I offered to make dinner that night. I’m a pretty good cook - my grandma taught me when I was a kid, and I’ve been cooking for my dad, who is hopeless in the kitchen, ever since.
Thankfully, Nick had planned ahead and gotten groceries, so when he turned me loose in his kitchen, I found I had plenty of options. I decided to go with something bland, in case he felt nauseous - baked chicken with white rice and green beans. Nick had gone to take a nap after his first chemo infusion finished, and I wasn’t sure he’d even have an appetite when he got up again, so I was surprised when I heard his voice say, “Somethin’ smells good.”
Closing the oven door, I looked up as he staggered into the kitchen. He had clearly just woken up; his eyes were puffy from sleep, his hair was sticking up in the back, and he had a red crease on one cheek from his pillowcase. I couldn’t help but smile; he looked less like a polished popstar now and more like a little boy. “Thanks! Did you sleep well?”
“I was out like a light,” he replied, his voice crackling with phlegm.
I hadn’t heard a peep from his room since he’d gone to lie down. I’d gone to check on him once and pressed my ear to his door, afraid to open it without knocking, yet also afraid to knock and wake him up. The chemo had clearly worn him out, but at least he hadn’t been getting up to vomit. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Tired. But otherwise, okay, I guess. Hungry.”
“Really? That’s good,” I said, encouraged. “No nausea, then?”
“Not really. That Zofran shit works pretty good. And the pill I have to take in the morning is a steroid, so it gives me an appetite. Go figure,” he scoffed, “I’ll probably gain weight doing chemo instead of lose it. I figured I’d be puking my guts out - gross, but hey, easy way to keep the pounds off. But just my luck - I still feel like eating, but not working out.”
“Aww, I wouldn’t worry about your weight right now. I’m sure you can take a few days off to recover from chemo without messing up your fitness routine too much. Just be glad you still feel like eating and can keep food down. Speaking of which, dinner should be ready in a few minutes.”
“Awesome. Oh, and hey, afterwards, we should go and get my car, before you start the second dose of chemo. We left it at the club last night, remember?”
Had it really only been a night ago? It seemed ages ago that I’d been bopping around in the backseat of a cab, buzzed out of my mind, completely oblivious to the real reason Nick had brought me out here. “Oh yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine.”
“Maybe we can get ice cream on the way,” he added. I laughed at the faraway look in his eyes; he was practically drooling.
“Ice cream sounds great.”
***
I was still stuffed full of chicken and rice when we set out in Nick’s white Escalade to pick up his Benz, but I got an ice cream cone anyway, when he insisted on treating me to dessert. We sat out in the parking lot in the SUV, the windows rolled down, enjoying the sea breeze while we ate our cones.
“I didn’t know they had places like this in LA,” I said, staring out the window at the run-down ice cream parlor. It looked just like the local ice cream shacks I’d frequented as a kid growing up in Illinois, and the soft serve tasted just as good. I licked a slow path around the outside of my cone, trying to keep it from dripping onto the leather seat.
Nick laughed. “What’d you expect?”
“I dunno... something more upscale? You know, where the ice cream isn’t really ice cream at all, but gelato or frozen yogurt.”
He chuckled again. “Oh, they have plenty of those places, too. But see, I’m not a true Californian; I grew up eating Dairy Queen in Florida. I like all kinds of ice cream - too much, if you couldn’t tell.”
I smiled. “Everyone has their weakness.”
He smirked back at me. “So what’s yours?”
“Mm... chocolate. Anything chocolate.” I took a huge lick of the chocolate side of my twist cone.
Nick finished his first and started the engine as soon as he’d popped the bottom of the cone into his mouth. I polished off the rest of mine on the drive over to the club we’d been at the night before. His Benz was still parked there, a piece of paper visible on the windshield.
“Fuck!” Nick swore, ripping the parking ticket out from under the wiper. “Are you fucking kidding me, LAPD? What, would you have rather I drove home drunk? This is what I get for being responsible for once? Just my fucking luck...”
I stood back, letting him rant. When he ran out of steam, he crammed the ticket into his pocket and turned to me. “Sorry,” he said stiffly, clearly still fuming on the inside. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Which one you wanna drive?”
He was giving me a choice? I looked between the massive, white SUV and the sporty, black coupe. I knew which one I wanted to drive. “Um... the Benz?” I asked timidly.
He placed a key fob in my hand. I looked down at it. There was no key attached.
