My name is Margaret Jo Michaels, and so help me God, if you call me anything besides Meg... But never mind that now.

 

When I was 18, I loved a boy band. When I was 30, I spent a week with them.

 

I was about to start college when I found them. Too old to love them the way I did, I was the same age as their youngest member. I raised the average age at their concerts, or would have if it weren't for their parents. I bought their CDs, consumed their fans' breathy Geocities tributes in those early days of the Web. I even wrote a little fan fiction, when I wasn't up to my eyeballs in school writing assignments, amazed at the age difference between me and these young girls writing online with no thought of what even high school held.

 

I knew it was silly, and I gave it up as those last vestiges of high school silliness that marked me as a freshman were lost over the next few years in the faux enlightenment of college: the indie rock, the late-night weed-fueled philosophizing, the soon-ragged Hunter S. Thompson tomes that sat next to my college journalism textbooks. The teenybopper was swallowed up by the rough-edged, hard-nosed journalist, the tough girl going out to change the world with pen and steno pad in hand: Meg Michaels, champion of the free press and butt-kicker at large.

 

College gave way to the real world and the journalist's idealism-masked-as-cynicism with which I faced it. With degree in hand from a prestigious journalism school in unlikely Missouri, just a couple hours' drive from my hometown in rural Illinois, I got a job with an alt-weekly magazine in St. Louis and labored for my chance to join the venerable staff of Rolling Stone, which came at last a week before my 28th birthday. Here I was alongside legends of the pop culture journalism world. But here also, as a way of coping with the heavy-handed cynicism at Rolling Stone and in New York, I had no choice but to seek out sources of light in the big city. I started taking pictures, looking for beauty. I found a place on a quiet street on the tippy-tip of Staten Island, the unlikeliest of the five boroughs. And as I was given more opportunities to enterprise my work, to seek out stories rather than always being handed them, I developed a heart for the comeback. For the stars that rose and fell and began a slow climb back up again.

 

And that was how I ended up with the boys on the bus.

 

I laughed when he asked me. Laughed because otherwise I'd have cried.

 

My editor called me into his office late in the afternoon on a warm, rainy Monday smack in the middle of May. Never a matter of "they called me in." Thomas Hartzler was a lifer at our esteemed publication, crusty but ageless, a gritty sort who on a certain level rejected the idea of representing any kind of "they," regardless of his job's demand for that role. In that way, and in his utter inability to give a shit unless it mattered, I thought he embodied Rolling Stone's general attitude toward the world.

 

"Michaels!" Thomas shouted across the 15 feet between his office and my desk.

 

A couple of other writers looked at me, half accusingly, as if it were my fault the boss had chosen to yell my name as he disturbed their peace. I was no more pleased than they were, effectively tethered to my desk. A phone cord was tangled around one arm, and the other hand was occupied with twirling a strand of curly hair around my pen as I stared at the blinking cursor on the screen halfway through a final draft of a story on social networking and illegal music downloading. My desk was a cluttered nightmare of piles of wrinkled notepads, press releases, a few framed pictures of family and a poorly printed photo of Hunter S. Thompson struggling to peek out from behind the mess, the occasional fast-food wrapper near the surface, and piles and piles of CDs. I looked around the mess, sighed, disentangled myself and trudged into Thomas' office with notepad in hand.

 

Thomas' lack of real urgency was confirmed by his failure to even look away from the computer screen when I walked in. His office was just as cluttered as my desk but was far more aesthetically pleasing, with old concert posters framed on the walls. A days-old cup from the pizza place downstairs sat on the corner of his desk, and his weary face needed a shave, but he was always Thomas - never Tom or Tommy - and he never went anywhere without a small stack of spotless business cards in his shirt pocket. It never failed to amaze me what shreds of formality he clung to.

 

"You've got a pen in your hair," he said absently, without looking at me. I still wondered how the hell he saw things like that. I reached up and yanked the pen free from my unruly curls, on which today's humidity had wreaked havoc. Global warming had not done my appearance any favors.

 

Thomas finally looked away from the computer and leaned back in his chair. He had that look on his face that told me he was about to give me a pep talk. Except this time he also looked as though he was trying to control a smirk.

 

"Michaels, you've built something of a reputation for yourself on these comeback stories," he began. "Could've made them into a series if they were closer together and were about bands that had anything to do with one another."

 

"Well, in fairness," I replied, crossing my legs and smirking myself, trying to crack a joke to put myself at ease, "the New Kids don't have much to do with anything, do they?"

 

Now Thomas smirked. "It's funny you should bring up New Kids. That piece you did on them and their last tour, that was something."

 

"Thanks?" I always had to wonder what exactly "something" was supposed to mean.

 

"No, it's a good thing," he reassured me, as reassuring as he ever sounded. "Matter of fact, we want you to do something more like it. Something a little bigger. maybe. This could be a big one, in fact - if you're up to it."

 

Bigger than a cover story about the New Kids? This was getting interesting. I leaned forward, projecting that careful blend of eagerness and nonchalance I had cultivated over the years, pen hovering over paper. "What did you have in mind?"

 

Thomas' smirk widened. "Seems the Backstreet Boys are going out on tour again. Remember those guys?" He chuckled. "My ex-wife's daughter was big into those guys, let me tell you. Ho-leeeee-shit." Another chuckle. "Anyway, ah, yeah, they're gonna tour again. I don't know who they think they are, Dave Matthews Band? Could've sworn they just finished a tour. Anyway, we're thinking of sending someone out on the tour with them, report from the road. We're thinking of you."

 

I stared at him. He raised an expectant eyebrow. "Well?"

 

I burst into laughter. I laughed hard. I laughed loud. I laughed long. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. He couldn't be serious. It was as if another Thomas from early 1999 had climbed into a time machine, traveled 12 years into the future, clocked my boss in the back of the head and begun to impersonate him in the moments before this conversation.

 

 "Wait. WAIT," I began, composing myself. "You want me to go on tour with the Backstreet Boys? Like, as in, the boy band?"

 

"Yes, like, as in, the boy band," Thomas echoed, mimicking my incredulous tone. "Is that so very hard to believe?"

 

"Well, I think it's a little soon to hype this up as a comeback, don't you think? I feel like these guys attempt a comeback every two or three years. I mean, aren't we just pandering to the hype they're creating for themselves?" I tried to sound like I was thinking critically, but I could feel all the color draining from my face.

 

It could have been literally any other band on Earth. Any other. I would have taken even Nickelback over this. Those guys weren't so bad. They were assholes, but knowing they were the most hated band in America gave me the confidence to write a decent story about them. What was I going to put in a story about the Backstreet Boys? A story big enough to justify the trouble of sending me out on tour with them?

 

More to the point, what had I done to piss off my boss sufficiently to get this assignment?

 

Thomas rolled his eyes. "You're starting to sound like a journalist. Not your style, Michaels."

 

"Neither is hanging around with a bunch of washed-up-" I bit off my angry retort as I realized that that was indeed what I'd built what he called my reputation on.

 

"Washed-up pop stars?" Thomas echoed my thought process. "Those washed-up pop stars are writing your paychecks, including those nice bonuses."

"Oh, right, bonuses." Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. "We don't even rate Jelly of the Month Club around here."

 

Thomas waved his hand dismissively. "Hard times. Let's not get into this right now." It was his usual response to any complaint about the sorry state of the magazine, journalism or the world in general. "Look, we're only sending you out for a week, the first week of the tour, end of July, beginning of August."

 

"A week? Christ." I squeezed my eyes shut.

 

He ignored me. "And we wanna do this big. We're talking multiple storytelling opportunities here. Words, photos, videos, all that crap. Do it on that fancy iPhone of yours. You want that, right?"

 

"Well, yeah." I couldn't deny that. Anyone in his or her right mind wanted a crack at that stuff to stay employable in this flailing industry. "But...the Backstreet Boys?"

 

"You had no problem covering the New Kids."

 

"The New Kids were a cultural phenomenon!"

 

"So were the Backstreet Boys. Look, you're what, 30? Probably too old to have enjoyed them. My ex-stepdaughter's 23 - now SHE was rabid for those guys. Jesus." Another long-suffering chuckle. I got the sense he'd had to buy her a few concert tickets.

 

"Well, I wouldn't exactly say I'm too old." A flash of nostalgia behind my eyes. I was lying on my bed, propped up on my elbows, writing in my diary about the waning days of summer with Backstreet Boys on the stereo. I was standing in line outside a record store in Columbia, wearing dark glasses and a scarf over my hair, surrounded by 12-year-olds and their moms. I was glancing nervously over my shoulder to make sure my roommate didn't figure out I was reading fanfiction.

 

"But the New Kids - they were something bigger," I continued. "Those guys took a break, and they still want to be pop stars. They're probably still getting tail after all these years, for that matter. The Backstreet Boys, they're a bunch of old married guys. All off doing their own thing, I would have thought."

 

"Well, guess solo life got the better of them. And off the record, not all of them are married, I hear. At least one of them lost their wives to this whole comeback effort. Betcha she couldn't handle the idea that these guys' fans might actually have grass on the playing field now." Thomas leered.

 

I grimaced. There was so much wrong with that statement, I didn't even know where to begin. "Jesus, Thomas."

 

"Sorry, I forgot about your delicate sensibilities." Thomas' voice dripped with sarcasm. He glanced at the computer screen without moving anything but his eyes. "I already talked to their PR rep. They want you there. They want someone to give a damn about this."

 

"Well, that should be your first clue," I said just as sarcastically.

 

"Look, you want this or not?" Thomas shot back. I suddenly had the sense that his patience was running out - a dangerous situation to be in. "I can totally find someone else. I just trust you slightly more not to screw it up."

 

I'd never gone on tour with a band before - at least, not for this long. It was a good opportunity, in theory. In practice, with this band, I wished I were dead. My old friends on the news side complained about having to write dozens of column inches about stuff like rotting sewer mains and vintage bowling alleys. This felt like the equivalent.

 

He'd better reward me by sending me into the studio with Bob Dylan or something.

 

I made a face. "Hunter Thompson is rolling in his grave."

 

Thomas made a face right back at me. "You never knew Thompson. Lest you forget, I did, and he got his jollies writing about 10 times the scum you deal with. Lest you forget, he had to ride with the boys on the bus, too. Maybe let him be your spirit guide here or whatever."

 

"He didn't have to live on the bus." A horrifying thought struck me. "Oh, mother of Jesus, you want me to live on the bus, don't you?"

 

Thomas grinned. "I want you with them 24 by 7 for the first week of that tour. Think of it like living a reality show."

 

I dropped my head into my hands. "Ugh. Of all the comparisons you could have made. My enthusiasm for this assignment just dropped another 10 points. Just fire me now."

 

"Now why would I do that when you've made it clear you believe I live to torment you?" The edge was back in his voice. "Meg..."

 

He never used my first name unless he was serious. I looked up, head resting in my hands, elbows on my knees, eyes level with a stack of papers anchored by a stained coffee mug with a red circle and cross over the word "bullshit." He needed new chairs in his office, ones that didn't sag halfway to the floor in the middle. For all its prestige, this magazine's offices needed new everything.

 

Thomas took a deep breath, preparing to expound. "I'm counting on you. And you should be counting on this. You might think it sounds like a real turd of an assignment, but this could be big for you. This could be the one, even. You specialize in comebacks, I believe that. This could be a spectacular comeback, the one that sticks for these guys. Or it could be a chance for you to wise up and realize not everyone gets a second chance."

 

I winced at the sharpness of his words. Thomas had a tendency to dole out these nuggets of wisdom whenever I was dragging my heels on an assignment, to needle at me when he thought I was being whiny. It worked, and he knew it.

 

"This could be a comeback for us, too, you know," Thomas continued. "Show ‘em we know how to use this social media shit. Show ‘em you can be. It could open some doors for you."

 

I sighed. "Gimme the publicist's email address."

 

Thomas beamed like a schoolboy and turned back to his computer. "Forwarding the email now." He hit enter. "Now get out of here. And close the door behind you. I need a nap."

 

I rose from my chair and turned to leave. "I hate you sometimes, Thomas."

 

"That's what I like to hear from my writers."

 

As I closed the door behind me, I leaned back against it. Dr. Thompson's hard, thoughtful face mocked me from my mess of a desk. I suddenly felt 14 again. I'd been older than 14 the last time I'd paid any attention to the Backstreet Boys, of course, but they had made me feel that way, reduced me to a screaming teenybopper, at least on some level. I had renounced that with the rest of my airheaded adolescent consciousness, tucked it away somewhere I didn't talk about at parties. Now it came roaring back. I slid slowly down the door, groaning softly.

 

On the other side of the door, I heard Thomas holler, "Do you mind, Michaels?"

 

 

**

 

Friday, 7/29: NYC

 

A howl of laughter on the other end of the line. "OK, I have to say it one more time: Really? The Backstreet Boys?"

 

I sighed, shoving a pile of clothes to one side as I plopped down on the couch with a cup of tea in one hand and my phone in the other. "And one more time, that was my initial reaction, too. And hey, will you cut it out? You've gotten two months of mileage out of this already."

 

"No dice," Alicia said dryly. "No sympathy. I'm in East Jesus, New Mexico, melting into a puddle shooting Route 66 novelty motels for I don't even remember which piece-of-shit quarterly anymore. You at least get to travel around to actual cities where you'll have phone service that doesn't require standing outside."

 

"Yeah, yeah. Your unique brand of non-compassion always saves the day." But I couldn't blame her this time. A freelance photographer who abandoned her hipster-y Brooklyn apartment for weeks at a time, Alicia was on a nine-month contract with AAA - "Alicia M. Hermoso for Brown Bird Media" had appeared as a byline under photos in a string of forgettable (insert region here) Traveler glossies - that, practically speaking, had meant being marooned in a string of extreme-weather destinations whenever Mother Nature was at her cruelest. I pictured her standing outside a teepee-themed motor inn, fitting right in with her dark Hispanic complexion and short-cropped black hair, feet planted on the ground to keep from toppling over in the hot desert wind, sweating in jeans because it was impractical to wear anything else on an assignment that required kneeling in sand, and I had to appreciate the sacrifice it took to call me and make sure I hadn't killed anyone over this assignment.

 

"Hey, you know, if I were straight, I'd jump at the chance to ride around on a bus full of attractive men." Alicia cackled at herself. "Maybe you'll finally get some meat."

 

"Very funny. By the end of this year, all but one of them will be or have been married. I can't decide if that's the good or the bad half. None of them look as interesting as they did 12 years ago." I finished and set down my cup of tea, picking up the sheaf of bio information the PR rep had sent me, topped with a stapled-on glossy PR photo of the band. It and a pile of other information and photos were sitting underneath it. I was trying desperately to familiarize myself with the guys before I had to fly out to meet them in Miami tomorrow. There had been a time when I'd been able to recite a lot of this stuff in my sleep, but that had been a long time ago, and I'd since forgotten most of it.

 

"I guess you'll find out," Alicia said. "I still don't know what you're bitching about. A bus full of attractive men that you used to lust after. It would be like me shooting ‘Womanizer'-era Britney Spears." She cackled again. "So, you all packed up and ready?"

 

I glanced around the apartment. "Uh..."

 

Poor little 25-C Montgomery was in a state of chaos, barren with neglect and destroyed by sudden attention. I had gone out on assignment for four days just two weeks earlier, and the back-to-back trips, combined with my apathy about this latest one, had worn me and the place down. I had nothing in my fridge, nothing in my cupboards but tea and peanut butter; I would go grocery shopping when I returned. A potted geranium I'd been vainly trying to grow indoors was wilting on my round little kitchen table, surrounded by a scattering of papers, the rest of my background information and a notepad full of ideas, to be stuffed into my trusty red messenger bag with my MacBook and several more blank notepads when I left in the morning. My bed was neatly made - I'd been sleeping on my faded brown couch the last few nights, trying to get used once again to not sleeping in my own bed. The area rug that broke up the expanse of lovingly waxed hardwood beneath my furniture desperately needed vacuuming. I'd counted stray threads and dust bunnies to fall asleep last night. Even the glass covering my framed photos on the wall needed to be dusted.

 

I had been throwing things into a purple wheeled suitcase on my floor as I thought of them. Lots of solid T-shirts, dressy capris, nice jeans, a couple pairs of flats, one of those three-piece mix-and-match-and-wash-and-wear black traveling ensembles catalogs sold to middle-aged women, a youthful red sundress I'd worn exactly twice, a few versatile accessories. Running shoes, on the off chance I might actually get to run. A part of me had, in fact, considered the idea that I would be riding a bus with four attractive men and had tried to pack accordingly. The result was an overstuffed mess of a bag, half of whose contents were still sitting on my couch, waiting to be sorted. A week's worth of freshly washed underwear sat on top, next to a Ziploc bag of soap and razor and tiny bottles of delicious-smelling shampoo and body wash, one of the few ways I was going to last a week on a bus full of boys! I felt a bit like June Carter all of a sudden.

 

The mess strewn across my couch meant I couldn't go to bed until I finished packing. I couldn't finish packing until I got my head out of my ass. I couldn't get my head out of my ass because I had no desire to embark on the journey for which I was packing. It was a miserable, vicious catch-22.

 

A lump filled my throat. I suddenly didn't want to be a journalist anymore. I just wanted to clean up my apartment. I wanted to get a nice 9-to-5 PR job. I wanted to find a boyfriend - now there was a novel concept after the last few years of dating mishaps - and get a dog and just live a normal little life in my cheap, homey, wonderful little flat four blocks from the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

 

"Lee, may I whine to you like a high-schooler for a moment? In all seriousness?" I managed, the lump in my throat making me sound ridiculously as if I were about to start crying. Which wasn't true, of course, as this was hardly worth crying over.

 

"Always," she said sincerely.

 

"This blows. I don't want to do this. This really is an asinine assignment. I feel like I'm going on a goddamn reality show. You know Thomas compared it to that?" Oh, I was taking full advantage of the permission to whine.

 

"I know, Peggy Jo," Alicia said, using the nickname she'd given me in college, all of a decade ago. She was the only person in the world who'd ever called me Peggy. "You don't want to go on assignment again so soon. You don't want this to be the first band you go on tour for this long with. You don't give a damn anymore about these guys. I know," she reassured me. "But I have to agree with your editor. It really is a good opportunity."

 

Her reassurance made my eyes well up. It was like talking to my mother, who had offered me similar reassurances a few days earlier. "I know," I said, wiping my eyes. "Everyone keeps saying that. And I know, realistically, it's a good challenge. It's just kind of obnoxious, the circumstances under which I'm getting it. Makes me tired just thinking about it."

 

"Yeah...but how many people are getting it at all?" She was quiet for a second. "You know I don't really go in for the whole God thing, but I do still think things happen for a reason. And right now, it just so happens this challenge is out here, and it's out here just for you. It's obviously gotta be you who this happens to. As hard as you've worked and as good as you are? Your boss is right. Nobody could make of this story what you can."

 

She had a point. I had made more of myself than had most of our old j-school classmates, and I wasn't afraid to admit it to myself or others. Rolling Stone was the Gray Lady of alt-weeklies, the Cadillac of jobs in this industry. I was extraordinarily lucky to be working there at all. I couldn't recall more than a couple of classmates who were working for national publications. These days, all I could think about was the sobering preponderance of classmates who were out of work. And here I was, bitching.

 

"It couldn't happen to a better person, frankly," Alicia added.

 

I yawned. "I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult."

 

"You sound really tired and beat-up. Go to bed." The moment of wisdom was over, and Alicia's mom-like voice was stern now. "You'll never survive tomorrow if you don't get some rest."

 

"I can sleep on the plane," I grumbled.

"You won't make your flight if you don't sleep now." The cheerfully admonishing tone remained firmly in place.

 

"Guh. Fair point." I made a face, even though she wouldn't see it.

 

"I'm always right. I'm right about your need to sleep, I'm right about this assignment, and I'm right when I tell you it's going to work out fine."

 

"Trouble is, that's probably true." I sighed. "Very well, then. Hugs."

 

"Hugs," Alicia echoed. It was our standard goodbye. "Give me a call when you're out there, huh?"

We hung up. I stared at my iPhone, a brand-new 4S bought with a chunk of my meager savings, my tether to the real world and to journalism, then plugged it into the charger and tossed it onto the end table.

 

I glanced around again. I wasn't actually tired enough to go to bed yet, despite Alicia's observation that I sounded like it. Might as well straighten the place up. Coming home to a messy apartment after a long trip was always a real morale killer. I finished packing the bag, rolling up my clothes into neat little bundles that fit in large quantities into the barely carry-on-sized suitcase. I picked up the armful of castoffs and returned them to their semi-rightful place on the floor of my bedroom closet. I shoved the papers on my kitchen table into my messenger bag.

 

Finally, I clicked off the lamp and stared at the pattern of the orange streetlight shining through my blinds. In the distance, a fire engine sounded. I reached for the end table again and grabbed for my old, beat-up iPod, shoving the headphones into my ears to block out the noise of a far-off emergency. As I burrowed into the couch, pulled a thin blanket up to my chin, and closed my eyes, the opening guitar strums of "As Long As You Love Me" filled my ears.

 

I'd dug up a couple of old Backstreet Boys CDs from the bottom of a box labeled "College" and reluctantly ripped them to my iPod. The hope was to familiarize myself anew with their old sound - I had, of course, been bombarded with their "new" sound in the course of preparing for this story. All I'd accomplished, however, was a hardcore trip down memory lane. I was 18 again, wondering if Brian Littrell really didn't care who I was as long as I loved him. If that didn't speak to multitudes of fans.

 

And yet, I could feel a tiny little seedling of excitement pushing through the cynicism. Try as I might to smother it, to relegate it to that cobwebby corner of my heart that I didn't talk about at parties, it battled through like a tulip against the frost.

 

OMG! the 18-year-old in me squealed. I'm going on tour with the Backstreet Boys! They're going to love me and marry me!

I ripped the headphones out of my ears, tossed the iPod to the floor and rolled over.

 

 

Saturday, 7/30: Miami

 

I stepped into the Miami terminal, drew myself up and squared my shoulders, as much to get my back in line as to look like I meant business. It hadn't been a particularly long flight, but it had felt like it, and I had found myself slouching in my seat as I tried to fake a nap. Better than talking to the middle-aged woman next to me.

 

"Couldn't help but notice you're reading about the Backstreet Boys," she'd said, peering at the papers I'd been going over on the plane. "Are you a fan?"

 

"Not really. It's for work. I'm a journalist." My sentences had been short and clipped as I tried desperately to squelch my annoyance at having my privacy invaded. It was Saturday afternoon, sure, but this plane was far from sold out. Why wasn't I sitting by myself?

 

The woman seemed to ignore completely that I was a journalist, which still stopped some people in their tracks, mostly people who were amazed I was gainfully employed. "Were you a fan back when they were popular? My daughter was a fan. I'd guess you're about her age. She just loved those guys when she was in middle school."

 

At which point I had closed my eyes, counted to 10, then shut the seatback tray with all of my papers still on it and made up an excuse about having a headache. Bad enough to be sitting next to Brenda Buttinski here, but even at 30, being mistaken for younger than my age was still near the top of my list of pet peeves. I was petite, curvy without being heavy, completely unintimidating, the extremely reluctant owner of a girlish face and a white-girl ‘fro of mouse-brown curls. In no universe did I pass for 30 at first blush. Sources usually didn't get close enough to notice the little lines just beginning to crease my skin between my eyebrows and at the corners of my clear gray eyes, the scattering of gray hairs in the midst of the brown. PR people and agents hardly knew what to make of me when they first laid eyes on me. But the moments when I knew my baby face engendered absolutely no respect from a given musician were still all too uncomfortably frequent.

 

Even after three years of knowing a nation full of music lovers would read my words and maybe even think about them, I still felt a frisson of jittery nerves as I embarked on every new assignment. The very prospect of working with a band I couldn't begin to know how to deal with, not least because of my long-ago girlish love for them, didn't help.

 

I tried to walk with authority now, striding through the terminal to an unheard anthem that might or might not have been "In the Air Tonight." It was Miami, after all. Even with the defiant splashes of color my red bag and purple suitcase made against my black skirt, black T-shirt and well-worn black flats, I felt horribly out of place among the all-too-stereotypical flowered dresses and light-colored suits. I remembered reading The Rum Diary shortly after I moved to New York, remembered how Thompson had characterized his pallid New Yorker among the tropical denizens. You've been a professional journalist for nine years now. You've been writing for no less than Rolling fucking Stone for three years. You've written harder-hitting stories, dealt with bigger divas. You know what you're doing.

 

It was a long walk through the airport, and my suitcase felt like it was full of granite as I approached the security checkpoint. The car ride into the city would be a welcome rest. The magazine had told me to expect a driver, and now my eyes searched the crowd at security, the sea of expectant faces dotted with signs hand-lettered with last names. A sign jumped out at me - M. MICHAELS - in a pair of hands connected to a mild-looking man with a salt-and-pepper #2 buzz cut and a deeply lined face the color of light oak. A broad white smile split his face as I approached.

 

"Hi, Meg Michaels," I introduced myself.

 

He shifted the sign to one side to shake my hand warmly. "Miz Michaels, I'm George. I'll be your driver this afternoon." His voice was faintly laced with Spanish. "Let's go grab your luggage and get going."

 

The long walk to the car allowed us the chance to chat. I was a writer for Rolling Stone assigned to follow the Backstreet Boys on tour for a week; single; lived on Staten Island but born and raised in a small town in western Illinois; had seen my share of celebrities - the good, the bad, and the ugly. George was a local limo driver the band had hired for this stop; married as long as I'd been alive, with a couple of grown kids; a lifelong Little Havana man; had seen his share of celebrities, too. We were still chatting about those celebrity experiences as we approached a cushy white sedan in the parking garage.

 

"About how long will it take to get to the theater?" I asked him, sinking into the soft beige leather of the backseat, closing my eyes briefly, savoring the luxury of the fabric and the coolness of the car after that slice of humid afternoon heat. The end of Miami July made the end of New York July look like the end of Idaho January, and the goosebumps on my bare legs from the chilly cabin air had finally smoothed out.

 

"Half an hour," George replied as he started the car. The lively chatter of a Spanish-language newscast drifted softly from the speakers. "It's not far, but traffic can be a horrorshow getting outta here and around down there."

 

"Well, let me know when we're about five minutes away," I replied, pulling out the papers I had just managed to rescue from the seatback tray on the plane.

 

Suburbia flew by outside the car window as I took one last look at my plan of action, scrawled in ever-hasty handwriting:

 

            Tweets to personal account (incl. pics) 6x+/day

            Video/text/photo blogs every day

            Individual interviews

            Final written piece (4000+ words)

 

I put away the action plan and took a final look at the tour itinerary. Could've been worse. Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville. Five shows in seven days, plus two full days of travel and - to my dismay - one night of sleeping on the bus. I would fly out of Nashville the day they departed for their next show in Louisville. A little over a week later, they would come to New York to perform and would shoot their cover in the midst of a bunch of other promotions. The story itself would run September 5, Labor Day; I had to put it to bed by August 19.

 

And finally, I looked one more time at what the PR rep and Thomas had given me about each guy. It felt surreal, looking at these for work and not for my own curiosity. The information told bits and pieces of the story of 12 roller-coaster years gone by in a flash. A few stories from our morgue, a couple of dossiers from the publicists - much of the info glossed over what it had been rumored had actually happened in their lives. A few more albums and corresponding tours, each less successful than the last. Lots of solo work, with varying degrees of success. The departure of Kevin Richardson from the band to focus on family (and star in Rent on Broadway, I vaguely remembered). Nick Carter's drunk-driving rap. A.J. McLean's stints in rehab. Marriages. Births. A divorce.

 

I winced. It felt like a bubble had burst, like some last little bit of my youth had disappeared. But at the same time, my head and my heart, the hardened heart of a journalist used to dealing with talented jerks and just plain bad-luck streaks, knew these things happened. I was used to them. It wasn't that I believed the Backstreet Boys were just talented jerks. It wasn't that I wanted to believe any celebrity I wrote about was just a jerk deep down inside. I just knew better. I knew the Backstreet Boys couldn't possibly be so very different from anyone else I had ever written about or would ever write about, just because my sun had once risen and set on them.

 

Yet, just like anyone else I'd ever written about, a part of me hoped they'd be at worst decent, at best a joy to cover. Maybe more so because I'd once loved them from afar.

 

To be sure, definitely more so because I was going to have to spend every waking moment of the next week with them, for God's sake.

 

"Miz Michaels?" George's voice broke into my thoughts. "We're about five minutes from the venue."

 

I looked up. Somehow, downtown already surrounded us.

 

I fished my press pass out of my messenger bag and hung it around my neck, my own red badge of courage. I pulled out my iPhone to check my email, staring down at it in wonder. Even years after getting my first iPhone, I still marveled at its ability to be a journalist's best friend, with a useful app for nearly everything. My phone would serve as video camera, still camera, audio recorder, Twitter updater, and God knew what else on this little adventure. It would upload my video blogs and still pictures directly to my Rolling Stone blog. Even so, I had also brought my laptop for writing and my trusty camera, a professional-quality Nikon worth more than my life that I'd bought off Alicia the last time she upgraded her equipment, for the high-quality still pictures the magazine would no doubt want to use in print. I wondered what old Dr. Thompson would think of a Rolling Stone writer as backpack journalist, although, my God, I was traveling with a washed-up boy band attempting another comeback and he had crossed swords with Nixon, so was there really any room for a legitimate comparison?

 

We pulled into the parking lot of a massive arena, which loomed larger than life above the flat urban blocks around it and the sparkling ocean behind it, and found our way to a back entrance with a fleet of sleek black buses and semi-trucks parked a casual distance away. The Waterfront Theater was a performance venue tucked inside the American Airlines Arena, and while it was hardly an arena-scale tour, I was willing to bet the whole building practically still stank of the Miami Heat's sweat.

 

George idled the car, popped the trunk, and jumped out to unload my bag and open my door. I grabbed my red bag and hopped out as a huge, red-haired refrigerator of a man opened it. He saw my press pass and gave me a dour nod, waving me in. I took my bag from George, eased it to the ground so I could pull out its handle, rested it against my leg as I unzipped a side pocket to pull out a $5 bill for his tip - a quick trick I'd learned several trips ago - and murmured my thanks. He had gotten me here, for which I wasn't actually sure whether to thank him as I stared up at the arena before me, at the long hallway I faced.

 

I walked into the building after the security guy, dragging my bag behind me as I heard the tone of George's engine change and then fade away, signaling that he'd driven off. Silence fell. "My" guard, the one leading the way, didn't seem to be a wordy fellow, but considering that he could have moonlighted for WWE and that his stony gaze could have wilted the most resourceful groupie in her tracks, I didn't get the sense he had been hired for his talkative nature.

 

We passed an overhead sign with an arrow pointing to the left: "Dressing Rooms." Ahead, double doors, guarded by another beefy security type, this one black and sullen-faced. He opened them, and my guard walked in ahead of me. I could hear voices singing, as clear as day, unaccompanied by any instrument. The guys must have been in the middle of sound check.

 

The first impression I had of even the relatively small Waterfront Theater, the one I would write down later, was that of a cavern - a great, empty cavern. Large spaces always seem smaller when they aren't crammed full of people and things, proving to you just how big they are and how much they can hold, but walking into an empty venue never lost its surreality to me. I felt so very small.

 

At our end of the cavernous space was a stage, elaborate and shiny, with instruments off to one side and all manner of lights and sound equipment surrounding it, hanging from the edges, sitting down below. The speakers blared a harmony of voices, singing vaguely familiar lyrics.

 

I couldn't see the guys - we were off to one side and slightly behind the stage - so I crept forward, ignoring the menacing stare of my guard, whose kind I had long ago learned to manage. My eyes registered first the side profile of Howie Dorough, then - as I tiptoed around the stage - all four guys sitting on stools.

 

I caught my breath. I kept my face carefully blank. As quietly as I could, I pulled my phone from my purse, thumbed to the camera app and held it up in front of me to record 15 golden seconds of singing. And now I would have known the song anywhere: "I'll Never Break Your Heart."  I smothered a smile in spite of myself.

 

The singing stopped, and I hit the stop button. And then a gravelly voice stopped me in my tracks: "Can we help you?"

 

My blood froze in my veins. I didn't need to look up to know the distinctive voice of A.J. McLean. But I looked up anyway - and was arrested by the sight of four of the five guys I'd worshipped more than a decade ago staring at me in unmasked curiosity.

 

I had told Alicia they no longer looked interesting, but the picture that had made me say that clearly hadn't done them justice. They looked different from my teenage fantasy - shorter hair, more facial hair, thinner, older, somehow as if they'd been around the block a few more times - and yet the same, like fruit that had ripened or, maybe less potentially insulting, a wine that had aged to perfection. I felt as I'd feared I would, 18 again, screaming on the inside. They were larger than life.

 

A lesser woman, I would have liked to think, would have fainted. But I was no less than a journalist with nerves of steel. I drew a deep breath, squared my shoulders and drew myself up to every hair of my 62 inches, steadied my hands and voice, marshaled my typical blend of confidence and a little icebreaking sarcasm, and replied, "I hope so. Meg Michaels, Rolling Stone." I forced a smile. "Your new best friend for the next two weeks."

 

Still, four stares. I could have been speaking Klingon. I counted off five seconds. I felt five inches tall. Bad start?

 

It wasn't for lack of trying. I was doing my best to be a good sport. Hell, Thomas had told me to be a good sport. He'd all but pulled me into his office by the ear yesterday, after a solid week of sullenness and passive-aggressive comments about not being able to take any stories next week because I'd be stuck on a goddamn bus.

 

"Michaels," he'd warned me, "just because you think this is a turd of an assignment doesn't mean it's not still an assignment. Now you be a good sport about this, or I swear to Christ I'll put you in the bread line."

 

I'd been about to spit out something to the effect of "Yes, Dad," but the dead-serious look in his eyes had killed the words in my throat. I was sarcastic at work, but bratty, that was much rarer. And he wasn't having it. Shit. Consequences. I'd squeaked out a response with uncharacteristic fear and slunk back to my desk. He couldn't see me now, and yet his threat echoed in my head, forcing me to at least fake enthusiasm. Fake it till you make it.

 

The problem was, I was doing such a good job of faking being enthusiastic about a story some subconscious part of me was faking not being enthusiastic about that I didn't even know how it really felt to be staring up at these guys, who stared skeptically down at me now. I would have liked to think this sort of reaction from a band always made me nervous. It would have been bullshit.

 

A.J. cleared his throat. In a spot-on Monty Python British accent, he said, "Pull the other one!"

 

The others laughed. Caught off guard, I had to laugh, too, out of nervousness more than anything else. Whatever retort I might have attempted wilted in my mouth as I held up my press pass. "No, I promise I am."

 

"Figured as much," Nick Carter spoke up. He looked more different from his old self than anyone, skinnier, his blond hair shorter and darker, the edges of tattoos visible under T-shirt sleeves that hugged well-defined biceps. His smirk mirrored mine. I wanted to hide. Jesus, Michaels, pull it together. You are knocking on 31 years old's door. You are a professional journalist. You've done lunch with Jagger. These guys are child's play.

 

"We don't get a lot of strange chicks joining us on tour," Nick continued

 

That's debatable, I thought, reflecting for half a second on my nine years of experience writing about musicians.

 

"Well, welcome," A.J. said, giving me what I chose to interpret as an encouraging smile. He wore a neatly trimmed black mustache and goatee, a fedora, and so help me God, a whole hot mess of guyliner. He looked like Pete Wentz's stunt double after a rousing round of No-Shave November and a few steaks, but he also looked very friendly. "If you wanna head on backstage, they can take your suitcase, and our - Bob, you wanna go find Christine? Our tour manager can bring you up to speed," he elaborated as my guard retreated backstage, wordlessly, reminding me of a carrot-topped Lurch. Silent Bob, indeed.

 

"We were just finishing sound check," A.J. continued. "So, uh..."

 

I knew where I wasn't wanted, and it was usually right where I wanted to be. As much as I wanted to escape, I remembered Thomas' warning, and I flashed them a winning smile. "Oh, I was gonna stay for the rest of sound check."

 

The guys exchanged one of those quick, speaking glances among themselves. I wondered if they had developed that maddening sixth sense for nonverbal communication so many normal guys had and claimed they didn't.

 

"Guess we can't stop you," Brian Littrell said finally.

 

My heart turned over in my chest. He had been my favorite all those years ago, and of all the guys, he had visibly aged the best. Where Nick's hair had darkened, his had lightened. His cheekbones looked like they'd been sculpted out of granite, and there was an ageless, determined set to his jaw that belied what I hoped was a healthy sense of irony, or else he wouldn't be a 36-year-old man wearing his jeans tucked into the tops of expensive basketball sneakers. But his left hand looked achingly bare, and he wouldn't meet my eyes, focusing on a spot above my head as he responded to my request.

