Friday, 9/9: NYC

"Michaels!"

I looked up from my computer. It was hard to tell whether Thomas was feeling urgent. It was Friday afternoon. I had just turned in my Q&A with the girl from the Decemberists about her cancer and the band's support for her. Surely Thomas hadn't given the entire thing a close read in five minutes. I picked up my notebook and trudged toward his office.

It had been four days since the Backstreet Boys story dropped. For all the psychological trauma it had indeed put me through - hardly the trauma I had anticipated, granted - I was feeling pretty good about it. My inbox had been flooded with complimentary emails, some of them CC'd to Thomas. About half had been from fangirls who probably never picked up Rolling Stone on any other given day. Quite a few had come from reformed fans like me.

And there had been phone calls from Nick, Howie, A.J. - even a nice email from Kevin. They'd all been quite pleased.

"You did us justice, Miz Michaels," Nick had said warmly when he called yesterday. "That's all we could've asked for."

Then he had asked if Brian had called, and I had made up an excuse to get off the phone.

Thomas was staring out at the skyscrapers as I walked in, making myself at home in that saggy, miserable chair in front of his desk. He studied me for a long moment, his face pensive, making me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

"Penny for your thoughts?" I said as lightly as I could.

"You've been a hell of a music writer, Meg." Thomas' eyes never left mine. "You really have."

My heart slammed into my ribs. Somewhere in the monolithic pile of papers on his desk was my pink slip. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

He rolled his eyes. "Jesus tap-dancing Christ, Michaels, I'm not going to fire you." He looked down. "But somebody in this building sure wants to poach you."

Poach me? I stared at him in confusion.

"See, a lot of other people around here think you're a hell of a music writer, too," he continued. "Whatever happened on the bus with the Backstreet Boys, you'd never know it was anything more than you getting to know yourself and a band well enough to tell a great fucking story. A lot of other people around here are starting to think, well, what other kinds of stories can you tell? Where can we stretch your gifts to fit where you never guessed they'd go?"

I stared at him, reality sinking in. "The upshot being that I'm still not going to be working for you anymore," I murmured. Regardless of how you sliced or diced it, I had spent my last day on the music beat.

"Well, now, I didn't say that. It's your call." Thomas slurped his fourth coffee of the day. "Curious how politics grabs you."

Politics? Like my hero, Thompson? I hardly dared to believe it. Music was the bread and butter of this magazine, but politics, where snark truly found a home, was its beating, bleeding heart.

And it terrified me.

"Taibbi needs a hand," Thomas was saying. "He's good, but he's stretched too damn thin. His editor wants another hand around here." He looked down into his coffee mug. "And since the people with offices bigger than mine aren't exactly scrambling to bring in new blood these days..."

"You want me - they want me - to do politics?" I breathed. "You really think I can hack it? Not exactly child's play, is that?"

"No, it's not." Thomas drained his mug and set it down. "But yes, I do. I think if anyone on my beat can handle that challenge, it's you."

He looked at me intently, sadly. "Now you know I hate to give you up, Meg," he said softly. Two first names in one conversation? Man, this was really getting to him.

"And I don't want you to say yes or no right away," he went on. "I just want you to go home this weekend and think about it."

I blew out a breath as I rose, both shakier than I'd have liked. "Well, that's a nice, relaxed weekend thought."

A thought occurred to me as I turned to leave. "Thomas - did this have anything to do with...?"

He shook his head. "No. Politics is asking for you. I'm not asking them to take you." He regarded me with a smirk on his face. "But if I hear about you boinking a senator, I'm going to lose a hell of a lot of respect for you."

Despite the snark with which that remark dripped, I found myself swallowing back a lump in my throat. "I really do hate you, Thomas."

He grinned maliciously. "That's what I like to hear from my writers."

I just looked at him for a moment, this rumpled, cynical lion of our newsroom, this fearless, feckless man who'd brought me here. My boss. But not for long, maybe.

"I'll miss working for you, Thomas," I said.

His grin turned wistful. "I know."

**

I called Alicia as I was walking home from the ferry that evening, golden light just starting to bathe the harbor. I heard a loud thunk on the other end as soon as my big news was out of my mouth. She had dropped the phone, I figured.

