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Chapter Eight



Jaymie

I was laying on the floor in my apartment over Nick’s garage, feeling thoroughly depressed, and a little over exposed. It’s weird because in a little better than seventeen years, I’ve slept with Nick about a billion times, he’s seen every single square inch of my body, every blemish, every mole, every birthmark. Yet I tell him about Daniel and that is what it takes to feel exposed.

I’d been laying there, crying and generally feeling miserable, for probably two hours, when Nick knocked on the door. He didn’t wait for me to open it or invite him in, just knocked twice and opened it up, stepping into the room with an almost cautious attitude. He ducked under the low doorway, and glanced around. “Looks different in here than I would’ve imagined it,” he commented.

This was the first time he’d ever come out to my apartment.

I sat up slowly, swiping the tears away from my eyes. I was kind of shocked that he had come out. I stared at him, unable to fathom words out of the vortex of thoughts in my head. He sat down on the chair nearest to where I was on the floor and leaned down so his elbows rested on his knees. He studied me a moment, his eyebrows furrowed. I felt like some kind of artifact or specimen he was analyzing. Then he said, “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

I thought about the answer for a moment, trying to decide if I should lie about it or just tell him the truth. I wasn’t sure what his motives were for asking. Nick never inquired about anything - and he avoided tears like the plague. Yet here he was, in my apartment, pressing for more information. Like he cared or something. He must want something colossal, I thought, and I wondered what it could possibly be that Nick Carter wanted from me that he didn’t already get on an almost daily basis.

“I didn’t tell you about him because… I didn’t want you to want to meet him,” I said.

He made a face, “What?”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. So. Daniel… he was everything a protective brother proverbially is expected to be. If he’d ever found out about… about you and me… he would’ve beat the crap out of you for, you know, deflowering me.”

Nick raised an eyebrow for a moment, seemed to teeter on the edge of amusement even, then said, “So wait… he died after you knew me?”

I nodded.

“When?” he asked.

I licked my lips. “Just before Millennium came out,” I said. “May 10, 1999.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?” he asked, concerned.

“Nick, you were in the middle of a gigantic explosion of awesome and I couldn’t even begin to think about telling you something like that. Besides, you were constantly touring back then, we didn’t see each other like we do now. It was only when you were in town, which wasn’t very often. Remember? It wasn’t like you were close enough to even notice the extreme depression I went into because of losing him. You had like a million girls back then.”

Nick took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair to the back of his neck. He looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it, that I didn’t ask, that I didn’t… that I wasn’t there for you.”

“It’s not like I was very good at being there for you when Leslie died,” I answered.

“I can’t believe you were able to stick around through that, knowing this now,” he replied, a hint of admiration burning in his voice.

I shrugged.

“I mean, it wasn’t easy,” I said.

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” he replied, staring down at his hands.

“But it’s not like I was some insane pillar of hope through that, either,” I pointed out. “I hardly said a word.”

As weird as it sounds, Leslie’s death had been oddly… beneficial… to the relationship between Nick and I.

See, here’s the thing - when I said that Nick and I were on again and off again before, I really do mean we were really super-super on and off. I met Nick in 1996, at a club in Toronto, where I was on a class trip with my school. The Backstreet Boys were super fucking huge in Canada, but nothing in the US. In fact, they hadn’t even released a CD in the US yet. Their CD had only just released in Canada, but they had this insane following. My roommate on the trip was this girl I barely, a foreign exchange student from Germany on her second semester in the US, freaked out when she heard that BSB was in town. She had like three singles and a bunch of posters of the Boys, sent to her by her best friend in Germany via Air Mail. So when she found out that the Backstreet Boys were doing a Much Music thing like three blocks from the hotel we were staying at, she talked me into sneaking out with her and walking to the event. So we faked sick to get out of dinner with the school group, and snuck down the backstairs of the hotel. We were dressed cute, armed with fake IDs that said we were eighteen - something that, at sixteen, both of us could more than get away with, especially in the cutesy fashion scene of the late-90s - and we went to the event. We got in, we got close somehow (she was kind of a ninja, I think), and somehow or other, we found ourselves right next to the stage area when the Boys themselves came out. I discovered a few things that night: a) the Backstreet Boys were fucking awesome, b) the weird German foreign exchange girl was actually really fricking awesome, and c) the fastest way to get my clothes off is a glass of vodka with cherry coke.