 

Ah, yes, there it was: the token musician who hated me. I couldn't for a moment imagine what else it could be.

 

Reminded of my role, I nodded my thanks, feeling strangely chastised, and took a seat a few rows back from the stage, shoving my phone into my pocket and digging out my notepad and a pen as I settled in.

 

Sound check rolled on, their voices rising and falling in volume as technicians adjusted the system. They still sounded as sweet as ever, and I was impressed; time easily could have done them harm. I kind of couldn't believe I was hearing them in person. I scribbled notes furiously on my first impressions.

 

Presently, as sound check wrapped up, I heard the staccato rhythm of high heels clicking, drawing closer to me. I looked up, and an icy blonde woman a few years older than me was approaching. She was taller than me, even absent heels, and so slender she could have hidden behind a sapling; the massive walkie-talkie on her hip probably constituted a quarter of her weight at that moment. She, too, was wearing jeans and a tee above her high heels, but she seemed just a little too put-together, her hair just a little too sleek, her makeup just a little too perfect, everything just a little too clipped. I assumed this was the tour manager, who by nature would be a high-strung person, but I would have expected her to look like she hadn't slept in three weeks, not like she'd just stepped off a TV set.

 

"Hiiiiiiiiiii," she drawled in a high-pitched voice, her tone as insincere as the one my mother had used with bank tellers when I was a kid. She extended a hand to me, but when I reached out to shake, her fingers barely curled around mine. Bad handshake, insincere voice, looked like the most popular girl in school: I hated her already.

 

"I'm Christine Palmero, tour manager," Ice Queen continued. "You wanna come backstage?"

 

I stood up, juggling notebook and bags. "Uh, sure."

 

As I followed her, Howie, who was sitting closest to the edge of the stage, caught my eye, the other guys in the middle of advising the technician. He had a warm, open, ageless face with a five o'clock shadow, and the flowing, curly locks of yesteryear had been cropped into a subtle fauxhawk. He, more than anyone else, was better-looking than I remembered.

 

"Good luck," he mouthed to me, with a quick wink, and I couldn't keep from cracking a smile.

 

Click, click, click back down the hall, but right this time instead of straight, heading for, I guessed, the dressing rooms and green room.

 

"How was your flight?" Christine asked. It was a perfunctory question, her tone made that clear.

 

"Fine, thanks," I replied, in no mood to go out of my way to engage her.

 

We reached the green room, and I propped up my suitcase and messenger bag in a corner, keeping my phone and notepad handy. My purse was buried in my suitcase, not that either bag held much of value besides my camera, which I would dig out before I went back out there.

 

Christine turned to a table full of food, junk and real food alike, and a full-sized fridge at one end. "Help yourself. Can I get you something to drink? Water, Coke products?"

 

"A Diet Coke, thanks." I had felt like eating my entire arm since before the plane ever took off, and it took everything in me not to fall upon the table like a savage, especially with a caterer fussing over hot food at the other end of the table. I helped myself to a small dish of fresh-cut fruit and sat in a nearby chair, trying to straighten my back and eat daintily, feeling like a wildebeest next to this human snowflake.

 

The tour manager handed me the Diet Coke and opened a bottle of water for herself - ladies never drank soda, LOL duh - before settling into a chair next to me, crossing her legs primly at the ankles.

 

"OK! So! You are with us for the next week," Christine said brightly, stating the obvious. "Any questions so far?"

 

You mean, any questions that weeks of emails didn't resolve? I thought about asking, but thought better of it. I wasn't interested in making an enemy of this harpy, who was all that stood between me and a hasty trip home. Although...

 

Instead, I flashed another winning smile. "Not really. Anything I need to know that we haven't been over?"

 

"Well, aaaaactually, I did want to let you know that we discussed what you and Tom had been talking about, and we're not going to allow you to shoot any video or photos during the concerts." Christine smiled the beatific smile of someone quite pleased with herself. "We didn't get the impression that yours is a concert story per se, so we're going to reserve that right for people writing about the concerts themselves."

 

I clenched my toes inside my shoes to keep from clenching my fists or jaw, which would have been a more obvious tell. Never mind that the publicists had all but guaranteed us in writing that we'd get footage during the shows. Never mind that our story would probably generate more buzz for the guys than the dumb Miami Herald review. No, no.

 

"And I want to make sure we have the blog and Twitter addresses right," Christine went on, oblivious to the smoke I was sure was coming out of my ears. "We'll be reading them regularly, me and the publicists. Just to make sure there's nothing...untoward."

 

I found my voice. "Well, I'll give you the addresses, but any issues with content, you'll need to take up with Thomas," I said calmly, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. "I take orders from him. I don't imagine I'll have much more than random observations from the road, anyway. We had discussed that previously."

 

Christine's smile never flickered. "Of course. But better safe than sorry."

 

I ripped a sheet off the notepad, trying not to do so violently, and scribbled down my Twitter handle and the address of my blog. So much for tweeting, "God, why don't these guys Febreze their damn shoes every once in a while?" or "If I hear ‘Backstreet's Back' one more time, I'm going to lie down in front of the bus."

 

Christine took the sheet in one perfectly manicured hand. "Thanks. I'll share this with the publicists. Also," she went on, "I don't need to tell you to try to keep a low profile with the boys. They don't need any extra distractions beyond you being here at all."

 

I had just about had it with this woman, and I'd only known her for five minutes. I didn't appreciate being talked to like I was an intern who'd stumbled into an all-expenses-paid vacation.

 

"Anything else?" I said, too politely.

 

There wasn't, really, just logistics. I would have my own room tonight and whenever the band and its entourage stayed in hotels; the magazine had paid for all that in advance. There wasn't time now to go check into the hotel, so my stuff would live in the green room for now.

 

"Oh, and before I forget," she added, reaching into her back pocket. She produced an all-access pass on a lanyard, which I instantly hung around my neck.

 

More fake smiles on both sides as Christine stood up. "Thanks for your time," she said. "Make yourself at home."

 

She walked out, and I glared at her as she departed, scribbling down a few obscenity-laden notes. No, I wasn't about to piss her off today, but I had half a mind to tell her what I thought on my way out of Nashville.

 

I looked around the green room. It was huge, full of food and refreshments. This one was for the crew - Christine, the tour accountant, a couple of promo guys, the technicians, the two bodyguards, the guys' personal assistant, the makeup artist and hairstylist - and the backing band. The guys and their five backup dancers would have their own, the guys having decided for old time's sake or some such shit to all cram onto one bus. These groups would fill four tour buses, not counting the two semis of set materials, lights and sound. The opening act, some Disney pop tart whose name I had promptly forgotten and who was almost young enough to be my daughter, was traveling separately, with her own legion of buses and equipment trailers. The whole thing was dizzying, when you really stopped to think about it, but I was used to it, and so I no longer did.

 

After a few minutes of studying my notes, carefully composing a tweet, chugging my Diet Coke, and contemplating whether or not to call Thomas and tear into him for not warning me about the evil sorceress running the show here, I heard a symphony of footsteps and voices outside the door. A moment later, most of the crew came stampeding in, along with a gang of roadies. It was two hours to showtime, and it was dinnertime for them; the band, as I understood it, had sound-checked earlier and had already eaten. I excused myself and my luggage, wondering how safe it really was there.

 

Walking down the hall, I found a closet and stuffed my suitcase inside, writing a note on the back of my hand to find it there later. Everything I really cared about was in my messenger bag anyway, including my wallet.

 

My all-access pass meant I could go anywhere the band did, except the bathroom, so I took advantage of the chance to track down their green room. It wasn't hard; it was just down the hall from the crew's. I could hear voices inside.

 

Someone from the same caterer was standing off to one side as the guys pounced on a buffet of what I guessed were manly foods - like a bunch of lions on a wounded gazelle, I wrote on my notepad before shoving it into my back pocket. They muttered appreciative things about the food as they moved down the line, one by one heading to a long table in the middle of the room.

 

Nick looked up, mouth full of food, and waved me in. "Oh, good, the writer's here," he said as he swallowed what looked like a painfully large chunk of food. "Come eat some of this awesome food."

 

"Yeah, it's not like they fed you on the flight, right?" A.J. added before chomping into a huge burger.

 

I tried not to laugh. I couldn't believe these guys were older than me. Visibly they'd aged, and yet, as they chowed down like frat brothers, they seemed distinctly, well, boyish.

 

I took a plate and filled it with a burger, no bun, a couple hot wings and a huge scoop of cheesy broccoli and cauliflower, grabbing another Diet Coke from the fully stocked fridge at the end of the table. I had a feeling I, too, would be eating like a frat boy for the next week. With no clear opportunities for a run in sight, either, I wondered if all my pants would still fit at the end of the week.

 

I plunked down my plate at the opposite end of the table from the guys, so I could see them all. They were silent as they stuffed their faces. Frat boys, for sure.

 

After a few minutes, Nick swallowed another huge chunk of food and said, "Sorry, we're..." He winced, something clearly stuck in his throat. He took a big gulp of water. "We're not trying to be rude. We just, you know, really love food."

 

"What, are you only allowed to eat when you're together?" I couldn't help but chuckle, softening the sarcasm.

 

"We kinda forgot how good tour food is," Howie said, a bit sheepishly. "It's been a while, y'know."

 

I made a mental note of his comment. Still getting their tour legs back?

 

"In fact," Nick said, stabbing a piece of cauliflower with his fork as if it had insulted his mother, "the PR team told us to be nice to you." He winked at me, a completely innocuous wink. "Not that we wouldn't be nice to a pretty lady, but this whole being-followed-on-tour thing, it's a bit of a first."

 

"Gee, thanks," I said. "You have to be told to be nice to a journalist. This is going to be a great week." But the truth was, the guys were being friendlier than the first few minutes in the theater had led me to expect, and I was starting to feel reassured.

 

"You probably do this a lot," Howie said, unaware that I'd never spent a whole week with a band whose entire membership I had once lusted after. The least attractive person in this band at any given time still would have stopped traffic on the average American street. "We'll try not to make it too painful for you. Unlike, ah, some of our colleagues whom you've already met."

 

The guys all chortled. I looked down at my plate and smiled tightly. "Yeeeeah."

 

"Christine, she's, uh, she's a pistol." Brian's smile mirrored mine, but I noticed that he still wasn't looking me in the eye. There was still a slow, gentle, appealing twang to his voice, and I remembered that he was from Kentucky - he'd even made his home in Louisville for the last few years, I seemed to recall.

 

"She's a bitch on wheels," Nick said matter-of-factly, through a mouthful of food, having apparently abandoned any effort to be polite.

 

"Dude, mixed company," Brian said to him, and now the smile was a sarcastic smirk. "Did you spend the last six months on a construction site?"

 

"Oh, like no sour word has ever passed your lips." Nick swallowed hard again. "They told us to be nice to her. They didn't tell us to not be ourselves. Would you want it any differently?" he said to me.

 

"You using blue language in front of me doesn't piss me off half as much as you being artificially nice would be," I said. "So by all means, cuss, fart and rant on."

 

Nick grinned. "Noted."

 

"You shouldn't have said that." A.J. rolled his eyes. "He'll act like a caveman all week now because he can."

 

"Dude, he was gonna act like a caveman anyway." Brian made a dismissive gesture with his hot wing. He looked at a spot above my head again. "You're probably used to it."

 

"This may shock you," I said, equally dedicated to avoiding eye contact with him as I shook excess cheese sauce off a piece of broccoli, "but I've never spent every moment of a whole week with musicians."

 

"Jesus." Howie grinned around his can of Coke. "Allow me to apologize now for everyone else's BS."

 

A.J. rolled his eyes again. "Now if that isn't the biggest crock of shit I ever did hear."

 

"Anyway, getting back to the point," Brian went on, "Christine's gonna be the worst thing that happens to you all week. She hates other women, hates journalists, thinks she's our mother and micromanages everything." He ticked off each of these points on barbecue sauce-covered fingertips. "We used her for our last tour, and I have no idea why our manager asked her back." He wiped off his fingers. "She's actually worse than our manager, who, thank the Lord, will not be joining us for a few weeks. Great guy, tight ship." He shook his head, let out a low whistle.

 

"What Brian means by all that," A.J. clarified, "is that you shouldn't take it personally if she was a total bitch to you. Which I'm guessing she was, since you are a woman and a journalist who will be in her hair and ours for the next week."

 

"She wasn't so bad, apart from essentially telling me not to do my job." I bit into a hot wing.

 

"Reading your tweets? Telling you to stay out of our hair?" Howie guessed. I nodded. He smirked. "Sounds about right."

 

Nick raised his hand like a schoolboy. "Question. So how do you stay out of our hair when you're supposed to ride the bus with us?"

 

Brian just rubbed his forehead, a pained expression on his face.

"So, Miss Journalist, you from New York originally?" A.J. asked.

 

Here came the barrage of polite small-talk questions. "Western Illinois," I replied.

 

"Illinois, huh?" He popped a piece of broccoli into his mouth without using his fork. "How'd you end up in New York?"

 

I smiled tightly. "By getting into bands' hair."

 

"So you're gonna be a pain in the ass anyway this week?" Brian sounded hard like he was trying to make a joke, but his prickliness so far took the laughs out of it.

 

"Something like that," I muttered, feeling chastised again, as I sipped my Diet Coke. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick scowl at him.

 

We made small talk for the rest of the meal before they all finished wolfing their food and excused themselves, off to do whatever it was they were going to do before they went on. A little more than two hours to showtime for them.

 

I pulled my notepad back out and made a few notes about our dinnertime conversation - no sense in intimidating them with it in our first chat - then finished my plate of food, which was getting cold. For someone who had little else to do, it was still a long time to showtime, when I would go out into the audience and sit near the front and experience it all. The green room had fallen silent. I assumed the backup dancers had long since eaten, if they ate at all.

 

I started typing my blog post for the day, then gave up. There would be more that night, and my own thoughts were somewhat muddled.

 

I had met many celebrities in my day, I reflected as I leaned back in my chair. Many of them had surprised me with their kindness, many more with their bad attitudes. These guys surprised me with how down-to-earth they were. It amazed me that fame hadn't gone to their heads.

 

Or maybe it had simply evaporated, after all these years.

 

Eventually, I dug my camera out of my bag, slung the bag over my shoulder and went for a walk. The guys' dressing rooms weren't far away, and showtime was drawing ever nearer. Maybe this was the place for a few good pre-show candid shots, maybe a composite shot of the four.

 

A.J. was touching up his guyliner. Howie had his elbows on his vanity, forehead resting on his clasped hands, a rosary snaking from between them - a beautiful image, I thought, hoping the click of my shutter wouldn't disturb him.

 

Brian, too, had his elbows on his vanity, but he was talking quietly into an iPhone. He glanced furtively at me as my camera clicked, but his eyes still didn't meet mine, and he swiveled in his chair so that his back was to me.

 

Anxiety prickled through me. Brian and I were not off to a good start.

 

Nick had his feet up on the vanity but was looking into the mirror as he spiked his hair. He glanced up when he heard the shutter click on my camera.

 

"Guess I better get used to this again, huh?" he said with a smirk.

 

I grinned unapologetically. "I'm sure it'll be like riding a bike."

 

Nick leaned back, uncapping a bottle of water that sat on the vanity. "You'd be surprised. This sorta thing was always sorta weird for me. And what you're doing?" He shook his head, a bemused look on his face. "Totally out of the ordinary."

 

I leaned against the doorframe, my camera hand dropping to my side. "You toured not that long ago, right?"

 

"Yeah, but..." He took a sip of water. "Not like this. Not when it felt like so much was riding on it. I don't know if any more than usual is, but..." He shrugged. "It's hard not to feel old right now, you know?"

 

I reached around to my bag, feeling around for my recorder.

 

Nick sighed heavily. "You're not looking for a notepad, are you?"

 

"Oh, didn't the Ice Queen or one of your publicists tell you? Each of you is going one-on-one with me." I crossed my arms and gave him my best sickly-sweet smile. "See, so I can't stay totally out of your hair."

 

"Well, just...not right now, OK?" He swung his feet to the floor and glanced at his hair in the mirror, then rose to his feet. He was every bit of a foot taller than me, and I felt very small as he walked over.

 

He placed a hand over his heart. "I promise I will sit down with you in the next 24 hours. And I promise I will lean on the others till they cooperate."

 

I couldn't keep from smiling, from dropping the sarcasm. "Well, I appreciate it. I've met a lot of surprisingly nice musicians, but I gotta say, you guys are really shocking the hell out of me with your hospitality." A thought nagged at me. "For the most part."

 

Nick looked thoughtful. He crossed his arms and studied me. "You seem nice. Nicer than a lot of journalists." He chewed on his lower lip. "I can tell you right now, Brian is going to take longer to buy that than anyone else in the band."

I snorted softly. "Yeah, I kinda picked up on that."

 

"He has to, though," he went on, as if he hadn't heard me. "Everyone knows it's a big deal that you're here. There's a lot riding on that, too."

 

He sat back down, and I turned to leave. But before I did, something else occurred to me.

 

"So, what's your opening number?" I asked.

 

Nick beamed up at me, the face that launched a thousand Geocities tributes. "Isn't it obvious? ‘Backstreet's Back.'"

 

Sunday, 7/31: Orlando

 

I heard the phone ring before I saw the clock: 5:45. My hand shot out and dragged the receiver to the side of my head, and I mumbled something not even I understood.

 

"This is your wake-up call!" a man on the other end singsonged.

 

"Go back to hell," I mumbled, and dropped the receiver back into the cradle.

 

It was disgustingly early for his good mood. The buses were supposed to be leaving Miami at 7, but we hadn't gotten to the hotel until 11 - in the crew's case, much later - and I had been up well past 1 working. It was going to be a minimum-four-Diet Coke day.

 

Crawling out of my huge, plump bed, I stumbled over to the window and ripped open the curtains. The sky was just lightening in the east, and the city lights still sparkled, a slice of dark ocean visible in the distance. I liked to start my hotel mornings like this, staring out at the landscape. It was easy to forget where you were when all you saw was the inside of a hotel room, the front of a USA Today and the endless, hellish loop of HLN headlines.

 

Half of Diet Coke #1 from the mini-bar was gone before I climbed into the shower. When I climbed out, there was a text message waiting for me from an unfamiliar number: "Don't eat breakfast. Tour ritual on bus."

 

Tour ritual? What, were they going to sacrifice the journalist and it'd be less messy on an empty stomach?

 

My stomach was growling hardcore at the thought of breakfast, but I managed to get down to the lobby without dry-heaving. Christine was waiting there, wearing another expensive-looking tee with capris and heels, looking as polished as she had yesterday. I wondered if she was actually an android. My outfit was theoretically identical to hers, but finished with flats and a halo of still-damp curls I'd tried to tame with anti-frizz cream, and I was sure I looked exactly like I'd gotten four hours of sleep.

 

"I forgot to tell you yesterday," she trilled. "You'll want to go out the back. Less conspicuous."

 

I thought about telling her that her lack of an inside voice was awfully conspicuous in itself, but instead I just returned her vapid smile, did an about-face and left out the back.

 

The alley behind the hotel reeked of exhaust, and the air was already heavy with hot humidity. I climbed onto the bus, dragging my bags - no one there to help me - and was instantly greeted by a McDonald's bag under my nose.

 

"What's all this?" I said, shouldering my messenger bag and accepting the food from Brian.

 

"Your breakfast, Miz Michaels." He smiled, looked me in the eye for the first time. I was so surprised I almost dropped both my breakfast and my bag. His eyes were startlingly blue, yes, but it was more that he was actually looking at me. A friendly look. A friendly look in the eye from Brian Littrell to a woman who, 12 years ago, had wanted to be Meg Littrell.

 

Words failed me. All I could offer, all I had to give, was a smile in return. Oh, holy hell.

 

"Welcome to our nightmare," Nick called out over Brian's shoulder, once again through a mouthful of food, this time something that probably contained the ground-up knuckles of Third World cows. And now I could see that, in the midst of their luxuriously appointed bus, McDonald's wrappers covered the tables in the two small booths on one side. I hadn't eaten McDonald's in years, drawing the fast-food line at the golden arches, but the smell sharpened my hunger & made me dizzy.

 

I had to laugh, relaxing. "So this is why I wasn't supposed to eat."

 

"Yep," Brian said gleefully. "Tour ritual. This is what we eat every morning we can. We even rotate who has to go get it. We dance our asses off. Least we can do is eat something that'll probably kill us once a day."

 

"Also, glad you got my text," Howie called out, his back to me.

 

Well. Super. Christine hadn't told me she had given out my cellphone number to the guys. At least I hadn't gotten any late-night pictures of genitalia.

 

"I got you the fruit-and-walnut thing," A.J. said, a little apologetically. "It seemed like something a woman would eat."

 

I wasn't convinced their fruit and walnuts weren't coated in industrial chemicals, but far be it from me to look a devastatingly attractive gift horse in the mouth. I dropped my bags where I stood, sat down on the long couch across from their booths and ate.

 

"You're gonna be in the extra bunk," A.J. informed me. "Across from the bodyguard."

 

I had a feeling I knew whose bunk the extra was, but I wasn't going to press it. "Great. Where's the bodyguard?" I popped a wilted green grape into my mouth.

 

"Jay's napping in the back," Nick said, busily mopping up a puddle of ketchup with the end of a perfectly oval hash brown. "He hit the hay as soon as A.J. got back to the bus. He doesn't exactly sleep soundly at night, having to babysit the likes of us."

 

The idea of a guy like yesterday's hulks lying across the aisle from me was unsettling at best, but he didn't stir when I eventually dragged my bags to the back. I pushed aside a short curtain to see a fairly utilitarian bunk bed with a fluffy-looking pillow and camel-colored bedding. The bunk was five feet off the ground, for some stupid reason, and I had to hoist my suitcase over my head to get it inside. There were ladders built into the wall next to each pair of bunks, but I didn't feel especially confident about them.

 

"It takes some getting used to," came a cheery, Southern-fried voice from behind me. I turned to see Brian heading back to the john. "Take it from another short person."

 

My everything clenched against a wave of I didn't even know what as he brushed past me. He smelled really nice, and his trim body was about half a foot taller than me, and his hair was still damp from a shower, something I refused to contemplate in much detail because all of these gorgeous men were still sources at the end of the day. Could be a long drive to Orlando.

 

"By the way," he called back over his shoulder, "there's a spot below the bunks for your suitcase."

 

Yep. It was going to be a long drive.

 

 

**

 

Thankfully, Orlando, where the guys had gotten their start, was just a few hours away. I would have gladly given my left kidney for a nap, but that would have been irresponsible of me as a journalist. Instead, I passed the time with a mix of work activities: a couple of tweets, a bit of video of A.J. and Nick talking about the band's lingering immaturities as they played some Call of Duty game on the Xbox in the front of the bus, the beginnings of the day's blog post. Some notes observing the brotherly camaraderie on the bus, which time didn't seem to have dimmed, although I was pretty sure it predated the term "bromance."

 

We hit Orlando at about 11 a.m., and everyone piled off the buses and into the Amway Center, which would be packed with a hometown crowd tonight. Someone else would take all the bags to the hotel and check them in.

 

"What exactly are you guys supposed to do all day?" I asked Nick, squinting against the bright sun in spite of my sunglasses. The bus had started to get chilly after a while, and the Southern heat felt almost nice.

 

"Well, we don't have sound check till 4," he replied. "Theoretically, we can do whatever we want."

 

It sounded familiar enough. "So what do you do? Hang out at Universal Studios?" I jeered.

 

"Well, I promised someone an interview." He flashed a photogenic smile down at me. I wondered if he'd ever had to buy a drink in his life.

 

Truthfully, he reminded me as we sat down in the bowels of the venue, iPhone-as-recorder between us in his dressing room, he hadn't had a drink in years. That was first a condition of the probation he'd received when he was hooked up for driving drunk, then a health decision.

 

The musicians I interviewed were often so flip about their criminal records, even as they paid lip service to it having been a dark time in their lives, their having learned a lesson, et cetera. I didn't feel like Nick felt any differently about his. After all, it hadn't affected his career. It probably wouldn't have affected mine, either. If either of us had been something normal, like a teacher or an accountant, it could have meant the end of our lives.

 

But it had been a tough time, and music had pulled him out of it, he acknowledged. He still struggled sometimes with his feelings, with getting angry, but he'd been the most prolific solo artist, even if none of them had exactly met with smashing success. It had helped him a lot.

 

"What did you say when there started to be talk of this album, this tour?" I asked him.

 

He chewed on his lip again; it appeared to be his nervous tic. "There was never any doubt we'd be out here again," he said quietly. "Never any real doubt. But you always wonder."

 

"Wonder what?" I pressed.

 

"Well... Think about it this way." He focused on a spot behind me. "We're all in our 30s. We're not kids. Some of us have kids. Some of us are old enough to have the big stars now as our kids."

 

I thought about what I knew of the guys. Nick was 31, just a few months older than me; A.J. was 33; Brian was 36; Howie was about to turn 38. Kevin, the missing member, had to be pushing 40. Justin Bieber was 18. In my small hometown, where it wasn't unheard-of for the obituary of a person under 80 to list great-great-grandchildren among the survivors, the musically reprehensible source of Bieber fever easily could have been Kevin's or Howie's kid, maybe even Brian's. His fame had now eclipsed their own, though maybe not at the height of their stardom. Then again, there had never been a Backstreet Boys 3D concert film that I was aware of.

 

"It's hard to keep up with such younger kids," Nick was saying. "I mean, we give it all we have to give, and yeah, we all still act like a bunch of college kids, but we're not. I have to wonder if we'll get too old for this someday."

 

He looked at the floor now. Now it was he who seemed eager not to look me in the eye. "I'm trying to enjoy this for what it is and not think of it as the last of something, but it's hard sometimes, you know?"

 

I wondered if it was the last time I'd hear that.

 

He sat up straighter. "Boy, I don't know where that came from." He gave me a forced smile. "You're good."

 

I shrugged. "Well, I guess that beats being called a bitch to my face."

 

He jumped up from his chair. "Nah, that was pretty painless, I have to say. I'll go lean on the others some more."

 

I stood up as well. "Some more?"

 

 "I told them I was going to do my interview and they damn well better do theirs soon, too." He grinned. "I also told them you didn't seem so bad."

 

I crossed my arms and arched an eyebrow up at him. "I see. You wouldn't have anything to do with a certain bandmate of yours suddenly not being a total ogre, would you?"

 

Nick's grin didn't budge, but it did turn just a hair shitty. "I don't know what you're talking about."

 

 

**

 

With still a couple of hours to go before sound check, and with the caterers nowhere to be seen, Nick took off to meet the rest of the guys for lunch, an invitation I declined so I could get some work done. He told me excitedly, before running out the door, that a Lee Roy Selmon's had just opened up in Orlando. I knew it to be a popular chain in Tampa, the general area where I seemed to recall Nick had grown up. I also knew, based on a family vacation years ago, that if I ate that, McDonald's and backstage catering all in the same day, my ass would jiggle for the rest of the week.

 

As I sat in the band's and dancers' green room, transcribing my interview, I was surprised to see the caterers coming in to set up.

 

"You guys are here early," I said to one of them, a chubby young lady with her hair in an untidy chignon.

 

She shrugged. "There's a rider in the contract that the backup dancers get their own meal."

 

Oh, God. Here came the nymphettes of the stage now, fairly prancing into the room to group around the table. If Christine had made me feel like a wildebeest, these women made me feel like Jabba the Hutt.

 

One of them, a statuesque black woman who was six feet tall if an inch, gave me a friendly smile. "You must be the Rolling Stone gal," she said to me, taking me by surprise.

 

I smiled back politely, pulling out one headphone. I would judge momentarily whether it was worth pulling out the other. "That's me. Meg Michaels."

 

"Nice to meet you." She held out her hand for a much less underwhelming handshake than I'd gotten from Christine yesterday. "I'm Asia. Lisette, Heather, Kylie, Amber," she added, pointing in turn to a petite blonde girl, a redhead, a taller blonde girl and an olive-skinned brunette. All were built like Jillian Michaels, all were several years younger than me, and with the exception of Asia, all were just a few inches taller than me.

 

"Because you'll totally remember all those names," Asia added with a wink. I liked her instantly.

 

The dancers descended on a huge salad bar the caterers had set up. "You're welcome to this, too," Lisette called out, in a voice with a surprising trace of an exotic accent I couldn't place. "Some of us remember what the guys' tour food is like."

 

Amber rolled her eyes. "Trust me, we remember what the man food is like," she informed me in a husky voice as she plunked down her plate of what looked mostly like lettuce and fruit. "It was hell trying to get our own rider, but we couldn't keep living on hot wings."

 

"So have you all been on tour with them before?" I asked, closing my laptop and pulling out the other headphone. I surreptitiously switched the recorder on.

 

"Asia, Lisette and I have," Amber said. "Kylie and Heather are new. Actually, there used to be seven or eight of us, but it would've been a little overpowering with just four guys, you know."

 

I wondered why the guys were bothering with backup dancers in the first place. I'd been surprised by the size of their tour, half arena shows and half big music venue shows. For a group trying to kick-start things, I might have expected something intimate. But apparently they weren't out to do things halfway.

 

"In fact," Amber went on, "Lisette's been with them a couple tours. She'll give you all the real dirt you need, right?" she called out to the smaller girl as Lisette sat down.

 

Lisette smirked. "True story. They're just a bunch of big goons. Nick wants me to teach him French. I think he just wants to be able to say ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi?' to French girls. He hasn't figured out Quebecois girls don't take that shit."

 

Quebecois. She'd answered that question. She'd also made me want to punch Nick in the back of the head next time I saw him.

 

"Anyway," Asia said, "you ever get tired of the boys, you come on over to our bus." She paused, and a naughty, not-quite-embarrassed grin crossed her face. "That didn't sound quite like I was intending."

 

I giggled, a sound that didn't often come out of my mouth. I hadn't had close female friends since college, and while I didn't expect to be close to these girls, they were refreshing.

 

They ate quickly, and then it was out the door again, the caterers sweeping in to whisk things away and set up the "man food." The appointed time for sound check came and went, but I hardly needed to go to every one of them, and I had hit my stride with work.

 

I felt a little like I was on the set of a constantly moving, week-long play. Problem was, it was hard not to want to feel like one of the actors.

 

Christine's half-scolding yesterday came to mind, her admonition that I keep a low profile. She had no idea what it would actually take for me to get the story I wanted, and yet I had to admit that if I were any other sort of journalist, she'd have a point. There was some merit to staying detached from the story and its handsome, friendly subjects. Leaving them alone all day seemed like a good start, even if it meant a long, boring day of busywork for me.

 

I wanted so badly to embrace the kindness they seemed to have been showing me so far. It felt as though they wanted to include me in their little world, something I hadn't expected and didn't want to keep avoiding.

 

But what kind of a story would I be writing if I didn't? I had never become part of my story. Bad enough I was covering a band in which I'd once been emotionally invested.

 

A voice startled me out of my reverie. "I feel like you've been hiding from us ever since we got here."

 

I looked up. A.J. was standing over me, one of those ridiculous stocking cap-flat cap hybrids on his head despite the 90-degree temperatures, a teasing grin on his face.

 

I shrugged. "Staying out of your hair."

 

"Well, first of all, don't listen to Christine. She's completely friggin' clueless. Second of all..." A.J. pulled out a chair next to me. "I've read some of your other stuff, you know," he said as he sat down. "I remember something you wrote about Hunter S. Thompson being your hero."

 

I nodded, surprised. I tried to sneak in a Thompson reference every once in a while, but I never assumed they actually sank in with most of our readers.

 

"I've read some Thompson," A.J. continued, surprising me further. "Seems to me that what he meant by gonzo journalism was that you sort of become part of what you're covering. Right?"

 

I stared at him in frank amazement. Was I really discussing journalistic philosophy with a member of a boy band?

 

"Yeah, well, you know, it doesn't usually work that way," I finally managed. "The rest of us plebes are called to be objective observers. That's sort of part and parcel in our work. There's no sense in me living your lives for the next week."

 

"Sure, there is. Our lives are kinda fun. And I, for one, think you oughta share in our fun." A.J. grinned. "Think of this as gonzo journalism for the post-boy band era."

 

His comment about the post-boy band era was the one I needed to chase for my story, but the part about gonzo journalism was the one that resonated with me. It was my dream. Was I supposed to live it now? Here? With these guys?

 

At that moment, footsteps sounded outside. A.J. rolled his eyes. "We'll catch up after dinner. But I want to knock out my one-on-one before the end of the night."

 

I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah?"

 

"Might as well get it overwith." He winked, then glanced over his shoulder as the other three walked in. "Nick might have threatened to shave my eyebrows," he added, loud enough for them to hear.

 

"I'll deny it to the grave," Nick said cheerfully, not breaking his stride to the food table for even half a second.

 

 

I leaned forward, elbows on the table. "So what'd you mean by ‘post-boy band era'?"

 

"I said that, didn't I?" A.J. screwed up his lips a little nervously.

 

"Sure did."

 

We were still sitting in the green room, our empty plates still on the table and my recorder between us. The other three had taken off again. It was two hours to showtime for them, but I hoped we wouldn't be here longer than half an hour.

 

A.J. contemplated his remark for a long moment, twisting the cap of his water bottle back and forth. His fingernails were painted black, he had a bunch of tattoos, and he was wearing a ton of guyliner and jewelry. He looked like the kind of guy who might claim to have read a lot of Hunter S. Thompson.

 

Finally, he said, "I guess it was kind of a Freudian slip. Only kind of, though."

 

I raised an eyebrow, prompting him to go on.

 

"I say ‘kind of,'" he said slowly, "because I don't think the people who came long before you at the magazine could've imagined what we wrought 13 years ago."

 

"Even though long before you guys, there was the Beatles and David Cassidy? Even though Dr. Thompson lived to see your glory days?"

 

A.J. shrugged, smiling sheepishly. "Fair enough."

 

He fell silent again for a moment before venturing, "I guess...what I'm trying to say...is that I wonder if this is our world anymore?" He looked up at me as if even he wasn't sure what he was saying. "I dunno. You don't really hear about groups like us anymore. The last boy band I can remember is the Jonas Brothers, and for all I know, they could be dead or waiting tables in Indiana."

 

 "But do you feel like maybe that leaves a niche for you guys to fill?"

 

He shrugged again. "Maybe? Maybe not. The fans overseas are one thing. They're insane, and they're awesome. But people in this country? They don't get jacked about a bunch of singing, dancing pop guys in their 30s anymore, unless they're women your age or maybe a little younger." He took a drink of water. "People in the States didn't really get as excited about the last record as we were all hoping. We're not getting mobbed in restaurants anymore. You know Nick took the bus to lunch today?"

 

I raised an eyebrow. "I figured he caught up with another driver or a bodyguard."

 

"Nope. We just have the one bodyguard at any given time. They switch off 24-hour shifts, and he wasn't gonna wake up Jay to take him to lunch. We only had the one driver, too. We didn't think we were going to split up right away." Another drink of water. "So yeah, he hopped on a city bus. Skipped straight over calling a cab or something. We all thought he was insane, but he said it felt like a challenge, made him feel alive. He didn't get one sideways glance, as far as I know."

 

I paused a moment. It seemed like a stupid question, but I had to go with it. "You guys don't actually miss being mobbed, do you?"

 

"Hell, no," A.J. replied, his tone emphatic. "I forgot how awesome a little privacy is. It's nice not to have to wear a hat and dark glasses everywhere I go. I get a few double-takes, but the people coming up to me, that's stopped for the most part. Maybe it'll be different after the tour, but..." Another shrug. "Hard to say. I can't say I want it back. Actually, I don't. I look at all that, at not being able to so much as take a dump in peace, and I say, ‘Yeah, don't want you back.'"

 

"But do you miss the attention?"

 

He leaned forward, his eyes studying the floor. "I'll tell you what I miss. I miss people coming out and enjoying our music. We'd do it no matter what, until it stops being fun - and it is still fun, don't misunderstand me," he clarified quickly, looking up at me, but back down just as quickly. "But it hurts a little to feel like no one else cares anymore. People caring is pressure, but it also means we're sharing something good with the world, something we care about."

 

I smiled. "Well, you know, I wouldn't be out here if my boss thought no one cared."

 

A.J. blew out a long breath. His dark eyes turned playful as they met mine again. "Let me ask you a question, Miss Journalist."

