Part of me was completely mortified. But then again, another part of me had to admit that Joey was adorable standing there with his hands in his pockets looking all guilty and mischievous like the cat who ate the canary. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I said “yes.” Carson was beside himself.

“Well, there you have it, folks. You can catch Forever tomorrow night at Radio City Music Hall opening for the Backstreet Boys, if you were lucky enough to score tickets. The show’s been sold out for months,” he said with a smirk. He ended the show shortly thereafter and thanked us profusely for being on the show and for letting him have some “breaking news.” Honestly, after it was all over, I kind of felt more like I’d just been on Jerry Springer than on MTV. Plus, why in the world would my (well Joey’s) personal life be breaking news?

As soon as the director yelled “That’s a wrap!,” Joey came barreling onto the set and scooped me up into his arms. He started kissing me over and over, and while it was cute and romantic, I couldn’t really let him off the hook just yet.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he murmured in between kisses.

“Not so fast there, mister.” I placed my hands on his shoulders and straightened my arms to push myself away from him.

“What?” he asked with furrowed eyebrows as he loosened his grip on me.

“What?! It just hit the fan! That’s what!” I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at him. The rest of the girls slipped out of the room while I confronted him.

Joey sighed and put his hands on my hips, then dropped a kiss onto my forehead. “I know. I’m sorry.” Then he shot a death glare at Carson, who was still standing in the corner being nosy. “I should have you fired for that stunt you just pulled, you know that?!” he snapped at him.

Carson held up his hands in defense. “You’re the one who showed up backstage. When I found out, I had to run with it. Besides, remember how happy you were, oh, about five seconds ago?”

“While that’s true, Carson, I was backstage. Backstage! Our manager is going to throw a shit fit over this, you know that! Seriously, you should be fired for this!” Joey’s hands instinctively tightened their grip on my hips.

“Never gonna happen, Fatone. By the way, that pretty one, Chrissy is it? She single?”

“Like we would tell you.” I rolled my eyes as he smirked and sauntered off the set. If only he knew that it was the Golden Boy Nick Carter that she was kissing backstage. Now that would be some breaking news!

“By the way,” Joey pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and held it up. “We have a date with this and Johnny when we get back to the hotel,” he said sarcastically.
I nodded knowingly. “I was waiting for that. Let’s get this over with.”


“What the hell Fatone?!” Johnny Wright’s voice echoed through the speaker of the cell phone Joey had tossed on the desk in his hotel room. Joey had his feet propped up on the desk with his legs crossed as he leaned back casually in the chair with his hands behind his head. I, on the other hand, was literally shaking in the corner. “Why in the world would you think it would be a good idea to show up at TRL?” Johnny went on.

“It’s not like I anticipated a camera being shoved in my face, Johnny. I just planned to hang backstage and see my girl.” He winked in my direction and I blushed, my heart beating wildly at the notion of him calling me “his girl.”

“So, I’ve got another question for you then,” Johnny huffed.

“What’s that?”

“Where was Kenny while you were hanging backstage?” You know, that was a good question.

“He was, um....in the bathroom,” Joey admitted sheepishly. I envisioned Johnny rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

“Yo, Emily,” I heard from the phone.

“Yeah?” I answered nervously.

“You okay, sweetie? I know Carson kind of attacked you.”

“Yeah....”

“I know it’s not your fault. I completely blame Carson for this one. Well, Carson and Joey.” I stifled a giggle and Joey laughed heartily. “You should know we were already planning on sending you ladies to the VMAs. The problem is the seating arrangements. Did you know they plan that strategically? They seriously sit Nick Carter next to Kid Rock on purpose. So, I don’t know how we’re going to swing sitting you two together, especially since you both need to be sitting with your bandmates.. Honestly, I’m not sure I even want to. You know there’s a reason we want you guys to be single, right Joey?”

Joey rolled his eyes. “You need to always look available. It makes you more enticing to the fans,” he said in a mocking tone. This was obviously something he’d heard a million times before.

“Can you tell me one thing, Johnny?”

“What’s that Fatone?”

“Isn’t it a little sick for me to look available to a twelve year old?”

“They’re not all twelve, Joey. Listen, I need to think about how we’re going handle this.”

“What’s there to handle? We’re together. MTV let everyone know. End of story.” Joey leaned forward with his hands on the desk.

Johnny grunted. “I’ll be talking to you. Try not to do anything else too stupid okay?” With a loud click, the phone went silent.

