The next day, the four of us (sans Amelia, who management said was just looking too pregnant) boarded a plane to New York City to promote our next single. We’d recently filmed a music video that involved a lot of headshots and objects strategically placed over Amelia’s growing abdomen. It was a ballad, so that was easy to do. The plan was to release a couple of singles while Amelia finished her pregnancy and hope that they did well on radio and TRL without out making a lot of appearances. Then, we planned to pick up where we left off after the baby was born. Of course, you know what they say about the best laid plans.
The show was supposed to start in five minutes and I couldn’t find Cassie. We were already one short, and I wasn’t about go to on stage as a threesome. “Cassie?” I pushed a dressing room door open, then stumbled backwards. “You have got to be kidding me!” I hissed loudly. Cassie gasped and twirled around to face me looking like a deer caught in the headlights, her hands still grasping the lapels of Carson’s blazer. He smiled smugly and wiped at the pink lip gloss lingering on his lips with the back of his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?” I placed my hands on my hips and glared at them. Neither of them had the chance answer, because a stagehand promptly ushered us out into the studio.
The beam from the halogen spotlight to my left felt like it was burning a hole through my purple corduroy blazer, and the chunky brown boots I wore were a half-size too small. My toes were cramped, and so was I. The Total Request studio was even smaller than it looked on television. It underwent a huge remodel a couple years later, but at the moment, it was miniscule and feeling smaller by the second. The addition of a studio audience had been accomplished by simply adding benches painted the same steely-gray as the rest of the studio along two walls that only held about fifteen people each. There was an even mix of teenage boys and girls, most of the latter we assumed to be more “boyband” fans than geniune Forever fans. We were standing in the corner opposite the audience near the windows, but I felt like if I were to take a step left or backwards, I’d knock over the offending spotlight that was making me sweat. Right, and I’d run into Mel, who’d subsequently bump into Chrissy, and like a line of dominoes, she’d fall into Cassie, whose fall would be broken by Carson. He’d like that wouldn’t he? He gave me a smug smile as I cast a glance in his direction, and I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up despite the fact that I was roasting like a marshmallow.
Carson, of course, asked us about Amelia, and we chalked her absence up to having the flu. Just as the Backstreet Boys had done with Nick a few months earlier when he actually did have the flu, Amelia called in to the show to chat for a few minutes. After the video premiere, Carson opened up the floor for questions. Now that there was a live studio audience, it seemed that anything was fair game, much to our chagrin. The first question was simple enough. “Who’s your favorite Backstreet Boy?”
“Nick!” Melissa answered almost too quickly. “He’s such a cutie. I just want to squeeze him like a big teddy bear.” The audience laughed and I looked to my left to see Christina attempting to hide an amused smirk.
“I’d have to say Kevin,” Cassie chimed in. “He really is like a big brother to everyone.”
“AJ,” Chrissy answered without missing a beat. “He’s so crazy you never know what to expect from him. One day, his hair is blue, the next it’s red. He might go out and come back with a new tattoo. He’s also hilarious and so much fun to be around.”
“I think I’d have to go with Brian,” I said next. “We’re all Kentucky girls, so I’ve gotta give some love to the other Kentucky boy. He and I can always talk about the Cats, and he has always reminded me of my brother. Talking to Brian is kind of like going home.” That, of course, elicited a chorus of “aww”s.
It seemed like an innocent enough question. After all, everyone knew we’d been on tour with them twice. However, we were heading full speed ahead into the information age, and in early 1999, there were over 2 million Backstreet Boys fan sites on the world wide web. There were 700 websites dedicated to Forever, and eight that we were aware of whose sole purpose was to discuss the actual or potential relationships between us and the members of the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. Our “flying by the seat of our pants”, yet still carefully calculated answers, in which we were sure to avoid mentioning any of the Boys that we’d been linked with romantically, made it pretty obvious that life as we knew it would never be the same.
The next question was one that were, of course, expecting. It came from a red-haired girl sitting just to my left. “Emily.” I eyed her suspiciously. “Everyone knows that you and Joey Fatone broke up a couple months ago. Are you still single?” I started to give her my well-practiced answer, but she kept talking. “Do any of you have boyfriends right now?”
Much to my surprise, Carson jumped in. “I know everyone’s curious about that, but let’s respect the ladies’ right to keep their private lives private, and stick with questions related to their music, okay?” WHAT? I peered across the rest of the girls towards Carson and he gave me a professional little nod. Cassie, however, bit her lip nervously and would never quite look me in the eye as they went on to the next question, and then the next.
After the show was over, we signed a few autographs and posed for some pictures with various audience members as they filed out of the studio. After they were all gone, I stood by the doorway leading out into the hall and waited for Cassie. Chrissy was already headed down the hall with her cell phone glued to her ear-- no doubt calling Nick to see what he thought of the show-- and Mel said something about trying to find John Norris’s office. Apparently, she thought he was “hot,” in a creepy, father figure kind of way. I stood with my arms crossed pensively across my chest and glared at Carson and Cassie, hoping to make it very clear that I was waiting on her. He grasped her wrist gently and scrawled what was no doubt his “digits” across the palm of her hand, then bent his head down and blew on it to dry the ink. She grinned sheepishly as she turned towards me, and he swatted her playfully on the behind she she walked away.
I met her halfway and jerked her down the hallway into the same dressing room where I’d found her canoodling Carson Daly just an hour earlier. “Cassandra Dale, what do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.
Cassie shrugged. “He’s nice,” she answered nonchalantly.
“No, he’s not!” I rebutted angrily. “The last time we were here, he totally put us on the chopping block out there!” I pointed and whipped my head towards the studio.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “He didn’t do that today, did he?” I slumped my shoulders in defeat. She had me there. Cassie sighed and plopped into one of the chairs we’d used for hair and makeup. “He knows something. I don’t know what, but he knows something. You know, there are all these message boards where the fans discuss star sightings and gossip about all of us, and--”
I gasped in sudden realization. “Cassie-” I placed a hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “He isn’t,” I paused. “Blackmailing you, is he?”
“No!” she exclaimed quickly. “No. He’s not blackmailing me. We-” She faltered. “We have an arrangement.”
“An arrangement?”
“Yes.” She nodded affirmatively. I’d known Cassie half my life, but I couldn’t read her expression at all. Her eyes danced in amusement, but her mouth twitched into a half-frown. Her feet shuffled nervously, but her hands were still and steady.
“Are you blackmailing him?”
