Chapter Four
Nick
Brian and I were in the dining room the next morning, sitting across from each other at the table, eating cereal. I’d ripped open the newspaper and dug through until I found the comics page. Brian was reading the actual news. The only sound was the rustling pages, the crunch-crunch-crunch of cereal between our teeth, and the occasional “hm” from Brian as he read.
I wiggled my toes under the table as my eyes scanned through the Garfield panels.
The deck door opened and Lauren came in, the dogs rushing around her feet to get inside, too. She was all sweaty from a run on the beach, the top of her chest all shiny around the edge of her tank top. I dropped my spoon with a clatter into my bowl.
Why the fuck isn’t she going with me? I wondered. I will so need to get laid after spending fourteen days alone with Brian. Hell. Fourteen minutes, even.
Brian looked up from the paper at me, then turned to look at her. “Morning, Lauren,” he said.
Lauren smiled as she pulled her hair out of the pony tail she’d put it in for running, “Morning, Brian,” she replied.
She walked into the kitchen.
I thought about following her, throwing her up against the fridge and having my way with her, but that would be kinda awkward with Brian sitting here in the dining room and all.
Especially since you could see the fridge from where he was sitting.
Brian turned back to the newspaper.
I crunched my cereal.
Somewhere in the house, there was a clock ticking, and suddenly the tick-tock-tick-tock rhythm seemed super loud and it was all I could hear. I looked around, trying to spot the culprit of the noise.
“What time is our flight?” Brian asked.
I turned to look at him, sure Lauren had come back in the room because he couldn’t possibly be talking to me. He hadn’t said a word to me since he’d come downstairs. Well, other than to complain that all we had was soymilk and then claim he didn’t know I was lactose intolerant. Everyone in the friggin’ world knows I’m lactose intolerant.
Everyone who pays attention and gives a shit, that is.
Which, obviously, Brian does not (give a shit, I mean) because he did not know about the lactose intolerance.
But Lauren hadn’t come in the room, and he was, indeed, talking to me.
Well fuck me sideways and call me a zebra, I thought.
“I dunno, like noon, I think,” I replied. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and swept my thumb into my passbook for the boarding pass. “Yeah, noon.”
“Okay.” He turned back to the newspaper.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Seriously, where the hell was that clock at?
Lauren came back out. She was carrying a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries. She sat down beside me and held out a little cup of blueberries. “Here, eat these. You need to consume something healthy and not just all that sugary cereal.” She’d been against my French Toast Crunch since the moment I’d been excited they were producing it again.
I’d had to make a special trip to Target to buy it because she’d refused to be present when I did.
If she had her way, I’d always be eating like fiber bran sticks or something.
“Okay.” I popped one of the blueberries in my mouth.
“How’d you sleep, Brian?” she asked, satisfied as I delved into a handful of the berries.
“Slept okay,” Brian replied. There was something reluctant in his voice, though. I chewed my blueberries, watching him suspiciously. But he didn’t elaborate.
Personally, I hadn’t slept much. First, when we went to bed I’d spent like a half hour trying to convince Lauren to go with me on the promo run with Brian. When she’d absolutely-positively refused, we’d had some pretty wild (and fuckin’ hot as hell, if I do say so myself) bon voyage sex. But then, after the sex was over and she’d fallen asleep, I’d laid there in the dark, unable to stop the thoughts and memories and nightmares. The constant echoing in my head of the moment when my friendship with Brian shattered had kept me awake all night long.
We all three fell into silence.
The tick-tock-tick-tock sound returned with vengeance.
“Where the fuck is that clock?” I asked Lauren.
“What clock?” she asked.
“You can’t hear that?” I asked, standing up. Nacho ran over, jumping up and down, used to getting the leftover milk from my cereal bowl when I was finished eating in the morning. “There isn’t even a clock out here, what the fuck? It’s like fuckin’ Godzilla clock.” I walked around, really studying everything on the walls.
Lauren was looking at me with a raised eyebrow, “I don’t hear a clock, but there’s one in the kitchen, maybe that’s it?”
