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Chapter One


Nick

”Shut the fuck up!”

”No you shut the fuck up! Don’t you be a dick, don’t you be a dick like everyone knows you are!”

I looked down the row of seats at Brian, his mouth tight, staring up at the screen with that same deer-in-headlights look he’d given me that day almost two years ago when this fight actually took place. He didn’t look at me.

”How about speaking from a place of love - and not a place of anger?”

”I’m not angry! I’m fuckin’ - I’m fuckin’ bein’ real!”

Then he did glance my way. His eyes were sad. No, more than sad, even. They were… nervous, too, I guess the word might be like remorseful or something like that.

It’d been two years and nothing much had changed for him, vocally. In fact, if anything, it’d gotten worse because the therapy wasn’t doing even what little bit it used to. He could drink tea, hum, and sit around on the tour bus in strange-ass yoga positions making gurgling noises all he wanted and it was still a crapshoot every night whether Brian was gonna hit the next note or not. Every. Fucking. Show.

And I was getting louder and louder backstage after a bad performance.

Last time, I’d broken Howie’s hair dryer by chuckin’ it across the room.

I looked away.

”Sit down for a second and show some fuckin’ respect.” Kevin’s voice filled the theater in surround sound, and I took a deep breath.

”How about respectin’ me and lemme stand up?” I mouthed the words along with myself. I’d seen this cut so many times it nauseated me. I was embarrassed by the way I’d come off as an asshole. I mean, I’d only said shit that needed sayin’ but I couldn’t have been more asshole about it than I’d been. The way my neck turned all red and I kept saying the word dick over and over again in the scene -- I could see the guys all thinking there goes Nicky being Nicky as they exchanged glances and see Kevin’s mental countdown from ten. They thought I was approaching it immaturely. And maybe I had, but it was the only way anybody was gonna approach it. God knows Brian hadn’t been about to admit it to himself at all. I stared down at my knees resolutely.

”Stand up then!” Kevin yelled on the screen.

In the theater, like every other time we’d watched this film, he laughed. I dunno why, but he found that part of the fight to be ridiculously funny in retrospect.

Personally, I couldn’t think of another thing that was less funny than someone having to ask for respect from the people who are supposed to be his family.

I cleared my throat and got to my feet. I didn’t think I could handle this anymore. I slid my way out of the row of seats and snuck down the side aisle.

”...baggage here from the past twenty fuckin’ years…” Kevin’s voice followed me from the surround sound system. A couple fans watched curiously as I hustled out the door.

Mike had jumped up as I passed him, following me out into the lobby of the theater and into the men’s room. He stood by, just inside the doorway, as I walked in and leaned against the furthest sink. I stared into the sink basin, at the blurry reflection of myself in the faucet, then turned it on and splashed a little water on my face.

“You alright man?” Mike intoned when I’d turned the tap off a moment later, my face still dripping wet.

“Sure,” I answered. “I just --” I shook my head, “I’m sick of the movie. We’ve seen it like a hundred and eighty times, I’m just tired of it is all. Needed a break. You know me, I barely can make it through any movie without gettin’ up. Not to mention one with my fat ass all up on it all the time.”

Mike shrugged noncommittally. I’m pretty sure he knew better, but he was cool and didn’t say anything.

The bathroom door opened and Brian came in. He glanced at Mike and Mike cleared his throat, “Gonna… y’know… fresh air…” and he ducked out into the hallway.

I wanted to stop him but that seemed juvenile, so I just stood there, my eyes turned back to the reflection on the faucet.

Brian walked up to the sink furthest from me. He took a deep breath, one hand on the edge of the sink. Then, “Look… I know you’ve been struggling with having patience with me,” he began.

“Don’t do this,” I interrupted him.

He looked surprised, “Do what?”

I sighed and ran my hand over the back of my neck, “This. Don’t try to make me feel like shit for things that happened two years ago --”

“I’m not,” Brian argued.

“You are. That’s why you came in here.”

