Day four…

"Tell me about the rock…" Nick said as he and Kel half-dozed in the sun aside his pool the next day.

She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand and made a face, "The wrestler?"

Nick laughed and shook his head, "You are such a dork… no, not the wrestler. The rock… you know, that big heavy thing on your finger there?"

Kel laughed and looked at the ring on her hand, "Oh…" She snorted as Nick continued to laugh and then she reached out and smacked him in the arm, "Shut up… I was half asleep and you just blurt out ‘tell me about the rock…’ I didn’t know what you meant."

"The wrestler…" Nick laughed as he rubbed his arm from where she’d hit him. "You’re too cute."

"Yeah I know," she smiled. "Anyway, the rock… this one," she said holding up her hand.

"Exactly… is it what I think it is?"

"Nope…" she said shaking her head. "It’s more of a I love you but I can’t marry you right now kind of ring. Like, I want to marry you some day, so don’t leave me, and here’s a ring, but just not yet."

"I hope he didn’t phrase it that way when he gave it to you…" Nick said with a slight chuckle.

"No, it was much sweeter.." she said with a smile as she closed her eyes to the sun and kept talking. "But that’s the whole idea behind the ring really. Kind of like a promise ring like you’d give a girl when you’re in high school or something."

"So are you planning on marrying him then? Someday…"

"Maybe…" she said softly. "I dunno really. I love him, and would love to be married to him and have kids and stuff."

"But…"

"But I want things to be more stable with us before I marry him. Which is exactly why we’re waiting. He doesn’t want to get married the way things are now either. Plus technically he’s not supposed to make any serious life changes yet… some AA rule or something. It makes sense."

"Yeah…"

"What do you think?" she asked turning her head toward him and once again shielding her eyes with her hand.

"About what?" he asked squinting his eyes at her in the sun.

"About the idea of us one day getting married, about the ring, about anything… I feel like I’ve been doing all of the talking lately. It’s your turn."

He smiled at her and closed his eyes, "I think it’s too damn bright out here. We should have brought sunglasses out with us…"

"I know… I keep hoping for a cloud…" she chuckled.

"Me too…" he laughed. After a minute of them lying there he began to talk, "I don’t know what I think… I know that he’s loved you for a really long time. And I know you love him. That should be enough for me to say that yes you should get married one day. But then there’s that little voice inside of me. The one who has to protect you from harm. The voice that still beats me up because I let him hurt you…"

Kel felt her heart jump and she opened her eyes then sat up to look at Nick without having to squint in the sun. She turned throwing her feet to the ground and shook her head, "Nicky… you don’t blame yourself do you? Not for what happened that night on tour."

"Of course I do, Kel…" he said softly and opened up his eyes to look at her sadly. "I can’t help but blame myself. I should have been there that night, and instead I was off doing shit that I knew I shouldn’t have been doing."

She shook her head, "Honey, it’s not your fault. Even if you’d been there, he still would have done something to hurt me that night… He’d completely lost it."

"But if I’d been there, I could have stopped him. I could have done something… sooner."

"It’s been a long time since that night… and so much has changed since then. Honey, don’t… Don’t blame yourself anymore. You were there for me when I needed you the most and you’re here now. That’s what matters to me."

Nick sat up and faced Kel, their bare feet facing each other. He looked down at his hands and picked at a hangnail before looking up to her eyes as she watched him, "I just don’t know if I can ever let that night go. I want to believe that he’s changed, and that he loves you too much to ever hurt you like that again. But just like you were saying last night, I wonder if there’s ever going to be a moment where he just breaks again. And if he does, what will he do this time? And what if I’m not there? It‘s one thing if I‘m on tour with Backstreet, because we‘re all together… but with this solo thing it‘s all different. You‘re not there on tour with me, and if something happens I‘m not in the next room."

Kel took Nick’s hands in hers and squeezed them, "I promise you, that if things with him get remotely scary again… if I feel at all like we’re going back in time, I won’t stay with him. I won’t let it get to that point again and give him the chance to hurt me like he did. I promise."

"I still dream about that night…" he said in a near whisper, his eyes looking down at their hands holding.

"So do I…" she said just as quiet. "And if I didn’t see first hand how much he’s changed, and what rehab and therapy and stuff has done for him, there’s no way I’d still be with him. But I do love him. I love him so much that I have to understand that the person he was when he was drinking isn’t who he really is. I fell in love with AJ… not who he turned into when he was drinking every day."

"I miss the guy that he used to be… before the drinking," Nick nodded.

