Chapter Sixteen
Nick
Kevin was pacing. He was making me uptight. I stared at my shoes. Howie was next to me on the couch and AJ was sitting on the arm of the couch to my left. Kevin’s sneakers squeaked as he walked back and forth across the wood floor. He had the contract in his hands, reading it, his lips moving as his eyes skimmed words, the pages hanging over the end. I flipped the hood of my sweatshirt up, leaning back against the couch cushion, staring up at the ceiling through the bit of my hair that had fallen over my forehead in the motion of my hood.
We were at a Kevin’s house in Los Angeles, holding the first sans-Brian band meeting. Kevin had called before I even got home the night before, while AJ was weaving through traffic. He’d wanted to hold the band meeting then, but I’d insisted on going home and seeing Lauren because I didn’t think I could handle much more before I saw her. It’d been with reluctance that Kevin had agreed to hold off for a few hours. “First thing in the morning, Carter,” he’d said as he hung up, “First thing, I mean it.”
Lauren had swallowed a lot of her excitement about the Fitmiss TV spot, so when I asked her about it she’d been giddy to talk about it and gone on for some time about it the night before. I was thankful for the distraction. I hadn’t wanted to talk anymore about Brian and the Backstreet Boys and the hell that had been the press tour. I think she knew that, so she didn’t bring it up at all. It was bad, though, how depressed I felt about it. When we went to bed, I actually had gone right to sleep without trying to get her to have sex with me or anything. Even when she came to bed in nothing but one of my old t-shirts, which is like the most sexiest thing ever, I still just wanted her to hold me ‘til I fell asleep. She rubbed my back just like I’d wanted all the time when I was in London.
Now I was at Kevin’s house, just like I promised, first thing in the morning, and the sun was coming through these yellow curtains that Kristin put on the living room windows, reflecting off Kevin’s white baby grand piano and making a reflection on the ceiling. A bird or something flew by the window and it’s shadow blocked the reflection, mirroring it on the ceiling.
“Well the contract’s fair enough,” Kevin said, finally finishing reading it. I heard the papers flip back into order. “How many of you signed it already.”
“I did,” AJ answered quickly.
I raised my palm lazily.
Kevin sounded surprised, “AJ? Really? You did?”
I rolled my eyes over to look at AJ. “Yeah,” he said. He sighed. “I told B-Rok I did, and I told him to think about it before he sent his in ‘cos this is bullshit, but… I know it was crap what I did to you when you tried to leave and…” AJ glanced at me, then back to Kevin, his lips tight, “If Brian wants to go, then we should let him go.” He didn’t sound fully convinced.
Kevin was looking at me, I could feel his eyes on me even without looking at him.
“I say good riddance. He’s a dick anyways,” I murmured, moving so I could see Kevin’s face as I said the words. The dismay people were giving me about my carelessness in the matter was the only thing that was fueling me to keep the charade up. The shock factor.
Kevin frowned.
He didn’t seem as surprised as I’d expected. I was disappointed.
He turned to Howie, “Did you sign it?”
Howie shook his head, “I thought we were going to talk about it before we signed anything,” he said, “But I guess we just sign things now without talking.”
“I wanted to fuckin’ talk about it,” AJ jumped on the offense quickly. “I wanted to but Nick didn’t wanna talk about it and --” he sighed, “Shit, Kev, I need a fuckin’ smoke.”
“There’s a perfectly good deck out there if you wanna go smoke you can be outside.”
“It’s cold outside,” AJ complained. It was cold for LA. Warm compared to the temperatures in Europe Brian and I had been in for the last two weeks though.
Kevin shrugged, “That’s the price you pay for smoking.”
AJ grumbled, but he didn’t move to go out on the deck, either.
“I think we need to talk about this, like really seriously, because we need to figure out how this is going to work without Brian, if it’s going to work without Brian. Because if Brian leaves we need a contract for us, we need to figure out the business strategy.” Howie chopped one hand across his palm. “It’s important that we plan for this stuff. Like that’s one fifth of the money we need to produce, that’s more money up front for albums and videos and stuff like that we need to put up. That’s one-fifth more money we need to produce for tours and stuff like that.” He paused. “We need to talk about leads and style. This isn’t just losing a member, it’s losing a part of who we are as Backstreet Boys and we didn’t make a plan last time this happened, when Kevin left. Guys, it was a mess, you remember? And I said then, I said we need a plan and we did not do it.” He shook his head. “And those albums, they were good music but nothing much happened for the band in that time, we didn’t do too good, remember? We hemorrhaged money following This Is Us, that’s how we ended up in NKOTBSB. Well. I hemorrhaged money, since I put up a majority of it,” he said pointedly. “Guys. We need a plan. I don’t want bad business this time if we’re gonna do this.”
