It’s June tomorrow.
Abby stared at the monitor. She didn’t know where to go from there. June. A year since they’d met. Twelve weird months. And the last one had been the weirdest of all. Abby was so glad that May was over. She had started the month by being sick and was ending it confused and worried.
Her life was getting crazier by the moment. She felt that somewhere along the line, she’d lost control of it. The closer it got to June, the worse it got. All she wanted was for Nick to come home, come to this apartment, take her in his arms and make love to her. That’s all she wanted.
She didn’t want to have a wedding reception. She didn’t want to have to deal with things like flowers and guest lists and appetizers. She didn’t care where people sat or what wine they drank. She cared about Nick.
She didn’t want to have a symphony fundraising concert. She didn’t want to talk about ticket sales and programs and future revenues from video sales. She didn’t want to hear from all the people suddenly interested in volunteering in hopes that they might get a ticket. She wanted to hear from Nick.
She didn’t want to go to New York and ‘launch’ her book. She didn’t care about interviews and press releases and sitting in a book store signing her name. She didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be with Nick.
And she didn’t want to be on national television. She really, really, really, didn’t want that. But it was going to happen. Oprah had laid it down. This was the way it was going to be. She didn’t want popstars. She wanted culture. She didn’t want to talk about selling records and making money. She wanted to talk about giving back.
Oprah was going to interview each of the Boys separately. She was going to talk to AJ about Save the Music. Kevin would get to discuss one environmental issue. He was allowed to bring a clip. Howie would be interviewed along with a doctor who was researching lupus. Brian would get to talk up the Healthy Heart Club and discuss the programs he supported. All of that would take place in the first half hour. The second half was going to be devoted to the performance with the Symphony. And who was going to discuss that? Why, native Chicago philanthropist and newly-published author, Abby Fremont-Carter and her illustrator husband Nick, that was who!
Oprah read the stories and loved them. But when she found out that the profits for each one would go to a different children’s charity, she knew she had the hook for the show. It was a deal-breaker. Either Abby agreed to be on the show with Nick, or the whole thing was off.
It made Abby want to throw up. In New York, it made Lawrence Shapiro dance on his desk.
Dear Nick,
What’s wrong?
Abby stared at the words and sighed. She wished she had the answer to that. She thought back over the month of May. After Nick left, she’d had a busy two weeks, trying to get everything in place so that she could make the announcement at the committee meeting. During that time, there had been the usual emails back and forth between her and Nick, sometimes quite lengthy ones, while the details of the concert were getting worked out. They had talked on AIM three times the first week and twice the second.
And then suddenly, it stopped. Nick’s daily email became shorter and shorter and they hadn’t talked on AIM once during the rest of the month. And the emails were…Abby couldn’t put her finger on it…forced. Yes, that was it, she thought. The spontaneity was gone. He was choosing every word carefully. There wasn’t much in the way of humor any more either. Just ‘how are you doing, the show went well’, and then filler…what he ate for lunch that day or some comment about one of the fellas. The details of the Chicago concert were taken out of their hands by then and passed on to management, so they didn’t have that to discuss, but they’d always managed before.
Abby wasn’t sure what to do about it. She wasn’t sure if there was even a problem or if she was merely projecting her own anxieties onto him. Everything else in her life had changed during the last month, why not this?
Changes. Heavens, there were lots of them. Her mother had suddenly decided that Abby was a grown-up and should be consulted on things. Abby was delighted that her mother finally listened to her opinion. The drawback, of course, was that now Abby was expected to have an opinion. ‘Do whatever you want, Mother’ didn’t cut it any more. Abby spent way more time than she wanted to thinking about trivial issues to do with the party. And she had noticed, that her opinion was only honored when it was the same as her mother’s. If she dared to disagree…
Roses. She had dared to disagree on that one. “But it’s June,” said her mother. “June and roses go together.” No roses, Abby had reiterated, for the twelfth time. But…protested her mother. Abby had been firm. She didn’t like roses and neither did Nick. And she didn’t have time to have this conversation over and over.
