“Yes, it is,” said a girl.
“This is Matty in the Morning calling from KISS 108.”
Tammy let out a squeal. “Omigod, omigod, omigod.”
“You seem excited about something, Tammy,” said Matt Siegel, who had been doing this job for twenty years and still loved every minute of it. He looked over at his entertainment reporter, Billy Costa, who had been with him for a long time. He grinned and shook his head. Teenagers! They never changed.
“It’s the contest, right?” Tammy was hyperventilating.
“Yes, it is,” said Matty heartily. He’d thought about torturing the girl and telling her that she had come in second and was going to get a lovely basket of cosmetic goodies. His slogan for his show, after all, was “putting the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional”. But he took pity on her. “You’re going on a Dream Date with a Backstreet Boy.”
The scream nearly pierced his eardrum. The technician in the sound booth spun a dial quickly.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod. I can’t believe this. This can’t be happening.” Tammy was crying now.
“Now, Tammy, calm down. Get your head together. You have a decision to make. There are five of them after all. And you can only pick one. Will it be…?” Matty waved to the technician who started the sound byte that Greater Boston teenagers had been listening to for the last two weeks. A deep bass voice intoned, “Kevin…Nick…Howie…Brian…AJ…” while Larger than Life played in the background.
“So, Tammy, what’s your…?”
“Nick.” It was a cross between a whisper and a sob.
“You seem pretty sure about that. Have you given this a lot of thought? Did you consider the other guys?”
“No, it has to be Nick. I love him.”
“Well, I’m sure his new wife will be happy to hear that,” laughed Matty.
“Oh,” said Tammy, in a tiny voice. “Oh, does that mean he won’t want to go with me?”
“No, no, it’s all good.” Matty reassured her. “We checked this all out thoroughly. The guys were thrilled about the contest and they all agreed that they would go, if they were chosen. Nick’s wife gave him permission.”
“She could come too,” said Tammy.
“What?!” Matty and Billy laughed out loud. “You’re inviting a guy’s wife along on a date? You’re a pretty open-minded sort there, Tammy.”
“I would really like it if Abby was there,” said Tammy. “I don’t think I’d feel right about it otherwise.”
“Well, I’ll just call up and ask them,” said Matty. “But you be ready tomorrow because here’s what you’ve won.” Another button pushed in the control room…another sound byte, detailing everything that was going to happen to Tammy in the next few hours.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Frank Bayliss broke it to them gently. He wasn’t sure how this was going to go over. It certainly wasn’t what Jive had anticipated. He guessed maybe they should have. Kevin had a good point. Three of them were married. One was a parent. It was a bit outdated to be auctioning them off as dates for teenage contest winners.
Three of them weren’t supposed to be married, of course. Only two of them were. Nick’s wedding had come out of the blue and the brass at Jive were not pleased. They were marketing this whole tour around the ones that spent the money…the 16-25 year olds. They didn’t want to hear that the album was number one on all the adult contemporary charts. So what? The older listeners bought the album. The younger ones bought the stickers and the notepaper and the posters. And that’s where the money was. Merchandising.
Nick’s engagement had raised eyebrows at Jive, but the wedding wasn’t supposed to happen until well into the tour, and quite frankly, none of the executives figured it would happen at all. They’d checked out the girl. She came from money and class. They didn’t figure she’d tolerate Nick very long. And she wasn’t very attractive or outgoing. She didn’t seem to fit into his world of movie premieres and celebrity golf tournaments. No, this had breakup written all over it.
Abby was torn. She definitely did not want to go on a “date” with her husband and a teenage fan…especially a date that was being photographed for a national magazine. But she had given the project her stamp of approval. And oddly enough, now that she had been invited along, the others seemed okay with it. She could hardly object now. So she nodded and smiled and said, ‘whatever you all think is best’. But what she was thinking was, I want to go home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” asked Nick.
Ask me one more time and I’m going to get violent, thought Abby. Yes, I was okay with this, when it was just you. But now I have to go too, and I don’t want to. And now that you’ve asked me fifty times if I’m okay with it, I’m not so sure.
“Is there some reason I shouldn’t be?” she said aloud.
“No, no, of course not,” said Nick.
They were in their hotel room, getting ready to head out to the venue. Nick had slept until eleven on the bus. Then they had gathered in the dressing room to have the fight about the contest. After that, they’d gone to work, doing interviews, visiting record stores and making video and radio promos for local countdown shows. “Hi, we’re the Backstreet Boys!”
Abby had spent the day in the hotel room. She felt somewhat guilty that she wasn’t getting out and seeing more of Boston, but quite frankly, Boston in March…it didn’t have much appeal. And she wanted to write. She used Nick’s computer and her fingers flew over the keyboard. It was awkward at first, adjusting to the tiny laptop keyboard, but she managed. She emailed page after page to herself and then deleted it from Nick’s computer. She wished he had a printer with him. She would have liked to have a hard copy of the pages. Oh well, they were in the freezer for now. She’d get them out when she got home.
Home.
And when would that be? Abby was feeling very much ‘in the way’. The whole Dream Date discussion wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been there. The Boys would have just done what they usually did.
The Boys were friendly, accommodating, wonderful…and Abby just wanted to go home. And she knew that in a couple of days, her body would provide another reason why she and Nick would benefit from separate beds.
