Nick
I was still in a trance, staring at the Polaroid when the phone vibrated against my knee.
“Nick… you gonna get that?” Lauren asked gently.
I reached for it on auto-pilot. “Hullo?” I asked as I swept my thumb over the screen to answer the call. My heart felt strange, heavy and kinda squeezed in my chest from all the emotions coursing through me. My voice came out funny.
“Nick? It’s Jen.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture in my hand.
I wondered if Brian remembered when it was taken.
I certainly did.
“Nick?”
I’d almost forgotten Jen was on the line. “Uh-huh?”
“I’m calling to check in,” she said, “Brian’s been getting kind of antsy to get the contracts filed and his departure finalized. I’m just wondering when I can expect yours?”
I blinked, unable to wrap my mind around what she was saying to me. My brain felt like mush. “My what? My departure? I’m not quitting.”
“No… your contract,” she said.
“I sent my contract to you,” I said dumbly.
“I have Brian, Howie, AJ, and Kevin,” Jen replied. “Is it in the mail?”
“No,” I said. “I emailed it to you. I was the first one to email it to you.”
“Actually, AJ was the first one that sent it to me,” she argued, “I remember because it was really strange, given past experience.”
“No, Jen, I swear… I sent that. Check your email, you must’ve missed it.”
Jen was quiet. I could hear her clicking around on her computer. I looked at Lauren, whose eyes were questioning me silently, and then back at the picture. My heart started pounding. “No, Nick, I definitely don’t have that from you. I just double-checked.”
“Jen, I swear to fuck I sent that already,” I argued. I leaned forward, balancing my phone on my shoulder, not wanting to put the picture down and grabbed my iPad off the coffee table again. My hands moved quickly, swiping across the screen to my email. That notification I kept ignoring popped up… reminding me I had a message in my drafts waiting to be sent…
Suddenly I remembered… my iPad was on airplane mode when I tried to send the email. I was gonna send it when I got to the airport.
My iPad. Was on. Airplane. Mode.
I never sent the fucking contract.
“Oh my God,” I choked.
“Nick?” Jen asked, “When can I expect the contract from you? Brian’s not officially done until you’ve sent it in and we get the contracts finalized.”
“I… I’ll work on it,” I answered, and then I hung up quickly before she could say anything more. I chucked my phone onto the cushion beside me and looked at Lauren, slack-jawed and wide eyed.
“What is it?” she asked.
I stared up at her, processing the information I’d just been given.
I looked back at the photograph in my hand. “I never… sent in… the contract.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
What does it mean? I thought to myself.
I looked up at Lauren. “It means…” I felt shaky all over inside and out. “It means…” my eyes fluttered around the room and landed on the shelf above the TV, on Lauren’s bowl. “Kintsugi.” I leaped up. Lauren just barely caught the iPad before it flew to the floor. “It means kintsugi!” I yelled.
Lauren looked at me like I was crazy.
“Kint - fuckin’ - sugi!” I shouted, waving the picture in her face. I bolted for the stairs, still clutching the Polaroid in my hand. It suddenly occurred to me I had a lot to do.
“Nick, where are you going?” Lauren called, confused.
“Upstairs,” I shouted back, “I gotta print the contract and pack.”
“Pack?”
“I gotta go to Atlanta.”
Brian
I was anxious all night, waiting for the phone to ring.
When Leighanne got home with Baylee, we ate dinner and watched TV, though I couldn’t tell you a single thing that we watched.
I felt like a prisoner waiting on a sentence.
A life sentence.
“Brian,” Leighanne said, nudging me, “Are you coming to bed?”
“Yeah,” I nodded numbly, suddenly realizing that the TV was off and the only light in the room was the one flooding into the living room from the stairs because I’d tuned out so long that they’d given up and gone to bed on me.
“I’m worried about you,” Leighanne confessed as she followed me up the stairs, “The way you’re acting is scaring me. I love you, and I don’t like seeing you like this. Maybe you should call Jen and tell her you don’t want to quit the band after all.”
“I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head.
“Why not?” she asked. We’d reached our bedroom and she closed the door behind us and went to turn down the blankets on the bed.
I sighed, “Because, the whole point of me leaving the band is that it’s better for them,” I replied. “They can make better music without me.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Leighanne said strongly.
I shook my head. “It is true,” I said, “They can produce music that will sound the same when they sing it live. There won’t be any worrying about whether my vocals hold out on us. There won’t be anymore producers asking them in whispered voices what’s going on with me. If there’s one thing for certain, Leighanne, it’s that I’m not doing this for myself. I can’t back down from doing what I believe is right.”
“But this isn’t something trivial, husband,” she argued, “It’s not like giving up chocolate for Lent, it’s like giving up your life.” She sighed as she crawled into the bed and started rubbing lavender scented body lotion up and down her arms.
“And theirs, too,” I pointed out.
Leighanne sighed.
“I’ll get it together,” I said, sounding a lot more confident than I felt. “It’s just going to take time, you know, but I’ll be okay in the end. I’ll be fine. I just gotta get there is all.” I pulled my jeans off and tossed them into the laundry hamper, shrugging my sweatshirt off and laying it on the chair. I got in bed, boxers and a t-shirt, and laid down, one arm stretched up behind my head, the other wrapped around Leighanne as she leaned into me. “I just have to figure out what’s next,” I murmured.
She pressed her head against my chest. “You’re strong, I never doubted if you’d be okay or fine. I want more than okay, fine for you, Brian,” she said. “I want amazing. I want breathtaking. I want you to be truly happy.”
I wanted to say then you need to pray for a miracle, but I didn’t.
I didn’t believe a miracle was coming.