"Lee? Are you OK?"

I heard her fumble with the phone, and then she was back. "You're shitting me. All that mess this last month and a half, and he wants you off music?"

"He doesn't. Politics needs a hand. But he's not stopping me if I want to go." I ran a hand through my hair. "Think of it, Alicia. I'd be channeling Dr. Thompson for real, working with his heir apparent. No more album reviews. No more going deaf every Saturday night."

"No more rubbing elbows with real famous people." Her tone was dry.

"You say that like it's a bad thing." I looked back and forth as I darted across the main drag, heading for my familiar cut-through next to the borough hall. "I know she's been through a lot, but Jenny from the Decemberists was annoying as shit when we talked earlier this week. I will miss people like her not at all."

"But you have to admit, the glamour isn't entirely a myth."

"Of course it's not." I held my purse closer as I slunk down the alley. "But it's definitely not reality. You should know that after three years of listening to me bitch. I need a challenge. I need..." I blew out a breath as I came out of the alley, ran across a side street and started down another alley. "I need a breath of fresh air after all this nonsense."

Alicia was quiet a moment. "Here's the big question. Would you be happy doing it?"

"Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? And that's what I have to think about this weekend." I came out of the second alley and started across a parking lot. "I don't know. What would you do?"

"Well, I know you always wanted to write about music. And you know I always wanted to tell the sorry stories of other gay kids with problems." Alicia sighed. "But you know, when I got out of school..."

And she was off, holding forth about the other assignments she'd taken to pay the bills, the unexpected passions she'd discovered, the fun she was having shooting travel stories. It was a welcome break from talking, from having to explain myself, I reflected as I traversed toward home.

Getting off music. It was all but explicit permission to indulge in the confusing feelings for a musician that had derailed my last assignment, not that they seemed to make much difference anymore. But could I do anything besides music? Was love worth giving up my first love?

I was trying so hard to listen to Alicia that I didn't even notice there was someone sitting at the top of my humble little building's stairs until I was two houses away. The person - it was a man - was hard to miss, blue shirt making a bold splash against the beige siding. Who was he waiting for? There were only three of us in the building, but two of us were women. Maybe my downstairs neighbor's boyfriend.

The guy didn't look over his shoulder until I was in the middle of the alley next to my building. His face stopped me in my tracks. Definitely not there for my downstairs neighbor, unless I was living in the Twilight Zone.

Unless Brian Littrell knew two people in this one sad little apartment building on Staten Island.

At that moment, all my arguments, all my pride, all my tears, all my resistance - they all seemed to float away. He had come here to fight back. And I was done fighting.

I saw Brian stand up, take a step down. The phone threatened to slip from my hand, and I tightened my grip on it. I was shaking where I stood. My heart was racing.

"Hey, lemme call you back," I croaked to Alicia, interrupting her.

She stopped midsentence. "Jeez, am I that boring?"

"I just - I - I gotta go." I hung up before she could say another word.

Brian was standing on the steps, leaning over the railing, looking down at me. He wasn't wearing anything special, just a blue polo shirt and jeans, but he looked gorgeous. And terrified.

"Um..." He cleared his throat. And then he blurted out, "Do you know how long it takes to get here from LaGuardia?"

I couldn't breathe, much less respond. Every girl dreamed of this moment. Granted, maybe she didn't dream of it with a Backstreet Boy - most girls had no good reason to seriously imagine a Backstreet Boy sitting on the stairs of her home, waiting to pour his heart out to her.

Apparently, I wasn't most girls.

Brian took another step down, then another, making his way down slowly as he continued, his eyes never leaving mine. "I got in at 3:30. It took me 15 minutes to get connected to wi-fi and look you up in the White Pages. Fifteen minutes to hail a cab. Another hour to get here. I've been sitting here for another hour since then."

I wanted to apologize. I wanted to ask him why he was complaining. I wanted to not talk at all.

He kept making his way down the steps. "But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, I'd do anything for one more chance to convince this woman to give me a shot, to give us a shot. And then I thought I would've walked here. From Kentucky."