"He’s back… for the most part. There’s still a little of the old AJ who is hiding a little bit, but I can look at him now and see the man I fell in love with all of that time ago. That’s when I know that I stayed for the right reasons. When I look at him and I get that smile on my face that says, ‘god I love him…’ and he looks at me and catches me smiling at him. He’ll stop whatever he’s doing when he sees that smile and he’ll say to me, ‘I love you too, baby…’ Then he’ll go back to whatever he was doing and I go back to whatever I was doing."

Nick smiled and nodded before looking up into Kel’s eyes again, "I remember when you used to do that when you guys first got together. It was pretty neat to see…"

"It’s neat to have back too…"

He looked at the ring on her finger and played with it, "You think he’s going to call today?"

"Probably… He’s at some event all day today though, so I’m guessing if he calls that it’ll be later once he’s back at the hotel for the night."

"What do you think he’s going to say?"

Kel shrugged, "I don’t know. He knows that you’re a really important part of my life and that you’d be back eventually. He’s going to have to deal with it eventually, so why not now? But I have to wonder… are you ready?"

"Me?"

"Yeah… Are you ready to talk to him about what happened eight months ago? To finally see if you two can make up? Cause it‘s bound to happen you know? If he and I start talking about how you‘re back in my life, he‘s going to want to talk to you. He can‘t just ignore you, we live together. Are you ready for that?"

Nick sighed, "I think I am."

"It won’t be easy… It‘s going to bring up a lot of stuff."

"I know… but it’s worth it right?"

Nick smiled a small smile at her and she smiled back at him with a nod, "Yeah, it’s worth it… He’s worth it."

~~~~~

"So tell me again why we’re painting a mural in this room?" Nick asked as he worked on painting part of the room as Kel had instructed him to do.

Kel shrugged and dipped a brush in a paper plate of paint, "Just because…"

Nick smiled and nodded as he continued to paint, "It’s been a while since you’ve done anything like this huh?"

"Yeah… that’s probably why I wanted to do it so bad. I miss having paint all over my fingers and paintbrushes stuck in my hair…"

"And paint speckles all over your face…" Nick laughed.

"Exactly…" she smiled.

"If you hadn’t told me that you and AJ weren’t screwing each other I would have thought you were pregnant and decorating this because it would soon be a kids room… I have to admit that’s what I thought when you first told me you were doing a mural. Cause I remember when we were kids and you used to talk about decorating your kids bedrooms…"

Kel smiled at the memory, "Yeah… I still want to do that when I have kids. But this definitely isn’t that."

"Sorry about bringing that up…" Nick said softly as he re-loaded his brush with paint.

"It’s okay…" she said with a smile in his direction. "I wouldn’t have told you last night if I didn’t mind you talking about it."

"Okay…" he nodded.

"He’s going off the meds soon…" she added, her paint brush lingering in the air just before the wall. "His therapist thinks he’s ready to at least start weaning him off of them."

Nick smiled, "Then maybe you’ll get yourself some ass again soon…"

Kel began to laugh and before long they were in a full out giggle fit. When they’d finished giggling and were both gasping for air she walked up to him and opened her arms, "Hug your best friend…"

"Gladly…" he smiled and wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground in a gut-squishing hug. "God I missed hugging you…"

"Me too…" she sighed as he set her back down on her bare feet. "Let’s make a promise. No more extended time apart from one another because of a fight… ever."

"I promise…" he said with a smile and held his paintbrush up along with his hand.

"As do I…" she said and raised her paintbrush as well. "So, you know what I’m thinking?"

"Not a clue…" he laughed.

"I’m thinking that this blue paint…" she said and showed him her paintbrush. "Will look really good with your eyes…"

"With my eyes?" he asked in confusion with a laugh.

"Uh huh…" she said with a smirk and then painted a big streak of blue paint down the side of his face.

"Oh no you didn’t…" he said, his mouth hanging open in shock.

She snorted and nodded, "Oh yes I did…"

"You are so dead…"

"Gotta catch me first Big Boy…" she laughed and promptly took off running.

~~~~~

Nick laughed as he stood behind Kel in her kitchen as they made dinner together that night. "You have paint on the back of your neck…"

"Oh gee, I wonder why…" she laughed. They’d had one serious paint fight that afternoon and even after scrubbing in the shower for fifteen minutes, she was still finding patches of skin with assorted paint coloring it.

"I can’t believe we didn’t get paint all over the house…" he chuckled and handed her a soda from the fridge after opening it for her.

"AJ would have disowned the both of us if we’d gotten paint everywhere…"

"Remember when we had that cookie dough fight last Christmas?"

"Oh god…" she laughed. "He thought we’d lost our minds when he came home and saw the kitchen."

"I think if we hadn’t accidentally dumped the flour all over he wouldn’t have been too mad, but that was a mess…"

Kel smiled and stirred their dinner, "True… but we cleaned it up. It’s all good. And it was fun…"

"It was a lot of fun…" Nick smiled. "Will you make me cookies this week before he gets home?"