He looked frustrated and it gave an edge to his voice, “I didn’t come in here to make you feel like shit, Nick, I came in here because I wanted to - to talk to you about --…” His voice broke mid-sentence. He groaned and put a hand on his forehead. “Fuck it. Never mind. Just forget it.” He turned to the bathroom door. “It doesn’t even matter.”

Normally, I would’ve stopped him, but I didn’t open my mouth. I just let him go.

When the door closed behind him, I went back to staring at my own reflection until Mike came back. “You… uh… okay?” he asked.

“Just peachy,” I answered. “C’mon, let’s just go back.”

Mike followed me back into the theater and he made sure I got to my spot before settling back into his a couple rows ahead of mine. I gripped the armrests of the chair I was in and took a deep breath. I could feel Brian’s eyes on me, but I refused to look his way again.

Things just felt so fucked up with a capital fucked up that whenever I looked at him, I felt this twinge in my stomach that hurt so much I couldn’t speak and sometimes, when I hurt like that, I get pissed off instead because it’s easier than thinking about the why.

The why was the part I never wanted to think about.





Brian

Leighanne rested her fingers on mine and she stared over at me in the dark, the movie screen reflecting off her glasses. I turned my hand over to squeeze hers and I felt tears burn the backside of my eyelids as my throat tightened up with emotion. On the screen, the fight was over, but the wounds were fresh from the bathroom.

When it was clear that Nick wasn’t gonna return my pleading look, I diverted my eyes down at my bright hot-pink shoes and willed the lump in my throat to go away.

Earlier in the week, I’d made a decision. Based on everything that had been happening over the past several years and based on a long and heart-felt talk with my wife, I’d decided that after the current tour dates were finished, I’d be taking a break from the group. It made every part of me scared as all hell to even think of it. The Backstreet Boys was everything to me, but I was dragging them down, Nick was right, and I couldn’t do that to them anymore. They meant to much to me, the fellas did, and the integrity of the band did, and it was just time. My therapy wasn’t working as well as it should have, I was trying to get better for me, like I’d said in the movie, but it wasn’t working and now I was to the point that doing it for me was just getting selfish and it was time for me to do something for them.

So far, the only people who knew was Jen, who had to prepare contractual stuff but who I also knew I could trust to keep my secret until I was ready, and Leighanne, who had come to the conclusion with me. I wanted to tell Nick myself before the other guys because somewhere deep down inside we were still best friends, whether either of us acted it or not. I knew if I didn’t tell him first the damage would be irrevocable. I owed it to him.

I was scared of how Nick would take the news. Would he say he’d been half expecting it? Would he say it was long over due? Beg me not to quit? Tell me good riddance? To go F myself? Would he blame me? Would he blame himself?

On screen, the movie was about to end already. It was the shots of us climbing up that damn mountain at the camp Kevin grew up on and Nick was clutching the ropes on the rock slope. ”Should we not do this maybe?”

”There wasn’t even any ropes here when we used to do it,” Kevin answered on the screen.

Sometimes, I thought, I felt like that - like there weren’t any ropes holding me up.

All I wanted was to be straight with him, make him understand me again. Like it used to be, when we were younger. Before whatever it was that made our bond break happened.

I held onto Leighanne’s hand tighter.

It’s really hard, telling someone that you want to respect you that you’re giving up.






Nick

It was later. After the movie, after everything, and I was sitting out on my house balcony, overlooking the ocean with AJ, who had his long-toed monkey feet up on the rail, his chair tilted back against the house, smoking a cigarette. His fingernails were like fuckin’ indeglo orange-pink-and-lime. I was standing up, staring down at the water on the rocks below, the beach swallowed by the tide.

“Rok was like fuckin’ crane-neckin’ ‘round me through ‘bout 98% of that damn movie,” he commented. He blew a ton of smoke out, like he was a chimney, and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Whenever you got up durin’ that fight scene, man, he bolted after you like he was friggin’ Cujo.”