In fact, she had lots of time to do that because of another change in her life. Ronni had disappeared…and taken Suzie and Clarice with her. There were no more lunches, no more rides to meetings, no more phone calls. This didn’t bother Abby; she’d never liked spending time with any of them, but it was so sudden. Abby guessed that Ronni had only been cultivating her to get access to the fan conference. It was weird at the meetings, though. Ronni seemed friendly enough, but she looked at Abby like she knew something Abby didn’t. Abby tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Ronni was up to no good. The blonde woman just looked too damn smug about everything.
And now Princess Penelope was being made public. Abby was flying to New York for a modest book launch and signing. She had fought with Lawrence every step of the way. He wanted to make a big splash; Abby would be content with a tiny ripple. She finally agreed to an interview with the New York Times book reviewer, a modest press conference that would be tightly controlled with no Backstreet overtones and a signing at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Rockefeller Center. She should be excited at the thought of two days in New York, she knew, but she just saw it as two days when she would be out of contact with Nick.
Dear Nick,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“What’s wrong with Nick?” AJ wanted to know.
Howie shrugged. “Hard to say.”
They’d all noticed it. Nick hadn’t smiled in days. He was absolutely silent during the ‘quiet little thang’ on stage unless someone directed a question at him, and then he answered in monosyllables. He sang and danced and interacted with the audience, but he went immediately to his bus or his hotel room afterward and spent the time alone. He was quiet in interviews and tried to choose the seat furthest away from the questioner.
Touring was hard on them all. They weren’t as young as they used to be and they all had lives outside of the group now. They all had their ups and downs, days when they were grumpy or sad or just not feeling like being ‘on’ all the time. They’d learned to recognized the signs and avoid each other when they needed to.
Howie was pretty easygoing and didn’t have too many down days. AJ’s down days were exacerbated by the fact that everyone got really, really concerned when he was down and he spent the time trying to bring himself back up so that people wouldn’t think he was ‘going there again’. Brian growled at people and then went off by himself. Kevin just looked at you and you knew. Step way back. Nick hadn’t had any down days on this tour, except for the one when he left Boston without Abby. He’d been having a ball…singing, dancing, hanging with the fellas, getting married…he was one happy man.
So what was wrong now? It was nearly June. They had a busy month coming up, what with the regular tour stuff, and now the added week in Chicago with the concert and the wedding party.
AJ thought there was more to it than just tour fatigue. He’d watched Nick carefully and then he’d gone to Terence. This was going to be a tricky conversation. Terence worked for Nick and it was kind of like a doctor/patient relationship. Terence had to be very careful about what he said and AJ was putting him in an awkward position just by asking. But AJ wanted to know. And Terence was happy that someone else was noticing.
Getting Terence alone, without Nick being around, wasn’t easy. AJ cornered him at a venue while Nick was in makeup. He talked about generalities for a minute and then moved the talk to a more specific area. How was it riding on Nick’s bus these days? Was he as quiet on the bus as he was…AJ waved his hand around.
Terence looked around him to see if anyone was listening. “It’s pretty quiet,” he admitted.
“Anything I can do?” asked AJ.
Terence didn’t know the answer to that. He chose his words very carefully. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think the problem is here.”
“Maybe in Chicago, then?” AJ said it half to himself.
“Maybe.” Terence said that to the wall.
“Abby?” AJ muttered in surprise.
“I didn’t say that,” responded Terence.
The two men drifted apart.