Nick
I didn’t give myself time to think. I just printed the contract, scribbled my signature and a quick note on the Polaroid and threw them both into a manilla envelope. I kissed Lauren goodbye, promised I’d be back by morning, and backed out the driveway with sweaty palms. I felt reckless and desperate, like I was losing my mind just a little.
I’ve always liked driving at night, liked the way the headlights look reflecting off the paint on the road and the signs, the eerie feeling like you’re the last person on the earth as your car moves alone on it’s journey. It’s quiet, driving alone at night, and it gives you time to think or to sing along with the radio, isolated from the rest of humanity. It’s soul cleansing.
And I definitely needed my soul cleansed.
I drove south on I-24 through Tennessee into Georgia, where I switched to I-75 in Chattanooga. I felt scared and excited at exactly the same time, with no real knowledge of what I would say or do when I got to his house. I’d just put the thing in his mailbox, I’d decided at one point. Then at another I’d decided I wanted to tell him about kintsugi, another I told myself that I’d rip the contract up in his face. Or maybe I’d just leave it on the doorstep and ring the bell.
None of the scenarios in my head had any words for me to say to him though.
Well, except for two words… I’m sorry.
Five hours at slightly over 70 miles an hour and I was pulling off the exit and weaving through backroads until I saw his mailbox in my headlights, the reflective numbers glowing in the dark. As I put on my blinker to turn into his driveway, I noticed that the clock on the dashboard said 12:48, which meant it was almost two in the morning with the time zone change between Nashville and Atlanta.
I pulled up to the front of the house, fully intending on just leaving the envelope on his doorstep, but when I got out of the Jeep and walked up to the house, I just had this strange feeling wash over me that I needed to see Brian and tell him face-to-face. So, before I could overthink it or change my mind, I pressed the doorbell firmly, still unsure what I would say when he opened the door.
Brian
I was laying in bed, wide awake, staring up at the ceiling. Leighanne had fallen asleep hours ago. All that was left was me and the dark and the pale glow of the moonlight filtered through the sheer yellow curtains in our bedroom window. I wanted to be okay with everything that was happening, I wanted to be the selfless guy who does whatever it takes to make the lives of his friends better. But it hurt, deep down in me, I felt like I’d been betrayed by life, by God himself. Tears pooled in my eyes as I lay there, rolling arbitrarily down the sides of my face. I didn’t bother to wipe them away, not wanting the movement to awaken my wife.
There’s other things in life besides singing, I told myself. You have been given other gifts. Other talents.
Maybe God was taking away my ability to sing so that I would focus more on those other gifts. Maybe this was his way of nudging me to be closer to my wife and my son, to be more involved in my personal community. I could still sing at church, I could join a choir. I could teach others how to use the gifts of music that God had given them. I could still do music. I just couldn’t do it on the scale that Backstreet Boys demanded I did. I’d been given twenty-two years of that particular gift. Maybe it was just time to let it go.
I looked over at the clock on the night stand. It was almost two in the morning. I closed my eyes.
At first, I thought I was dreaming the sound of a car engine rumbling outside, the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. But the sound got louder as the vehicle came closer up the long stretch and then the headlights reflected through the window as it turned in the loop around the fountain out front. Taillights as it came to a stop bathed the room in red glow. I moved slowly, sitting up in bed and rolled so my legs swung over the edge. I grabbed my sweatshirt from the chair, shrugging it on as I walked in my stocking feet and boxer shorts to the window to look out.
There was a white Jeep in the driveway.
“What the hell…?” I muttered.
Then the doorbell rang.
The dogs were barking from Baylee’s room and Leighanne groaned on the bed as the bell rang again and again. She muttered, rolling over, her eyes squinting at the moonlight. “What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s here,” I replied. “Stay here, I’ll go check it out.” I hurried down the stairs, zipping up my sweatshirt as I went, flipping on the lights. The bell was being rung manically, over and over and over, almost in a panic mode. I paused on the way to the door and grabbed an umbrella from the stand in the foyer and paused, the bell ringing three times as I took a deep breath and opened the door, umbrella at the ready to protect myself if needed.
Standing on the step was Nick.
I blinked in surprise.
“Nick?”
He looked scared to death. He stared at me, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water. Then he struck his hands out and in it was a manilla envelope. “I don’t know how to say it,” he said, “So… here.”
“What is this?” I asked, taking the envelope from him. I opened it and peered inside.
“My contract,” he said. “My signed contract.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“Because,” he said, “It’s the last one. If you wanna quit… submit it. Send it to Jen tomorrow. If you don’t…” he shook his head, “Then… then don’t. But… it should be your choice. Not mine. If you do this, it should be for you.”
He didn’t say anything else.
He just turned and walked back down the path to his Jeep.
“Nick, why the hell are you doing this?” I demanded, taking a couple steps out into the cold night air. The cement of the stoop seemed to zing the bottom of my feet right through my socks.
He paused by the car door. “Because…” he stopped mid-sentence and thought for a moment. Then: “In issue 583, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Superman walked into a room full of golden kryptonite to save everyone he cared about.”
I could barely breathe.
“Some people said, when the comic was released, that he was dead… but it turned out all he needed was for someone to move his body to the Fortress so that his Kryptonian cells would have time to regenerate.” He shrugged. “He just needed some therapy and someone to believe in him enough to get him there.”
Tears were burning my eyes.
Nick got into his car.
I was too stunned by his words to speak, even to stop him from leaving. So I stood there, watching, as his tail lights faded and disappeared from view down the driveway.
I turned the manilla envelope over and the contract slid out.
And something else, too.
A Polaroid had fallen to the ground. I bent down to pick it up, my eyes roving over it in the light spilling from the open door behind me. I could remember the moment it was snapped so clearly in my mind, like it was seconds ago instead of decades.