I went into the kitchen and pulled the clock off the wall and removed the batteries from the back, laying them down on the counter before going back out to the dining room. I sat down again and listened.
Tick-tock-tick-tock.
“The fuck,” I complained.
“Baby,” Lauren’s voice was soothing, but also nervous. “You okay?”
“There’s a fuckin’ clock ticking somewhere and it’s driving me crazy,” I said.
Lauren looked at Brian helplessly.
Brian tilted his head and listened, “I don’t hear it either.” He paused. “Wait. Is it my watch?” he held his arm up and the ticking got louder.
“Fucking hell Brian, that watch is loud as shit,” I complained.
He held it up to his ear, “Well I mean, I hear it when I have it up like this, but --”
I covered my ears.
It might’ve been an exaggeration, maybe it really wasn’t as loud as I was acting like, but suddenly it seemed like it really was.
Brian sighed, “I gotta go pack anyway,” he announced and he picked up his cereal bowl and carried it out into the kitchen, Nacho following, excited about the prospect of having two cereal bowls to finish.
Lauren’s eyes were asking a hundred thousand questions when she looked at me as I lowered my hands from my ears.
“I hate ticking sounds,” I said.
“I can’t believe you could even hear that,” she commented.
“It was silent as hell in here,” I replied.
Lauren shrugged and reached for the newspaper pages Brian had left behind, reading as she ate her oatmeal and I sat beside her in a much more comfortable silence than the one Brian and I had been sitting in all morning. I ate my blueberries and reveled in the absence of the ticking clock.
“You really gotta lighten up, baby,” she said as she chewed.
Brian
I took my watch off on the stairs and when I got to my room I shoved it deep into my suitcase. There was no way in hell he could hear the ticking from my watch, he was just being a diva -- as usual. Everything had to be Nick’s way or he’d complain and whine and eventually get it his way just because we were so desperate to shut him the hell up we’d do whatever it took. It was so irritating the way he did it, too, like a little kid. I threw myself onto the bed and closed my eyes.
All I wanted was a nap. After the awful night of trying to sleep through the sounds of Lauren and Nick having sex through half the night, I was exhausted and I didn’t know how much more of Nick’s bullshit I could take without killing him.
I woke up about twenty minutes later, little after nine, and grabbed my suitcase. If the flight was at noon, then we needed to get going. I made sure I had everything and then hauled my stuff down the steps into the foyer. Nick’s suitcases were there, too. Yes, suitcases because, again, Nick was a diva and couldn’t pack just one bag. Probably one whole suitcase was nothing but packages of damn underwear, I thought.
Probably that one, I thought, looking at the largest bag.
I waited. It was almost ten before Nick and Lauren came downstairs and I’m guessing by the fact that Nick was still tucking in his shirt and his hair was all messy that they’d been - er - busy until just a moment before. I went to look at my watch, but it was still in my suitcase, per Nick’s obnoxious sonic hearing. “We need to go,” I said.
“I know, I’m comin’,” Nick answered, but he bolted off into the depths of the house.
I looked at Lauren.
She smiled wanly.
It took a ridiculous amount of time to get Nick out of the house and I had to practically herd him through LAX to get him to the gate - only just in time. We were among the last passengers on the flight by the time we got there. “See, relax,” Nick chirped as we sat down in our seats in the mid-section of the plane, “All that damn rushing and we’re here just fine.” He shook his head.
He was mostly grumpy because I’d literally yanked him out of the Starbucks line on the concourse.
“Barely,” I said pointedly. I adjusted the seatbuckle across my lap. Nick was messing with the backpack he’d carried on board, pulling out his headphones and iPod. A woman was waiting impatiently for him to sit down so she could go by, but he was taking his time. “Nick,” I said, “Move.”
“What?” He looked at me, then at her and shifted slightly so she could squeeze by.
I rolled my eyes. He was so damn self absorbed, I couldn’t understand how and when he’d gotten that way. I felt like smacking him sometimes.
