“We can leave if you want,” offered Howie Dorough kindly, looking around the bar, which was filling up fairly quickly, and back to his friend.
“Yeah, whenever you’re ready, man,” added Kevin Richardson, nodding supportively.
“I’m not done eating,” AJ McLean answered, an edge to his voice. He appreciated his friend’s concern, but all he wanted to do was eat the burger he’d waited forty-five minutes for, drink his watered down iced tea and enjoy a nice, normal night with his friends. His concerned friends. His overly concerned friends. His friends who would be sporting matching black eyes if they didn’t let him finish.
“Okay, but when you are?” Kevin pressed. He didn’t feel comfortable having AJ in this type of environment. He knew his friend was an adult and could make his own decisions, but he also knew that his decisions just didn’t affect him anymore. AJ had a wife and a baby back home – an extremely caring, forgiving and yet terrified wife. The life on the road was different in every way possible than the life at home and Kevin didn’t want to see AJ pick up old habits from visual temptations, boredom or loneliness.
“Then I’ll be done,” answered AJ slowly, as though he was talking to a toddler. “Look, guys, I just want to eat some food, okay?”
“Okay,” Howie and Kevin answered in unison, Howie holding his hands up in a surrender pose. “We just –“ Howie began, but stopped as Kevin, who picked up on AJ’s tone, kicked him under the table. Constantly bringing up AJ’s substance abuse wasn’t going to do anything but piss AJ off.
“Never mind,” Howie finished, standing up. “Bathroom’s over there, right Kev?” he asked, pointing across the bar. Kevin nodded as Howie stepped away from the table and strode across the bar. He was deep in thought – thinking about his wife Leigh and their two boys back home. It was the first time he’d been away from his family on a tour and truthfully, he wasn’t sure how he liked it. He loved touring and performing. He was still amazed that their fans still came out and supported the group two decades since their inception. But with a beautiful girl and two little boys waiting for him in Florida, it was hard to enjoy touring as much as he used to.
Deep in thought, Howie almost didn’t see the giggling duo of girls heading out of the bathroom. One of them held the others bottom in her hands and was reciting moves from a basketball game, as though she was a sports announcer.
“Ivan fakes to the left, fakes to the right, down the court, three pointer! He wins all the things!” she cheered, spinning around and nearly crashing into Howie. Blushing, and ignoring Monica’s laughter, Mandy grinned sheepishly.
“Haha… sorry!” Mandy apologised, laughing as she covered her face with her hand, shielding her eyes from this stranger.
“No worries,” Howie replied, watching the girl curiously as she and her friend laughed over her near miss, walking down the hall arm-in-arm. He knew she looked familiar – but in the span of his career, Howie had met a lot of people. It didn’t seem to take much for people to look familiar to him these days. But then, it could be age.
Still, he knew he knew her.
“I think I know you,” he decided to call down the hall. Both girls turned around and looked at him, the older of the two smirking flirtatiously at him.
“Hmm… I think I would remember someone as handsome as you,” Monica purred, taking a few steps closer. “But you’re more than welcome to get to know me,” she added suggestively.
“Oh… my God!” Mandy suddenly exclaimed. She’d turned around when Monica had begun brazenly flirting with the guy, but it took her a few seconds to realise that she, too, knew him. “Howie?!”
“Mandy Clarke,” he determined with a smile, relieved that he remembered her name after all these years, though more relieved that she was who she thought. He didn’t want to try and fight off her feisty friend. Something told him she didn’t take kindly to the word ‘no’. “It’s been a long time.”
“So long!” agreed Mandy enthusiastically. She took a step forward, wondering if it’d been too long to give him a hug. Taking only half a second to decide – screaming fan girls hugged him every day – Mandy reached up and wrapped her arms around her old friend. “I can’t believe you’re here! In Texas! What!”
Monica stood between the two, her mouth slightly open in shock. It wasn’t that Mandy wasn’t pretty and couldn’t land an attractive guy but, well… she didn’t! In all the years Monica had known Mandy, she’d known her to be with one man and one man only: her ex-husband. And he was boring.
“You know him?” Monica asked in disbelief. “Good job, Mandy,” she praised under her breath.
Rolling her eyes at Monica, Mandy gestured her arm to Monica. “Howie, this is my friend Monica. Mon, this is Howie! We toured together, like…” she looked up at Howie, trying to figure out the math. “Like twelve, thirteen years ago!”
“Oh!” Monica exclaimed. “Oh, you’re in that little boy band!” she said, her voice changing to a sweet tone, as though she was praising a kindergarten student for being such a big, strong grown up.
Howie laughed, not insulted but amused. “Yeah, I’m Little Boy Howie,” he joked back, seeing Monica’s eyes drawn to his zipper.
“I doubt that,” she purred, her eyes staying fixated on his zipper regions before she finally drew her gaze upwards and gave him a wink.
“He’s married!” Mandy stressed to her friend, remembering reading about Howie’s wedding and subsequent babies in the tabloids she almost always bought while waiting in line at the grocery store. Something about reading about Lindsay Lohan in jail or Khloe Kardashian getting a divorce made Mandy feel so much better about her own life.
“Well, crap!” Monica huffed, dropping the flirtatious act. “They always are!” she added, turning on her heel and stalking back to the patio.
Snickering, Mandy turned back to Howie. “Sorry,” she apologised. “That’s how we say ‘nice to meet you’ in Monica’s own language,” she told him.
