NEW YORK CITY:
Tonight was the night the boys, as in boys I mean Backstreet, would hear all of my solo stuff. I was scared I remember being in the opposite position when Nick had his solo tour and we all came to see him. He was scared shitless of what we would think and I now knew how he must have felt. It’s weird going out on your own, but even weirder when your band mates are there to watch you perform without them. As I took the stage I looked to the side where the boys were standing to watch. Brian gave me this stupid thumbs up sign and made a weird face to go along with it making me laugh.
“What is up New York CITY?!?”I yelled into the microphone of the House of Blues doing my very best KISS impersonation. “Okay well as you may already know...my brothers are here tonight watching me play…I know I know.”I said trying to get all of the screams to stop. I put my hand up to my nose noticing something was dripping onto my bottom lip. As I pulled my hand away I noticed…my fucking nose was bleeding. “Give me one second.”I said to the crowd as I walked off stage on the opposite side the boys were on and leaned my head back plugging my nose with a towel. After a few minutes of standing there I walked back onstage, my nose had stopped bleeding, but I knew what the boys were thinking. Although they were right, I was determined to keep it from them this time.
“Anyways…”I said smiling. “I wanna dedicate this next song to them. I think they probably know this one well.”I said as the piano notes to Incomplete started behind me.
“It’s called…Incomplete.”I said nodding to the boys.
After the show:
“Really really good man!”Howie said pulling me into a hug backstage. I wiped the sweat from my face and lifted up my hat looking at the other guys. I saw Leighanne hiding behind Brian and I wondered why she hadn’t said anything.
“Talk to Caroline lately?”I said looking around Brian to make eye contact with her.
“Talked to her last night. She said she hadn’t heard from you.”Leighanne said shrugging. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and I knew she knew what I was doing. She wasn’t going to say anything until Brian caught on, but she knew it.
“Cool…yea I should call her in a bit.”I said sighing. “Can you guys give me a minute to take a shower and stuff I’ll meet you back at the place for dinner?”I said and Leighanne rolled her eyes. How were girls so intuitive? I just don’t get it. They always knew what we were doing when it was wrong. They agreed and I walked back towards my backstage room, pulling out the white baggie from my pocket. I spread some white powder on the counter and used the CD case beside me to put it into a line shape. As I leaned my nose down and took the first hit I heard the door open behind me.
“What the FUCK AJ?!?”Brian yelled as I turned back to look at him. I knew the coke had smeared across my cheek. Brian’s face turned red, this was a rare sight, Brian was NEVER and I mean NEVER mad.
“Brian shut the damn door!”I yelled pointing my finger at him as I turned back to the table. The coke was beginning to hit me and I could feel my heart speeding up. He slammed the door behind and walked over to me slapping my coke off of the table onto the floor.
“YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS AGAIN!”he yelled pulling me up by my collar.
“It’s not like before Bri chill.”I said rolling my eyes.
“This IS how it began!!”he said pushing me up against the wall. “How could you do THIS!!!” I looked away from him unable to look in his eyes. The truth was I didn’t know, and I didn’t know why I did it either. It was just happening all over again.
“Don’t tell her.”I said quietly and he looked over at me squinting my eyes. “I love her dude don’t tell her.” He let go of my shirt and let me slink back against the wall. I had never told her I loved her, but it was important for Brian to know how important she was to me.
“If you loved her you wouldn’t be doing this.”Brian said and walked out the door slamming it behind him.
~~CAROLINE~~
YAY!!! So excited because its finally time to see AJ. I’d been missing him this past week. I hadn’t talked to him that much since he’d been gone. I attributed it to him being busy…what else could it be? I rubbed on my final bit of eyeliner and stepped out of his Range Rover as I drove up to the House of Blues in LA. I was actually kind of nervous. I wondered what he would look like. He changed his look at least once a week it seemed haha. I put my backstage pass around my neck and walked into the venue. As I was showing my pass to the body guards I saw him sitting on the stage looking down at the ground with his legs hanging off the side. I wondered what he was so nervous about. He looked weird as he was rubbing his hands together. Maybe he was nervous about seeing me too.
“BABE!!”I said waving at him as I walked over. He hopped down from the stage and smiled as he walked over to me grabbing me around the waist to pull me into a kiss.
“God I missed you.”he said as he kissed me smiling in between each time our lips touched.
“Your shirts crazy!”I said looking at his cheetah print wife beater. “But it makes your arms look sexy.”I said and he grabbed me by the ass cheeks pulling me up off the floor. I put my arms around his neck as he kissed me slowly. I noticed the taste of Jack on his breath, but ignored it. I was to happy to see him to be fighting with him. He slammed me up against the wall still holding me up by my butt.
“Want me to do you right here?”he said holding his forehead up to mine as I wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Too many people around.”I said looking around all of the roadies already staring at us getting an eyeful.
“Who cares?”he asked unbuttoning my pants button. I let go of my legs to stand in front of him. He must have been drunk to be okay with doing that with all those people watching.
“Baby come on…”I said as he continued to kiss my neck.
“Alex?”a male voice said from behind us. I had never heard that voice before and he practically made me fall down he let go of me so fast. There was silence between the two of them, an unprecedented type of silence. I assumed they knew each other, they resembled each other slightly.
~~AJ~~
Wow…wow that’s all I can say right now.