Kel laughed, "Sure I will honey…"

"Cool… thanks. I miss your cookies."

"I’ll always have the power of my cookies over you… Even when you’re married, I’ll always be able to win you over with a fresh batch of cookies."

"You could teach my wife how to make the cookies you know? Or me…"

"Are you kidding? And lose my trump card? I think not… I like having that power over you."

"You’re really an evil bitch in Nice Girl clothing aren’t you?" he laughed.

She smirked and nodded, "Basically…" Just as she’d gotten her hands dirty with the ingredients she was throwing into the pot the phone rang and she batted her eyelashes at Nick, "Get that for me?"

He laughed and rolled his eyes, "You didn’t have to use the eyelashes on me… I would have gotten it if you said please…"

She giggled and began washing her hands as he went for the phone, "Please, Nicky?"

Laughing again he picked up the phone, "Kel & AJ’s… what’s your pleasure?" There was a pause on the other end of the line and Nick made a face, "Hello?"

"Nick?"

Nick’s heart immediately jumped into his throat at the sound of the voice he hadn’t heard in so long and he swallowed hard in order to clear it. "Uh yeah… hey."

"Hi… Is uh… Is Kel there?"

"Yeah… Yeah, she’s washing her hands, uh… hang on a second…" Nick pulled the phone away from his ear and Kel turned around as he pushed the phone toward her. "It’s AJ…"

"Oh…" she said softly. "I’m sorry, honey…" she whispered so that AJ couldn’t overhear.

Nick shook his head, "It’s okay… go ahead and talk to him. I’ll just go in the other room and set the table or something." He handed the phone to her and then kissed her cheek before walking out of the kitchen.

For a moment she watched the doorway where he’d left the room and then sighed. It was killing her to see how uncomfortable he was when it came to AJ considering how close they’d always been before their fight eight months earlier. Raising the phone to her ear she took a deep breath and forced a smile, "Hey, sweetheart…"

"Hey…" he said somewhat softly.

"You just get back to the hotel?"

"Yeah…"

"I figured you’d call once you got back and were settled."

"If I’m interrupting something I can call back later…"

"No, not at all. I’m just making dinner. I’d had my hands in tomatoes just as the phone rang, so I had Nicky get it for me."

"Oh…"

Kel bit her lip and hopped up on the counter next to the stove. She stirred the food and then looked around the kitchen, "How did today go?"

"It was okay… there were a lot of young kids there so that was cool. I got to play with toys and shit. That’s always fun."

"Aww…" she smiled. "Good… I bet they were happy to have you there to play with."

"Yeah… it was cool."

"You sound tired."

"I am…" he said with a yawn. "But I didn’t want to fall asleep without calling you."

"I’m glad you did…" she said softly and looked at the ring on her finger.

He was quiet and then she heard him clear his throat, "I’m sorry for closing up on you like that yesterday. I don’t know why I did. I’ve always known that eventually Nick was going to be back and I’d have to deal with it… I guess it just threw me a little."

She nodded despite the fact that he couldn’t see her, "Yeah…"

"Are you guys having fun together?"

She smiled, "Yeah… it’s been nice to see him again."

"I bet it has… I know you’ve missed him."

"I have, a lot…" she nodded.

"Yeah, so have I."

"He’s missed you too…"

AJ sighed and Kel could practically see the pained look on his face through the phone, "Let’s not deal with that part until I’m home okay?"

"Just a few more days…" she said with a smile. "I miss you, you know?"

"I miss you too, baby… so much."

"I love you, AJ…"

"I love you more…" he said with a smile that she heard through the phone and warmed her heart.

"Wouldn’t count on that…" she chuckled.

He yawned and looked at the clock, "I can’t believe I’m so tired and it’s not even 9:00 here…"

"You’ve had a long day… get some rest. Tomorrow’s an off day right?"

"Pretty much. I have some interview in the afternoon, but that’s it."

"Good… then get some sleep tonight, take a long bath tomorrow morning, and just relax."

"Mmm… only thing missing from that would be you in the bathtub with me."

A smile spread across her face, "We’ll do that the first night you’re home okay?"

"Promise?"

"Cross my heart…"

"Cool…" He yawned again, "Well I’m quickly losing the battle to sleep, baby… Why don’t you go finish making dinner and stuff. I’ll call you again tomorrow night?"

"I’ll be looking forward to it…" she smiled. "Sleep sweet, baby…"

"You too… Oh and, Kel?"

"Hmm?"

"Uh…" he said and paused. "Um… tell Nick I said hello okay?"

Tears welled up in her eyes despite the smile that was on her face as she nodded, "I sure will…"