His voice was soft, a little shaky, but I'd never have let myself miss a word. We were the only people on the street. We were the only people in New York.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and started walking toward me. "I read the story. It was good." He smiled, his head bobbing a little. "It was great. It brought back so many awesome memories of my life with these guys, our career, all our misadventures that week. But I couldn't stop thinking about what I knew was just underneath the surface of the story, the stupid laughs, the - the moments. I couldn't stop thinking about you."

He stopped in front of me, stuffed his hands nervously into his pocket. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Please don't tell me to leave."

"I won't." My voice came out a watery croak. I was crying, unable to stop myself. My purse had fallen to the ground. "I blew you off. Why did you come here when I blew you off?"

He smiled, that charming, knee-weakening, heart-stealing smile. "'Cause I'm stubborn as hell." He reached up and wiped my tears away with his thumb, cupping my face in his hand, his face more serious now. "And I said some stuff I didn't mean. And I'm sorry."

"I did, too." I swallowed. "God, I was bitchy. I just..." I shrugged helplessly, sniffled, found my words. "You know, it's not even that I don't care, or else I wouldn't have gotten so worked up. I think I'm just..."

I looked at my shoes. My emotions from the park came flooding back. I found myself retreading the words I'd spat out there, but this time, with nothing to hold them back, the meaning behind them spilled out. I couldn't hold it back anymore.

"I'm stubborn as hell, too. And too proud for my own good. And we're so different. And it's going to be hard as hell." I looked back up at him. "And as crazy as I am about you, because I am..." Fresh tears. "I just have this feeling I'm going to get my heart broken before it's all over, and I'm afraid that'll be even worse than not having you at all."

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth again. "I think I know a good song for you."

A month ago, I might have told him to shut his stupid mouth. But I couldn't bring myself to be snarky, not right now, not in this moment with so much riding on it. I giggled in spite of myself.

His smile brightened, hopeful. "Does that mean I can give you a hug? Can I start there?"

He pulled me into his arms, chin on top of my head. I wrapped my arms around his waist, my tears soaking into his shoulder. He smelled so clean and wonderful. I relaxed into him as he rubbed my back.

Yes. This was right. After all the fussing and fighting, this was right.

"I gotta tell you, the only thing I said in the park that I didn't mean was the part about you being afraid to be happy." He played with my hair as he talked. "That was really shitty of me."

I shrugged in his arms, my voice muffled in his shirt. "You weren't any worse than me." I turned my head just enough that he could hear me. "All those doubts, though - those are real. I just..." Another shrug.

"I know. God, I know." He sighed. "It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be work if we wanna do this right. We're going to have to work so much harder than any other two normal people, because we're not just two normal people, just because of what we do to pay the bills."

A smile crept into his voice. "But God, I want to work at this. It's worth it. You're worth it. As long as we just love each other through the hard parts, that's a heck of a start."

He pulled back and smiled down at me. "'Cause yeah, I'm in love with you, Meg." A little disbelieving laugh. "And I can finally get a word in edgewise to say so."

Love. It didn't surprise me to hear it in this moment. It surprised me on an entirely different level, to hear it from this unlikeliest of men. A puzzle piece fell into place. I closed my eyes not against tears, but against a wave of love and emotion so strong it shot through my veins, energized me, stole my breath.

His eyes were still on mine when I opened them. His voice was soft again. "So tell me, you didn't not mean everything you said in the park, did you?"

I knew what he was getting at. My heart thumped painfully again, but the pain was so much sweeter now that I knew where it had gotten me - to this moment, where I didn't have to keep running away from this man and my feelings and the delirious joy of being in his arms without guilt after all we'd shared. Of letting myself imagine, without guilt, and with only a fear he shared, what lay ahead for us.

I took a deep breath, and I took the plunge. "I meant it when I said I was in love with you," I whispered. "I knew it in Nashville. I just..."

"I know." He smiled a little, nodding in understanding.

I wanted to let it go. I wanted to just enjoy this moment. But the smart-ass in me reared her head, and I couldn't resist. Through my fast-drying tears, I smirked up at him. "Was that an ‘I know'? Did you just Han Solo me, Littrell?"