Seeing the look of confusion on my face, he explained, “It’s a smart key. Just put that in your pocket, put your foot on the brake, and hit the start button to start the ignition.”
I blinked. Back home, I drove the same car I’d had since I’d graduated college, a 1996 Honda Civic. It was the first car I’d bought all on my own, a cherry red hatchback with a sunroof, and I loved it, but it didn’t even have power locks, let alone a keyless start. I felt a little out of my league. “Are you sure you want me driving your car?” I asked.
He gave me a wary look. “Why, are you a really bad driver or somethin’? You’re not gonna wreck it, are ya?”
“I hope not...”
He chuckled. “You’ll be fine; I trust you. C’mon, get in.” He opened the driver’s side door for me, and I slid behind the wheel. To my surprise, after he closed my door, he came around to the passenger side and got in next to me. “I’ll have you follow me, but just in case we get separated in traffic, I’m gonna set up the GPS for ya so you don’t get lost,” he said. I waited while he programmed his address into the GPS. “You’ve got my number - call if you need me,” he added, before he got out.
I watched him get back into the Escalade and reluctantly shifted into drive so that I could follow him. I’m really not a bad driver, but I’ll be the first to admit that city traffic makes me nervous, especially when it’s a city I don’t know. Please don’t let me wreck his car, I pleaded, gripping the wheel tightly, as I inched out onto the street behind him.
***
After we made it back to the condo - in one piece, thankfully - it was time for Nick’s second dose of chemo. Once again, we spread the tub of medical supplies out over the dining room table and repeated the process from that morning. It must have been awkward for Nick, letting me into his home, letting me see him at his most vulnerable, when he’d only just met me, but he didn’t complain. Again, I tried to be professional, to be a nurse and not a fan. It was easier the second time.
When the chemo pump was hooked up and running again, Nick went to lie down on the couch, as he’d done before, while I cleaned up. After a few minutes, I heard him call, “Cary?”
I poked my head into the living room. “Yeah?”
“Will you make me an ice pack?”
“Um, sure...” I wondered what he needed an ice pack for. “Do you feel okay? You’re not running a fever, are you?” I hadn’t checked his temperature, but it was something we’d have to keep an eye on. A fever when he was neutropenic, low in white blood cells, could mean a dangerous infection.
“No, no... I’m fine,” he insisted. From the other room, he shouted out instructions, telling me where to find a large Ziploc bag, how much ice to put in it, and what kind of towel to wrap it in. “Thanks,” he said gratefully, when I brought it in to him. He was stretched out flat on his back, his head propped up against one arm of the couch, his feet dangling over the other. When he took the ice pack out of my hands, he laid it right on top of his head. Not across his forehead, but literally on top of his head, right over the crown of his hair. He left it there and closed his eyes.
I stared. He didn’t move. “Headache?” I asked after a few seconds.
“No. It’s to keep the chemo from getting to my hair cells, so I won’t go bald.”
I blinked. “Really? And that... works?”
“I still have my hair, don’t I? They said it’d start falling out in three weeks, and it’s been six.”
“And you’ve been putting ice packs on your head this whole time?” I wondered if he had done this while I was in the shower earlier.
“Yeah, ever since I read about it while I was in the hospital.”
“Where did you read about it?” I asked, sitting down. I have to admit, I was skeptical, but intrigued. I was a nurse, and I’d never heard of such a thing.
“Online.” Well, that explained it.
“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” I shivered just thinking about it. I couldn’t even stand to go out in the winter without a hat.
“Yeah, it’s fuckin’ cold, but I can’t exactly show up to the first concert bald, can I? I think people will notice.”
“Tell the fans AJ dared you to shave your head.” I smiled. “They’d eat it up.”
“Yeah, but AJ would know he didn’t dare me to do that.”
“Then tell AJ the truth.”
He frowned. “I told you I’m not doing that. Not till after the tour.”
“Then tell AJ Brian dared you. No, better yet, tell them all that Kevin dared you. It’s not like they’ll call Kevin up and ask.”
Nick cracked a smile, opening one eye to squint up at me, so it looked like he was winking. “Yeah, I could see Kevin doing that. It’d be payback for the time I tried to shave off his eyebrows in his sleep.”
“You didn’t!” I gasped, laughing.
“I didn’t succeed. But I did try,” he snickered.