Nick kept looking at me and Monika all night, kind of sneaking glances, flashing smiles. I had long ago decided he was the cute one, despite Monika’s excitement over the one with sweet curly hair, who I later learned was Brian. We danced to the music and let loose and had so much fun that by the time the event wound down, we were way too hyper to just go home, something I shouted out over the music a few moments before they were about to escort the Boys away through the crowd. Suddenly, Nick was at our sides, accompanied by AJ. “Hey,” he said, his voice a nervous, jumpy sound at the time -- I mean, sixteen, talking to women who were going ballistic over him, of course it was. “Me and Jay are gonna go out dancin’,” he said. He glanced around, then said lowly, “And, I dunno, maybe drinkin’, too.” He smirked. “You wanna come?” He said it to my boobs.

“Yes.” Monika said for me. Nick didn’t notice I hadn’t said it. My boobs were his focus.

And as previously discussed, I don’t really remember much else after that until the gold faucet in the bathroom as I puked my guts out over vodka and cherry coke fumes.

But Nick apparently remembered more than I did.

And I must’ve been fucking amazing because he kept the phone number I had scribbled onto a scrap of hotel stationary while Monika stood in the hotel room, holding her high heels and squealing that I had to go right now. We got in so much trouble back at the hotel our school group was staying at. In fact, Monika was sent back to Germany to finish the last quarter of the school year at home. I was expelled for a week.

I’d written about what I remembered in my diary and told no one what happened. Only Monika, who had become my best email buddy, had any clue about the events that went down that night in Toronto.

“I bet he calls you soon,” she had written once, about a month after the event. “If you get married you have to have me be your bridesmaid.”

I’d agreed.

But it was over a year before we had any fresh material.

When the Boys came to the US finally, and they started doing appearances on American radio stations and TV circuits, they frequented Los Angeles, an easy twenty minute drive from the suburbia where I grew up, as you already know. I remember reading that the Backstreet Boys were coming to LA and freaking out and telling my mother that I had to go while Daniel rolled his eyes from the La Z Boy recliner. My mother had agreed to let me borrow the car so I could go, even though she thought that their music was a bad influence on me after what had happened in Canada because of them. It was 1998, and I never dreamed that I’d hear from Nick Carter - ever - until the phone rang about a week before the event and my mother called me to the kitchen because it was for me.

It’s a BOY, she mouthed, handing it to me, her face scarlet with excitement. I’d been seeing this boy at school, Craig, who said he’d bring me to prom maybe and would call me when he found out about if his mom could rent him a tux or not and my mom had been waiting with baited breath for the official prom invite. And that’s what I thought it’d be, too, when I answered the phone. But instead, it was Nick.

“We’re in town,” he said. “I wanna see you again.”

“I’m going to the event,” I said, looking at my mom with wide eyes.

“Awesome,” Nick had said, “I can’t wait to see you.”

I wasn’t old enough then to realize how booty calls worked, and I was just naive enough to not get the concept of celebrities with hos in different area codes. Which is probably how I so easily became one. Every time Nick was in town, I got a similar call. Free tickets to shows followed when the Boys toured in the fall. And Nick was always in and out of town so quickly that it felt urgent when he was there. And still I kept this all a secret some how. When I’d get free tickets, I’d say I won them. I’d be going out with various boys from school when Nick was in town and it wasn’t for a show, or hanging out at my friends houses. And Daniel had been wise enough to keep his mouth shut, although I know he knew that I wasn’t really seeing any of the people I said I was.