 

I remembered what he'd said about gonzo journalism, about engaging with them like friends and not just sources, and I said the first thing that would have popped into my mind if I'd been with a friend like Alicia. "No, I don't know what that shit we ate for breakfast was actually made of."

 

He laughed, a deep chuckle that made my heart skip a beat in spite of itself. "Not quite. No, uh...were you a fan?"

 

Well, he had me there. I took a deep breath. "It was you who told me to think of myself as part of the story I'm trying to get..."

 

A.J. cackled triumphantly. "That's a yes." Just as quickly, he grew serious again. I had gotten the sense, but especially in this interview, that he had the most mercurial personality of the bunch. It wasn't unappealing. "What made it a ‘were'?"

 

I blew out a breath. "I dunno. College? Studying journalism. Hanging around cynical people. Living in a college town and listening to indie rock all the time. Reading a lot of old Dr. Thompson, frankly." His eyes made me feel like I could be honest. It was the most honest I‘d been the whole trip so far. Of course, it was also the first time any of them had asked me a real question about myself.

 

A.J. nodded knowingly. "That sort of thing's how we lost most of our fan base. I can't figure out why people won't listen to us now."

 

He seemed a little down all of a sudden. The journalist in me knew I was getting good stuff; the person in me, soul and all, hated to see a nice guy sad. So I did what came naturally: I cracked a joke.

 

"Well, maybe if Nick took some hormones and un-changed his voice, you guys could compete with Bieber fever," I said lightly.

 

Another sexy chuckle. "You know, Meg, this week might not be so bad."

 

 

**

 

As showtime drew closer, the buzz among the guys was palpable. It wasn't the first show of the tour, so it didn't look to me like nerves so much as pure excitement. I couldn't imagine being a musician and doing a hometown show.

 

Leaning against a wall across the cinder-blocked hall from the dressing rooms, I was flooded by a memory that felt relevant. It was a couple of days before Christmas two years ago. I'd been at Rolling Stone almost a year and a half, but it was my first Christmas home from New York, back in little old Quincy, Illinois. (My mother hadn't needed much convincing to fly out for the holidays the first year I was out there.) I'd found myself at a bar in what passed for downtown Quincy, catching up with some of the old gang from high school. It had been 11 years since graduation; I'd missed the 10-year reunion by a mile. Nearly all of them had kids, some of them well into grade school. And all of them were astonished at what I did for a living.

 

"Whoa! You write for Rolling Stone?! Like, the magazine?"

 

"So what do you write about? No, wait, who do you write about?"

 

"Like, have you met the Rolling Stones?" (That one had come from the former captain of the cheerleading squad, who had been diligently killing brain cells since the late ‘90s.)

 

It had been strange to share a little piece of my life in the place where my life had begun. I imagined that was how the guys felt right now.

 

That'd make a great analogy for the story, I thought, and pulled my notepad out of my pocket. By now I had it down to a system: messenger bag stowed safely in a closet, notepad and pen in one pocket, iPhone in the other, camera slung over my shoulder.

 

I had not, however, gotten used to the occasional person trying to surreptitiously sneak a peek at my notepad as I wrote.

 

"Keep my paychecks coming and buy a copy when it comes out," I teased Brian as he shuffled past, not-so-subtly eyeballing my notepad. I pulled it to my chest, feigning dismay.

 

He made a dismissive sound with his mouth. "You crazy journalists and your trade secrets."

 

Brian leaned his back against the wall next to me, crossing his legs like mine. A hint of spicy, linen-y cologne wafted over, inducing just the slightest wobble in my knees. I risked a glance over at him. His hair, just the dark side of sandy, too short to be as curly as it wanted to be, was a tad unruly, and I wanted to reach up and fix it. Part of me wanted an excuse to touch him. Part of me was sure I'd be electrocuted. God help me, my heart fluttered a little just thinking about it.

 

Snap out of it, Michaels. It's not 1998 anymore.

 

"Penny for your thoughts?" I somehow managed to get out, crossing my arms, notepad and pen safely separated.

 

He shook his head, mouth twisting idly. "Just wanna get out there. It's nice to see the hometown crowd."

 

Another memory flashed through my head, this one of a well-worn VHS tape of a Showtime concert film the guys had made here in Orlando. I had watched it mostly at home, mortified about bringing it to campus. Eventually, I'd thrown it away altogether.

 

"Have you looked to see how many people are out there?" I asked. "Sounds like a pretty enthused crowd out there for what's-her-bucket."

 

"The pop tart? Yeah, let's hope the teenyboppers stick around for us." Brian smiled a little nervously. A pause. "Hey, listen, Meg..."

 

I looked over at him curiously, trying to ignore how nice my name sounded coming from his lips.

 

"I was a total jackass to you yesterday, wasn't I?" His tone sounded a little bit grudging, and I knew Nick had told him to apologize. Well, nothing like being blunt.

 

I decided it was worth being equally honest. "Kinda, yeah."

 

He took a deep breath, not looking at me. "I'm trying really hard not to be a jerk, but I've been burned to hell and back by the media."

 

I wasn't sure if I considered TMZ or Perez Hilton "the media" per se, but they'd taken him out to the woodshed when he and his wife split up a couple years ago, casting some very nasty aspersions on his fidelity. I couldn't imagine what else he meant.

 

"I mean, we've all made some mistakes," he continued, "and yeah, I get that we're public figures, but that doesn't make it hurt any less to read that kinda crap about myself or my brothers." He looked at me now, and his beautiful eyes were a little sad, a lot apprehensive. "Don't take this personally, but I don't really like you people."

 

My lips curved in a sad smile. I almost wasn't sure whom I felt worse for, him or myself. I'd had a lot of people tell me they didn't like me, but this was almost worse than that time the bassist from Nickelback had called me the c-word.

 

You're used to this. Just not from someone you've ever been emotionally invested in.

 

"Mine's not exactly a well-liked profession," I said slowly, with a little shrug. "Admitting it doesn't make you a jerk. The truth is, you've all been a lot nicer than you have a right to be."

 

Brian smiled, and my knees went a little weak again. "Well, you seem like a nice girl." He winced. "Lady! Sorry. Lady."

 

A nervous chuckle escaped me, and then, out of nowhere, came the word vomit. "Oh, trust me, I get ‘girl' all the time. Girl, hon, sweetie. It comes with looking like a college kid. It helps, actually. People who don't take me seriously because they can't get past thinking I'm actually a teenager are at least as likely to slip up and tell me something juicy as they are to call security on me."

 

Shut your mouth, Michaels.

 

He leaned his head back and laughed. "Nice. I'll remember that next time I need to hire a spy." He blew out a breath, suddenly serious again. "Look, we've all known for weeks you'd be here for a reason, and here you are. And I really want to trust you."

 

My heart slammed against my ribs, but I did my best to hold his still-apprehensive gaze. "You can," I practically croaked, then cleared my throat. "Look, I don't expect to be your best friend when I leave here, but I don't thinkI'm a raging bitch, and I'm certainly not out to ‘gotcha' you or any of the others. It's not my style."

 

Where did that come from? To leaven it, I smiled again, more playfully now. "At least, I like to think I'm not so bad, anyway. You said so yourself," I joked.

 

"I did, didn't I?" Brian's tone was teasing, but his smile was a little sheepish. "Then I guess it must be sort of true."

 

He held out a hand. "I don't expect you to rip up your notes about what a terrible guy I am, but...start over?"

 

I couldn't help but smile and return his handshake, which was firm and reassuring. "OK. Start over."

 

"Hi, I'm Brian Littrell." He grinned, still gripping my hand.

 

Suddenly, I felt lighter, more confident. I held his teasing gaze, echoed his friendly tone. "Meg Michaels, Rolling Stone."

 

He released my hand. "Y'know, I might have to make an exception for you," he said.

 

"An exception to what?"

 

"Not liking journalists." He winked at me. "Girl."

 

As he straightened up and walked back to his dressing room, I actually had to push back harder against the wall to keep from sliding to the floor in a puddle of overgrown teenybopper.

 

 

**

 

Even through my earplugs, every music writer's best friend, the buzz of the crowd pressed in insistently around me. In a moment, it would turn to screams.

 

I was settled into my front-row seat, had been for about 10 minutes. As much as I wanted to be backstage in the final moments before they went on, like I had been last night, I wanted much more to see how this crowd reacted to them. I had my camera stowed safely - damn you, Christine - and my notepad out.

 

A huge screen covered the stage, so nobody would know when the band was setting up, when the guys walked out, nothing. The unknown seemed to have everyone restless, as it had last night. I glanced around me. A surprising number of young teenagers. A much larger and much less surprising number of people my age or a little younger. I was still probably the oldest person here without a kid in tow.

 

And now the lights went down, producing another screech from the crowd, and the screen came to life. It was a shot of two ominous, old-fashioned wooden doors, which were thrown open to reveal a lanky, middle-aged bus driver and the guys, all five of them, in what felt like another lifetime.

 

The camera panned around an awfully nice-looking haunted castle, then cut back to Nick, who in a squeaky voice complained, "This is the second time the bus broke down!"

 

"That ain't my fault," drawled the bus driver, cigarette hanging from his lips.

 

I tried to muffle a giggle that turned into a snort, earning a glare from the twentysomething woman next to me. The use of "Backstreet's Back" for the opener was apropos, sure, but the music video intro was just goofy.

 

That or it just reminded me too much of being on the threshold of 18.

 

As Brian, looking stunningly young compared to the handsome devil who had shaken my hand backstage, shrieked at the possum in his bed, the music swelled, the video blinked out, and the screen rose to reveal the guys and their dancers, who started in on a scaled-down version of the "Thriller"-inspired ballroom dance scene.

 

The crowd went nuts, so nuts I winced at the noise even through my earplugs. I wouldn't cheer, but I couldn't stifle a smile. Part of me had always found the "Thriller" homage incredibly obvious; I had been a really little kid when that music video dropped, and I still remembered the first time I'd seen it.

 

But as the song continued, I knew a much bigger part of me appreciated the flashback. I often tried to forget about my teen years, which hadn't been fun. Being short, nerdy and a gifted student with a massive white-girl ‘fro had done me no favors in a small town, and college had been a welcome respite. But every once in a while, something would catch me off-guard, usually a song, and remind me in a powerful way of the best moments of a time long gone by. Grunge had been king for about half my high school years, and that was what I remembered best. But discovering the Backstreet Boys just before I left for college had, in a way, bridged me to that different phase in life, even if they didn't stay with me throughout that phase.

 

I watched the guys onstage, my arms folded, biting my lip to keep from smiling too obviously big. They'd filled the Amway Center, that was for sure, but I knew I was sitting right where they could see me, and I knew they'd bust my butt if they saw me having too much fun.

 

They'd bust my butt... It was amazing to think that I was actually traveling with these guys I'd idolized in the twilight of my teen years, that I was starting to form something like a friendship with them. With the Backstreet Boys. You couldn't make it up.

 

Onstage, the end of the song broke my reverie.

 

"What's up, O-Town?" Howie screamed into his headset, to raucous cheers.

 

Monday, 8/1: Travel Day

 

"How long do we have again?" Nick asked, long legs stretching over the top of one of the booth tables.

 

Howie glanced at his watch. "About 25 minutes."

 

Nick flashed a shit-eating grin. "First to answer pulls McDonald's duty. Y'all never learn."

 

"Aw, hell." Howie hauled himself to his feet and stretched. He looked down at me. "Can I borrow a piece of paper and a pen?"

 

I handed over my whole notepad, yawning too deeply for the smart remark I usually had for anyone who wanted to "borrow" something I obviously wouldn't be getting back. Last night had been an even later night than Saturday had been, making it a fairly miserable schlep down to the bus, but at least we were getting a slightly later start today: The caravan was pulling out at 8:30 for a full day of driving to the next show in Atlanta, meaning today was more or less a day of rest.

 

Howie clicked the pen. "All right," he muttered as he wrote. "Coffee all around. Sausage McGriddle for me...Brian?"

 

"Hotcakes platter."

 

"Nick?"

 

Another shit-eating grin. "The biiiiig breakfast platter."

 

"Good God. A.J.?"

 

"Hmmm. How ‘bout a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit."

 

"Bob!" Howie shouted to the back of the bus. "Want anything from McDonald's?"

 

There was a shuffling in the back and a deep-voiced reply. "Hold on. I'll come with you."

 

Howie waved a hand dismissively. "No, don't get up. I'm walking all of a block to McDonald's. I think it'll be OK."

 

A heavy sigh. "Suit yourself. Hotcakes platter."

 

Howie turned to the bus driver. "Frank?"

 

It was a polite but pointless question, I could already see. Frank, a skinny man with a Nu Yawka accent that made me almost homesick, had already taken a huge bite of a Clif bar.

 

"I'll pass. You guys are gonna be eating while I'm driving anyway," he said through a mouthful of organic oats and deliciousness. I thought about asking him for one tomorrow.

 

"Fair enough." Howie turned to me. "What do you want?"

 

I got up, shouldering the purse I'd finally dug out of my suitcase; I'd even put my wallet back into it and everything. "I'll just go with you."

 

For a moment Howie seemed ready to argue, and then he just shrugged. "Eh. It'll be nice to have some help carrying."

 

"Don't look so alarmed." I raised my voice so Bob could hear me. "I'm such a pain in the ass, nobody'll mess with us."

 

A responding grunt came from the back. Howie turned to the others, beaming. "What a peach!"

 

"She'll fit in great in Georgia," A.J. quipped. The last thing I heard as we stepped off the bus was a chorus of good-natured boos.

 

The closest McDonald's was a block and a half away, apparently at the bottom of an office building that hadn't quite woken up for the day. The sun was still fairly low in the sky, casting long shadows over the tops of our heads, but a humid heat was already rising. I was grateful I'd pulled my hair back today, although a ponytail for me was really just a slightly more controlled poof near the top of my head.

 

I studied Howie out of the corner of my eye as we walked. He was the shortest of the bunch, only a couple inches taller than me; even half-hidden by sunglasses, topped by a fauxhawk, his face looked much younger than just this side of 40. He had a little bit of a Ted Mosby thing going on, I reflected, thinking of How I Met Your Mother. He seemed to radiate contentment; I couldn't imagine him expressing the dark doubts my other two one-on-one subjects had so far.

 

"Wanna do your one-on-one today?" I asked him hopefully as we strolled down a street just starting to hum with Monday morning activity.

 

"If you think we'll find a good time for it," he replied, handing me my notepad. "Usually what happens is we end up playing video games or watching a movie or something until at least half of us fall asleep." He grinned. "Travel days are awesome when you're old and cranky like us."

 

"I'm not sure cranky is the word I'd use so far."

 

"You haven't spent an entire day on the bus with us." He nodded toward the McDonald's, and we stepped inside. "You think you're a pain in the ass."

 

Surprisingly, it was quiet. Maybe we were beating the worst of the commuter crowd. The teenage girl behind the counter looked profoundly bored. She had a huge pimple on her chin and about a dozen earrings.

 

"I'm gonna need both of you to remove your sunglasses," she droned. "We had an armed robbery two days ago. It's standard operating procedure till they find the guy."

 

Well, that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I pushed my sunglasses up into my hair. Howie hesitated for a second, and I heard him half-sigh as he took his off and hung them from the neck of his T-shirt.

 

The girl's eyes grew very round, and her jaw dropped in frank astonishment. Gone was the teenage apathy; here came the teenage freakout.

 

"Buh...buh..." she stammered.

 

Maybe A.J. had been wrong about their not getting recognized anymore.

 

Howie shot me a look that begged me for a speedy death. "Maybe you better order," he mumbled, digging his wallet out of his pocket and fishing out a 20.

 

I smiled sweetly and handed him my notepad. "But I don't even know what I want yet. In the time you take to order, I might figure it out," I replied through my teeth, just as quietly.

 

He glared at me. "I'm gonna spit in your coffee," he muttered.

 

"Oh yeah? Good thing I'm not getting any."

 

With that, he stepped up to the counter, all charming, toothy smiles, and proceeded to rattle off the various orders on the notepad, plus an Egg McMuffin and a large Diet Coke, no ice, for me.

 

The cashier remained transfixed behind the counter. "Y...you're..."

 

"A valued customer," her manager, a guy in his early 20s with impressive sideburns, finished smoothly as he came to her side. He gave her a stern look. "And YOU are on break."

 

She backed away from the counter and toward the back of the kitchen, her eyes never leaving Howie until she bumped into the counter behind her boss. Only then did she turn and flee.

 

The manager was apologizing. "She went to some big concert last night. The Backstreet Boys, if you can believe it. So! Can you run your order by me one more time?"

 

 

**

 

By the time we finished eating breakfast, we were well out of Orlando and well into Top Gun, which was playing on a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall that began one row of bunks. The Xbox on which the guys had been playing Call of Duty yesterday had been somewhat hastily mounted to the wall below it, its disc port facing downward, and a few wireless controllers were Velcro'd up next to that when the guys weren't using them to kill brain cells. A fridge that barely qualified as mini sat below that, full of beverages and random snack food.

 

Nick had shoved a duffel bag full of DVDs under one table, but by the time Maverick showed up at the pool to watch Iceman congratulate himself on being named Top Gun, he had it on his lap and was rooting through it, looking for the next movie, I presumed.

 

"Whatcha lookin' for?" I asked.

 

"Something else explody that we can watch after this is done," Nick replied without looking up. His face brightened. "Oh, hey, Star Trek. Any objections? It's the new one."

 

The rest of us shook our heads.

 

"Honestly, if we had other Star Trek movies, they'd probably get watched, too. You seen any of ‘em?" A.J. said to me.

 

Had I seen any of ‘em? My stepdad, the only dad I'd ever known from the time I was in first grade, had loved Star Trek. The two were inextricably connected in my mind. I thought about telling them how he'd made me watch all the movies at least twice, how I'd watched nine straight hours of Next Generation reruns with him one day in high school when they thought I had mono. How, when I'd raced back to Quincy the day of his sudden and terrible death four years ago, one of the first things I'd done was unearth his tape of the Next Generation finale and cry hysterically through the whole thing.

 

I thought about saying all those things, and instead, I swallowed the sudden, horrifying lump in my throat, raised a fist, opened my mouth, and out came a righteously angry "KHAAAAAAAN!"

 

 "That's a yes." A.J. grinned as the others chortled. "See, but the new one, man, that's the whole package. Explosions and nerdy shit and the occasional hot alien chick for the guys, and you got the sexy men for the girls. No homo," he added quickly.

 

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," Nick added as he continued to rummage through, finally pulling out Star Trek.

 

"Whatever, I'll back him up on that." Howie grabbed the DVD from Nick almost as soon as the younger man had it out of the bag. He held it up as an exhibit, the young Captain Kirk's eyes smoldering as he sneered up from the box. "I'd go ‘mo for Chris Pine. Don't write that down," he said to me.

 

I grinned and held up my notepad in front of my face, making a show of scribbling absolutely nothing on the paper. "It'll cost you."

 

"See, I knew you people didn't have souls!" Nick crowed.

 

 

**

 

By the end of Star Trek, morning was almost over, rain was falling steadily on the road outside, and the bus had grown quiet and chilly. I was curled up against one arm of the couch, arms wrapped around my knees, the drapey jacket from that old-lady travel ensemble thrown over my shoulders, struggling like a child to keep my eyes open.

 

A balled-up piece of McDonald's trash bounced off my poofy ponytail. "Thought Miss Journalist wasn't supposed to go to sleep before the rest of us," I heard Brian say.

 

"No journalism, need sleepy," I muttered.

 

"I heard that." Nick's muffled voice sounded from across the bus, and I cracked an eye open. He had his head down on his arms at the table.

 

I surveyed the rest of the bus. Howie's head was resting on the back of the couch, a few feet away from me, and his mouth was hanging open in a most undignified snore.  A.J. had his head in one hand and his elbow propped up on the table, but was visibly nodding off. Brian had his feet up on the other booth table and his head leaned back, half-watching the TV, eyes at half-mast.

 

I watched Brian for a moment, both my eyes open now. It was so strange to be so close to someone I'd once crushed on so hard, to see him stretched out in half-asleep repose. To see that he was a normal guy. A painfully beautiful normal guy.

 

He turned his head and caught my thoughtful stare. Oh, hell. I willed myself not to look away. Instead, I cracked a small smile. He held my gaze for a couple seconds. Winked at me.

 

And then stuck his tongue out at me.

 

Well, enough of that. I stretched, shrugging into my jacket, lowering my feet to the floor and reaching by default for my laptop, which was never far away. "Are you guys always so exciting on travel days?"

 

"Only the long, rainy ones." Brian watched me pull my laptop out. "What are you always working on, anyway? A nap wouldn't actually kill you."

 

"Sorry to disappoint you, but my work here is never done." I opened it up, turned it on, then dug out the Internet-anywhere broadband card Thomas had bought me on his expense account and had implored me not to destroy. "Tweets, blogs, videos, the actual story. The whole package," I added, echoing A.J.'s overenthusiastic remark about Star Trek.

 

"You gonna write about how exciting we are today?" came Nick's muffled voice again.

 

"At least a few hundred words." Actually, I would probably fart around on Google Reader for at least 20 minutes, but I was bored and didn't feel like sleeping all day. "What are you guys gonna do when we get to Atlanta?"

 

"Well, we won't get there till dinnertime, in all likelihood." A.J. straightened up, blinking hard to wake himself up. "So, yeah, probably eat dinner."

 

Nick turned his head on his arms, and I could see a wicked grin even though he still sounded sleepy. "And then maybe go out and get a little nuts."

 

I shook my head. "Anyone ever tell you guys you're just a bunch of overgrown frat boys?"

 

"Whatever, get any bunch of thirtysomething guys in a room together for an extended period of time, and I guarantee they'll act like college dudes, too. Old School? That shit is real." A.J. yawned and got to his feet, stretching. He headed for his bunk. "And for the record, that includes calling naptime."

 

 

**

 

The rain never really abated, and between slow driving and stops, the 440-mile trip slowed to somewhere around 10 hours. I could have screamed.

 

As everyone drifted one by one back to their bunks to nap in the afternoon, Howie, who had been sleeping in the same position for three hours, came to with a start. His snore turned into a loud snort as he jerked upright and rubbed his neck.

 

I snickered. "Y'all right over there?"

 

"I'm good." He shook his head as if to clear it, then glanced over at me. "You busy?"

 

"I wouldn't say I'm doing anything constructive." Technically, I really wasn't. I couldn't think of anything else to do for work, so I was farting around on Google Reader again.

 

"Then can we do my one-on-one?"

 

I closed my laptop and smiled at him. Three in two days. At this rate, I'd be done with the real work of my reporting by the end of the day tomorrow. I didn't anticipate I'd be that lucky, though.

 

We hardly needed somewhere else to do it. I just pulled out my phone and plunked it on the couch between us. There would be slightly more ambient noise, but it was the most comfortable interview setting I could've asked for at that moment.

 

By now, a lot of my interview questions had become more or less the same. My biggest question for Howie was how his age affected things. With Kevin gone, he was the oldest bandmate, the only married one (anymore, my inner monologue said snidely) and a relatively new dad, and sometimes, when everyone was goofing off, he seemed to exude a quiet, mature serenity.

 

He seemed surprised by that assessment. A confused smirk twisted his face. "Really?"

 

"Really." I pulled one leg up underneath me. "It's not that you seem old, mind you. It's more that everyone still seems so young, and you slightly less so. Like an old soul."

 

Howie laced his fingers across a flat stomach and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't feel old," he said finally. "I don't think any of us do, when we're out on the road like this. We all get together, and it's like no years have passed at all. You know?" He looked at me. "How long have you been doing what you do?"

 

I smiled a little. "Nine years."

 

"And how much has your life changed in that time?"

 

I considered his question. Three years ago, I'd moved halfway across the country. I was writing for a huge magazine instead of a smallish alt-weekly. I rode a boat halfway to work every day. I walked out of my office building and saw Radio City Music Hall.

 

But really, what had changed besides the scenery? I'd never been married, except to my job, which demanded it, especially during weeks like this. No kids. No pets. Nothing tangible to my name that had cost more than my camera. No boyfriends or steady dates or, hell, second dates in the last five years. I'd had the same best friend since I was 20, and our conversations still drifted to the past more often than I would have liked. If I were a man, the appropriate label would've been "man-child." I wasn't sure what kind of woman that made me.

 

"The scenery has changed," I said slowly. "The rest, not so much." I found myself grasping for words. I wasn't usually the one answering questions. "It's clichéd, but I guess...I guess the world sort of passes you by when you're working all the time."

 

Howie nodded. "You get to doing something for so long that it's all you are."

 

I nodded, too.

 

"Well, that's sort of how I feel." Howie straightened up. "We've been doing this twice as long as you've been doing what you do. And we've all been on an incredible ride together."

 

He examined his thumbnail with sudden interest. "And that ride, and all its ups and downs, and all its trappings and benefits, has been all we've known for almost 20 years, especially for the guys who haven't gotten married yet. Kevin got off that ride to live the rest of his life, but the rest of us, we just kind of shrugged and stayed on. My wife gets it. She lets me stay young. I'm not saying Kevin's doesn't. I'm just saying I'm not quite ready to give it up like he did.

 

"So when I'm doing this," he continued, "it feels like a day hasn't passed, you know? Like, this line of work ages 99 percent of the people who do it, but for me, I just blinked and all these years went by on the calendar, but not in my heart.

 

"‘Cause I still love doing this, and I still love these guys like brothers, and I can't imagine what it will be like when the day comes that I feel otherwise for longer than a few minutes every couple weeks." He met my eyes. "You know?"

 

He had me there. A rainy, completely unsuspecting Monday afternoon, on a bus in the middle of Cousin Country, Georgia, and the hundredth or so musician I'd interviewed had pierced my heart. All I could do was blink at him.

 

Howie smiled knowingly. "I thought you might."

 

We finally rolled into Atlanta at 6:30 Monday night. It was raining in sheets.

 

"Well, hello there, ATL Jawja," Nick said as he studied the wet, sparkling city through the window. "It's been a minute."

 

Brian turned to look out the window as well. "Yeah, Georgia. You look kinda rainy. Have you been hangin' around with Portland behind my back?"

 

All three of us were turned around on the couch, and I tried not to look too eager as I watched the city pass by. I wanted off this damn bus NOW. Ten hours of smelly men and empty fields had made me want to get out and run next to the bus.

 

Frank couldn't get us within 20 feet of the hotel door's overhang, and the tall buildings around us only served as a wind tunnel for the rain, which started blowing in as soon as the bus door was open. This was going to be a fun dash inside. The only consolation was that the venue, Phillips Arena, was within a block of the hotel in CNN Center - CNN Center! the nerdy journalist in me squealed at the thought - but that did us no good tonight.

 

"We'll get your suitcases down," Frank said. "You guys just get inside."

 

I shouldered my purse and messenger bag and waited for the guys to pass. Instead, I got a chorus of "ladies first."

 

I narrowed my eyes. "When did y'all decide to be polite again?"

 

"Again?" Brian stood up, took my free hand and pantomimed a deep, gallant bow. "Why, Miz Michaels, we were always polite. The very picture of Southern gentlemen."

 

"Oh yeah? Then explain to me why I'm carrying my own bags." I successfully managed to smother a smile into an unimpressed smirk, because even though it was cute, after today I felt confident in saying I was no longer impressed by any of them, not even handsome Brian. I wanted to go upstairs, take a long soak and send an email without my Internet signal flickering every five miles.

 

I pulled my hand free, turned around and strode toward the steps. Which were wet. And metal.

 

WHAM! My feet were out from under me. I grabbed vainly for the railing, but it slid out of my hand. Down the steps I went in a tangle of limbs, landing flat on my ass on the wet pavement.

 

"Oh, shit!" I heard from behind me.

 

I did a quick self-assessment, muttering a stream of profanity that would have made an over-the-road trucker blush. My bags hadn't taken half as hard a hit as I had. But for the grace of God, I might have hit my head on the bottom step, and then I'd be in real trouble. My left elbow and my right knee - the knee I'd hurt 10 years ago, keeping me from running for months - were on fire. What had I even hit my knee on? The railing? Nothing looked to be skinned, but I would be black and blue by morning.

 

Perhaps worst of all, I was sitting on the pavement in the rain like a doofus.

 

Bob pushed his way to the front, and he and the guys scrambled down the steps more carefully than I had, picking their way around me.

 

"If y'all had let me off the bus first like you were supposed to..." Bob grumbled in his bass voice as he hauled me to my feet. Water was already glistening in his carrot-colored buzz cut.

 

I didn't doubt it. He had picked me up like a toy. I winced as I put weight on my knee, which I knew would be twice its normal size by morning.

 

I turned around, carefully, to see the guys standing in the pouring rain, staring at me, all visibly concerned, but all fighting laughter too hard to speak. A.J. had a hand over his mouth, as if to stroke his beard, but it was obviously there only to keep his mouth shut. Nick's face was almost purple.

 

"I'm fine, by the way," I said, shifting my weight off my knee.

 

All four dissolved into screaming laughter.

 

"My dignity may have suffered a mortal blow, though," I added.

 

Brian, who was doubled over with laughter, straightened up, wiping tears from his eyes. "Girl, dignity has no place on this bus," he managed, still gasping for breath, as he picked up my messenger bag from the ground.

 

"True that," Howie added as we filed inside, Bob supporting me as I limped. "Rotten way to learn, but hey, now you know."

 

"Easy for you to say." I gingerly stood on both legs again, then flipped my head over to wring out my now-soaked ponytail on the hallway carpet, even though my clothes were so wet that a little wet hair hardly mattered. "Did you ever eat the stairs on the bus?"

 

Chortles. "Uhhh, I'm pretty sure every last one of us has," Howie said, holding out the hem of his T-shirt to wring it out on the carpet. "And plenty of more intentional torment."

 

Nick ticked off the incidents on his fingers. "Whoopee cushions, short-sheeted beds, we once Naired a dick into the back of A.J.'s head..."

 

A.J. nodded somberly. "True story. I had to Bic my head every day until all my hair grew back evenly. Our manager was pissed."

 

"Don't worry, Christine, those sophomoric pranks are behind us," Howie said lightly. I turned around, midway through wringing out my T-shirt, to see a dry and composed Christine striding up to us. She had a wet raincoat folded neatly over one arm. Of course she did.

 

Christine flashed a brittle smile at us drowned rats. "Did Frank park the bus in Macon?"

 

"Meg blew out her knee coming down the bus stairs," Brian said quickly. It wasn't a total lie. "We needed a minute for her to regroup."

 

"Weren't going to leave her out in the rain by herself, ya know," A.J. added.

 

The smile didn't waver. "And that's why you guys are so sweet. Hope your knee feels better," she added to me, airily. I thought about telling her I didn't need my knee to write in a national publication that she was an evil bitch with a heart of polished marble.

 

"We were just finishing up getting you guys checked in," Christine continued, doling out hotel keys as a bellhop breezed past her. "Jay did a sweep. The crew and dancers are all already up there." Still with the brittle smile. I wanted to reach up and slap it off her face. "We had a few minutes' head start."

 

The entire process of staying in a hotel with them never failed to amaze me: one, because the hotels were always so luxurious; two, because I hadn't carried my own suitcase since that first night in Miami; three, because it was such a production security-wise. We got an entire secured floor, and a high one at that.

 

As we all piled off the elevator, Christine broke away from us and headed down the hall. "I'll check in later, gentlemen," she said breezily. "Be good."

 

"Sure thing, Mom," Nick muttered as she disappeared. He turned to the others. "Dinner?"

 

"Eh. Let's get the suitcases up here, and then give it about 10 minutes." A.J. looked down at himself. "In case you hadn't noticed, we look like we just crawled out the sewer."

 

"You comin' to dinner?" Brian asked me as the others headed down the hall.

 

I smiled weakly. "Frankly, I cannot think of anything I'd rather do than ice my knee and order room service." I was annoyed with Christine's existence all over again, and I was confident Thomas would understand that when the travel person inevitably flagged the surprise charge on my room bill.

 

Brian winced. "That bad, huh?"

 

I nodded. "Kind of. I cracked the same kneecap in college." I decided against telling him it had happened when a friend intending to pull an innocent prank tripped me as I ran down my dorm's linoleum-floored hallway. That would have been another case of word vomit.

 

"You got anything to take for it?"

 

"Advil."

 

He looked around furtively, then took a step closer. Even after 10 hours on a bus with him, and even though my knee was throbbing, my face grew warm. I found myself wishing I didn't look like I'd been flushed down the toilet. In fairness, so did he, and I tried to focus on the fact that water was streaming into his eyes from his hair, not on the way his soaked shirt clung to his chest.

 

"Don't take anything yet. I'll let you know when we get back," he said quietly. His eyes twinkled merrily. "I have something a little bit better than Advil."

 

 

**

 

I tried not to wait up for the guys to come back. I took a hot bath, trying to remember what it felt like to be a girl after being one of the boys all day. I limped down to the ice machine and back in my hotel robe, hair wrapped in a towel, then filled an entire plastic trash bag with the contents of the ice bucket and plunked it down on my knee. It was already turning black and blue, I noted as I called room service. Hopefully I wouldn't have to wear a short skirt for the next week or two.

 

I ate my perfectly delicious spaghetti alla puttanesca from a plate on my lap, the leg with the offending knee sticking straight out in front of me, the other tucked up Indian-style. The hotel cable was impressive, and I soon found an Entourage rerun on HBO East. My laptop was open on the bed next to me, Twitter buzzing merrily.

 

This wasn't so very different from a night at home, and I found myself missing ol' 25-C Montgomery. I'd only been gone a couple of days, but I hoped the neighbor who was looking after the place hadn't forgotten. I hoped Thomas wasn't getting angry phone call upon angry phone call from Christine. He hadn't responded to my email check-ins, although, in fairness, I seemed to recall his saying he might take a three-day weekend.

 

But at home, I reminded myself, I didn't have to clean up after any of this, the bed I'd be sleeping in tonight was about five times fluffier than my own, and the view I'd see out my window in the morning was a lot more picturesque than the back of the beauty school across the street.

 

I leaned back and mentally ran through what I still needed to do, besides take notes on, tweet about and try to survive the next five days. I could stand to shoot a little bit more video, write my blogs a little earlier in the day. I needed to transcribe my interviews with A.J. and Howie. I needed to actually do my interview with Brian. I wondered idly if he wanted to do it tonight, while I was enjoying my better-than-Advil medication, which I was pretty sure was going to be alcoholic in nature.

 

Don't ambush him, stupid. It wasn't an ambush, though. It was journalism. He was going to have to buck up sooner or later.

 

My phone buzzed with a text from an unfamiliar number. "Im back. Others found a place 2 watch the marlins game but i didnt feel like it. You still hurtin?"

 

I stared at the phone for a full minute, my heart betraying me with its pounding. What the hell? He farted in your general direction at least three times today, and you're still fussing over him? Finally, I picked up the phone and texted back: "Yep."

 

A moment later: "K. Come 2 1202."

 

I fished dry jeans and a tee out of my suitcase, then pulled my hair down from the towel and scrunched in the usual anti-frizz stuff, grateful for the cloud of fruity scent it released. I looked at myself in the mirror. Did I really need makeup? Well, probably, but I hated to look like I was trying too hard. Better to just go with a touch of mascara and some Chapstick, maybe the strawberry kind, my secret weapon.

 

Embarrassed suddenly, I slapped myself across the face. "Snap out of it, Michaels," I ordered my reflection.

 

My knee had a heartbeat with every step as I headed for the hallway with the guys' rooms, with my phone and room key shoved in my pocket and my all-access pass around my neck, although I knew it hardly mattered as I approached Bob.

 

"How's the knee?" he rumbled.

 

I smiled politely. "It's been better. Still got work to do, though."

 

He let me past, and I continued on to 1202. Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the door. For good measure, I quoted Tommy Boy in a high-pitched voice, "Housekeeping, you want mint for pillow?"

 

The response came: "Please go away...let me sleep...for the love of God!"

 

Brian opened the door, looking much less like a drowned rat. He grinned mischievously, and his piercing blue eyes danced with laughter. I wanted to barf with nerves.

 

"Well, look who's up and around." He stepped out of the way, then made a face as he saw me still sort of limping. "Jeez, not any better?"

 

"No, and I iced it for more than an hour." I shifted the weight off it again as he closed the door.

 

"Well, then it's probably a good thing you came." He jerked a thumb at the small table wedged into the corner, where an unopened bottle of Knob Creek, a bucket of ice and the two glasses from the bathroom were sitting.

 

My eyebrows went up. "I would not have pegged you for a bourbon guy. Good choice."

 

He smirked. "Give me some credit. I'm an old Kentucky boy." The smirk turned sheepish. "Nobody else'll drink it, but it, uh, seemed like something you'd enjoy."

