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Chapter Eight - Sex Interrupted


“Did you set the alarm downstairs?” Lauren asked, coming out of the bathroom in a pair of my boxers and an old t-shirt. She was brushing her hair, her glasses on.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Okay.” She went back in the bathroom. “I mean, it’s not like he’s going to steal anything so there’s nothing to worry about anyways,” she added, her voice muffled by the partially closed door.

I leaned over the nightstand, plugging in my phone. “Oh now you’re worried about him being Dexter, now that we’ve got him home. What happened to all that he’s fifteen, he’s not Dexter shit you were talkin’ in the woods?” I asked.

“I’m not saying he’s Dexter, I’m saying you have a lot of expensive gaming equipment downstairs and I don’t wanna hear it when you can’t play because you forgot to arm the perimeter of the house, Lord Balgrott,” she said. “And yeah, I didn’t fully think it through when we were running through the woods. Shit just got real.”

“He said he doesn’t usually steal,” I answered as I pulled the covers down on the bed and crawled in, snuggling myself into the blankets and kicking my feet around to loosen the sheets at the foot. When I was sufficiently comfy, I let myself sink into the pillow and let out a deep sigh.

“Usually,” Lauren came back out of the bathroom again, just finishing braiding her hair. She turned the light off behind her this time and went over to her side, kicking off her socks as she finished up her hair. “You know, when I told you to bank some juju yesterday, I totally did not have bringing home a teenager in mind for something you could do.”

“Go big or go home, right?” I joked.

Lauren climbed into bed next to me and shifted until her head was in the crook of my shoulder, her hand on my bare chest.

I took a deep breath. After a couple moments’ silence, I said, “How come people who can fuck their kids lives up without batting an eye always seem to be able to reproduce but the ones who want to actually try have to fight so hard for it?”

Lauren sighed. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Because life isn’t fair, I suppose.”

I put my non-Lauren’s-pillow arm up behind my head as I stared up at the ceiling.

After a few moments, Lauren rolled over, hugging my arm, but her back against my side. I laid there in the dark, my arm slowly going numb as she fell asleep, trying to find the strand of reason the universe could possibly have in who it chose to allowed to have children. There didn’t seem to be any.




It was a few hours later when Lauren woke up with a start, sitting up quickly. The movement woke me up. “What’s wrong?” I asked thickly. She was leaning forward. I reached my hand up and ran it down her back, “Baby, you okay?”

She nodded and rolled off her side of the bed and went into the bathroom.

I stared at the bathroom door, a little nervous. She was taking forever in there. “Baby?” I called.

She came back out a few minutes later. I was sitting up by the time she came out, checking my email on my phone. I put the phone down the second the bathroom door opened. “You okay? What was that all about?” I asked.

Lauren shook her head, “Nothing, I had a weird dream is all.” But her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, and I hated the thought.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she answered.

Our eye contact seemed to say a million words to each other. I dunno the words exactly because sometimes stuff like that doesn’t have words when it says things. But she came over and I guided her to straddle my lap and I ran my hands up her legs from her knees where she’d bent them to sit astride my hips. Up her thighs, onto her stomach… I pushed the old t-shirt off over her head and she tossed it onto the floor, her braid hung over her shoulder to the front. She didn’t have a bra on under the shirt, and I slid my hands from her shoulder to her chest and she mirrored the motion on me. Her fingernails trailing across my skin and I could feel that one chipped nail, the one that made her manicure imperfect after all that food kitchen volunteering on Thanksgiving and the thought of it turned me on even more.

Through a feat of gymnastics we managed to get the boxers she had on off of her and get mine off as well. A little bit more adieu and foreplay and she rose above me, and she -- I tried very hard not to think of Dr. Walden’s way of pronouncing this word -- thrust herself upon me. I ran my hands along her hips, guiding her, my heart racing.

This was the kinda sex Jordan Knight had suggested, I thought. There was no lack of Thor tonight. He was alive and well, eager to make Lauren feel better, like a superhero, running in to save the day.

We both pushed against each other, like we couldn’t get close enough to satisfy either of us. It was a little rough because of how hard we were going. I felt blinded by the experience of it all. Or maybe un-blinded. Like I’d been blinded before. I mean the sex we had the night before had been great and all but this -- this was insane.

Whatever the fuck she dreamed about, I hoped she had the same dream every friggin’ night if it was gonna get me laid like this after.

We’d gotten right to the edge, every muscle in my body was coiled like a spring about to let go, my fingers clutched her hips, pulling her down as I pushed my hips upward and she pushed into me, and --

The bedroom door opened.

My eyes only just barely focused on Ethan in the doorway.

“Oh shit.” He ducked back out and pulled the door shut.

I couldn’t react, I’d already gone over, and with a groan that started deep in my gut, we got to the big finish and Lauren slid to my side in the bed, her breathing heavy. She yanked the blankets up over her chest, her braid laying across the pillow. She looked at me, gasping, and I raised my eyebrows as my muscles relaxed.

“Did he see --?” she asked between breaths.

“I think so,” I said.

“Oh God,” she panted. “Fifteen isn’t like young enough that he wouldn’t have had - you know, the talk?” Lauren whispered nervously.