Brian shook his head, laughing. "Girl, you and your smart mouth..."

He bent his head and kissed that smart mouth, slowly, so sweetly I almost couldn't bear it. I wound my arms around his neck and pulled him in closer, hoping to God I'd never have to let go.

Because in that kiss was everything we'd been through, everything we'd been trying to say, everything we'd been trying not to say, everything we'd been fighting for weeks. Everything that lay ahead. In one simple kiss.

It was like coming home.

**

Sunday, 9/11: NYC

"Did you die or something?"

I shook my hair out of my face. "Oh, you weren't actually waiting for me to call you back, were you?"

"No, and I guess I should be glad I wasn't." Alicia sighed, sounding peeved and a little worried. "I texted you three times with no response, this is the second time I've called you... I was about ready to go to your house and see if you were decomposing yet."

I cast my eyes about the narrow white bathroom for something, anything to drink some water out of. A heavy glass sat on top of the toilet tank. Weird place for it. I grabbed it and stuck it under the faucet. I wouldn't even have heard my phone if I hadn't gotten out of bed. Now I was wishing I hadn't picked up.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I drank the water, my other hand holding the phone, my elbow holding up the blanket I had wrapped around myself. Damn, I looked scary. Yesterday's makeup had carved two black circles under my eyes. My hair was a slept-on rat's nest.

"It wouldn't have done you any good to go to my house," I replied, trying to keep my voice down.

"What, are you in the hospital? We're supposed to be going up to ground zero today."

Jesus. Ground zero. I set down the glass on the edge of the cold white pedestal sink and rubbed my forehead. Today was the 10th anniversary of the shittiest day in New York's history, and it had been the furthest thing from my mind all weekend. Well, there would be no making it up there today, at least not until after the ceremonies were already over.

"I'm at Fort Place," I said.

"The no-gas at the end of your street?" Alicia sounded confused.

"Um, no. The B&B behind it." I looked in the mirror again, past myself, at the sleeping figure in the other room, sprawled on his stomach, a sheet barely covering his hips. I tried not to smile. Alicia would hear the naughtiness in my voice, and seeing as she was feeling maternal to begin with, she'd come flying over here like a banshee if she knew the truth.

"The hell are you doing there?"

I dropped my voice to a whisper. "Brian showed up here on Friday."

Dead silence for a full five seconds. Then whooping laughter so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear, so loud it could probably be heard in Connecticut.

"Peggy Jo, you sly dog!" she crowed.

"Shhhh!" I glanced in the mirror again, watched Brian roll over, then looked down into the sink, biting my lip to smother a smile, my face burning at the memory of last night. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed. I needed to get the hell off the phone.

"Could you be a little louder?" I muttered. "I don't think they heard you in Hoboken."

"Oh, crap." Alicia giggled, apparently trying to calm down. "Oh, hell. Well, um, I'll let you get back to it."

Footsteps behind me. I looked back at the mirror. The bed was empty. My heart beat faster. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.

"So wait, no ground zero later?" Alicia was saying. "Meg, you're being a very bad New Yorker today."

Brian was right behind me in the mirror, wearing nothing but a very naughty grin.

No, he was no gentleman. And yes, I was one bad New Yorker.

"Meg?" Alicia said.

I grinned back at Brian. "I gotta go," I said to Alicia.

The phone fell into the sink, forgotten, as he slung me over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and carted me back into the bedroom. An unsexy, unladylike squeal escaped my mouth as he dropped me onto the bed.

He was on me in a heartbeat, his mouth on mine, his hands peeling the blanket away. That shut me up quickly enough.

Yeah, I was a lucky woman.

Afterward, the clock caught my eye. It was past 11 - less than an hour before checkout time. We started to put our clothes back on, but ended up curled up in bed, half-dressed, my head on his chest, one of his hands messing with my hair, neither one of us wanting to move.

"Screw it," Brian said. "I'll shower when I get home."

The sun was pouring through the blinds, illuminating the clean, white, homey room, with its painting of the harbor above the bed. Its old brick fireplace was filled in with concrete and fronted by little pillar candles, all a little shorter than they had been when we walked in last night. I wondered why I'd never seen this sweet little place before, and then I remembered that I'd never had a reason to come here.