“So where are you going?” he’d asked me one night when Mom and Dad were on a trip upstate. We were sitting on the couch watching some stupid TV show on Nickelodeon, eating popcorn and fudge pops and a pizza with extra cheese and extra pepperoni, drinking beers that we’d stolen from Dad’s mini fridge in the den.

“Just out,” I lied.

“C’mon, Jaymie,” he’d said, “I’m your twin. I know somethings going on. I can feel something is going on.”

I shook my head, “Nothing’s going on.”

“You’re so full of shit,” he’d argued.

But he’d let it go.

And Nick and I continued seeing each other off and on. And then 1999 came. The Backstreet Boys were huge. My parents were fighting over finances all of the time as my dad’s company suffered some turmoil, and it was setting Daniel and I on edge. We were fighting a lot between each other and I was spending a lot of time in moody teen mode in the bedroom under headphones. He was getting ready to go to college in New York in the fall and I was pissed he was leaving and he kept telling me I should be applying for colleges, too, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had no idea. None. And the more pressure I felt about deciding, the less I could actually decide.

The night Daniel died, my parents were fighting. Daniel had knocked on my bedroom door and come in and we’d sat on the floor, listening to the bickering through the floorboards. Daniel had sighed. “You want to know a secret?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m going to New York to get away from them.”

Tears had come to my eyes.

“I really wish you’d come with me,” he said. “I don’t want to leave you. I just wanna leave this.”

The sound of shattering glass had emphasized his point nicely.

“I get it,” I answered.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “And don’t laugh at me, I think this is a really, really good idea. What if you went to school for journalism?” he asked.

“Journalism?” I laughed.

“Yeah, like music journalism. You could write about your damn Backstreet Boys all day and get paid for it,” he laughed.

I’d stared into his eyes, “I’d be terrible at that,” I laughed.

Daniel shook his head, “You’d be really good. I know it. You’d be amazing. You write like crazy anyways, and you’re really great at it. And you’re really interested in music and everything. And NYU has a great journalism major, Jaymie. You could go with me. We could get an apartment together. Us against the world, you and me.” He smiled. “At least apply.”

The expulsion would’ve kept me out of NYU anyways, probably, in retrospect, but at the time it had filled me with this enthralling hope to know that Daniel and I would band together against the world, that we’d be somewhere exciting like New York City, and I pictured myself like Carrie Bradshaw, in flirty dresses with friends, drinking cosmos in the city.

And then my mother had burst into the room to get the car keys from me since I’d been the last to drive her car. And she was tipsy and Daniel had jumped up and insisted on going with her and they’d left.

Daniel died that night in the car crash. My mother got out with scrapes and bruises and a tainted, broken spirit, which my father only broke more as he blamed her as much as she blamed herself for Daniel dying. I didn’t move out, I didn’t apply to college. Instead, I dropped into this horrendous depression that seemed to numb my veins and soul. I saw Nick twice in the year that followed, and the drinking and drugs he was starting to dapple in were the escape that I needed, too, and I didn’t turn down anything he offered me both times he came. Then in early 2000, my mother killed herself and my depression was even worse.

Even though Nick and I were living very different lives this one thing about them mirrored: We were getting increasingly sadder at the same time, and increasingly willing to blot out reality with drugs.

By the time I moved out of my father’s house (and into a crappy one-room apartment in the most sketchy neighborhood LA had to offer), he’d met and married the evil Pilates (within a year of my mother’s death, making me wonder if he hadn’t been seeing her before she’d died, too). Nick had moved to Los Angeles full time and I was seeing him at least once a week, sometimes twice. We’d go clubbing or we’d go back to his place and snort some coke, smoke some weed, drink some booze… And it escalated over the years. We started seeing each other more and more and Nick confessed one night that I wasn’t the only girl he was seeing, but that it was slowly becoming me more frequently than anyone else.