Armed with his music and a stack of sports magazines, his Playstation Portable, and a small bag of granola he’d managed to buy at the newsstand on the way by, he finally took a seat. He spent a good ten minutes shoving all his stuff into the pouch in front of his knees, then spread out so one foot was occupying some of my space and the other was under the seat in front of him. He let out a long, low sigh and pulled his Beats over his ears.
I leaned back.
“Welcome aboard flight 285 nonstop to New York, connections to Boston, Toronto, and Paris... We’re expecting pretty smooth skies for the beginning portion of our flight today…” The pilot’s voice filled the cabin as he ran through the usual take-off announcements. “...and we ask at this time that you stow all of your belongings and turn off any personal electronics until the flight attendants give you the okay signal.”
I looked at Nick. He had his iPod on still. I nudged him and he didn’t react, so I nudged him harder. “Nick,” I said. He ignored me. “Nick.” I reached for his headphones and pulled them forward.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“They want you to turn your devices off.”
He scowled and turned the iPod off. “I would’ve when we started movin’,” he grumbled.
I sighed.
And to think we hadn’t even left LA yet.
As the plane was taxiing across the runway, getting ready to take off, I decided that I’d use the time on the flight to tell Nick that I was leaving the group. It was as good a time as ever, I thought, because there wasn’t anything else for either of us to do but talk to each other. As the plane lifted off the ground and the gravity messed with my stomach, I clutched the arm rests and closed my eyes and imagined Nick and I finally having a heart to heart. Maybe by the time I actually left the band, Nick and I would be friends again and I wouldn’t end up losing him completely.
But when the plane had leveled out and I opened my eyes again, Nick had already pulled his headphones back over his ears, tugged the strings on his hoodie tight so his eyes were covered, and leaned back, listening to his music, which was loud enough that I could just barely hear the bassline making them hum.
Nick
I’ve never been a big fan of long plane rides - or any plane rides at all, in general for that matter - but that flight from Los Angeles to New York to Paris was the longest fucking flight ever because I was stuck with Brian next to me and my fuckin’ iPod battery died somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. I’d glanced at Brian and waved my iPod, “Battery died,” I complained.
He’d shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.
I’d turned on the TV screen in front of me and he complained about the film I’d chosen to watch and about the brightness of the light overhead keeping him from sleeping and for pity’s sake Nick, can’t you just take a nap or something?
It was annoying as all hell.
Especially the part where he had to go to the bathroom every five seconds.
“Excuse me,” he’d said no less than ten times during a fifteen hour flight. He’d shuffle by me, sticking his ass in my face and walk down the center aisle, touching the back of every seat like he was having a rough time balancing, even though the plane was perfectly level. Then he’d come back after taking an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, again touching every seat, this petrified look on his face like his walking around on the plane might disturb it’s ability to stay in the air or something, and then squeeze his way back into the row, again sticking his ass in my face. Only to repeat the whole process like an hour later.
One of the times he went, he took like ten minutes to take a pee so when he sat down, I glanced at him, “What happened? You get initiated in the Mile High Club or something?” I grinned because I thought this was pretty funny and, back in the day at least, it would’ve started a conversation about whether either of us was actually in the MHC, but instead he just gave me this look of disapproval.
Right, because he’s a goody-goody and the Mile High Club is above him.
I bet him and Leighanne only have Missionary Sex every single night.
If they had sex at all. Maybe they were too holy and pure for something as dirty and forbidden as sexual intercourse. Or at least they weren’t allowed to talk about it, obviously, because I was clearly a heathen devil worshipper for even suggesting he was a member of the Mile High Club.
God forbid.
But, anyways, we’d somehow managed to make it all the way to France and now I finally had gotten the Starbucks he’d denied me at both LAX and JFK. I felt a lot better as we stood by the luggage carousel and the caffeine was starting to kick in. Brian was still acting like he was in a rush, hurrying to collect the bags off the carousel as they came out of the chute rather than letting them come ‘round the conveyer belt to where I stood.