 

The sheepishness of his smile put me slightly more at ease. Before I could stop myself, I smiled, batting my eyelashes, channeling an old Kentucky girl. "Well, I do so appreciate being thought of," I drawled, dropping into a chair and admiring the view from the window. It was still raining, but the city shimmered, and the raindrops on the window refracted the light into interesting patterns.

 

"I have no idea why the others wanted to stay out in this crap," Brian was saying as he opened the bottle. "But I guess it could be worse, right? Could be snowing." He looked up at me, grinning. "You're probably the only one of us cut out for that."

 

"How's that?"

 

"Well..." He pulled his glass toward him and poured in a couple fingers of the whiskey. "I grew up the furthest north of any of us. And you might be surprised to hear we don't get a whole ton of snow in northern Kentucky." He turned his attention to my glass. "Neat or on the rocks?"

 

"Oh. On the rocks, I guess." It was my turn to smile sheepishly. "I'm a cheap date."

 

"Fair enough." He dropped a fistful of ice into my glass, followed by the whiskey, and pushed my glass toward me. "Whereas you're from, what, Illinois?"

 

I nodded. "The very belly button of Illinois."

 

He laughed as he sat down, a nice laugh, a laugh that made the most nervous part of me want to jump out the window. "Never thought of it that way."

 

We both took a sip of the whiskey. It raced down my throat like fire, but it tasted wonderful, like honey and wood. I felt better already.

 

"That's good stuff," I said to him. "Thank you."

 

He smiled. "Think nothing of it. So how'd you hurt it the first time?"

 

 "Dorm tomfoolery in college, many moons ago," I said lightly, proud of myself for stemming the flow of word vomit.

 

"Couldn't have been that many." He winced. "Sorry. I bet you get that a lot."

 

I nodded slowly, smiling self-deprecatingly into my whiskey. "I do. So I'm used to it."

 

"It works for you."

 

I looked up. He was studying me with a little smile on his face that stopped my heart cold. Caught in the act, he shrugged. "Well, it does."

 

Take it as a compliment, you ignoramus.

 

"Thanks." I smiled my most charming smile, certain I was blushing, proud of myself for not leaping over the table at him or ruining things with more word vomit. Just to make sure, I leaned back in the chair, tried to cross my legs, crossed the wrong leg and winced at the pressure on my knee.

 

"Here, you can have the ice. I didn't even think about it." He scrambled to pull out the plastic sack the ice was in, even though it was starting to melt. "I'll get you a towel."

 

"You really don't have to do that," I protested good-naturedly. "It'll probably do my knee some good." I rolled up my pantleg, took the sack and plunked it directly on my knee. The cold seared my skin, and I sucked in a breath through my teeth, but the shock passed quickly.

 

"You took that like a champ," he joked.

 

"Yeah, well." I leaned back again, crossing the other leg this time so I could give my knee some attention. I quickly took another sip of the whiskey, swallowing this one more slowly. My insides were getting warm and starting to uncoil.

 

"So, when am I gonna get to interview you one-on-one?" I ventured.

 

Brian looked out the window, an embarrassed smile crossing his face. His elegant, chiseled profile reminded me a bit of a Roman bust, and I caught my breath in spite of myself. He was so damned handsome, even when that smile wasn't a happy one.

 

"I was wondering when you'd get on me about that," he said.

 

"You're the last one left, believe it or not. I'll try not to make it too painful," I teased.

 

He looked back at me. He was smiling, yes, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I really didn't invite you over here to have you corner me about your story."

 

I felt terrible suddenly and looked away. "I know. I'm sorry. Forget I said anything."

 

"It's OK." He sipped his whiskey, visibly savoring it. He was quiet for so long that I almost wasn't sure if he'd speak again. When he did, his voice was pensive. "I really don't want to make your job difficult. I'm sure it doesn't do you any good, when you're working, to make a friend who's an uncooperative source."

 

"It does me a different kind of good, though." I propped an elbow on the table, glad it wasn't my bad elbow, which was also on its way to becoming a rainbow of broken blood vessels. "It's nice to make a friend. Believe it or not, it doesn't happen that often in my line of work."

 

"I don't believe that, actually." Brian set his glass down and studied me again. "You really are a cool lady, Meg," he said softly. "I think we all had fun with you on the bus today. Makes it harder for me to look at you as just another journalist."

 

My heart sped up. I somehow found my glass of whiskey again and took a sip, without breaking the connection between our eyes. The room seemed to shrink to his face, which seemed very far away and yet incredibly close.

 

"And that's why I don't want to talk to you on the record tonight." He looked away and picked up his glass again. "We've got a few more days together, and I promise I will do your interview before you leave. Right now, I'm just glad to make a friend, too. Can I focus on that for a minute?"

 

I didn't know what to say. By now, my heart was in my throat. It was true that I'd rarely made a genuine friend in a source, but I'd never had to work on a source quite like this before, either. It bothered me. But not as much as it should have.

 

I managed a smile. "I'll find my way to your heart sooner or later." I picked up my glass, jiggled the ice cubes, felt my smile grow stronger. "In the meantime, it's nice to know I can always bribe you with bourbon."

 

Brian glanced under the table. "How's the knee?"

 

"Better. You were right. Bourbon does beat Advil any day."

 

He gave me his most charming smile yet, which was a lot more effective than mine. "See, so who said I'm the one being bribed?"

 

Tuesday, 8/2: Atlanta

 

By rights, I should have tossed and turned all night after hanging out with Brian, but two fingers of bourbon was enough to make me fall sound asleep as soon as I got back to my room. I awoke refreshed early the next morning and pulled open my blinds to see the early-morning sun shining brightly on Atlanta.

 

I was pretty sure no one from the tour would be up this early, nor would commuter traffic be a big deal. It was time to do some exploring, time to walk off this bum knee. I grabbed a shower, put on yesterday's now-dry jeans and last night's tee - no sense in dirtying more laundry - popped a couple of Advil and headed downstairs, camera and purse slung over my shoulder.

 

My body had never allowed me to be a morning person, which was too bad, because my heart loved mornings, loved the sights and sounds and smells of the world waking up for the day. The smell of coffee permeated the lobby, which was bustling with activity. A TV screen in the corner was showing CNN. It was like being in a very cushy airport terminal.

 

I stepped outside. The sun was still low enough to cast long shadows, but the light was golden and full of promise. I might have expected the rain to do nothing but create an uncomfortable blanket of humidity, but it had cooled down the air significantly; it couldn't have been a hair over 70 outside.

 

A perfect morning in an unfamiliar city, and as far as I could tell, I had it all to myself.

 

Olympic Centennial Park was just a couple blocks from the hotel, a peaceful green oasis I'd always wanted to see. I wandered that way, stopping frequently to snap photos. The morning commuters wouldn't descend en masse for at least another hour.

 

On my walk, I passed an Au Bon Pain. I did a double-take, surprised to see my usual pre-ferry breakfast stop, which I'd been so sure was a Northeast thing. I stopped in and picked up a huge Diet Coke and two bagels, one for me, one for the pigeons.

 

Sitting in the park, looking out at a fountain shaped like the Olympic rings, I was enveloped by the cool breeze and the quiet rush of the water that danced around the rings. The pigeons flocked eagerly to me as I tossed bits of bagel in their direction.

 

This was how I liked to spend my mornings off, right down to the Au Bon Pain, when the weather was nice and I actually bothered to get up early enough to enjoy it. So much of my time was "me time" because I had no one to share it with, but this was one way I preferred to spend it.

 

I leaned back and watched the birds waddle away. Howie's question yesterday about the lack of true change in our lives had gotten under my skin. How much of my life had been swallowed up in my career. How much time I had spent in the office or on the road instead of building relationships, especially romantic ones.

 

Mine was a terribly solitary profession. It demanded total commitment. It demanded that you shelve your personal life. I had accepted that when I got into it. But it had been so much easier when I was 22, with no interest in settling down. My 20s were behind me now, and the little voice in my head had begun to insist more loudly that I do my part to help perpetuate the human race. Journalism didn't silence that voice, any more than it silenced your humanity.

 

But I hadn't yet met a person who was worth changing my life for. At least, no one had stuck around long enough to prove himself worth of me changing my life. I wondered if I would. I wondered, more and more these days, if marriage or babies were in my future. It was easier to wait, to be lonely for a while, if that stuff was still waiting for me. If it wasn't, then I wasn't sure what the meaning of my being lonely really was.

 

My phone began to vibrate wildly in my pocket, followed by a tinkle of piano, the ringtone I had assigned to Thomas. What in the blue hell was he doing calling me at 7:30 in the morning?

 

I answered the phone with a sigh. "Yeeeeees?"

 

"Oh, good, you're awake. The rock-star lifestyle hasn't laid you too low." He sounded annoyingly fatherly.

 

"Not exactly. But I have managed to fall down a flight of bus stairs and spend an entire day being bombarded by McDonald's farts just in the last 24 hours."

 

A note of panic. "You're not claiming workman's comp for that first one, by chance, are you?"

 

I rolled my eyes so hard I hoped he heard it. "Oh, get real, Thomas."

 

"Well, anyway, I read your daily emails. Thought I'd give you a call before this stupid friggin' 8 a.m. meeting. Hear my favorite staff writer's voice and all that." His tone was more than a little facetious. He paused, and I thought I heard him take a slurp of coffee. "How's it going? Other than injuring yourself."

 

I crossed my legs, taking care not to put pressure on my knee. "Oh, it's going. We're in Atlanta today. Driving to Charlotte overnight."

 

"How's the story coming?"

 

"I've got a perfectly disgusting amount of notes and three one-on-one interviews done."

 

"Good. Great. Your blogs have been solid. I wouldn't mind a little more video, but you already pointed that out. See if you can post those separately from your text posts. Uh, let's see. Tweets have been..." He seemed to be grasping for words. "Appropriate."

 

I snickered to myself. Thomas' grasp of social media was slippery at best.

 

"I think I wanna have you talk with the tour manager," he continued. "Get an outside perspective on the tour, what she sees in them."

 

I groaned. "Oh, Christ, Thomas, you and I both know she's a bitch on wheels. In fact, one of the band members used those exact words to describe her."

 

"Yeah, yeah. Be that as it may, she might have some useful things to say. You've interviewed worse."

 

"Ugh. Fine. I'll do what I can. I don't think she's particularly interested in talking to me, so if I can't get an interview, I don't really know what to tell you."

 

"All you can do is try. So, any other issues so far?"

 

I hesitated a moment. I knew I needed to tell him about the issue with Brian, but extricating that from my feelings on the matter, which I felt strongly I didn't need to tell him about, was easier said than done.

 

"I'm gonna take your silence as a yes," Thomas said, a bit frostily.

 

"Well...it's nothing I can't resolve before I come back." I scratched the back of my head and focused on the fountains, hoping the sight of the undulating water would keep me calm. "The one interview I have left is being a little...I don't know. Uncooperative probably isn't the word I'd use. We're developing a really good rapport, but he's not especially interested in talking to me on the record, and I'm not really sure why."

 

"Uncooperative is absolutely the word I'd use." Thomas sounded dismissive as he replied readily, objective to a fault from his place hundreds of miles away from my experience here. "He can't possibly have a good excuse. He knew you were coming. He can't avoid you forever. Keep working on him. Your rapport ought to help."

 

"Oh, I know. I have a feeling it will be a good interview for that reason, when I finally get it." If I ever got it. I blew out a breath. "I'm getting along pretty well with all of them, so that's a plus. I think they trust me."

 

"Well, and we're not exactly out to gotcha them, either," Thomas pointed out. "We're not sugarcoating anything, especially if you get something really good, but our purpose in your being there is not to make them look entirely like douchebags. Unless they make themselves look like it."

 

"And I don't think they're doing that at all. It's the most bizarre thing." I watched the fountain. "They're having a great time. It's like they haven't aged at all. They're just a bunch of goofballs. And after spending an entire day on the bus with me yesterday, I kinda feel like they don't think they've got anything to hide." I smirked. "Kinda refreshing when you're dealing with people whose lives are an open book whether they like it or not."

 

"They couldn't have much to hide. They're not exactly Guns N' Roses."

 

I laughed at that, and he chuckled a little, too. "You don't sound particularly unhappy, I must say. Are you actually enjoying yourself out there?"

 

Yes, I wanted to say. I was. The guys were fun, and I was beginning to feel that only out of obligation, not out of need, was I working as hard as I was. And I had forgotten how good it was to spend some time backstage. But was that really what he wanted to hear, from one journalist to another?

 

"I don't know," I parried. "Am I supposed to be?"

 

"Well, we talked a little about your precious Hunter S. Thompson going out on assignment like this. I hope you're approaching your reporting that way. But I hope you're approaching your living that way this week, too. You're a person, ya know? Not just a journalist. It's OK to be a little gonzo in your reporting. We need a little more of that."

 

He paused. "And truthfully, I think you need a little more of it, too."

 

Now I laughed hard. It was as if he and A.J. had played a round of golf together before the tour. How much more ironic could it get?

 

"I'm glad you think that's funny," Thomas said, clearly annoyed.

 

"It's not," I said, wiping my eyes. "It's just that you're not the only person I've heard that from this week."

 

"Well, if you have your editor and the band telling you to go gonzo this week, it must be right. You have my blessing. Not that it ought to matter to you," he said, facetious again. "I'm not pulling you off this assignment unless you get charged with a felony or sleep with a band member or something."

 

Good God, had he hidden a camera on me or what?

 

"Is that all it takes?" I said.

 

A heavy sigh on the other end. "You're gonna put me in an early grave, Michaels."

 

I grinned. "That's what I like to hear from my editors."

 

 

**

 

"You should have come out with us last night instead of trying to nurse yourself back to health or whatever," Nick chastised me over lunch. "We found an awesome bar to watch the Marlins game in."

 

"True story," A.J. added. "Totally divey. Dartboards, Golden Tee, PBR signs. Huge TV. Full of hipsters who were doing a shite job of pretending they weren't interested in the game. We could have been wearing T-shirts saying, ‘We're the Backstreet Boys,' and nobody would have blinked." He grinned. "Actually, they probably would've thought we were being ironic."

 

I smirked, not unkindly. "Sounds a lot like Staten Island."

 

We were sitting in a burger joint a few blocks from the venue. We'd gone late enough in the afternoon that the lunch crowd had mostly evaporated, leaving little work for Jay, a handsome black man who was nearly 7 feet tall and a solid block of menacing muscle, intimidating to behold as he looked shiftily around from his place at the end of the table.

 

"You'd've fit right in," Howie said. He grinned. "You seem like a little bit of a hipster. You certainly write for a total hipster publication."

 

"No, no, friend." I popped another fry in my mouth, gathering my thoughts as I chewed. "I write for a publication that hipsters make fun of. When a band hipsters like gets mentioned in Rolling Stone, they all roll their eyes and shuffle away. See"-and here I adopted a National Geographic-like British accent-"the garden-variety hipster prides himself on liking stuff no one else listens to. Notice how he goes far out of his way to pick up records he may think are garbage but can be assured you've never heard of."

 

"So, as someone who writes about music, what would you recommend that hipsters think is so 10 minutes ago?" A.J. said.

 

"Ignore him," Brian said. "In other words: What are you listening to right now?"

 

"Right now?" I gave them a flirtatious smile. "The voices of a classic boy band."

 

Nick threw a fry at me. "Boooooo."

 

I leaned back in my chair, reflecting back on the bands I'd been listening to in order to cleanse the pop music from my brain at the end of the day. Not that I would mention that part. "Minus the Bear's always a favorite. Some old Wilco. Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros."

 

"Wilco's pretty good," Howie said. "None of that's exactly our thing, but they're pretty good."

 

"Joe Strummer - ah, God, why does that name sound so familiar?" Nick said.

 

"He was in the Clash." I sipped my Diet Coke. "He put out a couple records with some guys called the Mescaleros before he died. Pretty sweet stuff. A real strong kinda world-music vibe."

 

"God, you're a hipster," A.J. said, elbow on the table as he popped what was left of his turkey burger into his mouth. He swallowed almost without chewing and grinned.

 

I crooked a finger at him. "Give me your sunglasses."

 

He passed down his mirrored aviators, a curious look on his face. I put them on and slouched in my chair, affecting a bored look, tugging some of my hair over my face with one hand and thumbing my iPhone idly with the other.

 

"Meat is so mainstream," I deadpanned. "I found this great vegan place around the corner. You've probably never heard of it. They have BYO-vinyl night. Totes killer."

 

Light applause greeted my impression.

 

"Your acting chops are really shining through today," Brian said. "I think you missed your real calling."

 

"Yeah, nicely done. But you're missing an unnecessary scarf," Nick added. "Too bad it's the one month out of the year it's too hot for Brian to wear one."

 

It was no lie. I'd seen Brian sport an unnecessary hipster scarf in 90 percent of the publicity materials I'd received, but the heavy, humid, hellish heat had them all in T-shirts and jeans and not really any other accoutrements.

 

Brian popped a fry into his mouth. "You're a douche," he said casually.

 

Nick grinned across the table. "Love you, too, B-Rok."

 

"You guys still use those nicknames?" I passed A.J.'s sunglasses back down the table.

 

All four of them snicker-snorted. "We haven't in a million years," Howie replied. "I'm pretty sure our fans use them more than we ever did."

 

I clapped a hand over my heart. "A teenybopper fantasy dashed."

 

"For our fans? Or for you?" A.J. grinned like he knew he had me trapped.

 

I laid my forehead on the table as an accusatory chorus of "Ahhh..." surrounded me. "Guilty. At least, 13 years ago."

 

"Ah, but this is the one place you don't have to treat it like a guilty pleasure," Howie teased.

 

"Thirteen years, huh? So you would have been, what, in about the fourth grade?" Brian quipped.

 

I glared at him, doing my best to suppress a smile. "Oh, blow me. I saw the ‘Backstreet's Back' clip on TRL for the first time the summer after high school."

 

"Did we ever see you out in the audience?" Nick asked.

 

"That you did not." I smiled. "This tour is a first for me. You forget so quickly, I was a broke student when I was listening to you guys." I sipped my Diet Coke. "Anyway, living in a college town, it obviously didn't last all that long. Something about nobody letting me live it down for a whole semester when they found out I stood in line to buy Millennium."

 

"Can I ask a totally self-absorbed question?" Brian said. "Did you have a favorite song?"

 

I mock-sighed. "You guys will really think I'm strange..."

 

"We already do," Nick said cheerfully, and it was my turn to throw a fry at him.

 

"My favorite song of y'all's is ‘Just Want You to Know.'" I shrugged. "Yes, I was well into what y'all seem to think is my hipster phase the first time I heard it, but it was catchy, and it was different, and the video was objectively hilarious."

 

They all looked at one another. Unspoken communication seemed to pass among them.

 

"Noted." Brian winked at me.

 

The whole exchange made me feel a little funny inside. Now it was out in the open that I was covering a band I had once loved. The look they'd exchanged gave me the strange sense that it was going to come back to bite me before I flew back to New York.

 

 

 

Tonight had the potential to be the worst night of the tour, I reflected as I lay staring at the ceiling of my bunk. We were pulling an all-nighter, driving straight through to Charlotte for tomorrow's show. Five hours apparently was too short for a travel day and too long for a same-day drive.

 

A symphony of snores came from a few feet away. The guys were tuckered out from another energetic show - tuckered out? like they were my kids - and they were used to this sort of thing. They had all gone to sleep within half an hour of getting on the bus at 11, and I had dozed off for a while, too. Unlike me, however, they'd slept through the bus jolting to life and getting on the road at 1.

 

I'd been awake for at least half an hour. I had a feeling I wouldn't be getting back to sleep anytime soon. Quietly, I swung my legs out of the bunk and climbed down. It was chilly out there for a girl in a ratty old college T-shirt and athletic shorts, my preferred pajamas, and the floor was cold below my bare feet, but getting a little work done in the cold was better than contemplating the ceiling.

 

It was starting to get darker outside, the lights diminishing as we rolled through the layers of suburban Atlanta. The bus was dark, except for emergency lights that traced a path along the floor from front to back. It was silent, except for the noise of the road and the occasional snores.

 

I shuffled up to the front of the bus, where Frank was driving in near-silence. A small stereo next to him was playing classic rock softly enough that I was sure no one in the back had noticed.

 

"How's it going?" I asked quietly, leaning against the wall behind him.

 

He didn't look up. "It's going," he said tersely.

 

"You done this before?"

 

"A time or two. Used to drive Greyhounds before I got into charter work." He still didn't look up, nor did he elaborate further.

 

So much for making conversation. I shuffled back to a booth, facing the front, and pulled out my laptop. Maybe I could get more transcribing done on my interviews, I reflected as I pulled my hair back from my face. More likely I'd just get out the broadband card and putz around online.

 

My throat tickled, and I coughed. A few minutes later, I heard rustling in the back, heard footsteps on the floor.

 

"The heck are you doing up?" I heard a Southern-fried voice say quietly. I looked over my shoulder to see Brian walking out from the back, hands stuffed into the pockets of a Cincinnati Reds hoodie that looked about 20 years old.

 

The last thing I needed was for this Kentucky Adonis to see me in my pajamas, but it was too late now. I smiled up at him. "Couldn't sleep. You?"

 

"Yeah, I've been having trouble, too." He settled into the seat across from mine. "This late-night driving is kinda the pits. I could never sleep in the car as a kid."

 

I closed my laptop, which I hadn't even gotten to turn on yet. "You guys wear yourselves out up there, though."

 

"Sometimes." He shrugged. "A lot of the time, the high is such that none of us could fall asleep if we wanted to."

 

"Do you feel like that after most shows?" I asked.

 

"You know, I still kinda do." He looked out the window for a moment. "How awake are you?"

 

"Pretty awake," I admitted. Talking to him wasn't really helping my brain or heart slow down. "You?"

 

He smiled. "Pretty awake. Are you up to doing my interview?"

 

In the middle of the night? On the bus? In the dark? Strangest interview ever. But it was better than never. I smiled at him and shoved my laptop back into my bag. "Oh, I suppose. Let me go get my phone."

 

"That's fine." He grinned as I got up. "While we're at it, how's your knee feeling?"

 

I knew where he was going with this, and I faked a limp. "Oh, it huuuuuurts."

 

"Yeah, yeah." He got up and followed me to the back. While he dug through the little luggage cubby under his and Howie's bunks, I reached into my bunk, felt around and found my phone. I was walking back toward the front, thumbing through its contents for the audio recorder app, when the bus hit a pothole and jolted.

 

It all happened in seconds. Brian, still crouched in front of his suitcase, reached up and caught me around the waist as I lost my balance and tripped over him. I put out a hand to steady myself on his shoulder, but that only served to push both of us backward, and we both landed on our butts, facing each other.

 

"Good Lord. Are you OK?" There was a note of panic in his whisper.

 

I gave my head a quick shake. "Well, there's one more bruise for my efforts."

 

He hauled himself to his feet on the side of the lower bunk and pulled me up by the hand. The bus hit another pothole. We stumbled again. Both of us grabbed the side of the upper bunk with one hand, and his other hand was at my waist to steady me as I grabbed his arm.

 

I felt his arm tense through the sleeve of his hoodie, but he didn't let go of me. I looked up at him and caught my breath. Our faces were inches apart.

 

"Well, hey there, Miz Michaels," he murmured, a funny little smile on his face.

 

I had no choice but to study his face, not so very different from the posters of my late adolescence, but softened now by little lines you'd never see in a soft-focus music video. He was no boy.

 

I forgot how to breathe. The world seemed to shift on its axis. What had promised to be just another good conversation over whiskey, maybe just a touch of flirting, felt charged, ripe with a new sort of connection. I thought about scrapping the whole thing, tearing up all my notes, making Frank pull over and calling a cab to come pick me up from the side of the road, from this situation that I clearly couldn't manage.

 

Or maybe just scrapping the story, tearing up my notes, faking my own death and running away with Brian, because even though I was a clumsy hot mess in my PJs, something about his strong arm around me, the warmth of his hand through my thin T-shirt, the curious and surprised sort of pleasure in his eyes, all made me feel very - dared I even think it? - sexy.

 

Brian's strange little smile didn't budge. His eyes crinkled appealingly. "You're, uh..." He cleared his throat softly. "You're really short."

 

Involuntarily, of all the damnable reactions of someone half my age, I giggled.

 

"Dude!" Howie's bemused face appeared from behind his curtain, inches from us. He took in the scene and arched a sleepy eyebrow. "I'm sure y'all are having the time of your lives, but some of us are trying to sleep."

 

"Sorry! Sorry," I whispered. I regained my balance, patted Brian's shoulder without looking at him, and stumbled toward the front of the bus, half grateful to Howie for breaking up whatever the hell that was.

 

Brian joined me in the booth furthest from the back a moment later, carrying the bottle of Knob Creek and a couple of red beer pong-issue Solo cups that had been sitting on top of the mini-fridge. He sloshed a little bourbon into each one and handed me mine.

 

"Sorry, but I'm pretty sure there's no ice on the bus," he said. He avoided my eyes.

 

"It's cool." I had a feeling I would need it straight-up to get through this interview.

 

He took a sip. "Didn't think I'd be having this stuff two nights in a row. I only have it every few days, if I'm in the mood and someone else wants some. Howie's the only other one who'll even touch alcohol, and he's a beer man. I figured even half the bottle would get me through the tour." He finally shot me what I took as a mischievous smile. "But hey, if you're enjoying it, far be it from me to let you drink by yourself."

 

My questions fled my brain in the face of his smile, but I dug out my notepad as I started the recorder. We dispatched with the boilerplate questions quickly enough, but what he had said when he first came up front was still lingering in my head.

 

"You said you still get a high from performing," I said as I propped my good elbow on the table, taking a small sip of the whiskey. "Tell me more."

 

Brian likewise propped up an elbow on the table, but he turned sideways, leaning back against the bus window, drawing a knee up. "I don't really know how to describe it," he said. "It's like, I get out there, and I hear the cheers - doesn't matter if it's 10 people or 10,000 - and I have this chance to sing and dance and share what we've worked so hard on, what we love, and nothing else in the world matters. Not the press - no offense - not the hassles of touring, not all the business hoops we have to jump through, not whatever's gone wrong in our personal lives, none of it."

 

He took a drink of whiskey. "I think if we could just do the music, nothing but the music, and not have to worry about the rest of it, I'd be happy. I know we have a lot riding on what's going on with us right now, and I don't mind the publicity, that's not it at all. But all I care about is getting to make some music with these guys. If that's all we get to do, without the perks...sometimes I think that's how I'd prefer it."

 

"Do you miss it, though? All the craziness from 12, 13 years ago?"

 

He smiled a bittersweet smile. "Nope. Not a bit. People think, like, maybe our lives are incomplete without it, but honest to goodness, I don't miss any of it. That stuff takes its toll on a person."

 

I didn't want to push it. Instead, I said, "You're not the first one I've heard that from."

 

A deep breath. "Honestly, I was kinda apprehensive about coming back out on tour. You know, we've spent so much of the last couple years touring. We're not touring in support of an album. We're just doing it to perform. And that's awesome, and it's great to spend the time with the guys, don't get me wrong. If it weren't, I wouldn't be here." His eyes met mine. "But until I get on stage, I miss my bed, and my stuff going on in Louisville, and my kid, all of it. Does that make me an old man?"

 

I gave a small shrug. "Don't look at me. I was damn near kicking and screaming the whole way to Miami."

 

"Not literally, I hope. These days, they throw people off planes for that sort of thing." I rolled my eyes at him, and he snickered. "Well, you sure had me fooled. Felt like if anyone was kicking and screaming about you being here, it was totally me."

 

"Ouch." I put a hand over my heart, my voice dripping with mock hurt. "You ply me with expensive whiskey, only to insult me. I don't know what to think about you, Littrell." I took a sip of my whiskey and looked out the window, nose in the air, ignoring him.

 

When he didn't say anything for a few moments, I looked back at him. There was that little smile again, just for me.

 

"I'm feeling a whole lot better now, if it makes you feel any better," he said.

 

I looked down into my whiskey, unable to suppress a smile, my face suddenly very warm. "It does," I heard myself say.

 

Get back on track, Michaels. You've still got a job to do. I cleared my throat. "What would you be doing if you weren't here?" I asked.

 

He looked out the window for a long time, his eyes very far away. A big, bright moon was shining on the scenery outside, mostly open fields now. Finally, he said, "I've been talking with a radio station in Louisville about doing a show. A contemporary Christian show, probably. Maybe even something syndicated. And I want to record some more of that kind of music. Making my solo album was really good for me." He smiled. "A real joyful noise, you know?"

 

"Your faith is still very important to you." It was more a statement than a question.

 

He nodded. "I may not talk about it much, may not witness like I should, but yeah. It's the only thing keeping me from crawling up the walls or into a hole sometimes." Another sip of whiskey.

 

I took the plunge. "Tell me about your kid. If you're comfortable with that," I added quickly.

 

A fond smile spread across his face. "My son? Oh, man, he's a great little guy. He's 8, almost 9. He's so funny, and he's got such a big heart. He's gonna grow up to be a good man." The smile slipped a little, and he looked down into his whiskey. He cleared his throat. I could tell he was trying to keep his voice steady. "Custody arrangement's a total cluster right now, considering how often I'm actually home. Uh...but when we play in Louisville Saturday, I'll get to see him. My mom's actually driving up to Cincinnati to get him and then driving to Louisville."

 

I didn't know what to say. I hadn't contemplated that side of his divorce, that painful collateral damage. Another kid growing up in a broken home. Like I had, for a while.

 

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I know it's hard. For both of you."

 

He looked over at me. "Did you grow up with both your parents?" I couldn't hide my surprise at the personal question, and he continued, "What? I hardly know anything about you." He raised his eyebrows in a prompt.

 

Was he trying to get under my skin? Whenever a source tried to get friendly with me on the record, I just found myself doubling my defenses, trying twice as hard to be objective. It didn't help that I'd never felt a spark with a source like I had with him, especially just a little while ago. His eyes were sincere, but history was history. Was he out to deliberately compromise me?

 

"I haven't seen my dad in 25 years," I said flatly. There it was, the sound-bite version. I could at least say that.

 

"I'm sorry."

 

I studied my whiskey, swirling it around in the cup. I hadn't intended to say any more, but the compassion in those two little words urged me on. "He and my mom split when I was in preschool. He stuck around for a while, but he quit picking me up the summer before first grade, I guess right about when Mom got serious with my, uh, the guy who became my stepdad." I took a sip, still not looking at Brian. "Good men don't do that to their kids, you know?"

 

"No. They sure don't." Brian made a humorless sound. "If I never see Baylee again, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be my fault."

 

I looked up at him in time to see alarm dawn in his eyes. He'd said too much.

 

"Why?" I pressed.

 

He smiled tightly. "Ask me something else."

 

But there was little else to ask him. A couple more lame questions, and I switched off the recorder. All done. The whiskey, however, wasn't. And apparently, neither was he.

 

"Tell me about your family," Brian said, taking another small sip.

 

I looked out the window, choosing my words with care. "Mom's a nurse. She's a pretty typical mom, mild-mannered, sweet sense of humor. Did what she had to to make sure I had a good childhood." I looked at him now. "You didn't have much of a childhood, did you?"

 

"Sick all the time?" He rubbed his chest absently, as if remembering why. "Yeah, it wasn't the greatest. But it was as good as I guess anyone could have hoped." He smiled at me. "We're not talkin' about me anymore, though."

 

"Have it your way." I focused on a speck on the window. "I'm an only child. Mom's pretty much the only family I have in the world."

 

"Your stepdad?"

 

I pretended the speck was incredibly interesting as memories came flooding back. "Jeff was great. He loved me and my mom a lot. He always wanted to do stuff with us, always wanted to be a family. Always wanted to share his interests with me. He loved sci-fi and made me watch Star Trek, loved music and got me piano lessons. Sat in the car with me when I learned how to drive. Coached my fast-pitch team before I got too nerdy for sports." I smiled a little. "He was a pretty big nerd, too, but we were always laughing. He was a great dad." I paused. "We were real close. Sometimes I think closer than me and my mom."

 

The speck blurred on the window, and now the tremor in my voice betrayed me. "He died about a year before I moved to New York. He was in his work truck, and there was a drunk driver, and the truck, um, actually caught on fire." My eyes were brimming, and I sniffled a little, embarrassed. Totally out of character, this. "Moving further away from my mom was hard, but she pretty well told me to go. Told me he would've wanted me to."

 

"I'm sorry." His voice was gentle, full of compassion again.

 

I cleared my throat, willing the tears back, still not looking at Brian, saying the next words quickly. "And I've never been married, no kids, no pets, so, yeah, at the ripe old age of 30, that's all the family I've got, and it suits my line of work pretty damn well." I smiled, a smile I didn't really feel, and belted back the whiskey. "Hi-diddly-dee, a journalist's life for me."

 

Confident that my eyes were dry enough, I finally looked at him. He was contemplating me with a strange sort of stricken look on his face. Finally, he seemed to return to Earth, with a slight shake of his head, and took a sip of whiskey.

 

I shrugged. "Life's the shits sometimes, isn't it?"

 

He smiled. "Sometimes. Sometimes it's just ridiculous and beautiful."

 

"Kinda like sitting on a bus in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, drinking whiskey with someone you've known for three days and had a total schoolgirl crush on 12 years ago?" The words came out of my mouth without my even realizing I'd been thinking them.

 

If the schoolgirl crush part fazed him in the least, he didn't show it. He shot me a fleeting smile. "Yeah. Kinda exactly like that." He looked down into his cup, silent for a long moment. "She left, in case you were curious."

 

I didn't even need to ask who he was talking about.

 

"But it wasn't for the reasons everybody was led to believe." He tipped his cup way back, finishing the whiskey. "You know, when you're famous, everyone assumes it has to do with money, or your sexual orientation, or somebody not being able to keep their pants zipped. I feel like everyone in the celebrity gossip scene was trying to figure out which one it was." He looked over at me. "But it wasn't any of those. Normal people's marriages fail over way more mundane things. So do famous people's. You just don't hear about those."

 

My heart was beating erratically, but I found my voice. "So what was it?"

 

His eyes were on the fields outside again. "Having kids changes people. It's hard to find time for your relationship under the best circumstances, and mine are, uh, not the best circumstances."

 

"What musician's are?"

 

He didn't seem to hear me. "I tried. We were in LA, and my God, nothing out there is normal. We finally figured out it was a shitty place to raise a kid, so we bought a house in Kentucky in '08, when things were slowing down for the band." He snorted softly. "Yeah, that didn't do any good. We stopped trying to spend time together, started fighting. I probably wasn't being the partner I could have been. I was real proud, real stubborn. I fought going to counseling, thought we could work it out - and where was I gonna find time for counseling in the first place?"

 

He sighed, tapped his empty cup on the table a few times. "And then I came home from some studio time, and boom - packed bags and divorce papers." He looked down into his cup. His voice was very quiet. "I mean...I guess now I don't blame her. I should've seen it coming a mile away. But it was friggin' awful, and it was even worse because I had nobody to blame but myself." Now his voice broke, and my heart along with it. "Especially when she got Baylee. Wasn't so bad at first, but last year she met somebody and moved to Cincinnati, of all the friggin' places, and she took him with her." A shaky breath. "And I can't bring myself to move back to LA full-time to be closer to work because I can't stand to be any further from my kid."

 

He sniffled. "Honestly, the whole thing still sucks. You know, you promise forever with a person, and you never think you're gonna be trying to figure crap out again in your 30s." He finally looked at me. His eyes were damp, but his voice had grown steadier. "I know ‘damaged goods' is a little bit of a cliché, but it's hard not to feel like it sometimes. Like, what am I doing wrong, and why can't I do better?"

 

His gaze dropped back into his empty cup. He cleared his throat, sniffled again. "Boy, what a pair of sad sacks we make," he chuckled quietly. He imitated a sad trombone, SNL-style. "Womp, womp."

 

My chest tightened all over again, as much at his attempt to hide his misery as at the misery itself. Without thinking, I reached out and patted his hand. Before I could pull my hand back, he covered it with his, a move that felt almost reflexive.

 

It was another one of those moments when everything seemed to shift. My heart stopped. His hands were radiating warmth again, despite the chilly air. He looked over at me, mouth screwed up in thought, one eyebrow raised in that same sort of intrigued surprise, as if even he wasn't sure what he'd just done. But he didn't pull his hand away. Neither did I.

 

Say something, you idiot.

 

"Yeah, we're sorry, all right," I managed, which got a chuckle out of him. He let my hand go, and I was instantly sorry. I pulled both hands back over to rest safely in my lap.