"I really didn't expect the weekend to go that route." Brian kissed my forehead. His voice was sheepish.

I smirked. "Uh, yeah. I could kinda tell by the look on your face you needed more than just mouthwash when we went into the no-gas last night."

"I was gonna be good this weekend," he muttered, unable to squelch a smile.

I thought about last night, this morning. We had used up the whole mini-box of condoms from the no-gas. My face grew warm. "Oh, I don't know. You were plenty good."

He pinched my shoulder teasingly. "Real funny, girl. No, I was gonna be a nice gentleman."

I lifted my head, propped myself up on my elbow and arched an eyebrow at him. "Did you honestly think that after Nashville?"

He snickered. "All right, point taken."

In fairness, he had been a perfect gentleman on Friday. We had lingered for hours over dinner at a little Chinese place a few blocks away, and then he had kissed me good night and walked back to the B&B. I hadn't known whether to be grateful or furious. But last night, after we'd spent an entire day in Manhattan, we'd been standing outside on the upper deck on the ferry home, leaning over the railing, watching the city lights recede behind us, and he had slipped his arms around me, buried his face in my hair and nuzzled the extra-sensitive spot behind my ear.

His gentlemanly good intentions hadn't stood a snowball's chance in hell after that.

"You're not sorry you weren't good, are you?" I said teasingly.

"Girl, you hush." He pulled me back down, wrapping his arms around me. "I'm not sorry about anything this weekend."

I smiled into his chest. "Well, I guess I can't be, either."

We were silent a moment. I wanted to freeze time, here in this unfamiliar room a block from my home, where something undeniably beautiful was taking root. With my favorite Backstreet Boy. You couldn't make it up.

"I have to check out in, like, 45 minutes," Brian said.

Dread filled me. "When's your flight?"

"A little after 3." He looked down at me and kissed my forehead again. "I guess I should be glad I didn't have to change my flight. I was prepared to have to fly right back out of here in the morning yesterday."

I propped myself up again and studied his face, suddenly serious. "Did you think I was going to tell you to get lost?"

Brian sat up. "I didn't know what you were going to say," he said slowly. "Hell, I didn't really even know what I was going to say. I just had to come back here and try." He looked at me. "I'm glad I did."

I pulled my knees up to my chest and laid my head on his shoulder as we sat with our backs against the headboard. He was mine to touch whenever I wanted, without guilt, without confusion. It was a gigantic, incredible concept.

"I really want to make this work, you know," I said softly.

He put his arm around me. "Well...when you were a kid, did you ever break something valuable and have to glue it back together? Like, even though that thing's useful life was clearly over, you still had to fix it."

I nodded. "And our parents told us we had to learn how to take care of nice things, and we had to try to fix the things that meant the most to us if they broke."

"Well...that's how I feel about this. If this breaks, I want to fix it. When it's good, I want to just enjoy it for everything it's worth." He looked down, rubbing my shoulder. "I screwed it all up once. I won't screw this up. You're too amazing to screw up."

I wanted to say something pithy, but all that came out was, "Oh, Brian."

He put his fingers under my chin, tilted my face up to his and kissed me softly. He rested his forehead against mine for a moment, then pulled back enough to look into my eyes. "A happy, simple life? Wasn't that what you said in the park?"

I smiled at him, my heart full of hope. "I told you. I don't have expensive taste. I don't want things. I don't want you to fly me all over the world and wine me and dine me."

"But you wouldn't object if I tried every once in a while." He winked at me.

I swatted his knee. "I mean it. I just want you, and that's all." I realized as the words left my mouth that my voice was unsteady again. "I just want us to try to love each other, as long as we can." I blinked hard against the tears. "And if we break it, yeah, we'll try and put it back together."

He held out his hand. I realized with a flood of tenderness that it was the same gesture that he'd asked for in Orlando when he'd apologized for being distant, that I'd asked for in Nashville when we had tried and failed to be friends.

But I was home. This was real life. This was something so much bigger than either one of us could have imagined. His note had been right.

"Love?" he said hopefully, hand extended for a shake.

I reached out and took his hand. "Love."