AJ slid into the tiny space between me and the arm of the couch with a groan. He just barely fit. I slid toward Howie to balance out the space between us all so we weren’t cramped.
Kevin stood before us. He rubbed the back of his neck and started pacing again.
“God damn,” I muttered and I leaned my head back again, this time tugging my sweatshirt so the edge of the hood covered my eyes even.
“First of all. Do we know for sure Brian wants to do this?” Kevin asked.
They all looked at me.
I looked around at them, rolling my head on the cushion, “Jesus you guys, I don’t know anymore than you do.”
“You spent the last two weeks with the guy, you gotta know something,” Howie urged.
“I don’t gotta know anything,” I said, “He spent the last two weeks lying like a cheapass rug to me, saying shit like we were friends --”
“You are friends,” Kevin intoned, his voice Barry White deep.
I shook my head, “No we aren’t. We haven’t been for a long ass time.”
“See that’s the shit that scares the bejesus out of me,” AJ said. “Twenty years is a long time to pretend to be best friends. Aren’t you guys tired of it?”
“I’m exhausted of it,” I snapped, “That’s why I want him to just go already. He doesn’t wanna be here, he doesn’t wanna try and do his vocal therapy and get better and give a damn about any of us, then he doesn’t need to be pretending to be anymore.”
We sat in silence that seemed too loud to speak in.
Brian
Leighanne came out of the house while Baylee and I were still shooting hoops in the yard. She had the manilla envelope in her hand. She paused by the car, her keys in her fist, watching as I lifted Baylee up so he could slam-dunk the ball and we made raaahhh noises under our breath to replicate a cheering crowd going wild. I put Baylee down and jogged over to her, trying not to look at the envelope. “You going?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. She reached up and smoothed my wild-from-playing hair. Baylee was shooting in the background, the ball making that sharp slapping sound as it hit the backboard and the cement. That sound brought back so many memories to me, I could feel my chest crushing from the weight of them. She held up the envelope, forcing me to look at it. “Are you sure you want me to send this?” she asked.
“Positive,” I replied.
She studied my eyes for a long moment, like she wanted to see the truth written in them, but I’d become really good at keeping unsaid words out of them when I needed people to just believe the things I said. My poker face was flawless. Leighanne nodded and tossed the envelope into the car with her purse. “What kind of cereal do you want, Bay?” she called.
“Cocoa puffs,” he shouted, foisting the ball toward the net. He hit it this time and the net rocked with the force of the ball going through it, “SWISH!” he shouted, running around, arms spread wide like an airplane, “FIRST CLASS!” he swooped by Leighanne and I at the car, hair blown back in the air as he ran.
He reminded me of Nick. This was a celebratory dance Nick had taught him years ago playing ball with him by the tour buses.
I took a deep breath. “Send it priority,” I told Leighanne, and ran back to grab the ball from where it had rolled into a bush by the door as Baylee continued running around making airplane noises. “And buy me some Mac & Cheese,” I called. “Like from the box!”
Leighanne got in the car and Baylee stopped running to wave at her as she backed down the driveway. “C’mon, LeBron,” I called his attention back to the basket ball.
“On my way Jordan,” he called back, and he swept back toward me, arms still wide like a plane.
Nick
We had descended into anarchy in no time at the meeting. It’d been literally a solid half an hour of AJ yelling we couldn’t let Brian leave, me yelling I wanted him to get the fuck out, Howie shouting he wanted more vocals this time, and Kevin yelling over all of it for us to shut up and talk respectfully. We all left with the assignment to sign the contracts if we hadn’t, reflect on the idea of the four of us working together as a quartet and what that would look like, and reconvening two days later with lowered voices and cooler tempers.
I drove home frustrated, my fists balled around the steering wheel.
When I got to the house, Lauren’s car was gone, she had a photo shoot for the magazine ads to go with her TV spot for Fitmiss that she was going to do while I was at the meeting. I slammed through the door and the dogs and cats scattered, afraid of my anger, disappearing into various rooms of the house. I went to the kitchen and dug through the cupboards, searching for any alcohol we might’ve had left over somewhere, but Lauren had cleaned us out completely. I sighed and grabbed an orange juice from the fridge, which was not even close to alcohol but unfortunately was the only thing we had. I poured it into a tumbler and drank it the way I’d wanted to drink something harder, knocking it back in quick mouthfuls, trying to imagine my way into numbness. It didn’t work.