 

I could barely hear my own voice as I went on. "I'm sorry all that happened. I mean, it honestly isn't important to my story, but thank you for telling me. But I guess I'm curious...why did you decide to tell me?"

 

He looked out the window again. "I didn't want to tell Meg the journalist," he said slowly, as if still trying to understand what he himself was saying, "because I don't feel like the world needs to know the intimate details of all that. Even if they're really boring." He sat up a little straighter. "I wanted to tell Meg the person because...I don't know..." His eyes searched mine again, this time in a way that should have made me a little uncomfortable, but didn't. "I feel like you should know. Does that make any sense?"

 

My face was warm again, but I willed myself not to look away. "Maybe. But that still doesn't tell me why."

 

He stood up, but gazed thoughtfully down at me, shoving his hands in his hoodie pocket again. He looked like a teenager, but sounded very old as he said, "I don't really know why, either, Meg. I guess I'm just comfortable around you. I don't know. I think...maybe..." He chewed on his lip. "You're an easier person to trust than I thought."

 

He turned to go, then turned back around. He started to say something, then stopped. Then he said, with that funny, private little smile, "For what it's worth, you look really pretty in the moonlight."

 

Then he disappeared back toward the bunks, leaving me sitting there with my mouth hanging open and my heart trying to remember how to beat properly.

 

Where the hell had this come from?    

 

Wednesday, 8/3: Charlotte

 

"Strange women asleep on our bus. Now that's something I haven't seen in a hot minute."

 

I cracked an eye open. The guys were all standing over me, smirking.

 

"Aw, man, she's awake," Nick continued, disappointed. "I was hoping we could leave her on the bus and sneak off."

 

"Ha, ha." I sat up, and my back cracked. I had fallen asleep at the table, head in my arms. It was anyone's guess how long I'd been there. The inside of my mouth tasted like unwashed socks.

 

"What time is it?" I wondered aloud. It was only after those words had left my mouth that I looked out the window and noticed that the scenery wasn't moving. "We're already in Charlotte, aren't we?"

 

"Yep. And we were just gonna stare at you creepily until you woke up." A.J. cast a long-suffering look at Nick. "Unfortunately, this bimbo can't seem to be quiet."

 

I got to my feet and stretched. "Well, nice of y'all to come and stalkerishly wake me up. Is the rest of the caravan here?"

 

"Yeah, I think I saw them," Howie said.

 

"Let me guess - Christine looks like she should be hosting the Miss America finals."

 

Howie grinned smugly. "Actually, she looks like she got dragged behind one of the equipment semis for about 200 miles."

 

"You're kidding." I gave him a dirty look. "And you let me sleep through the satisfaction of seeing that?"

 

Howie shrugged. "Apparently she can't sleep on a bus any better than the rest of us."

 

"Speak for yourself." Nick scratched his stomach. "I slept like the dead."

 

"You know what? I will speak for myself." Howie looked mock-murderously between me and Brian, who was leaning against the wall, not saying a word, looking almost as tired as I felt. "I seem to recall a couple of other passengers waking me up in the dead of night, doing God knows what right next to my bed."

 

Brian shook his head innocently, scratching the back of his head, looking at no one in particular. "I dunno what you're talking about, bro. You must be a light sleeper."

 

"Yeah, I'm quite sure you're imagining things, Howie," I said just as innocently. I turned to head for my bunk, throwing an overdramatic elbow or two as I made my way past the guys. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to gather my things and get off this bus of death."

 

"See, shit like that is why we've never had a woman sleep on the bus with us, dude," I heard Howie mutter to Brian as I climbed into my bunk to grab my purse, which I normally never let out of my sight at night. "I mean, I'm not mad, but dude."

 

"Oh, dude yourself," Brian muttered back. "It's not like any-"

 

I couldn't resist. I poked my head out of my bunk and grinned mischievously at them. "Hello there, gentlemen. Did you know sound carries really, really well on this bus?"

 

The mortified looks on both their faces as they quickly exited the bus made me wish I were a little quicker on the draw with my camera.

 

 

**

 

As far as I could tell, Charlotte had the least going for it of any city we'd visited so far. I had no idea what we were doing here and no compunctions about crawling into bed for a few hours as soon as our extraordinarily early check-in was cleared.

 

A few minutes before noon, my phone rang. It was my usual ringtone, the dramatic sax crescendo in Guster's "Fa Fa." I reached out and grabbed blindly for the phone, then cleared my throat and said as politely as I could, "Hello, Meg Michaels."

 

"Hello, Miz Michaels," said an equally gracious and formal Nick on the other end. "Will we be enjoying the pleasure of your company at a 1:00 luncheon?"

 

"Yeah, I just need to get cleaned up." I glanced at the clock. Plenty of time.

 

"Cleaned up, schmeaned up. We've all seen you in your pajamas, and nobody turned to stone." The gentleman was gone. "In fact, I was thinking maybe we could all come jump on your bed, just for good measure."

 

I sat up, stretching. The nap had done my cramped body good, and I was feeling mentally refreshed enough to snap back, "I see y'all ate your creepy flakes this morning."

 

"Very funny. See you downstairs in an hour."

 

We hung up, and I walked over to the window for a delayed version of my usual morning ritual. Unfortunately, I had no idea what or where I was looking at. A strange city, indeed.

 

Shortly before 1, I walked into the lobby, notepad in my purse, hair as good as it would get, wearing what had by now become a standard uniform of tee and capris. Only Howie was sitting down there, reading his iPhone through dark sunglasses.

 

"Didn't your mother ever tell you you'd go blind that way?" I teased him as I sat down in the armchair next to his.

 

He shot me an equally jovial look over the tops of his shades. "I'll take my chances." He took off his shades, with a furtive glance from side to side, and looked straight-on at me, a bit apologetically. "I was just giving you and Brian a hard time this morning. You know that, right?"

 

I smiled. "Of course I do. I just tripped over him last night walking to the front of the bus. Neither one of us could sleep, so we stayed up and did his one-on-one."

 

Howie nodded a little, raising his eyebrows in surprise, looking nowhere. "I'm impressed he actually did it. I was starting to think you'd have to drug him."

 

 "No roofie coladas here. Just my own dubious powers of persuasion." I flashed him a winning smile.

 

Howie didn't smile back. He looked at me again. "He's got no love for the media. I'm kinda surprised you guys are getting along so well."

 

"I am, too. I was so sure he hated me when I got to Miami." I smiled, trying not to let on how pleased I was as I added, "I'm glad I was wrong."

 

He leaned back in his armchair, regarding me with an unreadable look on his face. "Brian's had a really crappy few years," he said cautiously. "And I don't think he's really dated since the divorce. Which probably isn't terrible - I can't remember him being single for more than a few months from the time I met him until that happened. But I mean, all of us have been friends for going on 20 years, and not many people know better than us what a stand-up guy he is. He needs someone decent in his life."

 

I suddenly didn't like the way Howie was looking at me. "And you're telling me this why?"

 

Howie chewed on his lip, the odd look in his eyes unwavering. "If you had told me Saturday morning he'd not only be on speaking terms with the writer, but sitting up all night talking to her - two nights in a row - I'd've told you you were crazy. He hates journalists, but you probably already know that.

 

"But...I kinda feel like he's taken a shine to you," he continued. "I catch him just kinda looking at you, when you're working or laughing or basically completely oblivious. And you wanna know what?"

 

I didn't. He should have known I didn't. My hands were starting to shake, and I clasped them in my lap. But he went on anyway. "I've seen that same look on your face." He paused. "And you're not denying it."

 

I froze. Shit. Shit shit shit shitting shit. Damn it. Called out.

 

"Now, I'm not in the business of matchmaking," Howie continued. "And I'm guessing that, being here for work, you're not exactly in a position to do anything about it or care if he feels the same way. And that's fine, for now." He steepled his fingers and looked down at them. "But you oughta know the effect you have on him, because I haven't seen it in a long time. And you oughta think about the effect he has on you, because you're not doing as good a job of hiding it as you think you are."

 

I opened my mouth to retort, but nothing came out. There was no denying my heart did crazy things around him, and I was still thinking about last night, remembering his warm, gentle hands when he'd caught me as I tripped or when he'd returned my small gesture of compassion, replaying the compliment he'd paid me before going back to bed. There was no ignoring that there was a spark. I'd thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping it out of my interactions with the guys, out of my work. Apparently not.

 

"I do believe you're professional enough not to let this affect your work," Howie was saying, as if reading my mind. "But I know your work is bound up in your experience with us, and, well, that goes for every facet of your experience."

 

I finally found words. "What do you want me to do?" I asked with a helpless shrug.

 

It was intended to be a rhetorical question, but he came right back, chuckling a little. "Well, I'd love it if you made my buddy happy. As long as you love him and you're good to him, I don't really care if you have four heads and smell like garlic. It just happens you're a pretty lady with an awesome personality. Yes, you are, we pretty much all think so," he said meaningfully as I rolled my eyes self-deprecatingly.

 

In a more serious voice, he added, "All I really want you to do is not hurt him. He's been through enough." He looked past me. "Heads up. He's behind you."

 

I turned around to see Brian walking up, also sporting sunglasses. My heart turned over. Fine time to see him, when my head was swimming with thoughts of him and what I ought to do about him.

 

"What are you all discussing so seriously?" Brian said, elbows on the back of my armchair. I instinctively shrank down a little.

 

"Feminine products." Howie smirked. "I needed specifics from someone who knows these things, see, so I'd know once and for all exactly what kind of a douche you are."

 

Brian faked a punch to Howie's head. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

 

 

**

 

"Mic check, A.J."

 

"Ladies, it's nice to have you with us tonight," A.J. intoned seductively into his headset, his voice rumbling through the arena. "Gentlemen, you have the patience of God."

 

The tech next to me adjusted a knob, then muttered into his headset, "Mic check, Nick."

 

"I can barely hear you, dude," Nick said, his voice much louder around us than the tech's must have been in his ear. "The mic sounds pretty good, but you might want to check the in-ear sound on this one."

 

"Roger that," the tech said.

 

I was sitting in the sound booth, my camera rolling. After putting my foot down with myself, I had decided to shoot some video during sound check. The tech hadn't seemed to mind much, as long as I stayed out of the way and didn't breathe too loudly.

 

So here I was, 50 feet from the stage, watching the technical side of sound check and attempting to share it with our readers. So far, all I'd learned - and all my readers would learn - was that sound check wasn't nearly as much fun for the techs as for the guys, who were goofing around onstage.

 

"Mic check, Brian."

 

Brian cleared his throat dramatically, and mock vocal exercises - "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me" - filled the arena.

 

"Mic check, Howie."

 

Howie threw Brian a who-are-you-kidding look. "You, you, you, you, you, you, you."

 

"Dude, why you gotta ride me like that today?" Brian protested, a smirk forming on his face. "Ever since I woke up this morning..."

 

The tech, a tall and painfully skinny guy with black-rimmed glasses, rolled his eyes. "All right, guys, why don't you try doing some real work? Drop the headsets, try the cordless mics."

 

As I filmed, the guys grabbed the cordless mics, warmed up a little, harmonized, sang silly made-up lyrics to a familiar tune.

 

"We gonna sing a real song here?" Nick asked.

 

"Yeah, how about...hmmm." A.J. paused for a moment. "Why don't we do ‘Helpless When She Smiles'? We could be rockin' that a little harder."

 

They all nodded in agreement. I made a mental note to shut off the camera after the first chorus. No sense in a 10-minute video.

 

"Somebody want to start me off here?" A.J. asked.

 

Howie hopped down from his stool, walked over to the piano and played a few notes of a ballad. A.J. nodded his thanks and started singing:

 

She keeps her secrets in her eyes

She wraps the truth inside her lies

Just when I can't say what she's done to me, she comes to me

And leads me back to paradise

 

As he got warmed up, he got really into it, leaning forward, hand gestures, eyes squeezed shut, the whole nine yards.

 

She's so hard to hold

But I can't let go

 

And now the others joined in:

 

I'm a house of cards in a hurricane

A reckless fire in the pouring rain

She cuts me and the pain is all I wanna feel

She'll dance away just like a child

She drives me crazy, drives me wild

But I'm helpless when she smiles

 

I nodded, smiling a little, and shut off the camera. It was a heartfelt song about the kind of mystifying, enigmatic woman some girls hoped they'd become, and I wondered who had inspired it.

 

And now it was Brian's turn:

 

Maybe I'd fight it if I could

It hurts so bad, but feels so good

 

I swallowed hard. Suddenly, there was something to these words. He turned ever so slightly toward the sound booth, and his eyes met mine as he went on:

 

She opens up just like a rose to me, when she's close to me

Anything she asks me to, I would

 

Last night popped into my head. And even from this distance, I could see it mirrored in his eyes.

 

My heart stopped. I couldn't breathe. In all likelihood I was clinically dead, but the way he looked at me made me feel incredibly alive, electrically charged.

 

It's out of control

But I can't let go

 

And it was back to the chorus, and they were all into it now, but I was no longer listening, frozen in my seat, lost in thought.

 

A memory flooded me: my first semester of college, when I was consumed by a crush on a guy in one of my classes. He'd look over at me in class and smile. Sometimes, he'd walk out of class with me. I had started to get optimistic, and upbeat love songs had spoken to me all the louder. I'd listen to ditties like "As Long As You Love Me" with a swoony sigh and imagine, in my more pathetic moments, that it was Mr. Spanish 104 singing to me, pouring out his heart, assuring me of his unconditional love. Instead, he had trampled on my little heart within weeks.

 

Thirteen years later, a guy who captivated me was actually maybe singing a swoony, crushy Backstreet Boys song to me. And it was a Backstreet Boy. I couldn't have made it up if I'd wanted to. The professional in me, the person who was supposed to be working, wished I had. It wasn't making my life any easier, on top of Howie calling me out.

 

If I was being honest, a little part of me had always wanted to be the kind of woman in this song. And now, maybe I was. To the person singing it.

 

And he was going to trample the hell out of my little heart, too.

 

"Yo, Meg. Meg!"

 

"I think she's in a coma."

 

I snapped back to reality. The guys' voices had filled the arena around me.

 

"Sound tech said we sounded fine," Nick said. "What do you think?"

 

I pasted a smile on my face and offered them two thumbs-up.

 

"Think we should keep the song on the set list for tonight?" Brian asked.

 

His eyes bored into me again. I wanted to crawl under the table. Instead, I said, "I sure think so, but you'd better keep some mops nearby if you do."

 

Brian raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

 

"Because whatever girl you happen to make eye contact with while you sing that song is going to melt into a puddle," I said sweetly. "Actually, I could use a mop right now. You can't see my legs, but they're actually completely gone." I pointed below the table. "If you were trying to test something out on me by singing to me, you succeeded."

 

All the guys stared at Brian, who suddenly glanced at his bare wrist. "Gosh, would you look at the time?"

 

 

**

 

I hung my head. "Oh, God, Alicia, I'm so screwed."

 

"I'm sorry, what are you whining about?"

 

I glared at the phone, even though I knew Alicia couldn't see me. "Oh, thank you. Your sensitivity is, as always, without parallel."

 

"Dude, I don't know what you want me to tell you when you won't tell me what's going on. I've been home for all of two hours, and here's a wild throw from left. All you've told me is that the assignment isn't going like you planned. That could mean anything."

 

I had ducked into a coffeehouse two blocks from the venue, citing its free wi-fi - 3G wasn't cutting it for uploading the video, I told the guys - and my need for a few minutes' me time. As the video uploaded from my computer to the great realm of the Internet, a sudden, growing panic had swallowed me, and I had called Alicia, only to find myself speechless when she picked up.

 

"Whatever it is, you know you can tell me," Alicia was saying. "When have I ever judged you?"

 

I hesitated, and then the words spilled out like a flood. "I think there's something going on with me and one of the guys and we've been hanging out off the record and he told me about his divorce and I think he just sang me a song and he has great hands and I think the other guys know and I don't know what to do and I'm totally screwed."

 

A moment's silence, then snickering. "Peggy Jo, you sly dog."

 

"Not helping," I grumbled through clenched teeth.

 

"I know." Alicia blew out a breath. "OK. So many questions right now, but let me see if I can distill this. You like this guy. Apparently he likes you. If this were real life, I wouldn't see a problem. Your garden-variety divorce does not constitute a problem when you're a single New Yorker in your 30s. And neither does his having a kid, if he does," she added.

 

"But this isn't real life. This is a story."

 

"Yeah. And that's the problem." Alicia was silent for a moment. "Do you think you can get through the week and never talk to him again?"

 

The idea horrified me. I couldn't imagine walking away from these feelings, from this connection, bizarre and surprising though it was. It was the smart thing to do, but not the realistic thing.

 

"I'll...take your silence as a no," Alicia said.

 

"Yeah." My voice was almost a whisper.

 

She clucked her tongue thoughtfully. "Do you think you'll ever have to cover these guys again?"

 

"Probably not." I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my forehead. "I can't imagine we'll be writing about them a whole ton. And even if we are, I'd like to think this earned me some goodwill with Thomas."

 

"OK. So once you're done with this, you might not actually have a conflict of interest to stop you."

 

I hadn't thought about it that way. I was trying not to think beyond this week.

 

"So what's to stop you from just fending him off until you're done reporting?" she went on. "Or until you're done writing? Or, probably best of all, until the story runs and you've put your professional relationship with him to bed once and for all?"

 

I swallowed hard. My voice was back to a whisper. "I...I don't want to fend him off."

 

"You're going to have to, hon." Her voice was a little reassuring, a little exasperated. "You have a job to do. And then, once you don't, you can go after him for all you're worth."

 

I sighed. "But I feel like once I'm not around him anymore, it won't be the same. Like, the spell will be broken."

 

"That's a risk you take, Meg," she said gently.

 

I leaned my head forward until my forehead touched my knees. I needed this tough love, this practical advice, but it didn't make me want to face the music any more.

 

"Even if you're right about all this, there's one other factor you haven't considered." I held out a hand, almost touching the floor, and examined my fingernails. "As you know, I'm complete chicken shit."

 

Alicia chuckled. "Now that part isn't my problem."    

 

Thursday, 8/4: Travel Day

 

"You know, you're terribly brave, sticking with this so long," I said somberly as I laid down my cards slowly, one at a time. "If I were you, I'd've folded a long time ago."

 

"Oh, you are made of bitch," A.J. groaned as I laid down my final card, revealing three 4's and two 7's, all hearts and spades, a full house.

 

"Sucks to suck, gentlemen," I said glibly as I gathered up a growing pile of nickels from the three grumbling guys around me, including all of A.J.'s.

 

It was my last travel day and second-to-last day of the tour, and I marveled at how quickly the time had slipped away. Fortunately, we had a long day ahead, driving through the mountains from Charlotte to Nashville, where the guys would play a remarkably different sort of show at the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night.

 

We were on the second movie of the day, Inglourious Basterds, but only Nick and Howie were watching it. A.J., Brian, Jay and I were playing Texas hold ‘em on the floor between bunks, betting nickels, five rolls of which Brian had squirreled away in his bag for just such an occasion.

 

"I do wonder why y'all don't use real money," Jay mused. "It's not like y'all are hurting."

 

"Yeah, but some people on this bus still get pissed off over real money," Brian pointed out from his spot on his bunk as he shuffled the deck. "Nickels are great because they don't really count. And they're useful," he added with a grin. "You can put ‘em in a sock and use ‘em for self-defense."

 

"In your case, you oughta be able to defend the whole bus," A.J. said to me as I counted up my winnings. He shook his head, glaring across the floor at me. "Totally uncool."

 

"What's uncool about it?" I retorted cheerfully. "Not used to a chick who can hold her own playing poker? One of many life skills you learn in a newsroom full of dudes."

 

A.J. made a face. "It's more that I'm not used to a chick who has an actual poker face."

 

"Poker face?" Nick echoed. "I hardly know ‘er."

 

"Go back to sleep, Nick," Brian called up to the front of the bus, where a burst of gunfire issued forth from the TV.

 

A second burst of gunfire, and the bus suddenly jolted hard. Jay, who was sitting on the bunk above me, pitched forward. My life briefly flashed before my eyes.

 

"Pulling over!" Frank shouted, and with a screech of brakes, we slid to the side of the road, bumping violently along.

 

"Aw, damn it, I spilled my water," Nick grumbled.

 

"That's your angel punishing you," Brian replied, holding on to the top of his bunk for dear life.

 

Frank scrambled off the bus as soon as it lurched to a stop. A few seconds later, I could hear his furious shouts from outside the bus. The four of us exchanged an anxious look, and we got to our feet and filed off the bus, joined by Nick and Howie.

 

"Son of a whore!" Frank bellowed as we got off the bus. He looked up at us, his face red. "The goddamn tire blew out."

 

We all stared down at the right front wheel, which was cradled now by shreds of rubber.

 

Nick screwed up his mouth. "Shit."

 

"That's your angel punishing you for beating us in poker," A.J. said to me.

 

"Now why would my angel punish the entire bus?" I snapped back.

 

A.J. glowered at me. "Because that last hand was an abomination from hell."

 

"Sore loser much?" Brian chastised him, winking at me.

 

Jay looked back and forth. "Damn, dude, I bet I'm the only black man for a hundred miles."

 

We were the second of only two buses traveling today. The dancers weren't needed for the show in Nashville, which was going to be much smaller, so they were rejoining the tour in Louisville. The first bus was half a mile in front of us, and I expected someone's phone to ring any minute.

 

Sure enough, it was Frank's. He yanked it out of his pocket and grimaced. "That bitch. Someone else answer this."

 

Howie took the phone from him and answered it with a big fake smile in his voice. "Hi, Christine. We blew a tire."

 

I could hear Christine's screech of dismay from 10 feet away. I turned around, not wanting any part of this conversation. A control freak's worst nightmare, this.

 

"Where the hell are we?" I wondered out loud. We had detoured onto a two-lane highway at Asheville to avoid an accident that had shut down the westbound lanes of the interstate. So it could be worse, I reasoned. Unfortunately, that meant we were more than likely in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around us but trees, dirt and a narrow ribbon of pale, pockmarked pavement.

 

Frank kicked at the dirt. "Seven, eight miles into Tennessee, give or take."

 

Yep. Middle of nowhere.

 

Howie sounded angry for the first time all week. He jammed his free hand into his pocket and paced back and forth. "We only have two buses today, remember? We can't fit six more people onto the crew bus for the next five hours. That's insane."

 

"Gimme my damn phone back," Frank said to Howie. "I gotta call someone to bring us a new friggin' tire." He made a face. "We'll need one before Nashville anyway."

 

"Christine, I gotta go," Howie said, sounding obviously relieved. "Frank needs the mechanic's number out of his phone. Bye."

 

He hung up and thrust the phone at Frank as if it had bitten him. A moment later, a loud ringing issued forth from his own pocket. "Damn it anyway!" he muttered, answering the phone. "No, Christine, you are not turning the bus around, it's just a travel day..."

 

And now Frank was on the phone with the mechanic. Evidently it wasn't going well. "Two goddamn hours?" he shouted. "We're only an hour out of Asheville! This is fucking nuts!"

 

Nick started walking away.

 

"Where the hell are you going?" Brian said.

 

"I saw a gas station a quarter-mile back," Nick replied. "I want a soda. And I gotta get away from this clusterfuck."

 

I smothered a grin. It was always my belief that a tour was one unscheduled disaster away from anarchy. This was proof positive. I ran onto the bus, slung my camera over one arm and my purse over the other, and followed Nick, Brian and A.J. down the road.

 

It was a bright, sunny, miserably hot day in Appalachia, and I soon regretted wearing jeans. By the time I reached the gas station, they were rolled to my knees, and the guys were already inside.

 

The gas station didn't appear to be from this millennium. The pumps were small, the kind that looked like ‘80s robots, with the pumps on the sides and a physically separate display on the top; pay-at-the-pump was a foreign concept. The inside of the convenience store had three fans blowing warm, stale air around, and the soda fountain displayed a Pepsi logo I hadn't seen since middle school. An old country song droned in the background: I've got heartaches by the number, I've got troubles by the score...

 

"We can't stop here! This is bat country!" I whispered to Brian, who was holding up a copy of what had to be the local newspaper, a thin broadsheet screaming from the front page about a water main break under a headline with a glaring typo.

 

He opened the paper to hide both our faces. "Fear and Loathing?"

 

I grinned up at him. "You know it."

 

"I was thinkin' more along the lines of..." He made a soft twanging sound with his mouth, humming a few notes of "Dueling Banjos."

 

I rolled my eyes. "You would."

 

"Dude, check it." Nick was standing in the middle of the candy aisle, one hand in a Laffy Taffy jar, the other already clutching a massive fountain soda. He fished out a piece of chewy candy and read its pink wrapper. "What's black and white and red all over? A sunburned zebra!" He slapped his knee and guffawed with fake laughter.

 

A.J. was already up at the counter, having not wasted any time. He was juggling two bottles of Coke and four anemic-looking hot dogs in paper cartons.

 

"We're gonna be here a while," he said to me as he dug around in his wallet. "Might as well have some lunch."

 

"You don't think Christine will insist on coming back for us?" I asked.

 

He rolled his eyes. "I think I'd rather lay down in the middle of the road and wait for death by semi than try to squeeze 15 people and our crap onto one bus to Nashville, with one toilet. No, I'm pretty sure Howie will talk her out of it."

 

"He better," Nick said as he deposited his gallon of fountain soda, three bags of 50-cent candy and a hot dog on the counter. "I wanna spend half a day on a bus with her like I want a colonoscopy. Sorry, ma'am," he said quickly to the middle-aged woman behind the counter, who arched a heavily penciled, mildly offended eyebrow at him.

 

A.J. and Nick paid in a hurry, gathered up their purchases and headed for the door. "We'll see y'all back at the bus," Nick said.

 

"Much appreciated, ma'am," A.J. added, beaming over his shoulder at the cashier as the jingle bells on the door tinkled their farewell to the guys.

 

"Y'all with a tour group or somethin'?" the cashier asked in a thick Southern accent. She was dark-haired and heavyset, with kind green eyes and the thickest mustache I'd ever seen on a woman.

 

Brian folded up the newspaper and gave her a charming smile. "You could say that, ma'am."

 

"Well, y'all boys sure are handsome gentlemen." The woman smiled sweetly, then turned to me. "And what's a naas lady lock yew doin' with these troublemakers?"

 

Brian slung a fraternal arm around my shoulders. "She keeps us in line, ma'am," he said, still ever the charmer. He patted my arm, then started walking toward the soda fountain. "And just for that, what do you want out of the fountain?"

 

I put my hands on my hips. "Why would you even have to ask that?"

 

He pointed a little shooter finger and winked at me before sticking the largest cup available under the Diet Coke spigot.

 

"Ooooh, yew keep yer eye on that one, girl," the cashier said to me with a conspiratorial wink. I didn't even know where to begin to respond to her, so I feigned interest in the newspaper Brian had left on the counter.

 

Brian came back with a huge soda in each hand and plunked them on the counter, pulling his wallet out of his pocket. "Don't even think about it," he said to me as I reached for my purse.

 

I held up my hands in mock surrender. "Who's thinking?"

 

The cashier squinted at Brian as she handed him his change. Suddenly, recognition dawned in her eyes. "Whaaah, ah know yew! I seen yew in an old poster on mah daughter's bedroom wall!"

 

I snickered, took my soda and excused myself as the lady fawned over Brian. I knew he could fend for himself with one middle-aged Southern woman. I'd seen glimpses of the Southern gentleman, the one who would smile sincerely and call her "ma'am" in that gentle drawl all day.

 

The hot, dusty day and the deserted road outside the gas station were begging for a harmonica solo. I looked up and down the road again as I sucked down a mouthful of Diet Coke. On my walk here, I'd seen maybe three cars - far fewer than I would have expected when you considered the interstate detour. There were no other structures between here and the bus.

 

I looked in the other direction. A little white clapboard church that had seen better days sat a few hundred feet away. Oh, what the hell. I had my camera. I started walking.

 

The bells of the gas station door jingled faintly behind me, and a moment later, I heard footsteps behind me. "Bus is that way," I heard Brian say.

 

I stopped and let him catch up, taking another deep pull on my straw. "You can go back and listen to Frank bitch about the tire and the guys try to talk Christine out of coming back and playing mother hen. You have my number. I need some me time."

 

Another charming smile. "No such thing around here."

 

I started walking away from the bus again. He matched my stride. I shook my head as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. "You're a real pain in the ass, Littrell."

 

"Thank you. So where we goin'?"

 

We were almost to the church now, and I nodded in its direction. "Just want to take a look." I could see now that it had fallen into considerable disrepair. There were sizable holes in the roof and in at least one of its windows, which made it all the more appealing - a slice of decaying rural life that awakened something deeply nostalgic in a reformed country girl like me.

 

We stopped in front of the church. Its sign looked like it had been completely blank for some time. I couldn't begin to guess when it had been deserted. Part of me wanted to peek inside, but a bigger part of me had no interest in being arrested on this rejected set from Deliverance. There was plenty to see outside. I put my soda on the ground, hoisted up my camera and started snapping photos.

 

I was about to walk around the side of the country chapel, taking my chances in the knee-high grass, when I heard a doorknob creak. I looked up to see Brian opening the door. Either it had been unlocked all this time, or he was committing a high-level misdemeanor.

 

I gaped at him. "Jesus. You want Barney Fife to come looking for you?"

 

He just shot me a mischievous smile over his shoulder and walked in.

 

The inside of the church was perhaps even more beautifully depressing, warped by the forces of nature. Rain obviously had fallen into the church, warping some of the three dozen or so wooden pews and nurturing an overwhelmingly musty smell. But a cross at the front seemed undamaged, and the stained glass windows were still beautiful, albeit grimy, depicting simple but lovingly rendered biblical scenes, saints gazing toward the heavens with basset-hound eyes. I walked up to one of them with my camera and started snapping away.

 

Brian was standing a few windows down, hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts, gazing up in reverence. Sweat trickled down his cheek, but he looked so serene and handsome in profile, I couldn't resist. I held up the camera and took the shot. He looked over at me, a bemused smile on his face, and I took another one. I ducked to one side and snapped a few more as he leaned against the end of one pew, the cross in the background.

 

"You ever thought about having photos taken in a church?" I asked him. "You know, for your solo album or whatever."

 

He chuckled as he sat down in a pew. "Maybe some other time. Record companies kinda frown on you sweating like a pig on your album covers."

 

I sat down in the pew in front of him, turning around to face him as I scrolled through the pictures. It was always hard to say whether my pictures were any good moments after I'd taken them, but so far, so good. I tried not to linger too long on the pictures of him, lest my heart speed up and betray me.

 

"How long have you been taking pictures?" Brian was leaning forward, craning his neck over the back of my pew to try to see the pictures. His face was inches from mine, but I dared not look up.

 

I blew out a breath, trying to calculate the years in my head. "I don't know. Casually, since I was 14 or 15, maybe? Seriously, since I moved to New York."

 

He held out a hand. "Can I...?"

 

I thumbed the dial back to shooting mode and handed him the camera gingerly. "You drop it, I break all your fingers," I threatened him, only half-teasing. "That thing has some miles on it, but it's still worth more than my life."

 

He held up the camera, took a few tentative shots pointed toward the altar. I smiled, taking advantage of the break to pull my hair out of its ponytail and shake out the sweaty mess a bit. I had no idea if he was any sort of photographer, but it always tickled me to see someone testing the waters, in the way that it still got me right in the heart when a little girl proudly told me she wanted to be a reporter when she grew up.

 

Then he turned the camera toward me: another snap. An embarrassed laugh escaped me, and I looked down, away from the lens.

 

"Aw, come on," he protested softly. A few more snaps.

 

I shook my head. "Nope. Being in front of the camera is not for me. That's why I became a writer, not a teleprompter jockey."

 

Brian lowered the camera and clicked the dial tentatively over, evidently in search of review mode. "Aha!" He smiled that funny little smile down at the camera, then back up at me. "It's, ah, it's not nearly as bad as you think."

 

He handed me the camera. I hardly recognized myself on the screen. He had caught me in profile, with one hand in my hair, seemingly staring off into space, the remnants of a smile on my face. I looked almost like I was daydreaming. I was sweaty, but it looked like the sweat of someone who had accomplished something, not someone a bit out of shape who was dripping wet from a walk in the heat. My hair looked like nothing so much as a chaotic modern-day halo. I looked gritty and real and tough and content.

 

I looked like the person I always tried to be. Somehow, he had captured that. I didn't know what to say. Incredibly, I felt a lump in my throat.

 

"Well, OK," I heard myself croak, a sheepish smile spreading across my face. I looked down and cleared my throat. "Point taken. Not as bad as I thought. You done good, Littrell."

 

He looked at the screen for a few seconds. "Jeez, you're beautiful."

 

I froze. Time froze. I was afraid to look up. For a crazy moment, I thought I'd dreamed his saying that, thought I was hallucinating in real life. I finally forced myself to meet his eyes, and he was staring at me in frank astonishment, as if even he couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud.

 

But there was something else mixed in with the astonishment. Something I hadn't seen directed at me in too long. Something that made me think the heat enveloping me wasn't just the stagnant summer air.

 

His elbows were resting on the back of my pew. He reached up with one hand, slowly, hesitantly, and toyed with my hair, twirling an unruly curl around one finger. His gaze was tender, intrigued.

 

"You act like nobody's ever said that to you before," he said softly. "That's a crime."

 

I stopped breathing. My eyes closed in spite of themselves, and I found myself squeezing them shut, wishing the moment would end without action. It wasn't that I didn't want action, but I couldn't stand for it to happen. He had proven himself to be pretty great this week, and whatever little spark there was between us was burning a hell of a lot more confidently now, but...everything I had worked for...everything I tried to avoid for the sake of being competent in my chosen profession...

 

"Meg?" I opened my eyes. He was still looking at me. His voice was still very soft. "I know I shouldn't be saying this. I know you probably think I'm just another crazy musician and I'm not worth it."

 

"I didn't say that," came a husky, tentative voice I didn't recognize from somewhere within me.

 

He went on like I hadn't spoken. "But I like you a lot, as a person, and you should know that. And I like you a lot as a woman, and you should know that, too." He dropped his hand. That little smile was back. "I still feel like I don't know hardly a thing about you, and I want to know everything about you."

 

The way he said "everything" suggested he meant a lot more than my astrological sign.

 

A nervous giggle escaped my mouth, again from some previously unknown cave inside me. "What's to know? I'm from the Midwest. I've had two dads and now I have none. I've been a writer since I was a little kid. I'm horribly allergic to ragweed. The only songs I remember how to play on the piano are ‘Heart and Soul' and the M*A*S*H theme song." I swallowed hard, trying to stop my next words from tumbling out, but it was no use: here we go. "I haven't been on a second date since before I moved to New York. I don't exactly have a whole lot of time for guys. No, I don't remember the last time someone said I was beautiful. I don't even remember the last time someone looked at me like that."

 

"Am I bothering you?" He didn't look away.

 

"No." The word slipped out before I could stop it, but what else was there to say? I tried to smile, but couldn't. "But you know, every moment we're together, I'm working."

 

It was useless trying to BS him, I realized. That little smile cut right through the crap. His gaze dropped, a little more purposeful now. I realized he was looking at my mouth. "What if you weren't working? Then what would you say?"

 

I couldn't speak. The church was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. He started to lean in closer, a little hesitantly. And I couldn't bring myself to stop him. My eyes fell closed again.

 

A low hum sounded. Then the tinkling of piano keys. Horror seized my insides. Thomas had found me. He'd felt some kind of disturbance in the Force, his alleged favorite staff writer starting down the dark path of boinking a source, forever to dominate her destiny.

 

But it wasn't my phone. I heard Brian sigh heavily through his nose. I opened my eyes, and he was pulling his phone out, leaning back.

 

"Yeah," he answered it, rubbing his forehead. "...Nothing. Meg and I went for a walk. ...Oh, no kidding? ...Yeah, we'll head back there. ...All right, see ya."

 

He lowered the phone. "They found somebody closer. Repairman's five minutes out."

 

"Oh. Good." My voice sounded hollow.

 

Brian looked at me for a long moment. There was an almost helpless look in his eyes.

 

I shrugged at him, just as helpless. "What do you want me to say? I got a job to do here. That's the only reason you even know who I am. How I feel is irrelevant."

 

"I know." He stood up, ran a hand through hair that was damp with sweat, looked down at me. A smile crossed his face, but didn't reach his eyes. "I notice you didn't say you don't feel anything."

 

"No. I didn't."

 

I held his gaze, silently pleading with him to see reason. He turned and walked out.    

