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After: Completely Different Person


Ashley

Chris brought me back to Nick's house.

Everything there smelled like him. It was like a giant Museum of Nick Carter. I'd joked once that if Nick was ever hard up on cash, he could cut the front of his house off, seal it off with glass, and sell tickets to fans so they could watch his every move.

"Like a reality TV show?" Nick had asked.

"No more like an aquarium," I answered.

I'd spent an hour that day talking in a National Geographic narrator voice, "Observe how the native Carter places his keys on the table beside the key hook instead of hanging them up actually on the key hook... The Carter carefully plans his meals, thinking ahead to whether he plans a quickie in the club bathroom or an overnighter at a random target's home... Blonde hair, blue eyes, and long, sexy fingers allow the Carter to easily select a mate..."

Now the house felt foreign and unwelcoming, like I didn't belong inside it.

I let Chris guide me in anyways.

He deposited me on the couch where this whole hell had started over thirteen hours ago. "Are you thirsty?" Chris asked. I nodded. "Be right back," he said, dashing away.

The TV was muted, but the news was still showing coverage of the plane crash, where the firefighters had finally tamed the flames, and the dead had been counted. Out of the 230 passangers on board the flight, only seventeen were still alive.

"What do you want to drink?" Chris called from the kitchen.

"What's he got?" I asked.

"What I can only assume used to be soy milk, but now has curds floating in it, and beer," Chris called back. "And also some kind of green sludge in a blender."

"The sludge is wheat grass and carrot juice," I answered, "And I'll take a beer."

The fridge door slammed and a moment later, Chris was handing me a Molson. He had one of Nick's Buds in his hand and I realized that somehow Chris had known the Molson in Nick's fridge were mine. I studied the bottle for a long moment, then looked back at Chris as he popped open his bottle, took a sip, and lowered himself into the cushion at the far end of the couch. I realized suddenly that I knew almost nothing about Chris. I'd never cared to.

He suddenly seemed like a completely different person to me than he'd been when he first stepped through the door into Nick's garage.

"Thank you," I said quietly, "For being so nice to me and being here through all this."

Chris nodded, staring down at the beer, "You're welcome."

I sipped my beer, still watching him. He was spinning the cap from his bottle over his fingers, a talent that I'd seen people in moves do but never in real life. The bottle seemed to dance across his knuckles on it's own will. "Why are you so nice to me?" I asked, "I'm such a bitch to you."

Chris laughed, never looking up. He shrugged, "You're not bad," he answered, and he flipped the cap into his palm. He looked over at me. "I think you're perfect."

I smiled, "I'm certainly not perfect."

"As close to it as anyone real is ever gonna get," he insisted.

Our eyes met. And I just knew. I felt like the breath had been taken right out of my lungs and I looked away, staring at the carpet, at anything but at him. Chris likes me. The thought raced through my mind and veins like wildfire. Oh God, he likes me.

"I'm sorry," he said. And I had a feeling he maybe knew what was going on in my nervous system, all the synapses firing away.

I shook my head, "No, don't be."

I still wasn't looking at him, but I could feel it when he looked away from me, too. We sat there on Nick's couch in silence, each staring at our respective beer bottles. After an incredibly long pause, he looked at me. "Is it possible?" he asked. "Is there anything I could do or say that would make you think about it?"

"You already are," I answered.




Nick

I lay in bed staring out the window. In the corner of the room, the TV was on, the noise drifting quietly off the walls. Sitcom laughter seemed to echo. Nurses floated in and out of the room like ghosts, checking vital signs, changing bandages, and asking me how I was. But I was hypnotized, lost somewhere else, watching the lights of the cars travelling along the winding freeway into the City of Angels.

Then I thought about Leslie. About the things that I'd seen and heard in those first few moments after the plane had crashed... and the words she said echoed in my mind as I watched the city. Red and white lights, yellow lights, blue and green lights... they blended together in that bokeh style beyond rain drops that had begun to fall, splashing against the window.

I wondered if my mother and the rest of my family had gone to Niagra Falls without me, if they'd talked about Leslie, if they'd gotten their closure. I knew, despite having not made it to Niagra, that I'd gotten mine.

I'd gotten to say good-bye.

Of course, when I said it, I thought I was saying good-bye to the world. Instead, I was changed. I had become a completely different person than the one I had been when I got on the plane.

I thought mostly about Ashley.

And I wished more than anything that I hadn't sent her away. I wished I'd told her I love you instead.