“Caroline this is my father.”I said staring down at my shoes. I couldn’t even look at him. My dad had walked out on my mom and I when I was two years old. He came back when I was 22 and I hadn’t seen him until this day. I had told Caroline the whole story, just never showed her any pictures. She looked up at me awkwardly and my Dad just kept staring at me. I wanted him to speak up because I had nothing to say.
“I heard you were playing here tonight…thought I’d stop by and see your show.”he said fumbling to get his hands into his pocket.He should be nervous. He’s lucky I don’t punch him in his God damned face right now. I didn’t say anything back to him. I had nothing to say he was in and out of my life so much. The first time he came back was right in the middle of the Backstreet glory days and when I wouldn’t give him any money he walked right back out. I figured today would be the same.
“I’ll be in your dressing room.”Caroline said tugging on my shirt. I couldn’t even turn to look at her. I wanted to know what my dad wanted.
“What is it that you want? I don’t have any money to give.”I said and he looked away from me. I could see the water forming in his eyes. My father was going to cry about something.
“I don’t want your money son.”I cringed at the thought of him calling me that. Kevin had been more of a father to me than he was. “I think we should just sit down and talk. Try to see where we went wrong….
~~CAROLINE~~
About fifteen minutes later the door slammed open and AJ walked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. He stayed in there for not even a half a minute and walked out without even flushing the toilet.
“Are you okay?”I asked as he walked out rubbing his nose a little. He twitched a few times and looked over at me.
“Fine.”he said walking past me to look in the mirror. He put one of his hands on the table in front of the mirror and used the other to apply his eyeliner.
“You don’t look fine…”I said pushing him. I knew if I did eventually he would crack.
“Because I’m not Caroline, I just ran into my Dad I have not seen in like seven years. What do you want me to say God Dammit!”he yelled sitting back in the makeup chair sighing.
“You don’t have to yell I’m just worried about you.”I said narrowing my eyebrows. What the hell was his problem? He had never been this snappy with me before.
“Can you just go get us something to drink from the coffee shop next door.”he said holding out twenty dollars for me to take.
“Fine.”I said snatching the bill out of his hand. If he was going to an asshole, I could sure as shit be a bitch right back. I slammed the door behind me and walked towards the coffee shop all the while watching all of these hardcore Backstreet fans hanging out outside the venue. Some of them had even camped out to get front row to AJ’s show.
As I returned back to the venue AJ was layed out on the couch with his eyes closed. I guess he was going to take a nap before the show. I switched on the television and started to watch whatever happened to be on.
****
“Move with me to LA then…”AJ said after a few minutes of laying back on the hotel bed.
“You are so crazy. I’m not just going to pick up my shit and move to LA with you! Oh my gosh!”Caroline said laughing as she rolled into his arms looking up at him.
“Well I want you to.”he said kissing Caroline on the forehead. “I want you to feel safe.”she looked into those dark brown eyes and there was no way she could say no.
“What to do about Josh then?”she asked sitting up leaning back on the headboard.
“Leave your shit. I’ll buy you everything new it will be like starting all over again.”he said and his glance shifted to the tiny bottles of liquor in the hotel refrigerator. This was the first time she noticed his problem was starting again.
****
~~AJ~~
I couldn’t tell her what I was doing…or better yet what I did while I was gone to London. God I was trying to block that out of my memory. I was planning on quitting last night when Brian saw me but after seeing my Dad…I just needed something to keep me stable. I had went into that bathroom and put the coke on the toilet seat and snorted it right off of it. I looked up at her as I woke up from the nap. I am such an asshole. This would make two times I had yelled at her in the past week. I could only for see this getting much worse. When I sent her to the coffee shop I had drank another half of my Jack Daniels bottle so I was struggling to keep a sober face in front of her.
“AJ! You are supposed to be in uniform already! Everyone is waiting on you!”Danny my manager said walking into the room yelling.
“Sorry…..sorry.”I said rolling my eyes as I got up and changed into a different outfit.
“Well hurry up…you watching from the stage? Just come with me.”Danny said grabbing Caroline’s hand pulling her out the door. I looked in the mirror at my saggy eyes and pulled on my hat. As I walked through the hallway to the stage I waved at Caroline who was positioned on the other side and smiled. She was so beautiful. Everytime I walk on stage from here on out I hope she’s on the other side. After playing London and a few other of my songs it was time to do what would be the hardest thing for me in a long time.
“So this next song as we take it low now is going to be a little bit hard for me…”I said looking to the side as I grabbed onto the microphone seeing my Dad in the balcony. “My Dad’s actually here tonight and um I had a chance to talk to him a little bit before the show. Its been an unfortunate circumstance that we’ve kept in touch lost touch…kept in touch lost touch…and I’m partially to blame for that myself, but over the past couple of years while writing my album I wanted to write a song about what I would say to my dad if he were right in front of me…and um when I wrote this song I wrote it with with Dan Mukavel in Los Angeles and I found out a little bit more about Dan than I knew before because Dan had written with the Backstreet Boys but I never got to work with him one on one, but when I did I found out that, you know, he had his own situation with his father as well…so this is Sincerely Yours…this is going to be an interesting one for me today…”I paused and breathed in deep looking down at the floor. I looked over at Caroline who gave me an encouraging side smile and began to sing.
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfcz_i6L0OI > See the full performance here!
Finally I knew why I was the way I was…it was because of him.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This is BY FAR my favorite chapter. Please review!