“I dunno when they learn that stuff these days,” I admitted.

Hell, I didn’t know it until Kevin explained the ins and outs -- er, that was probably not the best phrase to use there, huh? Anyways, I was like fourteen and on tour in Germany and had this really bad ass dream about this big breasted woman washing the tour buses with lots and lots of sudsy water and not a whole lot of clothes and I’d woke up to a surprise and freaked out thinking I had some kind of disease of the dick only to be laughed at by the other guys and brought out to a very educational breakfast with Kevin the next morning.

Waffles have turned me on ever since.

We laid there, recovering for a few moments, but once I caught my breath and my heart rate had evened out a little bit, I got up and grabbed my boxers from the floor, tugging them on. I had damage control to do.

Out in the hallway, there were a couple other doors open slightly, leading up to the bathroom, which the light under the door told me was where Ethan was. “Shit,” I mumbled, realizing I’d forgotten to show him the way to the bathroom in the hallway. I was so used to having one right off the bedroom that I didn’t even think about the fact that he’d need to know where the general use one was. I ran my hand over my forehead and reached for knobs on the doors he’d left slightly ajar in the search.

I paused at one of them, my hand lingering on the knob.

I pushed it open a little bit and looked inside.

Back in September, I had a week or so off between the Backstreet tour and the start of the Nick & Knight run and since the first date on the tour had been in Nashville, I’d been home for most of that time and Lauren and I had agreed that, in good faith that we’d succeeded in the August tries, we’d start working on a nursery. This was back when we were still confident and the sex was still exciting and Test Days hadn’t become the worst days of the month. Back when the pep talks were encouraging and there was no Dr. Walden, no questions in our minds if we’d ever have a baby. No, back then it had been when... only when.

I turned the light on.

We’d gone with giraffes because those were cute for boys or girls. It was all pastel yellows and a chocolate brown wood. We’d gotten a crib and a changing table and a dresser and a rocker. There was a quilt we’d bought during an art crawl downtown that some little old lady from the mountains had hand sewn with all these different animals and patterns in the fabric and the softest, most fluffiest underside you ever felt. A mobile with every safari animal you can think of, and a big stuffed giraffe that stood in the corner like a sentinel, keeping guard over the room.

I stared at the stuff, my heart felt heavy.

Eventually, we’d have to come in here and take it all apart, I thought.

The bathroom door opened and I turned the light off on the nursery and pulled the door shut as Ethan came out into the hallway. He stopped and stood there awkwardly when he saw me.

“I’m, uh, I’m sorry,” he said, “I was just looking for the toilet.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t know how to ask if he was, like, okay, if he understood what he’d seen, or if he needed me to call Dr. Phil to administer immediate emergency therapy or what. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “I, uh -- Are you -- I mean, did you -- Are you… you know… okay?”

Ethan nodded, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“You sure ‘cos… I mean… you know like… you know… about sex?”

“I’m fifteen not five,” he said.

He liked that phrase, I thought. It was the second time he’d used it.

“Okay,” I said.

And there we stood all awkward-like in the hallway, neither sure how to transition from the sex to something else.

“Are you guys having a baby?” Ethan asked, pointing at the nursery door.

I pressed my lips together.

“I saw it by accident,” he said, a slight panic to his voice, like he thought I was pissed off at him for mentioning it or for looking in the room or something, “I was just trying to find the bathroom and I tried all the doors and --”

“No man it’s cool,” I said, diffusing his panic. “We were trying to have one for a long time. But we’re not now.”

Ethan looked from me to the nursery door, “Oh,” he said. “I’m… sorry, I guess?”

I shrugged.

He looked around, casting for another subject in the awkwardness that followed yet again, and pointed to the platinum and gold records hanging up on the walls around us. “Those are cool,” he said. “Are they like awards?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “They’re for sales. Like when an album sells five hundred thousand copies, it’s certified Gold. A million copies is Platinum, and ten million is Diamond. These are the plaques the record company gave us.”

Ethan’s eyes travelled down the wall at all the plaques. I’d hung every last one up. Lauren used to tease me that I needed to stop making hit records because it looked kind of tacky, like my own mini Graceland. He walked slowly down the hall, looking at all the certifications, mouthing the word platinum at each. “Wow, diamond,” Ethan said, pausing at the fifteenth plaque for the US debut CD. He looked back at me, “You sold over ten million copies of this?”

“Fourteen million estimated in the U.S. alone. It’s multiplatinum and gold in other countries, too,” I answered. “We’ve sold over 130 million albums worldwide.”

Ethan turned to look at me. “So you’re like… for real. Shit.” He turned back to the plaque again, “No wonder your place is so nice.”

I chuckled and he kept looking at the certifications.

“So you been carrying that guitar around,” I said, “You play?”

“Some,” he answered. “Not good. Not like this level.” He was looking at a plaque for Millennium. There was a huge cluster of those. “Doubt I could ever be this good at anything.”

“Sure you could,” I answered, “Everyone’s this good at something, just they don’t issue awards for everything is all.” I shrugged, “Besides, a lot of this is testimony to our fans as much as it is to us. They’re batshit crazy, but I love’em.” I smiled. Then I jumped back, “Did you take lessons? On the guitar?”