“I’d make you my girlfriend,” he’d slurred over a bottle of Jack Daniels he’d got from AJ, “But then we’d have to be all like emotional and huggy-kissy and crap and alls I want is the sex, you know? Is that rude? It is, isn’t it?”

“Very,” I’d slurred back. “But it’s ok. Rude is ok. Rude is honest. Honest is good. I like honest. So I guess I like rude.” We’d stared at each other. “So wait. Are we dating now?”

“No we’re fucking,” Nick had laughed like a hyena. “But we’re fucking exclusively now. Or at least mostly exclusively. Unless you wanna come to Florida with me sometimes.”

“Florida’s nice. Except the crocodiles.”

“They’re nice too,” he said. “They don’t eat people.”

“Sure they do,” I argued.

“Nope they done a study, they don’t eat people.” He stared at me, “Rule number one. Nothing personal.”

I snorted. “What?”

“Like you don’t wanna hear about my family shit, and I don’t wanna talk about it neither, so -- nothing personal. You don’t tell me shit, I don’t tell you shit. We fuck, we talk goofy, like this about crocodiles and stuff, but its just fun. Nothing serious, nothing crazy. And very importantly, no going fucking psychotic on me like every other girl ever. Every time I date a girl they go fucking psychotic.” He shook his head.

“I’m not fucking psychotic.”

“Good. Stay that way. Rule number two…” and he slurred through several more rules that were mostly just covered under the first one. We’d shook hands on it.

That’s basically how it stayed for awhile; on again, off again, booty calls when he was in LA, a couple cross-country-or-even-extra-continental trips to soothe his horny soul… He dated others during that time, most notoriously Paris Hilton, but I was always kind of simmering on the back burner. Waiting.

When Leslie died things changed, though. Nick had been on a solo tour. I hadn’t heard from him since just before Christmas, when he’d been in LA for a couple weeks and needed a date to a few awards shows in December. Before that, it’d been about seven months since I’d heard from him. His friend, Chris, called and told me what was going on. I flew out to meet Nick in Baltimore, two days later. Nick and I didn't talk about it at all, though, despite what he made it sound like now. Rather, we just had some of the most intense sex ever.

“You were exactly what I needed,” Nick said now, looking up from his hands and into my eyes. “And that meant a lot to me.”




Nick

When Leslie died, I didn’t need someone who would listen to me cry about it - I had a therapist for that. I didn’t need someone to tell me what I could’ve done to change things - I had my entire family for that. I didn’t need someone to lecture me about my own habits (my personal trainer, doctors, and Brian had those bases covered), and I didn’t need someone to try to give me motivational speeches laced with too much enthusiasm (thank God, nobody did that at all). I just needed a tension release that wasn’t drugs or alcohol.

Enter, Jaymie.

No innuendos intended.

She didn’t ask questions, she didn’t try to cheer me up, she didn’t pep talk me. She just gave me what I needed and that was control and something that made me feel again. Because at the time I couldn’t feel much. But I remember one night, just before Jaymie ended up moving in over the garage, that she put her hands on my face, right on my jaw bone, and held my face so that we stared into each others eyes the entire time, and I have never in my life felt more cared for than that moment. It sounds weird. And maybe it’s fucked up, I dunno.

I felt bad because now I was finding out that I’d never done that for her. I’d never cared for her like she did me. And I was really confused because more than anything this desire was coursing around in me to find some way to repay the favor. I wanted to care for Jaymie.

And even weirder still, I kinda liked knowing. I liked that she’d told me. I liked that we now shared that bond of having lost a sibling. I liked that there was something between us. I stared into her eyes as she spoke, saying God knows what because I was too busy watching her talk to actually comprehend what she was saying, and I realized that, even if it wasn’t fair and it was completely not at all what she’d signed up for, maybe I didn’t care and maybe it’d be kind of nice to tell Jaymie my secret and tangle us up together for the rest of my life.

However long that might turn out to be.