanne slipped the ring off. Already her hand looked strangely empty without the diamond there and I whispered, "I'll tell them as quickly as possible." I didn't like the way her hand looked without it now.
"You better," she replied, kissing me.
Chapter End Notes:
Here's a link to one of the Sanremo Music Festival videos - additional footage can be found in the related videos list. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkA_C-amKSg&feature=related