Everything was going to shit, I thought, and it wasn’t fair. I’d tried really hard to be really honest with Brian. I got my face all busted up for him, I told him about Lou, I opened up to him and he couldn’t even tell me the biggest news ever.
If it had been the first time that Brian hadn’t bothered to tell me something before someone in the media told me then I might’ve been more inclined to believe that he’d been trying to tell me but it wasn’t.
There’d been other times.
Like when Baylee was born and I found out from a radio deejay that Leighanne had had the baby. Brian had called AJ and Howie and Kevin, but not me. When I’d asked him why he’d said because he knew I was on my solo tour at the time and he didn’t wanna bother me. I’d resented Baylee for years because of that.
Brian had acted exactly the way my family always acted. I thought about when I found out about Leslie from someone backstage that heard from Twitter and not from a phone call from my family. I thought about when I found out Angel was getting married on Instagram when fans were congratulating her. Just recently when BJ had a baby and fans were congratulating me on being an uncle again. The same way they had when Alyssa, Leslie’s baby, had been born. The way they’d told me about my half-brother whose name I never remember because I’ve only met the kid like once and he’s like ten or some shit like that now.
Brian knew about all this shit and about how much it broke my heart not to be included in a personal way. He knew how much the incident with Baylee had upset me, too.
Yet he still let it happen again.
I put the glass down so hard it broke and I picked up the pieces from the counter, throwing them in the trash. One sliced open my index finger on my right hand and blood started going everywhere. “Fuck,” I moaned as I swept the last of the shards in the trash, my blood dotting the counter, the floor and the trash bin. I grabbed the dish cloth and ran it under warm water, then wrapped it around my hand and went upstairs to the bathroom to find the first aid kit.
I was digging through the bathroom closet for it when I heard Lauren’s voice, “NICK? Holy shit, NICK?”
“I’m upstairs,” I yelled.
She ran up the steps and broke into the bathroom in a panic, “What happened?!?” Her eyes were wide.
“I’m okay,” I said, “I just can’t find the first aid kit. Calm down.” I had the cloth balled around my hand. It was stained red already.
Lauren moved me to sit on the closed toilet lid. “I come home and find blood all over the place… and you tell me to calm down,” she muttered, opening the cupboard under the sink, which I didn’t know actually opened. I thought the little doors were just decoration. She pulled out a tupperware with all the first aid things in it and opened it. “Is it deep? Do you need stitches?” she asked.
“I broke a tumbler,” I said.
She frowned because I hadn’t really answered her question and pulled my hand out to look at it. It was a nasty cut, but it didn’t need stitches. She cleaned it out with an antibacterial wipe and I bit down on my lip as it stung. “Hey, how come we don’t have any alcohol,” I demanded.
“Because we agreed not to keep any in the house because you drink it when you’re pissed off over stupid shit,” she reminded me. “I take it your meeting didn’t go well,” she said, squeezing neosporin onto the cut.
I shook my head.
Lauren sighed. She wrapped the wings of a bandage around my knuckles. “There you go,” she said, “Good as new.” She threw away the packaging and the cloth and started picking up the pieces of the first aid kit. I stared at my wound. She glanced over at me as she closed the kit. “I think you need to call Brian.”
“No.”
Lauren sighed. “Well, come downstairs anyways. I brought home Sushi to cheer you up.”
“I like sushi,” I said.
“I know you do, that’s why I got it for you,” she laughed, tucking the first aid kit back under the sink, “And for any future traumas you may have. The first aid kit is under the sink.” She stood up as I stood up, too, and tucked a stray hair behind my ear, “For the record, it’s under the sink in Nashville and Key West, too.”
I kissed her and she slid her hands in my hair to the back of my neck as our lips pressed against each other. When we pulled apart, she looked up at me, her face flushed. “You take good care of me,” I told her.
She smiled.
“We should go to Nashville,” I said, “I need a break from LA and the guys and everything.”
Lauren nodded, “I’m done with my Fitmiss stuff for now so we should go. A break sounds good.”
“We’ll go tomorrow,” I said, “I have another meeting with the guys.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll book us a flight tonight.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Also, we should have some sex tonight.”
Lauren laughed, “There it is. I was wondering when you were gonna get fresh with me.” She leaned in and pressed her lips to mine again.
