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Before: I'm Happy You Called


Nick

I was standing on the curb out front of a gas station. The buses were filling up and I had just bought a pack of cigarettes. I kicked a rock with my toe and watched as veryone ran around filling up the tour buses then rolling them across the street to a Walmart parking lot while the next one in the caravan filled up. Every muscle in my body ached. Usually I loved this feeling, this mid-tour burn used to be a high to me and now it just made me feel old. I took a long drag off my cigarette.

Kevin walked over from the convience store, carrying a bag and unwrapping what looked like a granola bar. He came to a stop beside me and took a bite of it, looking around in silence. He chewed slower than he talks and inspected the contents of his bag, then looked up at me. His mouth slightly pursed, his eyebrow raised.

"I ain't puttin' it out if that's what you're trying to say with your face lookin' like that," I said.

Kevin's cheek twitched.

"I don't give a shit how much cancer it could give me," I added.

Kevin made a sniffing noise with his nose, then yawned and turned away, going back to looking around. He squinted up and down the street.

I took another drag off my cigarette just to really rub it in that I was gonna smoke up all the cancer I could and blew the air out real nice and slow.

"You aren't enjoying this tour," he said. He sounded like when they humanize God in the movies, you know, like he should've been Morgan Freeman or something standing there beside me dressed in all white with a photoshopped halo hanging over his head.

I shrugged.

Kevin took a deep breath, "I ain't asking the question, Nick, I'm telling you the answer."

I stared at him for a moment. "I'll get used to it," I answered, shrugging, "It'll come back to me just like it came back for you. I just gotta get used to it."

Kevin shook his head, "It was instantaneous for me," he said. "I stood on the stage and I just knew it was time. I needed it like I need oxygen." He looked at my cigarette again pointedly when he said need oxygen. I looked at my cigarette. It was almost spent anyways, but I threw it to the ground and rubbed it out with my foot. "Thank you," he said.

"I like the part about being around you guys again," I said, "You and Brian and Howie and AJ -- but I dunno man."

"It's not like it was before," Kevin said, nodding. "I get it. I've been there. You remember when I left. You remember how I felt on the Never Gone tour. It was just like the magic had stopped."

I nodded.

"You need a break, kid," he said, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"We just took a year off," I said, "And we'd been off almost a year before that, even..."

Kevin took a deep breath, "Nick, I'm not gonna tell you what to do... I'm not your father... I'm not the boss of you, as you used to like to remind me every day when you were a kid..."

I laughed.

"...but I'm gonna tell you right now that you ain't happy and you ain't gonna be happy if you don't change things."

"There's nothing really to go home to," I said quietly, "That's the only reason I ain't gone home yet. When you quit, you had a family to go home to."

Kevin studied me for a long moment.

"If I had something to go home to, it would be different," I said.

"Then maybe you need to think about investing some time into finding someone and settling down," he said.

"I only will ever love one woman, Kevin, you know that. And she didn't pick me."

Kevin squinted at the sun. "You know Brian's getting a divorce?" he asked.

I blinked in surprise, "What?" I said.

"I didn't think you knew. Did you even know they separated?"

Brian had been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles, but I hadn't been spending a lot of time with him, so I didn't really notice. I just figured Leighanne and Baylee were with him and that he was in LA for the work on the album, for all the contracts and the recording sessions and the meetings. I remembered him being supremely cranky the year before, around Christmas and New Years, but I couldn't ever remember the D word coming up.

"When?" I asked.

Kevin thought about it, "I dunno, maybe last September? He didn't even go back for Christmas, he had Baylee in Kentucky."

It explained a lot about Brian's hyperactivity. When Brian was upset, he got hyperactive. I sighed, I felt bad for him. I wondered what happened, and why I was such a shitty, self-involved friend that I hadn't noticed. It'd been a long time since Brian and I had called ourselves best friends, after drifting apart we'd sort of settled into friendships with other people. I called AJ or Howie before I called Brian. Brian tended to call Kevin. We very rarely, if ever, called each other for advice or anything. It was sad, but it's what happens, I guess, when people grow up and change.

We'd both grown up and changed, just differently.

Kevin balled up the wrapper to his granola bar and put it in his bag. "Anyways my point is that he's been seeing someone."

I raised my eyebrow. "Like seeing someone like dating someone or seeing someone like R.L. Stein is my therapist seeing someone?"

"As in dating," Kevin said.

I couldn't picture Brian dating. It'd been so fucking long since he dated that I wondered how horrible he was at it. I pictured him being awkward and scaring away women with that hyperactive streak.

"He said the exact words you just said to me when I suggsested he find someone new," Kevin said, "That's my point." He turned and walked away, leaving me alone on the curb again.

Well Brian could date every woman in America if he wanted to, I thought, but there really was only one woman for me.

I looked at my watch. Speaking of...




Ashley

I was sitting at the kitchen table, the only chair in the house that I could get in and out of somewhat easily, the phone on the table in front of me, waiting. I stared at the clock on the microwave, glowing in green digital letters. 9:59. I looked at the phone, counting down the minute. 57...56...55...54...