Terence didn’t know what was wrong with Nick, but he knew something was. There was no more laughter over the email. Nick seemed reluctant even to open it. Terence used to ask after Abby but he’d stopped doing that. Nick used to tell him what she was doing or something funny she’d said. He even used to start it. “Hey, Terence, listen to this.” But he didn’t do that any more. And the other day when Terence had asked how she was doing, Nick had looked up at him from his computer like he didn’t know who the bodyguard was talking about. Yeah, the problem was in Chicago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The problem was in Chicago, all right, but it wasn’t Abby. It was Ronni. At one of the committee meetings, when Abby was occupied elsewhere, Ronni had ‘accidentally’ knocked Abby’s datebook on the floor. When she bent to pick it up, she’d quickly flipped to the Addresses section. Under ‘C’, she found Nick’s email address.
And she used it.
Dear Nick,
The first time he opened one, in the middle of May, he thought it was from Abby. He didn’t even look at the address. All his email came from Abby. He was halfway through it before he realized that it was not his wife, but his…his former girlfriend…his would-have-been wife…his…
Ronni was a clever, clever girl and took things very slowly. She made no sexual overtures or even suggested anything personal. She made it all about the upcoming concert, made it sound like she was doing something in an official capacity.
Dear Nick,
It was so nice to see you and Howie again at the concert. You all put on a wonderful show.
I am delighted, as is all of Chicago, that you will be coming back in June for the performance with the symphony. That will be an outstanding event, I am sure.
I am on the organizing committee and I need to know of any special requirements that you all might have backstage the night of the concert…bottled water, juice…
Please let me know.
Ronni Fenton
Nick stared at the email for a long time. He was angry with himself for his behavior in Chicago…for the kiss. At first he tried to rationalize it that Ronni had kissed him, but he knew he’d kissed her back. And he knew he’d enjoyed it. He didn’t like that he had enjoyed it. He knew that he had hurt Abby, even if she didn’t know anything about it…even though she had made it clear that the ‘friends forever’ plan was still in effect. She had made sure that she told him, even in her fevered state, that she hadn’t meant what she said in the email. She hadn’t meant the word ‘love’.
But that didn’t matter. He could not have anything more to do with Ronni. Except that…
Dear Ronni,
Thank you for your email.
No, that’s no good. That will encourage her to send another one. Be businesslike. All business.
Dear Mrs. Fenton,
Oh yeah, that’ll fool her!
Dear Ronni,
We like to have bottled water and fruit juice backstage…no soda and nothing with milk.
Nick
Nick thought about the email all day. And just like with so many other things in his life, he changed his mind about it a dozen times and ended up more confused than ever. At first, he wanted to avoid Ronni like the plague. But then he thought that might not be the right thing. It might look like he was avoiding her because he was afraid he’d fall for her again…or that he hadn’t gotten over her in the first place. It was over between them, after all, and he should be able to carry on a conversation with her, treat her like anyone else. He had done that before the concert. She was just another fan with a backstage pass. It was only when she came into his dressing room afterward that things went wrong. And if Abby had been there with him like she should have been, nothing would have happened.
Nick spent the rest of the evening beating himself up for blaming Abby. It wasn’t her fault that she was sick. It wasn’t her fault that Ronni came onto him. And it certainly wasn’t her fault that Nick had succumbed to a moment of weakness. He wondered if he would feel better if he confessed to her. He wondered that for about three seconds before he realized that that was certainly not something you did over email or AIM.
Nick sat down at the computer the next morning with shaking hands. Please let Ronni have taken the hint of his abrupt message and gone away.
You’ve got mail.
Two new messages.
Shit!
Nick opened Abby’s first.
Dear Nick,
Did you know that there are more than twenty ways to fold a table napkin? The mind boggles at the very thought. LOL!!
I was going to scan all the diagrams and send them to you, so you could help decide which one would be most appropriate, but you’ve got that whole tour thing happening, so maybe you wouldn’t have time.
Let me know if there’s anything special the guys will need when they are here. I know they’re not bringing their entourage.
Take care,
Abby
Terence watched out of the corner of his eye. Something about yesterday’s email had turned Nick inside out for the day. And now he was staring at this one. No laughing, no smiling…just staring. Terence watched to see how he would reply.
Nick didn’t reply. He clicked open another email.