 

Friday, 8/5: Nashville

 

Nashville sparkled against the lightening sky as I stared out my window at the Opryland Hotel. My last day on the tour was dawning.

 

It had snuck up on me out of nowhere. Through my haze of work and confusion, the week had managed to fly by.

 

From a professional standpoint, it had been productive, I thought as I watched the city glisten over the treetops. I felt ready to leave, ready to get back and start putting a decent story together.

 

From a strictly personal standpoint, I was a wreck. After yesterday's near-miss, or near-kiss, with Brian during our unscheduled pit stop, I had given him a wide berth. I couldn't risk something else happening with him, as badly as I wanted it. Alicia was right: I had to keep him at arm's length at least until the story ran. Maybe forever.

 

He seemed to get it, too. No more sitting next to me. No more little smiles, winks, jokes. Whatever conversations we had felt forced, stilted. But more than once, when I'd look up at him, hoping he wasn't looking, I'd caught him looking at me, that same sort of helplessness in his eyes. And every time, we'd both looked away in a hurry.

 

It had been a miserable ride. And 24 hours from now, I'd be getting ready to head to the airport. I had taken my last ride with the boys on the bus, and it had completely sucked. What a crappy end to a surprisingly decent week.

 

I turned back to my room. My laptop was sitting closed on the bed, where I'd left it when I finally tried to get some sleep last night, after attempting to work myself tired by transcribing interviews. It hadn't worked. The only one I had left to transcribe was Brian's, and I couldn't stand to listen to his voice. It had echoed in my ears as I'd tried to sleep.

 

My nightstand phone rang. I picked it up, and a front desk clerk's voice rang in my ear, reminding me it was time to wake up. In my failure to sleep, I'd beaten the alarm out of bed.

 

I showered, dressed, tried to make some sense of my bag. I wandered down to the vast, lushly green lobby, freshly renovated after last year's disastrous floods, and bought a Diet Coke and a granola bar from the sort of bland lobby convenience store you usually saw in casinos. I found a place to sit and stared up at the glass ceiling, trying to collect my thoughts.

 

A tinkling piano in my pocket broke through my reverie. It could only be one person. My heart jumped into my throat as I answered the phone. "What?"

 

"Well, good morning, sunshine," came Thomas' sarcastic reply from the other end. "Don't sound so thrilled to be talking to the guy keeping you out of the bread line."

 

I rubbed my forehead. "Don't try me, Thomas. I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon stranded in God's country. And I got a horrible night's sleep."

 

"Well, surely that's from excitement over coming back to this city of cynics. How's it going?"

 

"Pretty well. I think I'm in a good place as far as what I need to write the story. Just need to get through this last day." I propped up my feet. "Should get some good material from their playing the Grand Ole Opry tonight. It's a pretty different kind of show."

 

"They're preschoolers standing in the footsteps of giants, if you ask me, but more power to them," my boss said dryly. "All your social media stuff has been fine. Good job on the videos, too. Lot of activity on the one from the sound check."

 

I nodded. "Thanks. I'll try and do at least one more video today. Maybe kind of a retrospective with the guys."

 

"Sounds good. And, ah, how are things going with the guys? I take it you got all the interviews you needed."

 

"Yep. Except Christine declined to talk on the record." Or she would have if I had bothered asking her, of that I was sure. As far as I was concerned, this story had nothing to do with her, and I wanted to operate the same way.

 

An annoyed sigh. "I've got her cellphone number. I'll tell her to quit givin' you shit. "

 

I should have known he would call my bluff. "I wish you wouldn't," I said, not too quickly. "I don't think that's going to help my cause very much."

 

"Fine. It's your funeral. And the, ah, uncooperative band member?"

 

My chest tightened, and I realized I was trying to talk and hold my breath at the same time. "Everything's fine. Got the interview. He's been a lot more cooperative." Too cooperative.

 

"Good." Thomas was silent a moment. He must have known I was hiding something, or maybe I was just projecting. Yeah. Projecting.

 

"Well, I can't think of anything else," he went on, a little awkwardly. Thomas, awkward: a startling new concept. "Just wanted to make sure things were going as well as your emails made them sound."

 

I squeezed my eyes shut. I was tired of talking to Thomas. There was so much below the surface of those emails that my boss needed to never, ever know. "Yep. Looking forward to getting back to the office."

 

"Looking forward to having you back. The crazy hair quotient and self-righteous Thompson-quoting differential have been shamefully low this week." The sarcasm was back.

 

"I really hate you sometimes."

 

"That's what I like to hear from my writers. See you Monday."

 

The line went dead. I exhaled.

 

 

**

 

The Grand Ole Opry was smaller than it had looked on TV when I was a kid watching all my mom's favorite country singers on TNN. For all the history it had seen, it felt a little anticlimactic. Only that wooden circle on the stage, scuffed by so many famous boots, rescued intact from beneath muddy waters, seemed to hold any hint of the magic in this place.

 

I sat in the middle of the auditorium, watching the band wrap up their sound check. The roadies had been careful to avoid that wooden circle, even laying a cord around its perimeter so the guys would know not to approach it. It seemed like a nice touch.

 

It was early afternoon, and the guys were still at lunch. I had bowed out, despite their protests. I didn't want anything to do with them today, didn't want another opportunity to awkwardly try not to stare at or converse with Brian. I hated them for making me put myself through this.

 

You're the only one making yourself do anything, a voice inside hatefully reminded me. This is all your doing. You could have avoided him altogether.

 

But I really couldn't have. I had brought this on myself only by doing what I was sent here to do. Maybe it really was all his fault. That only made me hate him more, with a sweet kind of pain that clenched around my chest like a fist.

 

A movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned to see Brian making his way down the aisle toward me.

 

I rubbed my face. Damn it all to hell. I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted him to never leave me.

 

He sat down a couple seats away from me, kicking his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him. "So this is what was more important than having one last lunch with us."

 

The joke sounded a little forced, but so did my own lighthearted reply. "You expect a music writer not to grab a chance to just sit in the Grand Ole Opry and soak it up?"

 

"Guess not." He leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. "Awesome venue. Every freakin' kid in the South dreams of playing here sometime."

 

The silence between us was as thick as soup. He cleared his throat, still looking at the ceiling. "So, um, yesterday."

 

I blew out a breath. My heart was pounding. "You really want to talk about this?"

"Yeah. I do. I've been thinking about it ever since we walked out of that church."

 

"I-" He turned to me, and the serious look in those blue eyes shut me up on the spot.

 

"I meant every single thing I said," he began quietly. "I just want you to know that. But I hate how awkward it's been since I said those things."

 

A humorless laugh escaped me. "You don't want things to be awkward with a woman you know professionally, who you will never see again, over things you said to her that came from somewhere you know full well she cannot go with you because you know her professionally. Yeah. OK, Brian."

 

"Fair enough." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. The words seemed to come spilling out, barely a pause for a breath. "And yeah, you're beautiful, and there's something about you that just sucks me in, and that's totally the elephant in the room. But it's so much bigger than that. You and I have a connection, yeah? And I'm thankful for that. I've been doing nothing but steer clear of women, even as friends, for the last two years. I never thought I'd open up to you like I have. You're so easy to talk to. You're an amazing listener. You make me feel so comfortable, and I bet you don't even know how you do it. And you're so much fun, and such an interesting woman..." He trailed off. "I never thought I'd call a journalist a friend, but here we are."

 

A friend, huh? I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if it felt like a kiss-off or a come-on. It sounded like he was trying to persuade not just me, but himself that I was a friend, not someone he'd called beautiful and tried to kiss in an abandoned church 24 hours earlier. I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to hide my face in my hands and cry.

 

 "You said you don't make a lot of friends in your work," Brian was saying. "You said you were glad to make a friend in me. Did you mean that?"

 

"Well, yeah." I took a deep breath, looking at the back of the seat between us. Here went my attempt to verbalize everything that had been bothering me about this week. "I don't make friends with sources very often. I feel like there's this line of impartiality I'm not supposed to cross. If I'm friends with someone I'm writing about, I'm not impartial. That's why this week has been so strange for me - spending time with you guys as something more than just a silent observer, getting to know you guys as friends. I'm not used to that at all. If I'm in any way involved in the story, I'm not impartial." I looked him in the eye, trying to say my next words meaningfully. "So, you know, if I'm more than friends with someone in the story, that whole impartial thing is totally shot. The story runs a month from today. Until then, I can't be anything but impartial."

 

There it was, out in the open. It wasn't me. It wasn't him. It was my work. He knew how that went better than anyone. He could take that statement anywhere. Dear God, don't let him take it back to where it ended yesterday. I couldn't bear to hear him say those words again. This kind of heartache was so very, very bad for business.

 

He held my gaze, silent for a moment. I saw a million questions in his eyes. Finally, he said, "And yet here you are. Friends with me. Can we at least agree on that? Forget the rest, try to be less awkward, and at least part as friends? Someone the other can call and have a drink and a laugh when I'm in New York or you're in Kentucky?"

 

I nearly sighed with relief at the direction of the conversation, but the idea of being just friends with him lodged in my soul like a knife and twisted. As far as I was concerned, being just friends, long-distance friends, the sort of person you stop bothering to send a Christmas card after a couple years, was a difficult, horrifying notion. I wanted so much more. I wanted to hear him say I was beautiful in that sweet Southern drawl every day. I wanted his hands...

 

Right. Friends.

 

I pasted a smile on my face. "Yes. I think I can do that. Friends?" I held out my hand, an echo of the handshake he had extended me at the end of my second day with them. It seemed like a lifetime ago, especially when I considered what I'd been through with him.

 

He reached over and shook it, mock-solemnly. "OK, then. Friends." He offered me a cautious smile.

 

I didn't want to contemplate it any further. I released his hand and looked around. "Where the heck is everyone else?"

 

Brian looked at his phone. "They ought to be along anytime. I escaped while they were freaking out about A.J.'s fiancée and her friend flying out here today."

 

"What?" My eyebrows went up. "Wow. Where do they live?"

 

Brian looked bemused. "Uh, LA. She does this sometimes. So does Howie's wife. But we usually get more than a few hours' notice, so yeah, freaking out."

 

"Good freaking out? Bad freaking out?"

 

 "‘They want to go out after the show' freaking out." He grinned. "And you're going with us."

 

I facepalmed in mock dismay. "Out? We're in friggin' Nashville. Am I going to need cowboy boots for this?"

 

His grin broadened as, over his shoulder, I saw the others walk down the aisle. "Probably."

 

"LITTRELL!" Nick hollered across the auditorium. "Stage! Sound check!" Brian flashed me a smile and jumped up from his seat, heading for the stage.

 

I slouched in my seat, a little deflated. So much food for thought, and so little time to digest it.

 

The guys appeared onstage. Howie was dragging an extra stool, which he plunked down at the front of the stage. Well, now what was that about?

 

They went through their usual warm-up with the exasperated sound tech, who walked them through the headsets and the cordless mics. The whole process felt so much different from the arenas. They seem aware already that they're on hallowed ground, I wrote on my notepad.

 

Thomas' words echoed in my head: preschoolers in the footsteps of giants. It was ambitious, if nothing else.

 

A.J. cleared his throat into his mic. "Would Meg Michaels please report to the stage," he rumbled.

 

Every set of eyes in the auditorium was on me. I nearly swallowed my tongue in surprise.

 

"There should be some stairs here at the front," Brian added.

 

I clambered to my feet, stumbled out of my row on rubbery legs, found the stairs they mentioned. I climbed to the stage. The lights were on, blinding, but I could see beyond them into an empty auditorium filled with history. In my childhood, it had been filled with people screaming for Johnny and June; in a few hours, it would be filled with women screaming for my friends, the Backstreet Boys. The entire thing was surreal as hell.

 

And then my eyes landed on the fifth stool - sitting in the center of the old wooden circle, less than 10 feet in front of the guys. I didn't even have to look at them to know it was mine.

 

A lump swelled in my throat. Damn it all. Seriously?

 

"This tour has been an unprecedented one for us," Nick began, speaking to an unseen crowd as I sat shakily on the stool, in the middle of the circle unbroken. "We've had journalists bother us before, but not for six days in a row." He grinned. "And none so pretty and so much fun as Rolling Stone's finest, Miss Meg Michaels. This lady needs a round of applause just for putting up with us."

 

The guys offered a golf clap, their eyes twinkling with restrained glee.

 

"And I believe this is the first time we've ever had a fan travel with us," Howie added, smirking.

 

I finally found my voice. "Oh, come on."

 

A.J. hopped up from his stool, pacing back and forth as he spoke in grandstanding tones, the others punctuating his speech with verbal nods that made me feel like I was in church.

 

"Now, Miz Michaels, Brother Carter here speaks the truth. You've put up with a lot of crap from us this week." ("Mm-hmm!") "We've laughed at your expense, and you at ours. We've farted in your general direction more times than I myself care to admit." ("Preach it!") "We've run you around a little bit on the good work you were sent here to do. We even stranded you on the side of the road in Cousin Country, Tennessee." ("Amen!") "But you never gave up on your story, never gave up on us."

 

A.J. stopped in front of me, grinning. "And we've gained a hell of a friend in you, lady. And I hope you know you've got friends in us, just by being the bigger person."

 

"Which is ironic, because you're, like, the lost munchkin." Nick winked at me.

 

I was about to come back with a sarcastic retort when I suddenly saw Brian hop back onto his stool, holding an acoustic guitar. I didn't know he'd even gotten up. He must have snuck off while A.J. was channeling Al Sharpton. Now what was this all about? Since when did he even play the guitar?

 

As A.J. returned to his seat, Brian started strumming the guitar. And then he was singing, looking me right in the eye.

 

First off, I can't keep a promise

 

"Oh, Jesus." My burning face dropped into my hands.

 

Brian kept singing, a laugh creeping into his voice, and his eyes were still on me when I looked up, sparkling with joy and affection and I refused to contemplate what else.

 

I'm no one to count on at all

Add on that I'm a coward

Too scared to return your calls

 

The other three joined in:

 

But you don't care
You keep stickin' around
While I'm actin' a clown
You're bigger
La la la la la la, la la la la la la
'Cause you're still here
Your feet stuck to the ground
Despite how silly it sounds
You're bigger than me

La la la la la la, la la la la la la

 

A.J. picked it up:

 

It's known that I'm a liar

Often they're blacker than white

Add on my uncanny ego

No one's less humble than I

 

And then it was back to the chorus, my four friends - yes, friends, there was nothing else to call them - singing to me as I sat in one of the most iconic spots in the history of music. You couldn't make it up. My hands flew to my face again, covering everything below my eyes, which ached in the corners from smiling so hard. Howie pulled out his phone, and I thought I saw him take a picture.

 

I thought of all the insanity that had transpired this week, all the fun we'd had in spite of all the dread I'd carried with me to Miami. All the great conversations. All the good pictures I'd taken, the good stories I'd spun in my head, all about these guys I'd never even expected to meet when I'd been swooning to their music 12, 13 years ago.

 

All the ways these guys had surprised me, and I myself.

 

Back to just Brian, who looked me in the eye again, so impassioned that my heart clenched as he sang:

All the messed-up things I do
Yeah, I swear I'll make 'em up to you
Before you go and have enough
Just let me get better
I'll try and measure up
I'll try and measure up to you...

 

That could mean anything, I told myself. He had said whatever connection we had - and I could not deny we had one, it would be stupid to try - was bigger than attraction, bigger than awkwardness, bigger than our own bullheadedness. Friends or more, maybe he had a point.

 

And now we were back to the chorus, all the guys finishing strong, eyes shut, totally into it, Brian strumming away like his life depended on it. I'd seen the same looks on their faces for the crowds of thousands screaming for them every night. The only crowd here today was me.

 

They looked at me expectantly. I clapped hard all by myself, giving them a genuine smile powered by a wave of real fondness for them.

 

"Well, that was a very nice treat, gentlemen." My own voice sounded odd to me, rough, unnervingly close to tears, and I cleared my throat. I held up my fingers, just a tiny pinch apart. "You've moved a grown woman thiiiiiis much closer to tears."

 

Nick winked at me. "Wouldn't be the first time."

 

I laughed, and then it all hit me in a tidal wave. I hopped down from the stool and stumbled offstage without another word. I walked straight out of the auditorium, not even bothering to collect my stuff. I needed some air. Jesus. This was all getting to be too much.

 

No sooner had I walked into the lobby than I heard heels clicking behind me.

 

"Meg." Christine crossed her arms over her chest, towering over me as I hunched over, hands on my knees, catching my breath. Her tone was glacial. "I've had a sneaky feeling about you all week, and now I have proof."

 

Oh, here we go. I straightened up and matched her stance, arms crossed. It was hopeless, I knew. I could never be as intimidating as this harpy. I could never be as intimidating as a sea lion, for that matter.

 

"Proof?" I echoed coolly.

 

She sighed. "I told you not to be a distraction. I assumed you were professional enough not to be." Her voice hardened even further. If it had been ice before, now it was diamond. "I'd say a serenade is a bit of a distraction."

 

I exhaled my sigh slowly through my nose. OK. I could handle this. I would be the bigger person the guys seemed to think I was.

 

"Christine, when I do what I do best, I get to know people," I said evenly. "If they consider me a friend, I have no control over that."

 

Her eyes were on the box office behind me, her jaw set. "Fair enough." She looked at me again, her blue eyes angry. "The way Brian looked at you just now. That's a distraction."

 

I kept my face carefully blank. "I can't control that, either." Didn't she know that I would have if only I could?

 

She took a step closer, pointing a finger at me. If I had been a few inches taller, we would have been nose to nose.

 

"Now you listen here," she snarled, her voice barely above a whisper. "It is my job to control every aspect of this tour. If one of those guys breathes funny, my job is in jeopardy. So a strange woman with big hair and a big mouth coming in here and disrupting all that was never going to be my best friend in the first place. But now," and here she poked my shoulder, "now you've become a distraction, whether you meant to or not."

 

Her voice was cold, but the very fires of hell seemed to burn in her eyes. "It doesn't matter if you can't control yourself or what you create. What matters is that because of you, I can't control this week."

 

The lecture was bad enough, but the poke threatened my basic self-control. I dug my fingernails into my upper arm to keep from punching her in the face. Would it be so very bad to punch her, though? For a brief moment, I thought about us wrestling on this marble floor, slapping, pulling hair, beating the living piss out of each other, a cat meowing off in the distance somewhere. I thought about showing her what chicks from Staten Island did to bitches who poked them in the shoulder and called them names. I thought about calling her every single one of George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV, and plenty more you could.

 

I thought about all that, and instead I stood my ground and said, "Are we done here?"

 

She didn't respond. Her eyes narrowed just a hair.

 

"Because in case you've lost track of time, I am," I continued. I strode back into the auditorium, fists clenched, every step an effort.    

 

I tried again to force my foot into the unyielding leather of the cowboy boot, still so new, nowhere near broken in. Maybe these had been such a steal because they were going to be insanely uncomfortable. Maybe I'd end up leaving them in an alley and prowling the streets of Nashville in my bare feet.

 

Finally one boot on, then the other. I regarded myself in the mirror. I was wearing that rarely-worn, girlish red sundress, with ruffles at the knee-length hem and at the strapless bodice. I had bought a cheap black leather belt at the same store downstairs where I'd found the black cowboy boots, with their loud turquoise stitching, and cinched the waist of the dress with it, the better to look like I might in fact have an hourglass figure. With any luck, the rest of the dress would be a distraction from my knee, which the dress just skimmed, and which was starting to turn green. The boots made me look about as Nashville as I was going to get. From the neck up, I was some kind of disco refugee, all wild brown curls and alluring black eyeliner.

 

On a different night, I might have felt self-conscious. On a different night, Christine's tirade would have been echoing in my head, and I might not have gone out at all, the better to avoid being a further distraction. On a different night, I might not have opened up the mini-bar while I was doing my makeup. As it was, I looked in the mirror, two mini-whiskeys in, and I thought I cleaned up pretty damn well.

 

"Self, you ate a whole bowl of sexy for breakfast," I told my reflection.

 

It was past 11, and we were just heading out. I felt like a college girl again, pregaming before a late night full of mystery. The guys were leaving in less than seven hours; I had a strong suspicion we'd be pulling an all-nighter.

 

A thought occurred to me too late: I had absolutely no pockets, nor did I have a purse that was in any way suited to a night out. Into the bra went my phone, my ID, my debit card, my room key, my strawberry Chapstick. I was just rearranging the native contents of my bra, glad I'd thought to pack the supremely uncomfortable one with the convertible straps, when a knock came at the door.

 

"Housekeeping!" came a high-pitched voice.

 

"Gah!" I jumped, my hand still down my dress. I hardly needed to be feeling myself up when Brian was around.

 

I pulled myself together and opened the door. "Oh, it's you."

 

A.J. stood outside with a woman I took to be his fiancée, a vivacious-looking woman a couple years younger than me with Snow White coloring and a prominent nose. Neither one of them looked dressed for a night of honky-tonking - more like a night of clubbing, jeans and tattoo-revealing black T-shirt for him, short and curve-hugging black dress for her. Then again, she was sporting bright blue cowboy boots.

 

"Well, I'm just thrilled to see you too, Miz Michaels," A.J. said sarcastically. "You n' your Nancy Sinatra boots."

 

"Ignore him, he's cranky," Snow White said, flashing white teeth with an appealing little gap between the front two. She stuck out her right hand, although from here I could see the thumbnail-sized diamond on her left hand. "I'm Rochelle, soon to be Mrs. Cranky. You must be the infamous journalist."

 

I shook her hand. "Meg Michaels, Rolling Stone. Journalist by day, stuck with these goons for the last week by night."

 

"And goons they are," she agreed with a wink. She looked around. "My friend's around here some- Lindie!" she called down the hall. "Quit flirting with the bodyguard!"

 

"Oh, bite mah ass!" a thick Southern drawl came back. I was suddenly glad we had an entire floor to ourselves.

 

As I stepped out into the hall, a statuesque blonde girl walked away not from the bodyguard, but from Nick, who followed with a leer on his face. My desire to punch him in the back of the head returned, and then some.

 

Blondie, or Lindie, as Rochelle had called her, was wearing a slightly different black dress and hot pink cowboy boots. The two of them looked like something out of a Tobey Keith video. Lindie was also nearly a foot taller than me. She looked down with a cheerful smile, if a slightly insincere one.

 

"My best friend, Lindie," Rochelle said. She beamed. "She's come out with us a time or two, though this is a new adventure for us both."

 

"You're tellin' me," Brian said as he came out of his room two doors down from mine. He was wearing a dark blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up - God, there was just something about rolled-up sleeves on a good-looking man - and jeans that looked as soft as the sheets on the hotel bed. He lifted up one leg to reveal his own cowboy boots. "I don't know how real cowboys actually work on the ranch in these mothers."

 

"They probably don't buy the cheap ones in the hotel lobby," I pointed out helpfully, lifting a foot to compare notes.

 

Brian's eyes went to my boots. Then traveled upward. And widened slightly. Half his mouth lifted in a sly smile. He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes spoke volumes.

 

Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

 

A.J. rolled his eyes. "Good God, man, undress the nice lady with your eyes much?"

 

 "I was just gonna say. Meg, you're a laaaady!" Nick crowed. "You wouldn't punch me in the face if I wolf-whistled, would you?"

 

I rolled my eyes. If anything, it would be totally disingenuous. He was attempting to break a fundamental law of physics by standing almost on top of Lindie, attempting to occupy the exact same space. The look on her face indicated she didn't much mind.

 

A.J. looked around. "All right, are we goin' or are we goin'? Where's Howie? HOWIE D.!" he bellowed. "ONE HOUR IS MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR ANY REASONABLE MAN TO SHIT, SHOWER AND SHAVE!"

 

I facepalmed. Again I was glad we had an entire floor to ourselves. The guys had made me promise tonight would be off the record. I was somewhat regretting agreeing to that demand.

 

A door slammed down the hall, and Howie appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "I just want y'all to know I am not stoked not to have a date tonight," he remarked as we all shuffled toward the elevator, Bob bringing up the rear. "Maybe I should have flown the wife up."

 

 "You can dance with Bob." Brian grinned as we all squeezed into the elevator.

 

"Oh, what, you claiming Meg?" Howie smirked at Brian, then shot me a teasing wink.

 

"I didn't say that," Brian muttered at the floor. But as he caught my eye, his eyes said exactly that.

 

Our conversation before sound check felt forgotten. We were playing with fire, and my already-tipsy brain couldn't muster anything but excitement in response.

 

"Limo's out front," Rochelle said as we descended.

 

"Limo?" A.J. said. He put an arm around her and kissed her forehead. "Well, you're just full of surprises, sugar."

 

It was less a limo that awaited us outside than a motorized overcompensating mechanism, I reflected as we laid eyes on the white stretch Hummer.

 

"Well, that's a nice, inconspicuous vehicle," Howie said sarcastically.

 

Nick glowered down at him. "If you'd like to go get in your jammies and watch Jimmy Fallon, by all means, bro."

 

We piled into the limo, which was lit softly with twinkle lights along the ceiling, upholstered in white leather, big enough for 15 people and almost tall enough to stand up in. Lindie rummaged in her clutch and pulled out a CD in a white envelope. I glimpsed the words "Get Psyched Mix" written on the CD - a How I Met Your Mother reference? maybe she could stay - as she slipped it into a small ceiling-mounted stereo. Soon Usher was singing: Thank God the week is done, I feel like a zombie come back to life, back-back to life...

 

 "So, uh, I told the limo driver to take us where all the good bars are," Rochelle announced. She shrugged. "So I guess we're going down to Broadway."

 

"By ‘all the good bars,' do you mean ‘all the places with line dancing and people who are even whiter than us'?" Nick deadpanned.

 

"I didn't know there was anything else in Nashvegas," Brian quipped. "Hence the cowboy boots that all the smart people wore."

 

"Thank you." Lindie gestured triumphantly at her pink boots. "I knew I made the right move haulin' these bad boys out here with me."

 

Nick leered at the boots and the expanse of leg between them and Lindie's skirt. She caught his eye and winked.

 

Brian side-eyed me, trying to smother a smile. "Getaroom," we coughed more or less in unison.

 

Nick cleared his throat. "Heykettleyoureblack," he harrumphed.

 

I laughed and sank further into the soft leather. I was warm with whiskey, the limo was lively with laughter and friends, and on the stereo, Usher was singing: So dance, dance like it's the last, last night of your life, life...

 

Presently, the lights of downtown Nashville surrounded us, and we were crawling down Broadway, clubs lining both sides of the street. Someone rolled down a window, and a mosaic of lively country songs filled the limo.

 

As we halted, A.J. peeked outside, then looked around the limo. Doubt shadowed his face.

 

"What is it, babes?" Rochelle asked.

 

He looked outside again. "This...may not be our scene."

 

"Bullshit. We got our boots on. Let's go." Lindie opened the door and jumped out. Nick scrambled out after her, Bob after him, and the rest of us followed suit.

 

Nashville by night was an explosion of twangy music and neon color and people in fringes and energy, so much energy, all hanging in the muggy August air. We were in the South, no doubt about it, but the South was alive and the music was pulsing like the very heart of downtown. A smile spread across my face. Forget being a country fan - this was a good place to be a music fan.

 

The line moved fast outside a place called the Wildhorse Saloon - no jumping in line on our names for us, the guys insisted. We found ourselves inside a cavernous space full of colorful lights, wooden floors and line dancers, everywhere line dancers, kicking up their boots in intricate patterns to loud, twangy, fast-paced songs the likes of which I hadn't listened to since I left Illinois 13 years ago.

 

The guys all looked vaguely alarmed. "Uh..."

 

Rochelle and Lindie looked like it was Christmas morning. Grinning, they darted into the crowd, pulling A.J. and Nick behind them. The last we saw of A.J. was a look of panic.

 

Bob threw up his hands in despair. "How's a guy supposed to do his job?" I thought I saw him mouth.

 

"Come on, we'll get a drink," Brian half-shouted in my ear. He grabbed my hand, I grabbed Howie's, and the three of us took off toward the bar.

 

"So, Meg, since Brian and I are both theoretically dateless, you're gonna save me the waltz, right?" I glanced back at Howie, and he winked at me.

 

"You'll have to arm-wrestle me for it," Brian said cheerfully, tucking my hand into the crook of his arm.

 

I tried not to let my pleasure show on my face. "Boys, boys," I said lightly, feeling for all the world like a heroine in an old screwball comedy.

 

Brian elbowed his way up to the bar, plastic in his hand. He glanced down at me, then over his shoulder at Howie, and shouted at the bartender, "One Blue Moon with an orange and two Manhattans."

 

The bartender, who sported a resplendent black Fu Manchu mustache and an undersized brown suede vest, stared blankly at Brian as he cracked open a Blue Moon bottle, jammed an orange slice into the neck and passed it to Howie by way of me. "The hell's a Manhattan?" I barely heard him ask.

 

Brian rubbed his forehead. "OK. Uh...two Knob Creeks on the rocks."

 

The bartender's response was to grab the Knob Creek, slosh it into two large shotglasses and wordlessly push them toward us. Brian shrugged at me, handed the guy his card and picked up the shots.

 

"So, uh, shots!" he said, too brightly.            

 

I held mine up and offered the first toast that came to mind. "To friends!"

 

Brian winked at me. It was not a strictly friendly wink, I noted. "To friends."

 

We belted back the shots. I half-shrieked with excitement, newly alive, as the familiar honey, wood and fire slid down my throat. What was it about shots that brought out the woo girl in a grown woman?

 

Brian scrunched up his face. "Wow. Not used to that." He looked at me curiously. "Thought you were a cheap date."

 

I grinned, my face flushing. "I opened up the mini-bar before we left."

 

He stared down at me, shaking his head in amusement. "You are somethin' else, Meg."

 

Two awkward beats. We both dissolved into laughter. I squeezed Brian's arm in thanks and took off for the dance floor before it could get any worse.

 

Anyone who looked at me standing on the sidelines would have thought I'd fit right in, with my red dress and loud boots, but venturing onto the floor quickly outed me as an unabashed Yankee. I didn't recognize most of the songs, which all dealt with honky-tonks and patriotism and women in white cotton dresses and other things we didn't get much of in New York. You had to have a healthy sense of irony to listen to them, and I was sure my snickering was doing as much to blow my cover as anything.

 

I felt like a glorious fool, watching the floor, trying to mimic the other boots flying around me. But it was Nashville, and what else were we going to do with our night?

 

It wasn't until about five songs in that I looked up to see Rochelle on one side and Brian on the other, gamely stumbling through the songs along with me.

 

"Alex was right. This might have been a mistake," Rochelle giggled, catching herself on my shoulder as she kicked up a foot behind her.

 

It took me a full five seconds to realize she was talking about A.J., who was nowhere to be seen. I caught a glimpse of him near the door. He caught my eye and cut across his throat with his hand, a panicked look on his face. I snickered out loud.

 

"Somewhere our choreographer is laughing at me," Brian said as he watched the feet of the guy in front of him, awkwardly trying to mimic him.

 

"First time for everything." I executed a wobbly twirl on my heel, following the lead of the woman in front of me as Rascal Flatts crooned about a little brick house on the Oklahoma-Texas line.

 

The fast-paced ditty faded into a sweet, achingly sad steel guitar. I recognized the melody instantly: "Tequila Sunrise."

 

The dancers cleared out or coupled off. Brian held out a hand to me. "May I have this dance, Miz Michaels?" he asked formally, gallantly, although he couldn't quite squelch a playful smile.

 

My head was swimming with dance steps and whiskey shots, and this seemed like no worse an idea than anything else tonight. I kicked one foot back and bent my knees in an ironic little curtsy as I placed my hand in his. "Why, Mr. Littrell, I do declare," I drawled.

 

He twirled me around and pulled me in close, one hand holding mine, the other on my hip. A wicked grin down at me. "Hello again, short stack."

 

"You're a real pain in the ass, Littrell," I said sweetly.

 

He laced our fingers together, and we swayed in a small circle on the scuffed wooden floor as Glenn Frey sang the Eagles' melancholy ballad of a hired hand working on the dreams he planned to try. All around us, couples in leather and boots circled the floor in quick, graceful, complicated steps. Even a slow song was a production for these people.

 

As for me, I barely heard the words, barely felt my feet, and it wasn't the alcohol. I remembered the lovely feel of my dance partner's hands, the reassuring solidness of his arms, but being so close to him like this made me swoon on the inside. I was twirling on a dance floor well after midnight with a handsome man who excited me beyond caring how much he confused me. I felt like a teenager. I felt better than I ever had as a teenager.

 

In 12 hours I'd be on a plane back to New York, returning to a reality in which he had no place, and I couldn't have given less of a damn. Damn the timing, damn the story, damn the torpedoes: full speed ahead. Dr. Thompson would have been proud.

 

"So...last night on the tour," Brian said, leaning in to be heard over the loud music enveloping us. "Didja think you'd be late-nighting in a honky tonk in Nashvegas?"

 

"Oh, this whole week's been full of surprises." I smiled up at him, taking care to keep my voice light even though it almost hurt to look at him. I couldn't resist adding, "Wouldn't you agree?"

 

He just gave me that funny, private little smile, eyes thoughtful but sparkling as the Eagles spun the tale: She wasn't just another woman, and I couldn't keep from comin' on...

 

And I saw it: the same joyful confusion I felt, the same affection, the same sense of...falling.

 

Falling. I hadn't even known what word to give it until now, but at once it clicked: of course. The realization cut straight through my heart. I felt like jumping up and down and squealing like a schoolgirl, because he felt it too -- he'd made that clear. I felt like jumping out a window and hailing the first cab to the airport, because neither one of us ought to have felt anything. Our conversation before sound check might as well have never happened.

 

"I thought we were gonna be friends." The words slipped out, unapologetically. I shook my head, a sheepish smile curving my lips.

 

Brian scoffed as overhead, Glenn Frey went on: Oh, and it's a hollow feelin', when it comes down to dealin' friends..."Pfft. Friends slow-dance to old Eagles songs. Ask Nick about some of our man-dates last tour."

 

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up."

 

He laughed and gathered me in closer, his hand at the small of my back, as the prettiest guitar part began. I was close enough to bury my nose in his shoulder, almost close enough not to have a choice, and his scent made my knees just a little weak as, not for the first time this week, something long-dormant, as old as man and woman themselves, began to awaken deep inside me.

 

That was not the intended effect, I thought. At any rate, it was not what I'd intended. Neither was the crazy beat of my heart, which I was sure he could feel against his chest, as close as we were.

 

I felt his thumb move on my back. He laid his cheek against my hair, and I could hear his voice in my ear, singing along. He'd do well to record this song, it went so perfectly with his just-barely-not-twangy voice, not so dissimilar from the Eagles'. Didn't steady my knees any, this little show for one.

 

"Take another shot of courage," he murmured, "wonder why the right words never come..."

 

I squeezed my eyes shut against a wave of emotion, my fingers curling involuntarily into his shoulder. No, I could never be this man's friend. I was totally screwed.    

 

"Tomorrow is going to be the shittiest day in the history of days," Nick grumbled as we all shuffled off the elevator.

 

"What do you mean, tomorrow? It's already today." A.J. rubbed his face wearily. "Jesus Christ. Maybe Howie had the right idea cashin' out early."

 

Nick looked at his phone. "It's only 4:45. You could probably grab a nap if you skip showering."

 

"And the guyliner," I added with a deep yawn.

 

"Oh, ha, ha." A.J. cast me a long-suffering look. "And when do you get to leave, Nancy Sinatra?"

 

I grinned lazily. "Flight leaves at 11. Leaving for the airport at 9. I'm going to bed for at least three hours."

 

A chorus of boos greeted my gloating.

 

"Well, jeez, then this is it, huh?" A.J. draped an arm over my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. "Miss Journalist is burnin' out on us."

 

"Awwww..." And the guys surrounded me in a sweaty group hug.

 

I managed to snake my arms out of their tight grip and pat a couple of backs. "Oh, dry your eyes, boys. You'll see me in New York." My voice was muffled by someone's armpit, I didn't even know whose. Three of the Backstreet Boys were accosting me with smelly hugs in a hotel hallway in Nashville at 4:45 a.m. You couldn't make it up.

 

And suddenly I really didn't want to fly home. I wanted to stay here, with my new friends. I felt rather like a kid at summer camp. I'd been dreading this assignment with every fiber of my being, but the truth was, I'd had unforgettably great fun. And now, suddenly, it was coming to an end. A sentimental knot formed in my heart.

 

The guys let me out for some air. Rochelle moved in and squeezed my hand. "It was really nice meeting you, Meg."