I didn’t answer.

“Where’d y’all go anyway?” he asked. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth to take another drag.

I breathed in the ocean air. “I dunno where he went, I was in the toilet.”

AJ lowered the cigarette. “He didn’t go after you?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t see him.”

“Something’s going on with him,” AJ commented. “You noticed? All week he’s been actin’... fuckin’ weird. Less…”

“Dickheady?”

“Dickheady,” AJ laughed, “Now there’s a new one for Merrium-Webster.”

“Who?”

“The dictionary bastards,” he mumbled. He cleared his throat. I felt like reminding him that he was fucking his voice up with every breath he took, but I didn’t wanna be that guy. Plus, it was taking every ounce of willpower and restraint in my body not to knock him over the head and steal the damn pack. Lauren would kill me if she ever saw me smoking, though. “Seriously, though, you noticed it?”

“I think we’re all just tired,” I answered. I folded my hands together and stared at them.

“Tired would make me act more dicky,” AJ responded. He put his feet down and sat forward, his chair hit the floor with a thunk and he smooshed out the cigarette against the wood.

I watched the ashes fall like fireflies down over the beach and into the water below.

“Being tired usually does make dicks softer.”

AJ scoffed. “Jesus Christ,” he laughed, shaking his head, “Damn. You know, I miss the damn Frick & Frack days,” he commented. He flicked the last of the cigarette into the ocean. Lauren would’ve killed me for letting him do that, too. The whole environmental thing. But I didn’t have the energy to fight him right now.

There was something gnawing at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Kind of all the emotion of the movie and the past and Brian and everything kinda all coming to a head and it hurt like a sonofabitch deep inside.

AJ stood up next to me and leaned against the rail too. “You think you motherfuckers are ever gonna work it out?” he asked.

“I dunno if it can be,” I replied glumly.

AJ, always the advocate for things staying the way they’d always been, for going back to the way things used to be. I felt bad to tell him that I didn’t think it would ever be the same as it was. “What the hell changed anyway?” he asked. He shook his head, “I feel like I missed whatever it was. Was it something like while I was under the coke?”

I shook my head.

“So what the fuck, man?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.





Brian

Leighanne was turning down the sheets on the bed while I brushed my teeth. “So…” she took a deep breath.

“So?” I asked around the mouthful of toothpaste.

“Did you talk to him at all?” she raised her eyebrow as she stood there, holding the pillows we’d requested in the lobby. She tossed them onto the bed in their respective places.

I shook my head and went in the bathroom to spit.

Leighanne took a second, but she followed me around the corner and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching my face in the mirror from behind me. “What happened when you went after him?”

I shrugged, “He was just kinda pissed off,” I replied, running the tap and rinsing my mouth out.

“About what?” she asked.

I shrugged yet again. “He’s Nick,” I answered. “He doesn’t need any other reason. I swear he’s the moodiest person I’ve ever known in my entire life.”

Leighanne nodded emphatically.

I tossed my toothbrush into my travel bag and spit one last time. “I think AJ has it figured out anyways. You know how many times he’s told me how great it is to be five again this week? It’s like he’s trying to guilt me out of thinking about leaving.” I paused and looked down at my blue wash cloth, spinning it between my hands. When I looked back up, my eyes met hers in the mirror. “I’m not making a mistake am I?”

Leighanne held up her hands, “I told you already, I’m abstaining completely from this choice. I don’t want to be the one to blame for your decision either way. You have to do this for you and not for anybody else. Not me, not Baylee, not Nick, AJ, Kevin or Howie. Not management. Not the fans. You.

I sighed.

She reached out and ran her hands along my shoulders. “I think you’re going to make the right choice, whatever you decide you need to do.” She kissed my ear softly.

I put my hand over hers as she slid it across my chest, coming to rest, palms down, over my heart. “You’ll love me even when I’m not a - a Backstreet Boy?” I asked in a half-joking tone.

“Husband, I’ll love you no matter what,” she replied.