“Would it kill you to help?” he grunted as he tossed my large suitcase onto the trolley he’d pulled over.
“It ain’t my fault you’re runnin’ after ‘em all,” I said with a shrug and I reached down and grabbed my backpack from the floor, tossing it onto the trolley. “I’m tryin’ to help man, you ain’t lettin’ me.”
Brian sighed, “Well, you can push the trolley at least.”
I grabbed hold of the pole and pushed it along as he led the way down the concourse toward the front door, where a driver was waiting for us to drive us on to the hotel where our entourage would be waiting. I was just glad that our bodyguards would be there and I’d get to talk to Mike or someone - as long as there was anyone else to talk to besides Brian, it would be an improvement.
How’s it going so far? Lauren had texted me, and I balanced my coffee cup, phone, and the trolley pushing job as I tried to tap out my response.
Brian’s being kind of a dick, I tapped, too distracted by my mission to reply to notice that he’d come to a sudden stop ahead of me.
“Ouch, what the hell? Watch what you’re doing will you?” Brian glanced back. The trolley had driven into his ankle.
“Sorry,” I apologized.
Brian shook his head.
The driver helped us load the cases into the back of the car and we got in, crunched together in the backseat.
Brian
The hotel was quite a way from the airport and Nick was really too tall for the backseat of the car they’d picked us up in. His legs were crushed up against the seat in front of him and he was hunched down from the low ceiling, almost in a ball. I fit perfectly, but I’m also almost half foot shorter than he is.
“My fuckin’ neck is killin’ me,” he complained when we got to the hotel and climbed out of the car. He was rubbing his neck with the ball of his hand as the driver collected our bags from the back. I shouldered mine and waited until a busboy had come out and put Nick’s onto another trolley, and he followed Nick and I into the lobby. Mike, Nick’s bodyguard, was waiting for us.
“There you are,” he called, getting up from a table in the lounge. He came over and Nick practically jumped on him with excitement. Mike laughed, “Long trip?”
“Yes,” Nick announced enthusiastically. “Impossibly long.” He glanced at me meaningfully. “Alls I want right now is the hottest fuckin’ shower this place has on tap. Where’s our rooms?”
Mike’s grin shook a little at the edge with apparent humor. “Come with me.”
We followed along to the elevator and Mike pressed a button with his thumb and we rode up, the busboy and the trolley making it a tight fit. When the door opened, Mike led us down the hall and he pointed to a hotel room door, “There you are,” he said, standing by. His mouth twitched.
Nick stared at the door, “Me or Brian?” he asked.
As soon as he said it I knew the answer.
Mike cleared his throat, “Jen cut the reservations down to, uh, one room, to… accommodate… the both of you.”
Nick stared at Mike.
“She, uh, said if you have any problems with sharing a room with each other you can call her and she’ll tell you, uh, where to go.” Mike’s amusement was definitely not at all concealed as his voice quivered with it.
I took a deep breath and reached for one of the keys Mike was holding out and headed into the room.
“Son of a bitch, you mean we gotta share rooms, too? This is bullshit. I’m going downstairs and getting a room with my own fuckin’ money,” Nick said and I heard him storm off.
I slugged my bag onto one of the two double beds in the room.
“Nick…” Mike called out, half laughing, even as he went after the pissed off Nick.
I sat down on the bed.
The busboy looked into the room and cleared his throat, “Where should I put these, sir?” he asked in a thick French accent.
“Oh, sorry,” I stood up and pulled a couple euros out of my wallet and handed it to him as a tip, “You can leave them in the hall there. Nick can carry them in himself.”
I grinned to myself as the busboy unloaded the suitcases literally right in the middle of the hallway and pushed the trolley away. I went back in the bedroom and laid down on the bed and fell asleep before Nick and Mike came back.
As much as I’d like to think Nick had to bring the suitcases into the room himself, I’m sure he bitched and moaned until Mike did it for him anyway.
There's Us by Pengi