 

"Same here," Lindie added, smiling more warmly than earlier. "Looks like y'all have had a good week."

 

I smiled. "It didn't totally suck."

 

The guys crowded around me with their goodbyes.

 

"Well, you take care of yourself, Miz Michaels." Nick side-hugged me, too tall for a decent hug, and I looped an arm around his waist, feeling rather like I was hugging an annoying brother. "Can't wait to read the story. Leave out all the good stuff from tonight, will ya?"

 

A.J. pecked me on the cheek. "Thanks for bein' a good sport this week, lady. You're all right."

 

A sleepy smile crept onto my face as I patted A.J.'s arm. "Well, I could say the same to y'all. I'm probably not even allowed to have this much fun out on the beat."

 

"Well, if you admit to having fun, that's good enough for us." A.J. grinned warmly.

 

With that, A.J., Rochelle, Lindie and Nick all took off down the hall. I watched Lindie loop her arm through Nick's as they disappeared around a corner, and my heart squeezed at the sight of the carefree affection.

 

Brian looked at Bob and cleared his throat. "Bob, maybe you better go make sure Christine isn't waiting to tear us a new one."

 

Recognition dawned in Bob's eyes. "Yeah. Maybe," he said slowly. The undercurrent of the exchange was clear. He gave me a little two-fingered salute. "Meg...you have a safe flight home."

 

I smiled as he shuffled away. "Thanks, Bob. Take care."

 

You could have heard a pin drop in that hallway. My heart was pounding. I wanted to say goodbye to Brian like I wanted to be punched in the face. That was probably what was in store for my heart, I reflected.

 

"Where's your room?" Brian asked quietly.

"607."

 

"I'm down that hallway. I'll walk with you."

 

"Hold on." I turned away from him and fished my room key out of my dress.

 

When I turned back, he was shielding his eyes, but there was a smirk on his face. "Well, that explains why you didn't carry a pocketbook tonight."

 

"Pocketbook?" I echoed as we started down the hall. "Haven't heard that term in a few decades."

 

He slung an arm around me as we walked. "Girl, I don't know what we're gonna do without you and your smart mouth."

 

I could have said the same, I reflected as we reached my door. My heart actually hurt, half from this nonstop pounding, half from the emotions coursing through me.

 

"Well, Scarecrow, I'll miss you most of all," I said lightly. I realized with horror that my voice was shaking a bit.

 

He threw out his arms, hung his head and pantomimed a scarecrow. Then he looked up, eyes warm and searching. "So, we're cool?"

 

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out in frustration with the whole situation. I pasted on a smile. "Yeah, we're cool."

 

He wrapped his arms around my shoulders in a tight, tender hug. I slipped my arms around his waist, face buried in his shoulder.

 

We were silent a long moment, neither one of us moving, relaxing into each other. I inhaled his spicy, linen-y scent, rubbed his back tentatively. I felt his thumb tracing tiny circles on my bare shoulder, felt him turn his face into my hair. I didn't know whether I might burst into tears or burst into flames.

 

"Kinda wanna stay," I heard myself murmur.

 

His lips silently brushed the top of my head. I felt him sigh. "Yeah. That's two of us."

 

I could feel the insistent drumming of my heartbeat in every nerve in my body, and I was sure he could, too. It seemed my very teeth had a pulse, though not as strong as the one in the very pit of my belly.

 

He drew back, but didn't let me go. His eyes had darkened, grown as intense as I'd seen them anytime this week. Bedroom eyes. He ran a hand slowly through my hair, twirling a curl around his finger.

 

"Maybe we're just really bad friends, Meg." There he went with that private little smile again.

 

I needed to run. I needed to stay. Or maybe I just needed to give up the fight.

 

I gave up the fight. I rose up on my toes and kissed him.

 

He took a small step back, catching me as I all but launched myself at him, but he responded immediately, one hand buried in my hair, the other one sliding down to the small of my back. I clutched at his back, my fingers curling in his shirt. A surprised little sound of pleasure escaped one of us.

 

I rocked back and broke the kiss, catching my breath. Brian's mouth was hanging open in shock, but his hands didn't budge, and his eyes were smoldering.

 

"So, um..." I began.

 

Even if I had known what to say, I wouldn't have been able to finish, because his lips were on mine again.

 

Yes. This was what the entire week had been building up to. This was what might have happened on the bus a few nights ago if Howie hadn't busted us, what certainly would have happened in that rotting church in God's country yesterday - yesterday? seemed like a lifetime ago - if the phone hadn't rung just in time. This was the moment when it had to happen, the moment when it seemed entirely possible I'd never see him again or know a consequence for this incredible, passionate, time-stopping kiss.

 

I was making out with my favorite Backstreet Boy in a hotel hallway in Nashville at 5 a.m. You couldn't make it up.

 

His lips were sweet and skilled and a little demanding, and this second kiss deepened in a matter of seconds. Both his hands were around my waist as my arms went around his neck. The wall was at my back suddenly. It was a good thing, because my knees were simply...gone.

 

Damn, this was delicious and worth every ounce of misery it was sure to cause. That thing I had felt just beginning to stir awake as we danced earlier, it roared to life now. As close as I was to him, it didn't take rocket science to know he felt the same.

 

His arms went fully around my waist, and then my feet were off the ground. Against my better judgment - oh, hell, better judgment had waved bye-bye hours ago - I hooked one foot behind his knee. One of my hands found his hair. He groaned into my mouth. Oh, he was no boy, no nice Southern gentleman, not now. He was kissing me like he wanted to throw me over his shoulder and take me back to the cave.

 

We were at the point of no return. If this didn't end now, it would end naked. Tough call.

 

He must have read my mind, because he broke the kiss abruptly and set me down. I quickly dropped my leg to the ground, though I didn't trust my legs.

 

He rested his forehead against mine, breathing hard, but didn't let me go. I managed to drag my eyes open. Desire was written all over his face. I was sure it was etched in mine, because God, I wanted him like I'd never wanted anything else.

 

"OK." He took a deep breath. "You need to go to bed, or we're going to go to bed."

 

Nothing like using a sledgehammer to get the point across. Those last words - "we're going to go to bed" - would be echoing in my head for days, I already knew. Nothing could have sounded better right now. All sorts of lurid images danced in my head.

 

Instead, reason returning to me - no! not reason! - I drew in a ragged breath and slowly disentangled my arms from around his neck. "OK. I'm gonna go to bed."

 

He nodded, and some of the sexytime cleared from his face. "OK." He sounded as disappointed as I felt.

 

Damn it all, Michaels! that voice inside me screamed. We were gonna get laid, and you ruined it!

 

He kissed my forehead, and I squeezed his arms and pulled myself out of them. My room key had fallen to the floor, and I retrieved it quickly, hands shaking so badly I could barely grasp it. I unlocked my door, not looking at him. If I so much as glanced at him, I was going to jump him.

 

"Meg..."

 

I looked back as I stepped into the dark room. Brian was staring at me, hands jammed in his pockets. The desire was gone completely from his face. In its place was heartache.

 

It was only a mirror of my own face, I was sure. Tears pricked the backs of my eyeballs. This was exactly what I had wanted to avoid.

 

I rested my head against the cool doorjamb. I was out of words, but I opened my mouth anyway, unsure of what would come out.

 

"Oh, Brian, you and I just need to stay away from each other."

 

I regretted the words as soon as they slipped out, but there was no taking them back. The stricken look on his face was the last thing I saw as I closed the door, finally alone with my confusion and frustration and utter misery, the way it was always going to be.

 

 

**

 

The next time I opened the door, a USA Today was lying in front of it.

 

It was probably weightless, being a Saturday USA Today, but I stared at it as if it were a cinderblock of doom. It was the principle of the thing. Why did some geniuses think it was a good idea to drop the newspaper right in front of the door? Suppose it was a Sunday edition, and someone tripped over it? That was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

It had been a sleepless, troubled few hours. As soon as I'd closed the door, I'd slid to the floor and sat there for a good 10 minutes, emotions and hormones storming within me. Part of me had wanted to take a nice, hot bath. Part of me had wanted to cry myself to sleep. None of the above had happened, including the crying. I'd been too stunned to do much of anything.

 

I had finally crawled into bed and listened in exhausted silence as the guys left the hotel. Suitcases and duffel bags dragging on the floor, quiet masculine voices. Even Christine's outside voice had seemed somewhat muted. As if they were all miles away. In a way, they already were.

 

And by now, they were probably in Louisville. I thought of Brian, envisioned him hugging his son, whom I remembered he'd be seeing today. I wondered what the boy looked like. Did he have big blue eyes like his old man? Would he hug me if I ever met him?

 

Angry at myself for even wondering, I kicked the free newspaper out of the way. And that was when I noticed it: a tiny, folded square of paper, perhaps an inch across. It must have been sitting on the newspaper.

 

I picked it up. "Read on the plane" was scrawled on the outside in messy script.

 

My heart sped up, and in spite of the instructions, I began to unfold it. But more script awaited behind the first fold: "I mean it."

 

I sighed, exasperated, and stuffed the paper into my pocket as I shouldered my messenger bag and purse, dragged my overstuffed and poorly packed suitcase out of my room, and headed for the lobby.

 

No posh leather backseat this time, no driver with a little sign. I had refused it. A cab was waiting, yellow on the outside, nondescript and pungent on the inside. The driver was playing a classic rock station. I had been previously unaware there was anything but country on FM radio in Nashville.

 

I was aware of a smooth voice singing softly in the cab. And he was just a hired hand, workin' on a dream he planned to try... I slouched against the threadbare gray upholstery, squeezing my eyes closed. Seriously?

 

The note was there, taunting me. I fished it out of my pocket and began again to unfold it, but behind the next fold was more script: "Seriously."

 

"Oh, damn you," I muttered, stuffing the paper back into my pocket.

 

"Problem, ma'am?" the cabbie asked.

I shook my head in the rearview mirror. The song ended, and another twangy Eagles tune began: City girls just seem to find out early how to open doors with just a smile...

 

If that was true, then some city girl I was.

 

The Nashville airport was larger than I'd expected, but I breezed through security. That I was in no mood to be trifled with must have shown on my face, because the TSA agent, a shrimpy, bespectacled man, looked at me as if I might actually shoot him and waved me through without a second glance. Smart guy. If I had been patted down today, I might have punched an agent. I was too tired and miserable for this crap.

 

I hit the gate 45 minutes before takeoff, but I didn't feel like hauling out my laptop. I thumbed through Twitter and a few news headlines on my phone, but I could barely focus on the screen. The note was burning a hole in my pocket. I knew what I was likely to find if I unfolded it, but curiosity got the better of me.

 

Sure enough, "You're not on the plane yet." was written on the last fold. Whoever had written this note - I refused to believe it was who I hoped it was - obviously either was psychic or knew my neuroses too well.

 

That anyone on this tour had any idea how deep my neuroses ran was a testament to how royally I'd fucked up as an objective journalist this week, I reflected as I shoved the note back into my pocket.

 

The flight was nearly full, which made no sense to me because, really, how many people from Nashville could be flying to New York on a Saturday morning? A woman as old as Moses settled into the seat next to mine. She greeted me with only a polite nod, so that was a plus. I was in no mood to make small talk or be called "dearie" today.

 

As I stared out the window at the skyline, close enough to touch, I realized I was actually half-afraid to read the note. It was only after my skyline view had been replaced with fluffy white clouds, after I'd broken out my iPod, that I finally reached into my pocket again.

 

With suddenly trembling hands, I opened the last fold. The note was scrawled on cream-colored hotel stationery in that same messy script. It had been written in pencil, and there were a lot of eraser marks. It took me three tries to get through reading the words as they blurred before me.

 

Meg -

 

You're a hell of a woman. I will never forget you. I can't find words for how much I miss you already. This is so much "bigger" than I expected. I sure hope you're wrong about us.

 

See you in NYC.

 

Your whiskey-drinking friend,
Brian

 

Andrew Bird droned on in my ears. Tears streamed down my face in spite of myself. I felt like my heart had been drop-kicked with steel-toed boots, then tracked down and trampled. I could picture it in my mind, its shape hopelessly dented. By whom? Not him. He was just doing what his honest emotions told him to do. Was it me, then, sabotaging myself and my own feelings?

 

Never in a million years would I have expected a source to make me feel this way, but I knew now, in an instant, crystalline way: this was why I had always worked so hard not to get involved in my stories.

 

But maybe, just maybe it was why I shouldn't bother trying not to. I didn't know what was worse -- being heartsick, or being angry at myself for being heartsick.

 

A handkerchief swam before one eye. I turned my head. The little old lady next to me was holding out a large square of faded white linen embroidered with pink flowers.

 

"You look like you could use this, dearie," she said in a voice wavering with age but warm with comfort.

 

I was so very tired of fighting. I burst into tears.    

 

Monday, 8/15: NYC

 

"Is it sexual harassment to comment that you look awfully fancy today?" Thomas said as he passed my desk.

 

I flashed him a too-bright smile. "I'll allow it."

 

"Well, then." He thunked his briefcase down on the four square inches of my desk not covered with crap from the tour, along with various and sundry other stories. He sounded crankier than usual; I wondered if he'd run out of cigarettes on the way here. "You look awfully fancy today."

 

I looked down at my outfit in feigned surprise. "Do I?"

 

The reality was, I was fully aware I looked nothing like the bedraggled urbanite who skulked into the office most days. I was wearing my favorite blue linen shirtdress, the one that made my eyes pop with color, the one whose knotted belt highlighted curves that usually got hidden under wide-leg pants and utilitarian tees when I was here. I had made an extra-special effort to make my hair not look like the nest of a bird with an unaddressed drinking problem. Perhaps most shocking for the newsroom, I was wearing more makeup than the usual strawberry Chapstick and mascara.

 

It had been nine days since I left the tour. Today was the day the Backstreet Boys would be showing up for their follow-up. They were here for three days, with two shows at the Gramercy, before heading out to St. Louis and heading west for two weeks of shows. A grueling couple weeks of travel lay ahead, and I was glad to have dodged that bullet.

 

In the midst of their busy promotions schedule, the four of them had already gotten their photo taken when they hit town yesterday, which no doubt had dismayed the photographer. That meant only two of them would be showing up today to talk with me over lunch. No one had told me who. Until I walked up to the little lunch place across from Bryant Park where I'd made reservations, I had no clue who would be meeting me.

 

My heart had been pounding since the moment I'd opened my eyes this morning. I'd primped for an hour on the off chance Brian was one of them. If it wasn't, well, at least I could trick myself into, for once, feeling like a million bucks on a sticky summer Monday. It was worth the sketchy glances I'd gotten on the ferry.

 

"You make your lunch reservations at the goddamn Russian Tea Room or something?" Thomas was saying.

 

"Nah, just Vic's." I grinned. "Figured I'd keep the expenses down after that surprise room service bill from the tour."

 

"Don't even go down that road with me," Thomas muttered. He picked up his briefcase. "Anyway, what do they care what you look like? They've probably seen you in your pajamas."

 

I sniffed delicately. "Can't I, for once, not look like a homeless person for an interview?"

 

Thomas side-eyed me suspiciously, then walked into his office without another word, closing the door behind him. The moment I heard it click, I exhaled.

 

It had been a long nine days. At times, it felt like I'd done nothing but cry. I'd cried when I walked into my apartment for the first time. I'd cried when Alicia hugged me as she walked in two days later with a Tupperware of homemade lasagna and a magnum of cheap white wine. I'd cried myself to sleep three different nights.

 

For God's sake, I hadn't cried this much since my stepdad died. The reason for it now was barely worth comparing to that tragedy. I'd only walked away from a perfectly imperfect man who was falling in love with me, and I with him, because my stupid career came first.

 

I was heartsick, just like I'd known I would be. Stupid girl.

 

My stupid career was what had put me on that stupid bus in the first stupid place, though. I turned back to my computer, ran a hand through my hair and tried to concentrate on telling the story of that stupid, perfect man and his friends.

 

 

**

 

I emerged from the subway on the other side of Bryant Park from Vic's Delicatessen, the sandwich place where I was taking my two assigned Backstreet Boys - where Rolling Stone was taking them, really. The quick walk through the woodsy, picturesque park calmed my nerves, if only a little.

 

I was a wreck, breathing in heavy sighs, heart threatening to beat its way out of my chest, tapping my fingers against my purse. I had brought only a notebook and my phone as recorder.

 

Panic seized me. I had brought a notebook, hadn't I? I stopped in the middle of the park, rummaged through my purse. It was there. Phew.

 

And at that precise moment, a hand on my shoulder terrified me so completely that I dropped my purse. Here we go, I thought. Three years in New York, and I'm getting mugged for the first time. It was bound to happen sometime.

 

I whirled as my purse fell, fists clenched. Not a mugger. Worse. Or better. Or both.

 

It was Brian.

 

All the thoughts and fantasies and emotions and regrets and assorted miseries of the last week and a half came flooding back. My heart leaped, then dropped.

 

He smiled tentatively. His voice was quiet. "Well, hey there, Miz Michaels."

 

I was speechless. I wanted to cry all over again. Enough with the goddamn crying!

 

"Dude, you must have been on the same train as us." A.J. reached us and clasped my hand in both of his. Just him - no bodyguard accompanied them. "How's it going?"

 

I smiled, wondering if he had any idea he was going to be nothing but a welcome seawall against the awkwardness today. "Your Southern-fried associate here just scared the living hell out of me, but you know, other than that, I'm good."

 

"Yeah, jeez, I'm sorry." Brian dropped to his knees, trying to help reassemble the scattered contents of my purse. I followed suit, the pavement pressing hard into my bare knees.

 

We reached for my notebook at the same time. His hand covered mine.

 

"Meg..." he began, in a voice just for me.

 

I looked up, caught his gaze just for a moment. His eyes were full of conflicting emotions. In them, I saw us tangled against the wall of that hotel hallway. I snatched my notebook away, too quickly, and tore my eyes away as well.

 

"So, we gonna eat?" A.J. was looking across the street at the restaurant.

 

Brian and I both straightened up, and the three of us started walking.

 

I had to say something. "How are you, Brian?" I asked, formally, my voice full of forced cheerfulness. I didn't dare look at him.

 

"Good. Really good." He cleared his throat. "I saw my son last weekend, so couldn't have been all bad."

 

"That's awesome." My voice sounded like someone else's.

 

I looked at A.J., desperate for help. He shrugged, his mouth forming the word "What?"

 

No one seemed to look up when we walked into Vic's. I'd brought a handful of sources here for lunch; it was a well-kept secret among the famous and the plebes who got to interview them. It was a study in contrasts, white tablecloths and old Dylan records on the speakers, $9 sandwiches that came with chips. We were seated right away, our sandwich orders in within five minutes, the better to get down to business.

 

As soon as the waiter walked away, A.J. stood up from the table. "Well, before we get too far here, I'm going to let my thing down."

 

"Glad to see you're just as well-mannered and gentlemanly as you were two weeks ago," I replied.

 

"Don't hurry back," Brian added. "We want the food to show up." A.J. rolled his eyes and walked away.

 

As A.J.'s footsteps receded, I busied myself looking at the wine list. I could totally rationalize a liquid lunch to Thomas, I reasoned. God knew I needed one.

 

Something seemed to be burning a hole in my face. I looked up to find Brian full-on staring at me, his eyes piercing and earnest.

 

"I can't stop thinking about you," he said frankly.

 

My heart sped up. I dropped my face into my hands, elbows on the table. Sighing heavily, I rested my face in my palms and met his gaze. I could do that. I would not think about his hands around my waist. I would not think about his lips... No. I refused. I was working. How I felt was immaterial. Again. I needed to stop him from going down this road. Again.

 

"Please don't," I whispered. As badly as I'd wanted to see him, I was at a total loss when it came to actually dealing with him. With us. Whatever "us" even meant.

 

He leaned in closer, looking a touch desperate. "I miss you. I'm going nuts. I haven't heard a word out of you since Nashville. You keep actin' like I might as well be a stranger, but you look at me and I know better. Please--"

 

"I can't do this with you!" I hissed, miserable. "Not here, not now. We're in the middle of Manhattan. There are people here who know who you are. Your buddy is coming out of the bathroom any minute. Jesus, can you please at least just wait till the story runs?"

 

"No, I wanna talk about this now. I don't care who else is around." He looked around, but didn't raise his voice. "You hear that? I don't care. Can we just talk?"

 

"What's there to talk about?" I spluttered, still in a stage whisper. "I did something totally out of character with someone I never expected to do it with, at the worst possible time. It just happened. The end."

 

"The end? No, that's wh--"

 

He broke off, his face reddening, as my eyes left his and I saw A.J. emerge from the bathroom. I straightened up and took a drink of water, my own face burning. Brian looked down at the table, visibly composing himself, but the look in his eyes when he looked up told me this wasn't over.

 

A.J. sat down, snapped his napkin formally over his lap with a wry smile on his face. Dead silence. Brian got up without excusing himself, and I watched him walk to the bathroom.

 

Now it was A.J.'s turn to stare at me, though his words were far less touching. "Dude, what the hell?" he said.

 

I looked down at my plate. My face was still hot. I couldn't find the words to explain this nicely.

 

"You don't know?" I said quietly.

 

I heard A.J. make a humorless sound. "Oh, every one of us knows. Not the dirty details, but the fact you two are into each other is hardly a secret. You were both super shitty at hiding it."

 

I rubbed the spot between my eyes, which was starting to pound.

 

"I guess I just wasn't prepared for you two to be so painfully awkward today," A.J. continued. "Sooooo whatever happened before you got on the plane last weekend had to have been good." He chuckled a little, but there was no mirth in the sound. "No wonder he's been so wound up today. I thought I was gonna have to put Xanax in his coffee."

 

"I really don't wanna talk about it, A.J." I looked up, letting my helplessness show in my eyes. "Just help me get through this interview. This is the last time I ever have to see you guys for this assignment."

 

The waiter brought our drinks - water for me, Cokes for the guys - and A.J. waited for him to walk away before responding. He looked a little sad. "I'll help you, because I like you. But so help me God, you two need to figure your shit out, because I think I like you together."

 

He glanced up with a forced smile as Brian returned to his seat. "All right, let's do this and get out of the nice lady's hair."

 

The past week had been just as eventful as the rest of the tour. Rochelle and Lindie had ended up changing their flight back to LA, renting a car and driving to Louisville to accompany the guys to another stop, much to Christine's chagrin. The last week's just-barely-Midwestern stops had brought out nice crowds. The bus had held up, more or less. So had the guys, more or less.

 

The conversation flowed reasonably well over our delicious sandwiches, though always with the sense that we were working at it. Gone was the ease of our long chats two weeks ago. And the three times I risked eye contact with Brian were as painful as popping a pimple.

 

Soon enough, we were walking through the park to the subway again. A hand on my shoulder stopped me. Brian was shooting me that same look from the restaurant - our conversation there was far from over, it said.

 

"Hey, A.J., I'll catch up with you," he said.

 

My heart sank. Bloody hell. I was in no shape to have this conversation today. Maybe ever. I glared at Brian, but he pretended not to see me.

 

A.J. turned around, not even bothering to mask the surprise on his face. "OK, dude." He doubled back and hugged me briefly. "Miz Michaels, great to see you."

 

"Thanks for everything, A.J." I patted his back.

 

"Figure your shit out," he muttered in my ear, and I knew just the brief contact of our hug was enough to tell him my heart was pounding.

 

As A.J. walked away, I looked up at Brian, my heart thudding. His face bore the marks of heartache again.

 

"The end?" he said, as if our conversation while A.J. was in the bathroom had simply paused.

 

I rubbed my face wearily. "I don't know what you want me to say, Brian. I think we just made a mistake." And I knew as the words left my mouth that it had been a mistake. A mistake to give him even an inch on this spark between us, a mistake to flirt with him that last night in Nashville, a mistake to kiss him. A mistake to take this assignment. A mistake to think I could deal with him neutrally.

 

"A mistake?" he repeated. "Oh, that didn't feel like a mistake to me. A mistake is something stupid you didn't mean to do. That didn't feel stupid to me, and it didn't feel like something you didn't mean to do." His eyes radiated hurt, like a finger slammed in a car door, pulsating with pain and heat. "You really think that night was stupid?"

 

"Well, obviously it wasn't smart, because it's just brought us nothing but heartache. The whole thing that week, whatever it was, has been nothing but heartache." I shrugged helplessly.

 

"Aha!" Brian pointed at me, vaguely triumphant. "So you felt something there, too."

 

"I told you, I never said I didn't feel anything." My voice was rising. "It doesn't matter if I did or do or didn't or don't. I had a job to do. I still have a job to do." I turned away from him, pacing back and forth to try to blow off my misery in some way besides raising my voice. "And even if I didn't have a job to do? It still wouldn't matter. It'd never work between you and me. You do know that, don't you?" The words were spilling out now. "I'm a bitchy New Yorker, you're a nice Southern guy, neither of us is going anywhere, we both have completely crazy jobs, you have a kid, and hi, Brian? You're famous." I ran my hands through my hair, still not looking at him. "All I want is a happy, simple life with a normal guy who's going to be there. How can you and I ever hope to make that happen? How can I possibly have a decent relationship with a guy who's anything but normal who lives halfway across the country?"

 

"What are you trying to talk yourself out of, Meg?" Now Brian's voice was rising, too.

 

"What do you want me to say?" I threw my hands in the air. I could feel tears of frustration behind my eyes.

 

"Say it wasn't a mistake." He stepped closer to me, his eyes searching mine, his voice pleading. "Say you felt what I felt in that kiss. Tell me what you're feeling. If it doesn't matter either way, then what's the harm in saying it? Please, tell me I'm not-"

 

The words burst out of me before I could stop myself from even thinking them. "Yes, I'm in love with you!" I shouted, taking a step back. My voice broke. "And I HATE IT!"

 

The park seemed to fall silent. A flock of pigeons abandoned the hot dog bun for which they were jockeying, their wings flapping as they fled. Nearby, a hobo sacked out under a tree lifted his unkempt head in mild interest.

 

And there it was. The words I'd refused to even say out loud to myself, I'd said to him. No going back now.

 

Brian took a deep breath, but before he could speak, I went on. "I hate feeling like this. I feel like a goddamn teenager." He blurred before my eyes as tears welled up and spilled over. "One minute I don't want anything to do with you because you're just another musician, the next I just want you by my side all the time because you'll never be just another musician. I can't stand the thought of never seeing you again, but I know it'll be so much easier if I never see you again. I just want my life to go back to normal, and there's no such thing as normal with you. I am so. Fucking. Sick. Of all this heartache and misery and wondering about you constantly. I just wanna do what I do best, writing, working, and living my little life."

 

It's a sad little life indeed, and you know it, that little voice in my head said. I ignored it.

 

I wiped my eyes. "I can't make room for you in that life. And what makes you think you have room for someone like me? Jesus, I wouldn't be able to bear it when you got sick of me because you need somebody who can keep up with you."

 

"I need you, Meg!" His voice was rough. I thought I saw a lump working in his throat. "I never thought I'd need a person again like I need you. I never thought I'd meet someone like you. I could look all over the world and never find someone like you, and now I know I'm not the only one who feels like I do." He took another deep breath, anguish in his eyes. "And you really wanna walk away from that?"

 

It was a do-or-die moment, but I'd said too much to take back. Whatever this was would die here, in the middle of Bryant Park. I couldn't stand the thought, but there was nothing for it.

 

"I just..." I sighed miserably. "I'm not gonna do this with you, Brian. I'm sorry. Please just leave me alone."

 

I turned to walk away, fists clenched at my sides. Yes. This was the high road. I couldn't let myself go down the other. I wouldn't. His words on the bus about pride and stubbornness ruining his marriage sounded in my head; I pushed them away.

 

"Meg?"

 

I couldn't stop myself from looking back. The look on Brian's face was one of those sights I knew I'd never forget, like the deer lying dead in front of my crumpled car when I was 18 or my mother crying in my childhood living room the day she lost her second husband. But it wasn't pain I saw on his face. It was something worse: the absence of emotion.

 

"I think you're afraid of being happy," he said.

 

Every word was a bullet. I should have fallen dead where I stood. Instead, I walked away without another word, tears drying on my cheeks, my heart breaking a little more with every step.

 

 

**

 

I made it through the rest of the day on autopilot mode, utterly numb, my brain shut off except for essential job- and life-related functions. Get on the subway. Get off the subway. Walk upstairs. Transcribe the interview. Finish the story. Walk downstairs. Get on the subway. Get off the subway. Get on the boat. Get off the boat. Walk home. Walk upstairs. Boil water. Cook pasta. Eat pasta (although misery had crowded hunger out of my stomach). Go to bed. Get up. Walk to bathroom. Wash face. Squeeze toothpaste onto toothbrush.

 

No sooner had I squeezed toothpaste onto my toothbrush than my phone buzzed with a text. "Your buddies are on Z100!" Alicia had written.

 

I nearly tripped over my own feet sprinting to the bedroom to turn on my radio, scrolling away from WNYC and onward to Z100. I was 18 again, squealing over "Backstreet's Back" on the obnoxious Top 40 station back in Quincy. Howie's voice filled my ears.

 

"...happy to be back in this city," he was saying. "New York's always been pretty good to us. You guys remember when they had us on TRL for, like, two hours that one day back in, like, '98 or '99?"

 

Chortles all around. "Man, that's hard to forget," Nick snickered.

 

"What was it, that one girl called Kevin 'Mr. Body Beautiful' in front of God and everyone," Brian said. My heart leaped into my throat.

 

"Any chance Kevin'll be performing with you guys tonight?" the morning show guy asked as I brushed my teeth with a shaky hand, listening intently.

 

A chorus of "nah." "Can't rule it out that he'll join us on tour in the future, but, uh, not tonight," Nick said. "He's busy down the street, tearing up the boards."

 

"And again, we're here with the Backstreet Boys...Backstreet's back!" the DJ quipped. "Playing tonight for a second night at the Gramercy Theatre -- I think there are still a few tickets left. Guys, you wanna give us a preview of tonight's show?"

 

"Well, uh, yeah, actually, we wanna send something out to a good lady friend of ours who was right there with us on the tour this first week," A.J. said.

 

I stopped brushing.

 

"Yeah, uh, we had an extra someone on the bus with us this week," Brian said. His voice was warm and a little uncertain. "She put up with a lot, and for sure I'd call her a good friend of mine. Whether she agrees is another story." He cleared his throat. "And, uh, I think I speak for all the guys when I say that."

 

"We have it on very good authority that this is her favorite song by us," A.J. said. "So, here we go."

 

I heard a faint, familiar drumming on a tabletop, and then Brian started singing:

 

Lookin' at your picture from when we first met
You gave me a smile that I could never forget
And nothin' I could do could protect me from you that night

 

My toothbrush hit the floor with a little clatter.

 

Wrapped around your finger, always on my mind
The days would blend 'cause we stayed up all night

 

I'd heard this song just a couple times on the tour, with Nick leading off, as he did on the record. But the words meant something totally different in Brian's voice, something unmistakable that stopped my heart. My mind's eye saw us sitting in the hotel room in Atlanta, drinking whiskey, laughing. It saw us sitting on the bus in the middle of the night, his hands holding mine as I tried to process what he'd told me about his broken heart. It saw us dancing in the honky-tonk, his voice crooning a gorgeous Eagles song in my ear. It saw that reckless kiss in the Opryland hallway in the gray area between Friday and Saturday. It saw that emotionless look on his face in the park yesterday, before I walked away from him for good.

 

Yeah, you and I were everything, everything to me

 

I was blushing from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. God, I was stupid.

 

And then the others joined in:

 

I just want you to know
That I've been fighting to let you go
Some days I make it through
And then there's nights that never end
I wish that I could believe
That there's day you'll come back to me
But still I have to say
I would do it all again
Just want you to know

 

A.J. started singing the bridge, but I could barely hear it for my heart pounding in my ears. Tears were pooled in my eyes, perilously close to falling: oh, not again. One hand was clapped over my mouth, and I had swallowed a mouthful of toothpaste to keep myself from dissolving into a sobbing mess.

 

So, there it was, on live radio for 15 million people to hear, what that week had meant to him. He just wasn't giving up, for whatever insane reason. And I had done nothing but rebuff him at every turn, for what suddenly seemed like a very small, petty reason. There was more to life than work. His own divorce proved that in spades. I saw myself alone in 10 years. In the next instant, I saw myself with him in 10 years. I saw everything fall into place, and I knew: God, I was stupid.

 

I heard the buzz of my vibrating phone back in the bathroom. Not the tinkling piano of Thomas' ringtone, thank God, but the gritty saxophone of everyone else's. Surely not one of the guys? I stumbled to the bathroom, hardly trusting my own legs, and picked it up.

 

Alicia's voice was incredulous. "Oh, Peggy Jo, what did you do?"

 

Tuesday, 8/16: NYC

 

Well, this was a new one: crying on the ferry. All these tears were quite out of character. But somehow, I managed to make it to work, relatively composed. I could always tell Thomas I'd had a terrible allergy attack when I got up. Yeah, that'd go over like a fart in an elevator.

 

No sooner had I sat down at my desk - hadn't even taken off my good old commuting sneakers - than I heard "Michaels!"

 

I rose from my seat, my knees unsure of themselves, and headed for his office, making the most conscious effort of my life in New York to put one foot in front of the other. Please don't have been listening to the radio, please don't have been listening to the radio, please don't have been listening to the radio...

 

As I sat down in that same sagging chair, Thomas leaned back in his own dangerously low chair, his ears almost level with the top of his desk from my perspective, and stared out the window at the skyscrapers around us.

 

"You got that Backstreet Boys story done in one hell of a hurry when you got back yesterday," he said. "Did you already have most of it written before they showed up here?"

 

I nodded, then remembered he wasn't looking at me. "Yeah. Well, I mean, I had a week."

 

He nodded. "Good hustle. I gave it a once-over after you left." He smiled a little. "It was pretty good. Nice personal story, for them and for you. Way to show how the tour feels. Maybe some fine-tuning, but nothing I'll make you hunt them down for."

 

"Thanks." I smiled tentatively. Maybe I was off the hook.

 

His smile faded. He didn't look at me. Instead, he examined a hangnail. "So, I was listening to Z100 this morning while I was shaving, because that's what the wife left on while she was in the shower, and fuck it, I didn't feel like changing it."

 

Shit. He'd been listening to the radio.

 

"And what do I hear but the Backstreet Boys talking to the morning show goons, singing them a little song that they dedicated - what were their words - to 'a good lady friend of ours from the tour.'" Thomas picked up a pen, tapped it on the desk. "Whole thing kinda spoke for itself."

 

Thomas sat up and focused on me now. "Did you hear it?"

 

I couldn't speak. The whole room narrowed to his face as I stared at him, my pulse pounding in my ears, my face hot with the knowledge I was totally busted. There was a small shred of toilet paper stuck to his chin, I noticed. I envisioned his razor slipping in shock as Brian spoke, the bemused "Weeeeeelllllll, sonofabitch" that might have escaped his mouth.

 

He knew. He folded his arms on his desk. His intent gaze didn't waver. "So, anything else you'd like to tell me about how the tour went? And about how the follow-up yesterday went?"

 

My entire career flashed before my eyes. I was sitting in my first college journalism class, bright-eyed, bushy-haired, a three-subject notebook open before me, completely absorbed in a lecture on media ethics. I was hunched over a Mac nearly as old as Steve Jobs himself in the campus paper's newsroom, ignoring the pungent smell of BO and ink as I pounded out a review of some forgettable jam band's show a few hours earlier, their four-minute guitar solos still ringing in my ears. I was on the fringes of the pit at a sold-out Smashing Pumpkins show, brand-new Riverfront Times press pass around my neck, struggling to hold on to my notebook. I was staring up at the Rolling Stonebuilding for the first time. I was looking David Bowie in the eye over Indian food around the corner. I was sitting in this pathetic chair, watching it all unravel because I had somehow given my freshman-year celebrity schoolgirl crush a compelling reason to call me "a hell of a woman" in hasty script on hotel stationery, to sing me a love song in front of God and all the five boroughs.

 

My horror must have been written all over my face, because Thomas rolled his eyes. "For Christ's sake, Michaels, you can stop looking at me like I ran over your dog. I'm not going to fire you."

 

I exhaled and looked at my hands, biting my lip. Thomas' eyes widened with panic, and he fumbled on a side table for a Kleenex. It was his gut reaction whenever I seemed the slightest bit upset, tears or no.

 

"What the hell happened out there?" he demanded.

 

I shrugged finally. "Nothing. Honestly. Nothing." Well, that wasn't completely honest, but considering Thomas had made it clear more than once that he thought "nothing" constituted everything up to but excluding actually screwing a member of the band, it wasn't completely dishonest.