I laughed too, but just a little - his story had made me think of something else, a fact I wasn’t sure he knew. “You know, if you do lose your hair, you’ll probably lose all of it - not just on your head, but everywhere. Your eyebrows, eyelashes... and other body hair...” I trailed off, glad he had his eyes closed again so he couldn’t see the way my face got red. “But your excuse will still work,” I went on quickly. “Payback for the failed attempt on Kevin’s brows; he got yours instead.”
Nick chuckled a little at that, but I saw the way his forehead creased, his lovely eyebrows furrowing together. It was hard to imagine him without them. “Maybe I should be icing those too,” he muttered. Then he said, “Will you grab me a blanket or something? This really is fucking cold.”
“Sure. Where do you keep extra blankets?” He directed me to a linen closet, where I found a pile of mismatched blankets. I chose a soft, warm-looking fleece one and brought it back to him. “Here,” I said, as I covered him with the blanket, tucking it around his shoulders and under his chin, so that only his head was uncovered. It looked like he was starting to shiver. “How long do you keep the ice on?” I asked, thinking this couldn’t possibly be good for him.
“As long as I can stand it,” he replied with a grimace.
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t worth torturing himself, that he’d be lucky if losing his hair was the worst side effect he had from the chemo. But he’d already snapped at me about telling AJ the truth, and I didn’t want to get my head bitten off, so I kept my mouth shut.
After a few minutes, he asked quietly, “Do you know anyone who’s gone through chemo and hasn’t lost their hair?”
I thought for a minute. “Well... some of our residents don’t have much hair to begin with...” And the ones who did lost it to chemo. But then I did come up with an exception. “But actually, yeah! I do know of one person. Luke Menard - he was on American Idol a couple seasons before I was; he made the top sixteen. I actually knew of him before he was on the show; we went to the same college, Millikin. He was a couple years ahead of me, so I didn’t really know him, but he sang in an a capella group there called Chapter 6. They’re still together, and they tour and release albums and stuff.” I had prided myself on owning an album autographed by Luke from my college days when I saw him on Idol, having no idea I would be there myself in two more years. “Anyway, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma after he got voted off the show, and he did chemo and radiation and everything, but didn’t lose his hair.”
“Yeah?” That made Nick smile. “Well, see, then, this might just work. Is that guy... is he still alive?”
“Oh, yeah!” I replied quickly. “Yeah, as far as I know, he’s in remission and doing well. I read his blog and follow him on Twitter.”
“Kaw, kaw!” Nick crowed, without opening his eyes. “Did you follow me on Twitter before I followed you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, giggling. “I follow all of you.”
“So you’re, like, an actual fan then?”
“Well, yeah... I thought you knew that. How else would I have known ‘Evergreen’?”
“Good point. You’re not, like, posting about this on LiveDaily or something, though, are you?”
At first, I thought he was just kidding, but I looked over at his face and saw no hint of a smirk at the corners of his mouth. He was asking me for real. Before I could feel too offended at the implication, though, I reminded myself that he had every reason to be skeptical. He had been screwed over by plenty of people in the past, including girlfriends and his own family. He had no reason to trust me, and yet he had trusted me. He hardly knew me, yet he’d let me into his home and let me in on a secret he hadn’t told anyone else. I was in a prime position to exploit him if I wanted to, and he knew it. He was just desperate enough to take the risk, I supposed. Luckily for him, I wasn’t out to exploit him.
“No way! I would never do that!” I said emphatically. “Besides, LiveDaily sucks now.”
“But you do go there?”
“I’ve been there before...” I said slowly. “To be honest, though, I haven’t had much time for message boards lately, between doing Idol and then going back to my regular work hours and then coming out here.”
“What’s your screen name?”
He opened his eyes and looked over at me. I blushed furiously, picturing the username I’d registered there a long, long time ago and just never changed. KFC4Dessert. It had nothing to do with chicken. (Did I mention Brian and Kevin were my favorite Backstreet Boys?) No way was I going to tell him that one, though, so I shot back, “What’s yours?”
It was common knowledge among Backstreet fans that Nick knew of LiveDaily; he’d mentioned it before, and everyone was sure he secretly had an account there. But Nick admitted nothing. He just smirked and replied, “Touché.”
I smiled back and quickly tried to change the subject. “Seriously,” I said, “your secret’s safe with me. Even if I did want to spill, I wouldn’t - patient confidentiality and all.”
He chuckled. “Doesn’t that only apply if you’ve signed some kind of confidentiality agreement?”
I considered that. “Well... you wouldn’t still let me tour with you guys if I broke your confidentiality, right? There’s our contract. If you want me to sign something to make it official, I will. I would never sell you out, Nick. I’m not like that.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, and it sounded like he believed me. Good. I didn’t want him to think I was some kind of mole.