Brian
I was sitting in the parlor, which I called the den but Leighanne called the parlor, at the piano, tapping keys slowly. I knew I recognized the melody I was striking, but I couldn’t place it. I just kept playing the notes over and over, staring down at the ivory and black, at my fingers moving across them. Baylee had gone upstairs to work on studying his script once we’d tired from playing basketball. The sun was setting, turning the sky orange and pink over the trees outback, dying the room with amber light. I’d taken a shower because my muscles were sore from the basketball. Other than that imaginary game with Nick in France, I hadn’t played much ball in a while and I forgot how much my body ached after playing. Ached in a good way.
“I mailed it,” Leighanne said, coming into the room. I didn’t hear her get home, so I was surprised to see her. I stopped tapping the keys. “Priority, like you wanted,” she said, handing me the tracking and delivery confirmation slips. I held them for a moment, then laid them on the piano and started tapping the keys again. She nudged her way onto the bench next to me and watched my hands moving. “So what’s next?” she asked.
I shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“How long until this is all finalized?”
“However long it takes to take the guys all to sign it and send it in. I know AJ already did.” I shook my head, “And I’m sure Nick did,” I added with a scoff.
Leighanne rested her cheek on my shoulder. “Maybe we could think about adopting a baby or something,” she suggested quietly.
“Maybe,” I answered offhandedly. I didn’t want to be making any life-altering plans right now, I felt too fragile for anything like that. At the moment, all I wanted to invest myself in was the plinky-plonky sound of the notes rising out of the piano - even if I couldn’t remember what the tune was.
“I always loved this song,” Leighanne said. “I don’t understand why y’all didn’t release it.”
I looked over at her, “What?”
“This song,” she answered, “It’s beautiful. Turn the radio on I don’t hear a song,” she sang quietly, boosting my memory.
That’s right, that was what it was. We’d watched the clip of us messing with this song over and over again during the promo in Europe, no wonder it was stuck in my head. The simple notes fell from my fingers over and over again. “And everybody said we won’t last forever, I just wanna know if we’re still together… turn the radio on, I won’t hear a song… hey, hey … heyyyy… I waited my whole life... here in the spotlight, why can’t you see me? Ah... Stars froze in darkness, eyes filled with sadness, why can’t you see me?” My voice broke and in frustration, I brought my hands down too hard and hit an off key and the piano hummed with the resonating wrong note. I reached for the lid and closed off the keys and got up off the bench.
“Brian,” Leighanne called, but I didn’t stop or turn back.
I was out back in the yard when she caught up to me.
I was staring at the trees that lined the back yard, leading off into a small thicket of woods where Baylee and I had built a fort a few years before with leftover pallets that some bricks had come on when we had some landscaping done. During summer you couldn’t see the fort from the yard because of all the leaves but with everything dead and gone now it was easy to see, it’s cover down, exposed. I felt like that, too.
I heard Leighanne come up behind me, her feet quiet. She stopped a couple steps away and just stood there without saying a word, just being there. I licked my lips. “It’s frustrating,” I admitted, “Because everyone thinks I have this perfect life. Nick thinks I have this perfect life,” I corrected, “And in a lot of ways I do. I have you and Baylee and -- well, I had Backstreet Boys and that was the dream. I’ve seen miracles happen.” I shook my head, “But sometimes I wonder what the --” I struggled, “What the hell God is playing at, taking my voice away from me. He gave me this - this gift and…” I swallowed, trying to keep steady, trying not to let the emotion take over my words, “And now he’s just taking it away, and I just… I feel weak because it feels like it’s all in my head and I should be able to just… just sing, like I always have, but I just can’t and it’s not fair. And it’s hard and nobody understands that it isn’t easy to have a perfect life, it isn’t easy to be - to be good enough.” I stayed staring at that stupid fort and the stupid dead trees all around it as the light started fading off into dusk. Soon the fort would be hidden again but only by the dark.
She put her hand on my shoulders, “You know, it’ll happen less if you do your therapy more like the doctor told you to,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” I asked.
“Of course it matters,” she said, “Even without the band. It matters to you.”
I nodded.
“Come inside, it’s getting cold,” she commanded, “And look at you, you don’t even have shoes on.”
I looked down at my socks.
“C’mon.”
I turned and followed her back into the house. “I’m gonna fix up Baylee’s fort this summer,” I said as we stepped inside.
“He never uses it,” she pointed out.
I glanced back at the fort as I shut the door.
“Then I guess we’ll just let it be,” I said.
There's Us by Pengi