 

"Well, obviously he doesn't feel that way. At the very least, he - whichever he it was -  wanted something to happen." Thomas cocked an eyebrow. "Did you?"

 

Couldn't very well beat around the bush on that one. I took a deep breath. "As a professional, no. I did everything in my power to keep something from happening." That was no lie. Well, it was 95 percent not a lie.

 

Now both eyebrows went up, and Thomas regarded me over the tops of his glasses. "You couldn't possibly have been a professional the entire trip. You had to sleep sometime. You spent every waking moment with those guys. And didn't we agree you'd try the whole gonzo thing? Actually spending time with these people?"

 

I looked at the Kleenex in my hands, now crumpled as I twisted it nervously. I couldn't speak. Even if I still had my job, I was watching my credibility slip through my fingers like so many shreds of the cheap tissue I held.

 

"Hey, guess what? Everyone slips sometimes. God knows Thompson got way too involved in his stories, or else the end of Campaign Trail wouldn't have been dictated from a sickbed." I heard Thomas blow out a breath. "Obviously, I would rather you didn't slip or sleep with a source. There's gonzo journalism, and there's boinking someone you just interviewed."

 

I didn't look up. A piteous sound came from within me, and I realized as I heard it that it couldn't have been anything but my voice. "What are you going to do, Thomas?"

 

"First, I'm going to tell you to stop bitching." He took off his glasses as I looked up. "Michaels, stop bitching."

 

I couldn't help but smile a little.

 

"Second, I can't control your personal life. You wanna be happy, that's your own damn business. Good for you. God knows it'd put you in the minority around here." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and put his glasses back on. "But seeing's how your personal life apparently has a lot to do with someone you've just written a story about, I can ask you to make a concerted effort to keep it in your pants until the story runs. That's in three weeks. Surely you can hold out that long." He rolled his eyes. "I hope."

 

I nodded. I had told them three weeks. Three weeks it would be. Lasting that long would be a miserable task, but I'd have to do it.

 

Thomas leaned back in his chair. I took that as my cue to leave, rising from the sagging chair on shaky legs, turning to go.

 

"Meg?"

 

There he went using my first name. I turned, surprised.

 

"You do know it's OK to be happy in your personal life, right?" Thomas said softly. "I want it that way. And you should, too. You're only young once, y'know. You shouldn't be married to this job." His tone was downright paternal. He looked away. "Trust me, you don't wanna turn out like your old boss."

 

The rare glimpse of something that almost passed for tenderness caught me off guard. I swallowed hard, composed my features into a cool mask. "What's it matter to you? You're my boss, not my dad." It came out sounding more petulant than sarcastic.

 

Thomas blew out a breath, then looked back down at that hangnail. The tenderness was gone from his face in an instant. "Well, generally a happy writer isn't a pain in the ass." He looked up. Gone was the father figure, back was my irritable editor.

 

"Just chew on that," he said. "Now get out."

 

I walked slowly back to my desk, toed off my sneakers. I felt like I'd already been awake 16 hours. I picked up my phone. A text from Alicia awaited.

 

"So are you gonna go to the show?" she'd written.

 

Three weeks. It seemed like an eternity suddenly, knowing Brian was in my city. I wanted to leave work and go find him. I wanted to hide from him forever.

 

Three weeks.

 

"No," I typed back.

 

 

**

 

Friday, 8/26: NYC

 

"Hold her, squeeze her..."

 

My eyes flew open as my mom's favorite song, "Try a Little Tenderness," my ringtone for her, filled the room. The alarm clock read 5:51. Not even 5 in Quincy. What in God's name was she doing calling at this hour? Panic shot through me. 

I grabbed the phone, my voice still bleary. "Mom?"

 

"Happy birthday to you..."

 

I closed my eyes and smiled as she sang to me. I might have known.

 

"Thanks, Mom," I whispered.

 

"Just think, 31 years ago right now, your father" - she pronounced the word with disinterest - "was driving me to the hospital."

 

She paused, and I heard her slurp her coffee. I could picture her in our old wood-paneled kitchen on Oak Street, sitting at the table in her bathrobe, or maybe already her scrubs, with a cup of java. It would still be pitch-black in Quincy right now; it was barely light out in New York.

 

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

 

"No," I lied, even though it would be more than two hours before I got on the ferry. "Still just waking my brain up."

 

"Any big plans today?"

 

"Work. Covering a show tonight. But I think Alicia and her new lady friend will go with me." I was honestly pretty excited about that part.

 

"Well, do something special for yourself today, honey, hmm?" Her voice was gentle, a touch worried and so sweet it almost hurt to hear it.

 

I smiled. "I'll try."

 

"Good." Another slurp of coffee. "Well, I won't keep you, I've got to be at work at 5:15, but I just wanted to..." Her voice wavered just a bit. "Tell my girl happy birthday."

 

A wave of tenderness. I felt like a little girl. I wanted to lay my head in her lap. Instead, a thousand miles away, I said, "Thanks, Mama. Love you."

 

"Love you too, honey." She hung up.

 

I rolled over and blew out a breath. Well, there was no going back to sleep now.

 

A run suddenly sounded incredible. I'd only made it out a couple times a week since getting home from the tour, which had shattered my routine in so many ways. And I hadn't been out this early in months. But I rolled out of bed, threw on fresh shorts and T-shirt, laced up my sneakers, and hurried out the door before I could change my mind.

 

Dawn on Staten Island: it was easy to forget I lived in New York, as I jogged further away from the ferry, down the side streets and into the neighborhoods. My iPod was on shuffle, and it seemed to know that my brain needed to be cleared on this special day.

 

31. It didn't feel like it, I thought as hard rock drove my footsteps in a rhythmic speed. Even in New York, where adulthood was different, more solitary, more youthful in a way, most of the 31-year-olds I knew had managed to get married off, had at least started to think about starting families, had bought apartments rather than rent. It had been ingrained into my head, growing up in the sticks, that a childless and unmarried 31-year-old was nothing short of an unaccountable freak. There, adulthood was forever synonymous with marriage, kids, a house. Maybe I was still projecting, after 13 years away.

 

I had a demanding job that all but required me to be married to it. Everyone around here did, but it had felt no less solitary this last month. Indeed, the last month of the first year of my 30s had been a challenging one in that respect.

 

The fast, insistent running music abruptly shuffled to a mournful acoustic guitar. I stopped to catch my breath -- only to have it stolen from me when a voice all too bittersweetly familiar filled my ears:

 

You are my fire
The one desire

 

I squeezed my eyes shut against emotions still so raw that it felt like I'd been punched. In my ears, unstoppable, from 12 years in the past, Brian went on:

 

Believe when I say
I want it that way

 

I wanted to change it. I forced myself not to. I dragged in a shaky breath and started running again. And then there was Nick, with a dose of reality he never could have predicted I'd need:

 

But we are two worlds apart 
Can't reach to your heart

 

I ran faster, pushing myself hard. Yep, that was no lie. Brian was on the other side of the country. Complete radio silence for a week and a half now. He had finally listened when I'd told him to leave me alone. It was a bitter victory.

 

When you say
That I want it that way

 

All five guys' voices soared together:

 

Tell me why
Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Tell me why
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why
I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way

 

Heartache. Mistake. Both words I'd used that day in the park, unsure then or now whether I'd truly felt them. Both words I couldn't take back. I had made my bed.

 

I gritted my teeth and barreled ahead, pushing way harder than usual, almost punishingly hard. My heart actually ached. The casual observer might have thought I was being chased, running from some invisible specter. Maybe I was only running from myself, I thought: the ultimate metaphor, the ultimate cliché.

 

A.J. started singing:

 

Am I your fire?
The one desire?
Yes, I know it's too late...

 

My story would publish in 10 days, not that I was counting. I had told Brian to read the story. He could make up his mind from there. I had a feeling I'd made it up for him. I had begun to think that stunning radio serenade was less a statement of purpose than of farewell. I tried not to think about it at all.

 

I was a fool, the ultimate fool. I knew what I had always wanted from a relationship and never gotten, what I had never permitted myself to do or feel as a journalist, what I had done to keep those two parts of my life separate. Love had come along, too messy to fit that mold, and I had pushed it away.

 

Kevin, the one I'd never met, was singing now:

 

Now I can see that we've fallen apart 
From the way that it used to be, yeah
No matter the distance, I want you to know
That deep down inside of me...

 

I ran fiercely, down the long, gentle hill to the ferry terminal. Sweat was pouring off my protesting body. It occurred to me that walking to the terminal later to head to work might be a new adventure.

 

Ain't nothin' but a heartache 
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way

 

I rounded the corner to the terminal, still deserted at 6:20, the city still twinkling as the sun edged over the horizon. This was my city, I thought as I ran. I was a New Yorker, and nothing could change that. I'd made my life here. I'd chosen it.

 

It was enough, at 31. It would have to be.

 

I stopped, hands on my knees, gasping for breath. The song was over. My lungs were burning. Tears were streaming down my face. I coughed hard, and it felt suspiciously like a dry heave. My everything hurt. I was a block from my apartment, but I was two or three more strides from collapsing. It was the hardest I'd run in months, driven by the voices of four guys I'd never expected to change my life.

 

The ultimate cliché, I thought, and I looked up to see my birthday dawning.

 

 

**

 

"So, you get the ol' 'blah blah blah years ago I was in labor with you' speech yet today?" Thomas deadpanned as he passed my desk, unusually fat briefcase in hand.

 

I swiveled away from my keyboard, away from my album review. "How'd you guess?"

 

"Because I still get one every year." He said this matter-of-factly, without a smile, as if it were just another inalienable truth. The sky was blue. The Pope was Catholic. Our mothers were sweet.

 

His grouchiness made me smile in spite of myself. "Yes. She woke me up at the crack of dawn. Sang to me and everything."

 

"Good to hear." He thunked his briefcase down on my desk, opened it, and produced a dented plastic clamshell that held a pink-topped cupcake. "Happy anniversary of the day you started dying."

 

A wave of fondness suffused me. "Your sentimentality is peerless, as ever. Thanks, Thomas."

 

"Don't say the old slave driver never did anything for you." He offered me a small but genuine smile, and then he picked up his briefcase and continued to his office.

 

I opened the clamshell. Chocolate with pink frosting, turquoise sprinkles and a strawberry Runt on top. It was the most delicious-looking thing ever today. My intent was only to eat one small bite for now, but I gobbled the whole thing in three. Well, God knew I'd earned it by running myself into a sore-muscled stupor this morning.

 

Back to the album review. I had two to knock out for the next edition, plus a thousand words on Two Door Cinema Club. Not a bad gig, if you could get it.

 

It was nearly lunchtime when my cellphone rang. I cast a distracted glance in its direction. And then I did a double-take. A Facetime call? From Howie Dorough?

 

I snatched up the phone and hurried toward the conference room as I answered the call, a grin spreading across my face. "Gentlemen."

 

Howie was holding the phone at the end of an outstretched arm, with Nick and A.J. crowded in next to him in the shot. The trio broke into a raucous rendition of "Happy Birthday" before I closed the door, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught a few annoyed glances from my coworkers.

 

My face hurt from smiling as they sang. "Well, this is just a real nice surprise."

 

"We had to call and give you some shit." A.J. grinned. "Bet you didn't think we'd remember."

 

I laughed. "Remember? I don't even remember telling y'all when my birthday was."

 

Nick smirked. "You didn't. We tweetstalked you."

 

I searched the shot, not caring that they could see me. "Where's, uh..." My mouth went dry.

 

Howie rolled his eyes. "Brian's still asleep. With earplugs in. The bus crashing into a nuclear reactor wouldn't wake him up."

 

"Besides, you two had so obviously eaten your awkward flakes for breakfast when we were in New York, I figured he wouldn't want any part of it anyway." A.J. smirked, scratching the back of his head.

 

My heart sank. My face must have visibly fallen along with it, because all three of them winced. "Duuuude," Howie said to A.J., stretching the word out for a full two seconds. "It's her birthday, for God's sakes."

 

"Sorry. That was rude." A.J. looked so apologetic that I had to laugh.

 

"It's fine, really," I said. I pasted a smile on my face. "I'm just touched you guys thought to call me. Thank you. Where are you?"

 

"In the desert on a horse with no name," A.J. quipped.

 

"We're on the way to Vegas," Nick clarified. "Dude, Howie, you gotta show her the scenery."

 

The shot jostled, and then Howie was pressing the camera to the window, the shot was refocusing, and I was watching the desert roll by, all craggy reddish-beige cliffs and sandy plains. I had never seen the wild desert in person, even after several trips to LA and Vegas for work. It was breathtaking, so very different from the cityscapes of New York, the hills of old Columbia, the cornfields of my native Quincy. I couldn't hide my pleasure, my awe. I was still grinning when the phone was pulled away from the window, replaced with the guys' faces.

 

"Pretty good birthday present?" Nick grinned back at me.

 

"That was lovely. Really. Thanks." I glanced at the clock. "Guys, y'know, I'm at work. And I really need to get back to it." A chorus of reluctant grumbles and baleful looks. I feigned sympathy. "Awww, are you that torn up about it? Do you want me to give you boys a call soon?"

 

"Darn right we do," Howie said cheerfully. "You've smelled our farts. Don't be a stranger."

 

I smiled fondly, my heart swelling. If I had gained nothing else from this, I had gained friends -- three crazy, sweet, famous, totally unlikely friends.

 

"Besides, you know you're gonna hear about it from us when we see the story," A.J. added. "When's that come out again?"

 

"The 5th. Labor Day."

 

"Oh, that's timing," Howie said. "Our last show of the U.S. leg is the 3rd. We'll all be off and back home." He made a face, sighed dramatically. "Guess we won't be Facetiming you again with our reactions."

 

"Well, they won't much matter, because the bullet's already out of the gun even as we speak," I said sweetly. "So if you had any objections, tough shit."

 

A chorus of muttered "yeah, yeah." "All right, Miz Michaels, you'd best get back to work," Nick said. He winked at me. "Ya slacker."

 

"Oh, but I didn't even tell you what your call reminded me of," I said. "This isn't even the first time you guys have sung to me today."

 

"Whaddaya mean?" A.J. said, confusion on his face.

 

I grinned. "You showed up for my run today and told me you wanted it that way. Creepsters." 

 

The last thing I saw as I hung up was the three of them laughing hysterically.

 

I stuck my phone in my pocket and walked back out into the newsroom. My heart was full from the guys' unexpected remembrance, and yet it felt chipped, a tiny piece missing. Maybe it would always feel that way now.

 

"The hell was that about?" one of the other music writers, a burly, sideburned fellow named Drew who had a pair of huge headphones around his neck, said as I walked back to my desk.

 

I smiled a little. "Some friends of mine just called to wish me a happy birthday."

 

Drew's eyes were already back on his screen, disinterested. "Oh, it's your birthday?"    

Friday, 9/9: NYC

 

"Michaels!"

 

I looked up from my computer. It was hard to tell whether Thomas was feeling urgent. It was Friday afternoon. I had just turned in my Q&A with the girl from the Decemberists about her cancer and the band's support for her. Surely Thomas hadn't given the entire thing a close read in five minutes. I picked up my notebook and trudged toward his office.

 

It had been four days since the Backstreet Boys story dropped. For all the psychological trauma it had indeed put me through - hardly the trauma I had anticipated, granted - I was feeling pretty good about it. My inbox had been flooded with complimentary emails, some of them CC'd to Thomas. About half had been from fangirls who probably never picked up Rolling Stone on any other given day. Quite a few had come from reformed fans like me.

 

And there had been phone calls from Nick, Howie, A.J. - even a nice email from Kevin. They'd all been quite pleased.

 

"You did us justice, Miz Michaels," Nick had said warmly when he called yesterday. "That's all we could've asked for."

 

Then he had asked if Brian had called, and I had made up an excuse to get off the phone.

 

Thomas was staring out at the skyscrapers as I walked in, making myself at home in that saggy, miserable chair in front of his desk. He studied me for a long moment, his face pensive, making me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

 

"Penny for your thoughts?" I said as lightly as I could.

 

"You've been a hell of a music writer, Meg." Thomas' eyes never left mine. "You really have."

 

My heart slammed into my ribs. Somewhere in the monolithic pile of papers on his desk was my pink slip. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

 

He rolled his eyes. "Jesus tap-dancing Christ, Michaels, I'm not going to fire you." He looked down. "But somebody in this building sure wants to poach you."

 

Poach me? I stared at him in confusion.

 

"See, a lot of other people around here think you're a hell of a music writer, too," he continued. "Whatever happened on the bus with the Backstreet Boys, you'd never know it was anything more than you getting to know yourself and a band well enough to tell a great fucking story. A lot of other people around here are starting to think, well, what other kinds of stories can you tell? Where can we stretch your gifts to fit where you never guessed they'd go?"

 

I stared at him, reality sinking in. "The upshot being that I'm still not going to be working for you anymore," I murmured. Regardless of how you sliced or diced it, I had spent my last day on the music beat.

 

"Well, now, I didn't say that. It's your call." Thomas slurped his fourth coffee of the day. "Curious how politics grabs you."

 

Politics? Like my hero, Thompson? I hardly dared to believe it. Music was the bread and butter of this magazine, but politics, where snark truly found a home, was its beating, bleeding heart.

 

And it terrified me.

 

"Taibbi needs a hand," Thomas was saying. "He's good, but he's stretched too damn thin. His editor wants another hand around here." He looked down into his coffee mug. "And since the people with offices bigger than mine aren't exactly scrambling to bring in new blood these days..."

 

"You want me - they want me - to do politics?" I breathed. "You really think I can hack it? Not exactly child's play, is that?"

 

"No, it's not." Thomas drained his mug and set it down. "But yes, I do. I think if anyone on my beat can handle that challenge, it's you."

 

He looked at me intently, sadly. "Now you know I hate to give you up, Meg," he said softly. Two first names in one conversation? Man, this was really getting to him.

 

"And I don't want you to say yes or no right away," he went on. "I just want you to go home this weekend and think about it."

 

I blew out a breath as I rose, both shakier than I'd have liked. "Well, that's a nice, relaxed weekend thought."

 

A thought occurred to me as I turned to leave. "Thomas - did this have anything to do with...?"

 

He shook his head. "No. Politics is asking for you. I'm not asking them to take you." He regarded me with a smirk on his face. "But if I hear about you boinking a senator, I'm going to lose a hell of a lot of respect for you."

 

Despite the snark with which that remark dripped, I found myself swallowing back a lump in my throat. "I really do hate you, Thomas."

 

He grinned maliciously. "That's what I like to hear from my writers."

 

I just looked at him for a moment, this rumpled, cynical lion of our newsroom, this fearless, feckless man who'd brought me here. My boss. But not for long, maybe.

 

"I'll miss working for you, Thomas," I said.

 

His grin turned wistful. "I know."

 

 

**

 

I called Alicia as I was walking home from the ferry that evening, golden light just starting to bathe the harbor. I heard a loud thunk on the other end as soon as my big news was out of my mouth. She had dropped the phone, I figured.

 

"Lee? Are you OK?"

 

I heard her fumble with the phone, and then she was back. "You're shitting me. All that mess this last month and a half, and he wants you off music?"

 

"He doesn't. Politics needs a hand. But he's not stopping me if I want to go." I ran a hand through my hair. "Think of it, Alicia. I'd be channeling Dr. Thompson for real, working with his heir apparent. No more album reviews. No more going deaf every Saturday night."

 

"No more rubbing elbows with real famous people." Her tone was dry.

 

"You say that like it's a bad thing." I looked back and forth as I darted across the main drag, heading for my familiar cut-through next to the borough hall. "I know she's been through a lot, but Jenny from the Decemberists was annoying as shit when we talked earlier this week. I will miss people like her not at all."

 

"But you have to admit, the glamour isn't entirely a myth."

 

"Of course it's not." I held my purse closer as I slunk down the alley. "But it's definitely not reality. You should know that after three years of listening to me bitch. I need a challenge. I need..." I blew out a breath as I came out of the alley, ran across a side street and started down another alley. "I need a breath of fresh air after all this nonsense."

 

Alicia was quiet a moment. "Here's the big question. Would you be happy doing it?"

 

"Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? And that's what I have to think about this weekend." I came out of the second alley and started across a parking lot. "I don't know. What would you do?"

 

"Well, I know you always wanted to write about music. And you know I always wanted to tell the sorry stories of other gay kids with problems." Alicia sighed. "But you know, when I got out of school..."

 

And she was off, holding forth about the other assignments she'd taken to pay the bills, the unexpected passions she'd discovered, the fun she was having shooting travel stories. It was a welcome break from talking, from having to explain myself, I reflected as I traversed toward home.

 

Getting off music. It was all but explicit permission to indulge in the confusing feelings for a musician that had derailed my last assignment, not that they seemed to make much difference anymore. But could I do anything besides music? Was love worth giving up my first love?

 

I was trying so hard to listen to Alicia that I didn't even notice there was someone sitting at the top of my humble little building's stairs until I was two houses away. The person - it was a man - was hard to miss, blue shirt making a bold splash against the beige siding. Who was he waiting for? There were only three of us in the building, but two of us were women. Maybe my downstairs neighbor's boyfriend.

 

The guy didn't look over his shoulder until I was in the middle of the alley next to my building. His face stopped me in my tracks. Definitely not there for my downstairs neighbor, unless I was living in the Twilight Zone.

 

Unless Brian Littrell knew two people in this one sad little apartment building on Staten Island.

 

At that moment, all my arguments, all my pride, all my tears, all my resistance - they all seemed to float away. He had come here to fight back. And I was done fighting.

 

I saw Brian stand up, take a step down. The phone threatened to slip from my hand, and I tightened my grip on it. I was shaking where I stood. My heart was racing.

 

"Hey, lemme call you back," I croaked to Alicia, interrupting her.

 

She stopped midsentence. "Jeez, am I that boring?"

 

"I just - I - I gotta go." I hung up before she could say another word.

 

Brian was standing on the steps, leaning over the railing, looking down at me. He wasn't wearing anything special, just a blue polo shirt and jeans, but he looked gorgeous. And terrified.

 

"Um..." He cleared his throat. And then he blurted out, "Do you know how long it takes to get here from LaGuardia?"

 

I couldn't breathe, much less respond. Every girl dreamed of this moment. Granted, maybe she didn't dream of it with a Backstreet Boy - most girls had no good reason to seriously imagine a Backstreet Boy sitting on the stairs of her home, waiting to pour his heart out to her.

 

Apparently, I wasn't most girls.

 

Brian took another step down, then another, making his way down slowly as he continued, his eyes never leaving mine. "I got in at 3:30. It took me 15 minutes to get connected to wi-fi and look you up in the White Pages. Fifteen minutes to hail a cab. Another hour to get here. I've been sitting here for another hour since then."

 

I wanted to apologize. I wanted to ask him why he was complaining. I wanted to not talk at all.

 

He kept making his way down the steps. "But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, I'd do anything for one more chance to convince this woman to give me a shot, to give us a shot. And then I thought I would've walked here. From Kentucky."

 

His voice was soft, a little shaky, but I'd never have let myself miss a word. We were the only people on the street. We were the only people in New York.

 

He reached the bottom of the stairs and started walking toward me. "I read the story. It was good." He smiled, his head bobbing a little. "It was great. It brought back so many awesome memories of my life with these guys, our career, all our misadventures that week. But I couldn't stop thinking about what I knew was just underneath the surface of the story, the stupid laughs, the - the moments. I couldn't stop thinking about you."

 

He stopped in front of me, stuffed his hands nervously into his pocket. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Please don't tell me to leave."

 

"I won't." My voice came out a watery croak. I was crying, unable to stop myself. My purse had fallen to the ground. "I blew you off. Why did you come here when I blew you off?"

 

He smiled, that charming, knee-weakening, heart-stealing smile. "'Cause I'm stubborn as hell." He reached up and wiped my tears away with his thumb, cupping my face in his hand, his face more serious now. "And I said some stuff I didn't mean. And I'm sorry."

 

"I did, too." I swallowed. "God, I was bitchy. I just..." I shrugged helplessly, sniffled, found my words. "You know, it's not even that I don't care, or else I wouldn't have gotten so worked up. I think I'm just..."

 

I looked at my shoes. My emotions from the park came flooding back. I found myself retreading the words I'd spat out there, but this time, with nothing to hold them back, the meaning behind them spilled out. I couldn't hold it back anymore.

 

"I'm stubborn as hell, too. And too proud for my own good. And we're so different. And it's going to be hard as hell." I looked back up at him. "And as crazy as I am about you, because I am..." Fresh tears. "I just have this feeling I'm going to get my heart broken before it's all over, and I'm afraid that'll be even worse than not having you at all."

 

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth again. "I think I know a good song for you."

 

A month ago, I might have told him to shut his stupid mouth. But I couldn't bring myself to be snarky, not right now, not in this moment with so much riding on it. I giggled in spite of myself.

 

His smile brightened, hopeful. "Does that mean I can give you a hug? Can I start there?"

 

He pulled me into his arms, chin on top of my head. I wrapped my arms around his waist, my tears soaking into his shoulder. He smelled so clean and wonderful. I relaxed into him as he rubbed my back.

 

Yes. This was right. After all the fussing and fighting, this was right.

 

"I gotta tell you, the only thing I said in the park that I didn't mean was the part about you being afraid to be happy." He played with my hair as he talked. "That was really shitty of me."

 

I shrugged in his arms, my voice muffled in his shirt. "You weren't any worse than me." I turned my head just enough that he could hear me. "All those doubts, though - those are real. I just..." Another shrug.

 

"I know. God, I know." He sighed. "It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be work if we wanna do this right. We're going to have to work so much harder than any other two normal people, because we're not just two normal people, just because of what we do to pay the bills."

 

A smile crept into his voice. "But God, I want to work at this. It's worth it. You're worth it. As long as we just love each other through the hard parts, that's a heck of a start."

 

He pulled back and smiled down at me. "'Cause yeah, I'm in love with you, Meg." A little disbelieving laugh. "And I can finally get a word in edgewise to say so."

 

Love. It didn't surprise me to hear it in this moment. It surprised me on an entirely different level, to hear it from this unlikeliest of men. A puzzle piece fell into place. I closed my eyes not against tears, but against a wave of love and emotion so strong it shot through my veins, energized me, stole my breath.

 

His eyes were still on mine when I opened them. His voice was soft again. "So tell me, you didn't not mean everything you said in the park, did you?"

 

I knew what he was getting at. My heart thumped painfully again, but the pain was so much sweeter now that I knew where it had gotten me - to this moment, where I didn't have to keep running away from this man and my feelings and the delirious joy of being in his arms without guilt after all we'd shared. Of letting myself imagine, without guilt, and with only a fear he shared, what lay ahead for us.

 

I took a deep breath, and I took the plunge. "I meant it when I said I was in love with you," I whispered. "I knew it in Nashville. I just..."

 

"I know." He smiled a little, nodding in understanding.

 

I wanted to let it go. I wanted to just enjoy this moment. But the smart-ass in me reared her head, and I couldn't resist. Through my fast-drying tears, I smirked up at him. "Was that an ‘I know'? Did you just Han Solo me, Littrell?"

 

Brian shook his head, laughing. "Girl, you and your smart mouth..."

 

He bent his head and kissed that smart mouth, slowly, so sweetly I almost couldn't bear it. I wound my arms around his neck and pulled him in closer, hoping to God I'd never have to let go.

 

Because in that kiss was everything we'd been through, everything we'd been trying to say, everything we'd been trying not to say, everything we'd been fighting for weeks. Everything that lay ahead. In one simple kiss.

 

It was like coming home.

 

 

**

 

Sunday, 9/11: NYC

 

"Did you die or something?"

 

I shook my hair out of my face. "Oh, you weren't actually waiting for me to call you back, were you?"

 

"No, and I guess I should be glad I wasn't." Alicia sighed, sounding peeved and a little worried. "I texted you three times with no response, this is the second time I've called you... I was about ready to go to your house and see if you were decomposing yet."

 

I cast my eyes about the narrow white bathroom for something, anything to drink some water out of. A heavy glass sat on top of the toilet tank. Weird place for it. I grabbed it and stuck it under the faucet. I wouldn't even have heard my phone if I hadn't gotten out of bed. Now I was wishing I hadn't picked up.

 

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I drank the water, my other hand holding the phone, my elbow holding up the blanket I had wrapped around myself. Damn, I looked scary. Yesterday's makeup had carved two black circles under my eyes. My hair was a slept-on rat's nest.

 

"It wouldn't have done you any good to go to my house," I replied, trying to keep my voice down.

 

"What, are you in the hospital? We're supposed to be going up to ground zero today."

 

Jesus. Ground zero. I set down the glass on the edge of the cold white pedestal sink and rubbed my forehead. Today was the 10th anniversary of the shittiest day in New York's history, and it had been the furthest thing from my mind all weekend. Well, there would be no making it up there today, at least not until after the ceremonies were already over.

 

"I'm at Fort Place," I said.

 

"The no-gas at the end of your street?" Alicia sounded confused.

 

"Um, no. The B&B behind it." I looked in the mirror again, past myself, at the sleeping figure in the other room, sprawled on his stomach, a sheet barely covering his hips. I tried not to smile. Alicia would hear the naughtiness in my voice, and seeing as she was feeling maternal to begin with, she'd come flying over here like a banshee if she knew the truth.

 

"The hell are you doing there?"

 

I dropped my voice to a whisper. "Brian showed up here on Friday."

 

Dead silence for a full five seconds. Then whooping laughter so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear, so loud it could probably be heard in Connecticut.

 

"Peggy Jo, you sly dog!" she crowed.

 

"Shhhh!" I glanced in the mirror again, watched Brian roll over, then looked down into the sink, biting my lip to smother a smile, my face burning at the memory of last night. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed. I needed to get the hell off the phone.

 

"Could you be a little louder?" I muttered. "I don't think they heard you in Hoboken."

 

"Oh, crap." Alicia giggled, apparently trying to calm down. "Oh, hell. Well, um, I'll let you get back to it."

 

Footsteps behind me. I looked back at the mirror. The bed was empty. My heart beat faster. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.

 

"So wait, no ground zero later?" Alicia was saying. "Meg, you're being a very bad New Yorker today."

 

Brian was right behind me in the mirror, wearing nothing but a very naughty grin.

 

No, he was no gentleman. And yes, I was one bad New Yorker.

 

"Meg?" Alicia said.

 

I grinned back at Brian. "I gotta go," I said to Alicia.

 

The phone fell into the sink, forgotten, as he slung me over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and carted me back into the bedroom. An unsexy, unladylike squeal escaped my mouth as he dropped me onto the bed.

 

He was on me in a heartbeat, his mouth on mine, his hands peeling the blanket away. That shut me up quickly enough.

 

Yeah, I was a lucky woman.

 

Afterward, the clock caught my eye. It was past 11 - less than an hour before checkout time. We started to put our clothes back on, but ended up curled up in bed, half-dressed, my head on his chest, one of his hands messing with my hair, neither one of us wanting to move.

 

"Screw it," Brian said. "I'll shower when I get home."

 

The sun was pouring through the blinds, illuminating the clean, white, homey room, with its painting of the harbor above the bed. Its old brick fireplace was filled in with concrete and fronted by little pillar candles, all a little shorter than they had been when we walked in last night. I wondered why I'd never seen this sweet little place before, and then I remembered that I'd never had a reason to come here.

 

"I really didn't expect the weekend to go that route." Brian kissed my forehead. His voice was sheepish.

 

I smirked. "Uh, yeah. I could kinda tell by the look on your face you needed more than just mouthwash when we went into the no-gas last night."

 

"I was gonna be good this weekend," he muttered, unable to squelch a smile.

 

I thought about last night, this morning. We had used up the whole mini-box of condoms from the no-gas. My face grew warm. "Oh, I don't know. You were plenty good."

 

He pinched my shoulder teasingly. "Real funny, girl. No, I was gonna be a nice gentleman."

 

I lifted my head, propped myself up on my elbow and arched an eyebrow at him. "Did you honestly think that after Nashville?"

 

He snickered. "All right, point taken."

 

In fairness, he had been a perfect gentleman on Friday. We had lingered for hours over dinner at a little Chinese place a few blocks away, and then he had kissed me good night and walked back to the B&B. I hadn't known whether to be grateful or furious. But last night, after we'd spent an entire day in Manhattan, we'd been standing outside on the upper deck on the ferry home, leaning over the railing, watching the city lights recede behind us, and he had slipped his arms around me, buried his face in my hair and nuzzled the extra-sensitive spot behind my ear.

 

His gentlemanly good intentions hadn't stood a snowball's chance in hell after that.

 

"You're not sorry you weren't good, are you?" I said teasingly.

 

"Girl, you hush." He pulled me back down, wrapping his arms around me. "I'm not sorry about anything this weekend."

 

I smiled into his chest. "Well, I guess I can't be, either."

 

We were silent a moment. I wanted to freeze time, here in this unfamiliar room a block from my home, where something undeniably beautiful was taking root. With my favorite Backstreet Boy. You couldn't make it up.

 

"I have to check out in, like, 45 minutes," Brian said.

 

Dread filled me. "When's your flight?"

 

"A little after 3." He looked down at me and kissed my forehead again. "I guess I should be glad I didn't have to change my flight. I was prepared to have to fly right back out of here in the morning yesterday."

 

I propped myself up again and studied his face, suddenly serious. "Did you think I was going to tell you to get lost?"

 

Brian sat up. "I didn't know what you were going to say," he said slowly. "Hell, I didn't really even know what I was going to say. I just had to come back here and try." He looked at me. "I'm glad I did."

 

I pulled my knees up to my chest and laid my head on his shoulder as we sat with our backs against the headboard. He was mine to touch whenever I wanted, without guilt, without confusion. It was a gigantic, incredible concept.

 

"I really want to make this work, you know," I said softly.

 

He put his arm around me. "Well...when you were a kid, did you ever break something valuable and have to glue it back together? Like, even though that thing's useful life was clearly over, you still had to fix it."

 

I nodded. "And our parents told us we had to learn how to take care of nice things, and we had to try to fix the things that meant the most to us if they broke."

 

"Well...that's how I feel about this. If this breaks, I want to fix it. When it's good, I want to just enjoy it for everything it's worth." He looked down, rubbing my shoulder. "I screwed it all up once. I won't screw this up. You're too amazing to screw up."

 

I wanted to say something pithy, but all that came out was, "Oh, Brian."

 

He put his fingers under my chin, tilted my face up to his and kissed me softly. He rested his forehead against mine for a moment, then pulled back enough to look into my eyes. "A happy, simple life? Wasn't that what you said in the park?"

 

I smiled at him, my heart full of hope. "I told you. I don't have expensive taste. I don't want things. I don't want you to fly me all over the world and wine me and dine me."

 

"But you wouldn't object if I tried every once in a while." He winked at me.

 

I swatted his knee. "I mean it. I just want you, and that's all." I realized as the words left my mouth that my voice was unsteady again. "I just want us to try to love each other, as long as we can." I blinked hard against the tears. "And if we break it, yeah, we'll try and put it back together."

 

He held out his hand. I realized with a flood of tenderness that it was the same gesture that he'd asked for in Orlando when he'd apologized for being distant, that I'd asked for in Nashville when we had tried and failed to be friends.

 

But I was home. This was real life. This was something so much bigger than either one of us could have imagined. His note had been right.

 

"Love?" he said hopefully, hand extended for a shake.

 

I reached out and took his hand. "Love."    

 

WEDDINGS

9/12/2013 04:38 AM PDT BY TMZ STAFF

 

BACKSTREET BOY WEDS

 

From the Department of So Cute We May Puke...

 

Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell has reportedly married his girlfriend of two years, journalist Meg Michaels.

 

A publicist for the Backstreet Boys confirmed the pair got hitched last weekend in Louisville, Ky., where they make their home. Littrell and Michaels swapped vows in an intimate, emotional Christian ceremony Saturday on the Louisville riverfront, then celebrated at local dining spot Corbett's with close family and friends, including Littrell's bandmates.

 

It's the first marriage for Michaels, 33, the arts editor at Louisville alt-weekly LEO Weekly, and the second for Littrell, 38, a founding BSB member and a syndicated Christian radio host. Littrell has a 10-year-old son, Baylee, from his previous marriage to actress Leighanne Wallace; the pair wed in 2000 and split in 2009.

 

The two reportedly met cute when Michaels, formerly a writer for Rolling Stone, went out on tour with the Boys for a 2011 story for the iconic music mag. They tweeted the news of Littrell's Hawaii proposal in early July of this year. Nothing like a short engagement, you crazy kids.

 

From all of us here at TMZ, best wishes, and pass the airsick bag.