“How’s your head?” I asked to change the subject again, my eyes drifting back to the towel of ice on his head.
“Numb from cold,” he replied, deadpan. “You just had to ask, didn’t you? I had almost forgotten about how fucking cold I am.”
I giggled. “Sorry!”
“Keep talking. Distract me.” He closed his eyes again.
“Okay... um...” Well, of course, now that he’d asked me, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Time’s up, you fail.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “So what’s your favorite Backstreet record?”
“Backstreet’s Back.”
He made a face. “Really? I was like seventeen when we recorded that thing.” He said it like it was something to be ashamed of.
I smirked, remembering how whiny his voice sounded on that album. “Oh, totally. My favorite track’s the ‘All I Have to Give’ Conversation Mix.”
“Shut up.”
I giggled again. “Sorry. Do I fail as a fan, too?”
“Do you have ‘This is Us’?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you don’t totally fail. D-minus for mentioning the Conversation Mix, though.”
“Okay, okay, so that’s not really my favorite track. My favorite is ‘If You Want to Be a Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy)’.”
Nick snorted. “Okay, now you do fail. Don’t ever bring up that song again.”
I was tempted to plug my nose and start singing it, but I wasn’t quite that brave around him yet.
“So what is your favorite track, really?”
“‘10,000 Promises’.”
“Yeah? Good call. Man, we haven’t sung that one in forever...” Even with his eyes closed, his expression was wistful.
“You should sometime. It’s even better live.”
“Thanks.” A smile flickered on his lips. “Who’s your favorite Backstreet Boy?”
Oh, now there was a loaded question. “Kevin,” I replied quickly.
“Current Backstreet Boy,” he amended.
“Then Brian.”
His eyes flashed open, and I smiled sweetly at him. He put on a pout. “Not me? I’m wounded.”
“Sorry. It’s those Littrell genes, I guess.”
“Ouch. That’s cold.”
“Sorry,” I giggled again.
“No, I meant my head.” He sat up suddenly, sweeping the ice pack off the top of his head. “I can’t take that shit anymore.” He started to get up, forgot about the chemo pump he was tethered to, and shouted “Fuck!” when the IV line pulled taut. The ice pack fell with a splat onto the hardwood floor and burst, cold water and chunks of ice flying everywhere. “SHIT!” Nick screamed.
The laughter had died on my lips. I watched, wide-eyed, as he collapsed back onto the couch and buried his head in his knees, both hands clutching at his hair. For a second, I was afraid he was going to start tearing it out, but he didn’t. He took a shuddering breath, and I couldn’t tell if it was more from frustration or from pain. “Are you okay?” I asked hesitantly, worried the IV had pulled at his port and hurt him.
“I’m fine,” he muttered after a few seconds, his voice muffled.
“Don’t worry about the floor. I’ll take care of it.” I got up and went into the guest bathroom, where I’d found the extra bath towels for my shower. I grabbed an armload and carried them back into the living room.
“You don’t have to do that,” he mumbled when I returned.
“I don’t mind. Relax.” I started dropping towels everywhere I saw puddles, stamping them down with my bare feet to absorb as much water as possible.
After a few minutes, I saw Nick slump back onto the couch. His face was red. My heart went out to him, but I didn’t know what to say. I finished mopping up without another word, carried a towel full of melting ice cubes into the kitchen to dump in the sink, and deposited the pile of wet towels in his laundry room. I’ll do a load of laundry for him tomorrow, I thought, since I’d be there another few days, anyway.
“Thanks,” Nick said stiffly when I sat down again. I could tell his good mood was gone.
“No problem,” I replied simply, turning my attention to whatever he was watching on TV. The Simpsons. Well, maybe that would cheer him up again.
In the middle of the show, I got a text. I looked at my phone to find that it was from Jessica. I hadn’t talked to her since the ride over to Nick’s place the day before, which felt like a century ago.
Sooo?! she’d texted. Why havent u called yet? How’s it goin? Ya havin fun? Makin beautiful music? Bangin nick carter? I want details damnit!
I smiled down at my phone. Then I glanced over at Nick, half-asleep on the couch, the blanket draped over him again with the chemo pump resting on top. This was so not how I’d expected my time in California to be spent, but it wasn’t like I could tell Jess the truth.
Can’t talk now, but I’ll tell you all about it later, I texted back. I’m having the time of my life.
***