Ethan shook his head, “Watched a YouTube video. The guitar I got at a yard sale for like thirty bucks. I can’t play any actual songs, I just mess around, really. Well, I mean, I can play the first couple bars of that Green Day song, Good Riddance, you know that one that’s like I guess I had the time of my life?”

“Yeah, I know that song,” I nodded.

He shrugged, “That’s about it, though. It’s just comforting, the noise of it, especially at night in the grain mill. Sometimes there’s these sounds and you just know there’s like an animal somewhere in there or something and I play the guitar to drown out the noise. And I dunno maybe it scares the animals off, too. It sounds pretty cool though, you know them big silo things on there? They’re empty, right, so it kinda echos, it’s like an amplifier.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said.

“Yeah.” Ethan had reached the end of the plaques and he turned to me. “Those are awesome.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Is Lauren a singer too?”

“No,” I answered, “Never, ever, ever ask her to sing. It’s like mermaids screeching.” I shuddered. “I love her, but shit she cannot sing. No.” I cringed, shaking my head. “Just don’t do it.”

Ethan laughed. “So what does Lauren do?”

“I mean it’s basically a full time job keeping up with me,” I answered, “But she does personal training, too. She’s a licensed nutritionist and stuff. Remember I told you I weighed like a million pounds from all the Big Macs? She’s the one that fixed me.”

Ethan nodded, “That makes sense. She’s super --” he paused and his face turned a little red.

“Hot?” I supplied. “Yeah, trust me, I know. I got real lucky. So. Uh, you gotta girlfriend?”

Ethan shook his head, “A girlfriend? Me? No.”

“That’s surprising,” I commented. He had that look to him that was in right now, that One-Directiony-floppy-haired-brown-eyed-baby-face look.

Ethan snorted, “Surprising? No. I don’t even have friends, not to mention girlfriends.”

“No friends? Why?” I asked.

He shrugged, “I don’t like talking to people.”

“You’re talking to me,” I pointed out.

He laughed. “Well, you’re really easy to talk to,” he said.

I shrugged. “Am I?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I don’t usually talk to people but I keep finding myself talking to you.”

“Well,” I said, “You’re cool, so I dunno why you wouldn’t talk to people.”

Ethan shrugged, “I just don’t usually.”

“Maybe you should more.”

“Maybe,” he answered.

“You know what you need is confidence,” I said.

Ethan laughed, “Do they sell that at the galleria?”

“You can learn confidence,” I said. “It’s just a matter of believing in yourself and in what you have to offer the world. Confidence can be something you’re born with, I guess, but it isn’t always. More often, it’s something you learn about yourself. It takes a long time sometimes. Years. I’ve only learned it since I met Lauren in the last few years.”

Ethan looked at the wall, then back at me. “This looks a lot longer than the last few years,” he said.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of confidence in those years,” I said, “There’s a difference between confidence and what I was then. I was more like balls out stupid and hyperactive and attention seeking then. I wanted attention so much I’d have done anything for it. Then there was a brief period of drug induced not giving a fuck and a bout of arrogance and finally, finally at the end of a pretty massive, also mostly drug induced, breakdown, there came this time where I realized all the shit I’d been through was just that. Shit. And it was over and I met Lauren after that and she taught me confidence and made me realize I ain’t the person I was and I ain’t the person a lot of people want me to believe I am and I’m worth something to somebody.”

“I wish I was worth something to somebody,” Ethan said.

“You are,” I said.

He shrugged.

I put my hand on his shoulders and looked him right in the eyes, and my voice was firm: “Ethan,” I said, “You are.”

He nodded and turned away, looking back at the multiplatinum plaques.

“Hey,” I said, “You know what, if you stick around here, instead of going back to the grain mill, I can give you some guitar lessons.”

“I don’t have money to pay you,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t say I was charging you anything,” I answered.

“You’d just teach me how to play the guitar and let me stay in your house and eat your food and all that for nothin’?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and turning back to me.

I shrugged. “It is Christmas. Isn’t shit like that what the holidays are all about and whatever?” I asked. He looked skeptical, though. “Tell you what,” I said, “You sleep on it and get back to me when you decide. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Alrighty then. That decided, I better get back to bed and let Lauren know we didn’t traumatize you for life, I was all ready to go bangin’ on Dr. Phil’s door to get some emergency therapy for you after that,” I joked.

“Dude. You know Dr. Phil?” he asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah,” I answered, “I wrote a book with his son.”

“Jesus,” Ethan muttered.

“Night Ethan.”

“Night Hollywood,” he said, and he wandered into the guest bedroom, closing the door behind him.

When I walked into the bedroom, Lauren was still laying on the bed, but the wrong way, her head at the bottom of the bed and her feet up on the headboard, hips inclined.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked her.

She turned her head to look at me, “Nothing.” She rolled over and sat up. “Is Ethan okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

She made a sympathetic face, “Did you have to have waffles?”

“No waffles,” I answered. “He thinks you’re hot, though.”

Lauren blushed.