They had done what they set out to do. They had gotten married and had spent a few days together to show the world that it was indeed a real thing. Abby had gotten a taste of his life; she knew him better now, she thought. But she also knew that she wasn’t part of this area of his life and that he would be better off without her on tour, would be able to concentrate fully on his job without having to worry about her.
She should go home. She wanted to go home. That was the plan.
Abby sighed. Of course, that meant leaving Nick…not seeing him again until…well, who knew? They hadn’t talked about that part. The plan was to get married and then be in separate parts of the country. They would have to see each other occasionally, but how often was that? Damn, damn, damn, she told herself. Why did you mess things up by falling in love with the guy? Why couldn’t you do the ‘friends forever’ thing and get on with your life?
Abby sighed again. She had to get out of town. Maybe when she was away from him, it would be different. Maybe it would revert to ‘friends’. Maybe it was just the physical intimacy that was making her think she loved him. She knew she had to leave him before she slipped and told him. That wasn’t part of the deal. That was rule number one. It would be beyond unfair to dump that on him. Yes, I know we said we’d just be friends, but now that it’s too late for you to back out, guess what! I’m in love with you.
Abby clicked open Explorer. Might as well stop feeling sorry for myself, she said. I wonder what the fans are saying now. She logged on to MFC.
Abby’s heart sank as she read the threads. Omilord, if they were doing this at the supposedly mature site, what would be going on at the others?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ronni’s initial round of meanness had paid dividends far beyond her imagination. When she woke up the next morning, she could hardly wait for James to get out the door so she could get to the computer. She logged on and perused the sites. Wow! These people took their Backstreet Boys seriously. If these girls had all been in the same room, there would have been bloodshed.
Backstreetforever was the funniest, from Ronni’s point of view. There were no moderators there, at least not any with standards. The rumors got wilder and wilder.
She was pregnant.
She wasn’t pregnant.
She was pregnant, but not with Nick’s child. It was his best friend’s who had been killed in an accident before he could marry her. Noble Nick to the rescue!
She was pregnant, but wasn’t keeping the baby. They were having it for Kevin and Kristin, who were having trouble conceiving.
She wasn’t pregnant and never would be. The marriage was a sham…Nick’s way of hiding the fact that he was gay.
Well, Ronni knew that certainly wasn’t true…that Nick was gay. She stopped and thought about the rest of it though. A sham…hmmm… Ronni still hadn’t been able to put Nick and Abby in the same city between Brookhaven in June and Chicago at Thanksgiving. The only possibility she could see had been the weekend in August, but by careful questioning, she had got it out of Jeannette Fenton that Abby had been in Chicago that weekend. Her mother had been upset with her because she spent all her time in her room on her computer rather than helping with preparations for the Art Institute Luncheon.
Ronni wondered where Nick was that weekend. Maybe with Kevin. Maybe they were both gay, she laughed to herself, and having a little quiet weekend, just the two of them. Maybe that’s why Kevin and Kristin weren’t conceiving. Ronni laughed out loud. She was tempted to throw that one out there, but she would have to get a whole new persona to do it, and she didn’t feel like doing that right now.
Let’s see what’s going on at MFC. Ronni wondered if the post would even be there. The moderators at the Mature Fan Club didn’t just edit posts or shut down threads. If it was too inflammatory, they removed the whole thing. Of course, this led to ‘protest posts’, where a member would demand to know why the thread had been removed and talk about free speech in America. Surely we can agree to disagree. We are mature enough to have our own opinions and respect others. The moderators let them discuss free speech. But they never put back a thread once they’d taken it down.
The thread was still there. Maybe the moderator slept in or did shift work. Because it wasn’t going to be there long once she’d seen it, thought Ronni. She chuckled as she moved through it. The original rumor had been lost in the arguing about the appropriateness of spreading rumors. It then evolved to a discussion of ‘rumor vs. innocent question’. One woman, LovesAlex, stated quite emphatically that the Board was too stodgy and that they looked for evil intent when there was none there. Asking a question was not necessarily starting a rumor, and if they weren’t even allowed to ask a question, then how could they get the information that would separate fact from rumor? Ronni noted the name of the poster in her address book – this could be an ally.
Every so often, the question got asked again. It usually took the form of a strong denial that the poster was starting a rumor and then…well, the rumor. I agree with everyone here…Interesting, thought Ronni, since everyone had a different opinion…and I’m not trying to start a rumor. But I was wondering if this would have an effect on the tour. I mean, Brian took a whole year off when his son was born.
Ronni snorted with laughter. Wonderful, wonderful! Throw in a ‘breakup’ rumor. Genius, she said to the hapless poster, WantsSweetD. Ronni flexed her fingers and prepared to type.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Abby wondered if she should say something to Nick. She really, really, really didn’t want to. But she didn’t want him blindsided by it in an interview. She paced the floor and tried to make up her mind. She was getting a lot more than she’d bargained on. She’d thought she could marry a Backstreet Boy and then live an anonymous life! How stupid was that?! She remembered that Leighanne and Kristin managed. She held on to that strand of hope. She wondered if she should call Leighanne.
She looked at her watch. Nick would be arriving soon. They were only going to have an hour or so before it was time to go to the Fleet Center. She didn’t want to make trouble where there was none, so she decided to say nothing for the time being. But she guessed she wasn’t hiding her anxiety all that well. Nick assumed it was the Dream Date thing and asked her over and over “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” By the time they left for the venue, she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