The apartment was hotter than hades. I had a fan blowing on the counter, oscillating back and forth, but I still felt like every pore in my body was a swimming pool.

32...31...30...29...28...

I wondered if Nick would call. If he'd forget. He was forgetful. Especially on tour. He was just so busy. And really, why would he remember to call me? Probably he only remembered to call on my birthday because he had like a phone alarm set or something like that. I rubbed my hands on the knees of my sweatpants.

5...4...3...2...

The clock on the microwave clicked over: 10:00. I looked at the phone, willing it to ring, eyeing it, waiting. But it didn't. I felt ridiculously let down.

You said around ten, I reminded myself, And just because you're sitting on top of the clock waiting for it to tick over doesn't mean he is.

I struggled to my feet, using the table top to help push me up, and waddled to the cupboard and got a row of saltines out. I waddled back to the table and sat back down and opened the package and stuck a cracker in my mouth. My stomach was threatening to throw me into the bouts of morning sickness. I closed my eyes and wished I'd turrned out the overhead light.

The phone rang.

I scrambled for it, knocking my package of saltines onto the floor. Crackers went everywhere. "Shit," I said. I grabbed up the phone and answered it, "Hello!?"

"Hey Ashley."

It was him. Oh thank God it was him, he remembered to call me!

"Oh hey Nick, wow is it ten already? Morning flew by! How are you?" I looked at the crackers all over the floor.

"I'm okay, a little tired. Sorry I'm a little late calling you, you're a couple hours behind me and I was talking to Kevin..."

I slid to the edge of my seat, lowering myself to my knees on the floor carefully, and used my one free hand to swipe the crackers into a pile, trying to get even the ones that had sailed under the stove. Some of those would just plain be casualties, I thought.

"Hey, did you know Brian was leaving Leighanne?" he asked.

"Well they separated like two years ago," I said.

"Damn," Nick muttered, "I had no idea."

"You weren't exactly -uhm- involved with Brian at that point," I said. "It was like strictly work and that's it."

"He's dating," Nick said pointedly.

I laughed, "I bet you could sell tickets to that spectator sport," I said. I sat on my feet because now I was stuck on the kitchen floor.

"It must be so awkward," Nick said.

"Maybe you should give him some pointers," I said. I paused, "Just suggest to him that he tell the girl he loves her before she's at the alter."

It was too soon to make such jokes. I don't know why I said it. I closed my eyes, regretting bringing it up before even the awkward silence that followed it had struck.

"Kevin thinks I should find someone too," he said.

I felt a shoot of jealousy, or pain, or something run through me. I wanted to throw something at Kevin, wanted to scream at Nick don't do it. But what right did I have to either of those feelings when I had not only had a chance with Nick but had looked at him, down on his knees in front of me literally begging me to pick him instead, and still married Chris? I didn't have any right at all, that's what right I had.

"Hey Ashley?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Who am I?"

"What?"

"Outside of being a Backstreet Boy, I mean," he said, "Like, I have an identity besides Nick Carter, Backstreet Boy, right?"

"Of course you do," I said, "What kind of question is that?"

He was quiet a moment. "Kevin thinks I should quit."

"Quit the band?" I asked, surprised.

Nick was quiet a moment, I had a feeling he nodded forgetting I couldn't see him, then, "Yeah-uh," he said.

I tried to picture Nick not a Backstreet Boy.

"What would you do?" I asked him.

"I dunno," he replied. "I mean, like I told Kevin, it'd be different if I had someone at home to come home to, or whatever, but... I'm just alone, and it sucks being home alone."

I looked around the apartment. "I know the feeling," I said.

"Where's Chris?" Nick asked.

"Work," I replied.

He was quiet a moment. "You're on summer vacation from work, huh?"

I hesitated. "Well, I kind of put in my resignation after this year..."

"What? Why? You love your job."

"Well I'm gonna be a mother, I mean it's cheaper than daycare and it's not like my job was really like... I dunno. I wasn't getting paid as much as Chris and... it's just better that I'm home..."

Nick was quiet a long moment. "So you're home alone all day."

"Yeah," I said.

"Pregnant. Alone all day."

"Yeah."

"Wow," he said. I could hear disapproval in his voice.

"Well I mean Chris works really hard," I defended him automatically. "It's just lonely when the only other person you see is your gyno," I said.

Nick was quiet again. I could hear him breathing. Then I heard a shout in the background and Nick answered whoever was shouting, "I'm coming." Then he said to me, "I gotta get going, we were gasing up the buses."

"Where you headed?" I asked.

"North Carolina. We're in Pennsylvania right now."

"Swinging South, huh?"

"Yeah," Nick said. "Hey, if you need anything you give me a call okay? I might not be in LA but I can call Rochelle or someone to swing by and help you out."

I smiled. It was the most anyone had offered to do for me in awhile. I felt teary eyed. "Thank you," I said sincerely.

"I'll call you," he said simply.

"Okay," I replied. "When?"

He thought for a moment. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Okay!" It came out more excited than I'd meant for it to and I felt silly.

"Okay," Nick agreed. I could tell he was about to hang up, and then he hesitated, and he asked, "Ashley, are you happy?"

I thought about it. "I'm happy you called," I answered.