Joey sighed and spun the desk chair around so that he was facing me. “C’mere.” He motioned for me with his finger and I carefully stood up and walked over to him. He pulled me down onto his lap so that I was sitting sideways across this legs, and wrapped his arms around my waist. Then he leaned his head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry Carson did that to you, and I’m sorry Johnny’s pissed, but if I can be really honest, I’m kind of glad it happened.” I didn’t really know what to say to that. The whole thing was just exhausting. He raised his head and cupped my chin with one of his hands, turning my face towards his. “I’d like to shout it from the top of the Empire State building,” he grinned. “I feel like the luckiest man alive.”

I could feel my eyes starting to burn with tears. Besides Danny, no other guy had ever talked to me like that. I smiled and he captured my lips with his, quickly darting his tongue into my mouth and running it along my top teeth. He moaned as I did the same to him and massaged the back of my neck with one of his big, warm hands. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he whined. I kept on kissing him. Judging by the growing bulge rubbing against my backside, I had a pretty good idea exactly what I did to him. That fact was making me pretty nervous. “You’re....so.....sexy,” he carried on in between kisses.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Fatone,” I teased.

He growled and pulled me even closer to him. “How about we take this over there?” he asked, gesturing over towards the bed with his head as one hand inched higher and squeezed my breast over my shirt. I froze. So far, the furthest we’d gone was a lot of heavy kissing, and while I expected him to eventually want it to go further, we’d only been going out for a few weeks. I didn’t really expect it this soon, which was a little naive, I guess.

“How about we keep it over here a little longer?” I asked meekly.

“God, baby. You’re killing me,” he sighed, nipping at my lips playfully.
I pulled away from him and placed my hands on his shoulders. “We should probably talk,” I breathed.

He raised an eyebrow. “Okay....”

I bit my bottom lip thoughtfully. “It’s not that I don’t want to do this with you eventually, Joe. Believe me, I do. It’s just that...... I’ve never actually done it before.”

“Oh,” he said with wide eyes. Then he sat there for a few moments looking down at our laps. “You must think I’m such a jerk.” He rubbed his hands up and down my back slowly.

“No, I don’t think that at all. You are too good to me, you know that? You must think I’m such a tease.”

He laughed. “I don’t think you’re a tease.” Then he turned serious and placed his forehead up against mine. “Listen. I don’t want to pressure you into anything you’re not ready to do, okay?”

I smiled. “Thank you. So, everyone’s talking about doing something together tonight since we have the night off. You wanna go?”

“Absolutely, as long as you’re going, too.” He grinned and kissed my forehead. As I climbed off of him, he winced noticeably and hissed softly. To be honest, this was the first time I’d ever had an inkling of understanding of the term “blue balls.”

“Oh, Joey,” I held a hand up over my mouth and gasped. “Are you...okay?”

“I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s not comfortable, but I’ll live,” he insisted, clearly embarrassed, as he shooed me away to go get ready.


“Why is Kevin Richardson giving me the stink-eye?” Joey leaned onto the bar-top table and whispered into my ear. I shot a glance in Kevin’s direction, and sure enough, he was glaring back at me as he nursed a bottle of beer at the far end of the bar. The eleven of us (and six bodyguards) had ended up at a little known bar and grill in Greenwich Village and the guys were immersed in a Major League Baseball game on television while the girls (sans Mel, who sat perched atop Howie’s knee pretending to be interested in the game) sat around a table chatting. Joey, however, was glued to my side since the guys hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms.

“Don’t worry about him, Joey. It’s nothing.” Amelia, who was sitting beside me opposite Joey, snorted. I kicked her under the table and shot her a “look.”

“Is there.....something going on between you two?” he asked dejectedly as he glanced back and forth between Kevin and me.

“Was...as in past tense. I once thought there was something going on between the two of us, but I was wrong. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore.” I gave his bicep a reassuring squeeze and leaned in to give him a quick peck on the lips.

Joey stayed tense. “He kind of intimidates me,” he admitted nervously.

“Yeah, well, he tries to intimidate everybody,” I rolled my eyes. “You’re on his turf, and he thinks he needs to pee all over it.


Joey jumped to his feet. “What do mean ‘his turf’?” he screeched. “I thought you said nothing was going on between you two!” About a dozen sets of eyes fell on us.

“Joey calm down!” I hissed, pulling on his shirt sleeve. “And sit down. By his turf, I was talking about the whole boyband thing. Geez!”

He blushed and glanced around the room, then shrank back onto his barstool. “Oh,” he said red-faced. “I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear this after my little outburst, but I’m insanely jealous.” He grinned and laced his fingers with mine, gripping my hand tightly as he locked lips with me.