“No worries,” Howie assured her. “You got time to come say hi, or do you have to get back to your hen party?” he teased.
“Say hi,” Mandy repeated. “Who else is here?”
“Kevin and AJ.”
AJ. Just hearing his name sent shivers up her arms. Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought of seeing him after so many years. She’d thought about it, no doubt, over the course of the last decade. Something about that first love, it never goes away.
“I’d love to see them,” she answered earnestly after a brief pause. That feeling of being scared yet excited rushed over her. “But… I do have to get my friend Erica. I apologise in advance, she still lives in 1998, I think,” Mandy told him with a small laugh. “But… she’ll kill me if I don’t introduce her to you guys. And, don’t worry, she’s married,” she added with a smile.
“Awesome,” answered Howie. “We’re just sitting over there,” he told her, pointing across the bar. “Go get your friend and come catch up!”
“I will,” Mandy promised as they parted ways. Beelining out the door, she rushed back to her table and excitedly fell into her seat.
“What took you so long?” asked Monica. “He’s married!”
“Who’s married?” Erica questioned.
“You didn’t say anything?” Mandy asked Monica, surprised.
“He’s married,” Monica stressed. “What do I give a crap if he made little girl’s panties wet for the last hundred years?”
Erica curiously raised an eyebrow and stared at Mandy. “Who’s married?” she repeated, feeling like the answer wouldn’t be someone she went to high school with.
“Okay,” Mandy began slowly. “Now, remember, Erica. You’re thirty-three years old. You have two kids. You’re on the PTA. You have a reputation of a mature, together grown woman. What I am about to tell you is going to make you want to scream like a thirteen year old. Just remember… you’re not,” she stressed, knowing she was making Erica go crazy inside.
“Who’s married!?” she squeaked out, gripping the edge of the table in anticipation.
“Howie.”
That was all Erica needed was one word, a single name, to screech loudly and clap her hands together excitedly. “He’s inside?!” she yelped, balling her hands up into fists, shaking them around as though she held invisible maracas in each hand. “What do we do?!”
“We’re going to go inside,” Mandy explained slowly. “We’re going to sit down and visit with old friends of mine. We’re not going to ask for autographs,” she added, shaking her head. Erica mimicked the head shaking.
“We’re not going to ask for pictures.”
Erica continued to shake her head along with Mandy, though she was hardly listening.
“We’re not going to scream. Or faint. Or throw up.”
“No!” Erica exclaimed. “None of that! I promise! Please, please, let’s go!”
“Okay,” Mandy agreed, satisfied that Erica wouldn’t make too much of a fool out of herself. Standing up, she turned her attention to Monica and Jessie. “You guys coming?”
Monica scoffed. “Married,” she reiterated. “Besides, there’s a father son duo over there. I think Jessie and I are going to go make all their dreams come true,” she added, winking at Jessie.
“Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “Besides, like… no offense? But I don’t really want to hang out with some old married guy,” she told Mandy, making a face at the thought, the fact that the ‘old married guy’ was pretty much a real celebrity. But unless he was Bruno Mars or one of the Real Housewives, Jessie didn’t care.
“Okay, let’s go then!” Erica pleaded, tugging on Mandy’s arm like an over-eager toddler. “Howie! Eeii!”
“You know what they say if you shake it more than twice,” commented AJ, not looking up from his plate as Howie rejoined the table. “Or did you get it stuck in the zipper again?”
Howie sat down, ignoring AJ’s comments. He wondered what kind of comments he’d come up with when Howie told his friends who he randomly just ran into.
“So,” he began, “I just got hit on.”
“Hang on, let me call TMZ,” AJ commented, pretending to search his pockets for his phone. “This is headline news!”
“By a girl,” Howie continued.
“This is headline news!” Kevin joked, getting in on the Howie ribbing.
Howie snickered. “So, anyway…” he continued. “This girl has a friend. Guess who she is?”
“Oh, I couldn’t even fathom a guess,” AJ replied sarcastically, slurping down the last of his iced tea.
Pausing briefly for effect, Howie smiled and stated, “Mandy Clarke.”
Sputtering on his iced tea, AJ coughed and looked at Howie in shock. “Mandy Clarke?” he repeated incredulously. “Like… Red Velvet Cupcake Mandy Clarke?”
“The one and only,” answered Howie triumphantly.
“Holy shit,” AJ breathed out, leaning back in his seat. Mandy Clarke wasn’t the first anything on AJ’s roster. He slept with girls before her. He loved girls before her. He thought about his future with girls before her. But there was something about her – fresh faced, frizzy haired, scrawny little teenager – that made him fall head over heels for her, felt things for her he never felt for another girl before. Or, if he was being completely honest with himself, after.
“Yeah,” Howie answered in agreement. “I haven’t seen her in something like… twelve years.”
“Something like that,” agreed AJ, still in a daze. “So, what? So she lives here? In Texas?”
Howie shrugged. “I guess so,” he replied. “You can ask her yourself, though,” he added, gesturing to his left. AJ looked over and there she was, looking exactly the same and yet completely different all at the same time. For a moment, he forgot about his wife and his child and all the time that had passed. For a brief moment, it was the year 2000, him and her, insane and in love.
A million thoughts of what to say buzzed through his mind in a few short seconds. ‘You look great’, ‘How’s things?’ ‘It’s been forever’, ‘It’s good to see you’, but nothing sounded right. This wasn’t just an old friend. This was Mandy. So, simply, he stood up and smiled.
“Hi, Mandy.”
