All five Backstreet Boys were holed up in a small bedroom in my Orlando condo with my very pregnant best friend and Nick Carter’s secret wife.  Carson Daly was boiling eggs in my kitchen while Cassandra Dale looked on in adoration. And here I’d thought my life couldn’t get any weirder.  Carson whistled a tune I recognized as “As Long as You Love Me”  as he took the pot off the stove and stepped over to the sink where he ran cold water over his eggs to cool them.  I started to call him out on it, but he started talking instead.  “So, where are the other girls?”

I looked at Mel, who had emerged as the spokesperson of the group, as if we were being interviewed.  Cassie bit her fingernails and watched Carson as he smashed a hard-boiled egg  on the formica countertop and started to peel it. “Amelia’s visiting her parents in Kentucky,” Mel answered without a beat.  I scoffed inwardly at the irony of her statement.  Amelia’s parents were pretty low on my list at the moment. “And Chrissy was actually napping in her room the last I checked.”  Oh.  Apparently Chrissy still lived with us.  Good thinking, Mel.  

“Knives?”  Carson asked, turning around to look at me.  I don’t know why he didn’t ask Cassie.  Maybe he already knew she didn’t cook.  I pointed to the knife block pushed against the backsplash on the countertop just a few inches away from where he’d been peeling eggs.  “Oh! Thanks!”  Then my cell phone rang.  

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” AJ said in a loud whisper.

“Excuse me.”  I politely bowed out of the kitchen and headed down the hallway.  “What?”  I hissed quietly as I shoved the door to Amy’s room open.   

“Amelia’s hungry,”  AJ answered quickly.

“She keeps a bag of pretzels in her nightstand.  Why are you calling me over this?”  I asked as I leaned down to open the drawer.  Pretzels in the nightstand were a trick she’d adopted in the beginning of her pregnancy while we were still on tour and she was fighting an uphill battle with morning sickness.  Eating something salty before she got out of bed seemed to help, and I often found myself sneaking to hotel snack machines with a handful of quarters whenever she ran out of them and was too busy getting sick to get them for herself.

“Well, Tweedle-frick, and Tweedle-frack over here ate them all,” Kevin grunted with an eye roll as he  threw his hand out towards Brian and Nick.  I bit my lip to stifle the giggle that rose in my throat.  They were a sight to see, really.  Kevin was sitting on one floor in one corner with his knees bent, his arms propped on his knees, and his head leaned back against the closet door, eyes closed and brows furrowed in frustration.  Brian and Nick were in the opposite corner taking turns pouring the salt from the bottom of the empty pretzel bag into each other’s mouths.  Amy was sprawled out on the bed flipping through the TV channels with the remote  while Chrissy way laying on her stomach at the foot of the bed with her ankles crossed behind her, reading an old issue of Cosmo.  AJ was perched stiffly on the other side of said bed watching Amelia like a hawk and Howie was leaning against the bed post since there really wasn’t anywhere else to be, and winking at me.  

“It’s only been like twenty-five minutes!”  I scolded the boys with the pretzel bag.

“I’m a growing boy!”  Nick insisted with a cheesy smile in my direction.  He spoke the truth.  At nineteen, he was six feet tall and getting taller and broader every day.  Crazy to think he hadn’t hit his final growth spurt yet and he’d already been married for almost eight months.

“What’s your excuse?”  I asked 24-year old Brian, my eyebrows raised in amusement.  

“He started it.”  Brian hiked his thumb in Nick’s direction and grinned sheepishly.  I couldn’t help laughing as I rolled my eyes.

“The baby’s hungry,” AJ reminded me.  “When are we going to lose Carson?”  

I shrugged.  “He’s in the kitchen making egg salad.”

“Why is he making eg--”

“Ooh!  The baby wants egg salad!”  Amelia interrupted him with excited exclamation.

“Shh!”  Index fingers fell on the lips of every other person in the room as we all shushed her.

“Sorry!” she whispered.  “But the baby’s hungry!”

I nodded my acknowledgement.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Can we get some Coke?”  Brian asked, ears perking up at my statement.

“No!”  I half-whispered.  “A- I’m not your waitress.  B- Don’t you think it’ll look a little suspicious when I go into the kitchen and come back here with more than enough food for one person?”

“Fine,” he huffed dramatically.  “Can you work on getting rid of Carson?”

I sighed.  “I’ll see what I can do.  Chrissy, it’s time for you to wake up from your nap.”

“What?”  She looked up from a magazine article titled “Blow His Mind” with wide eyes.

“You still live here.  You’ve been taking a nap.  It’s time to come say hello to Cassie’s boyfriend.”  I spat out the last word as if it left a bad taste in my mouth.

“Ohhh-” she said with a nod of understanding.  “Do I have to?” She frowned.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her off the bed.  “If I do, you do.”  She groaned and followed me out of the room.

“Get rid of him!” Brian hissed at us as we crossed the doorframe.  I threw my hand up in the air to let him know I’d heard him loud and clear.  If only it was that simple.

“Oh, hi Carson!”  Chrissy said cheerfully as we got into the kitchen.

 “What a surprise!  How are you?”  She crossed the room and placed a friendly hand on his arm.  

Carson turned to her and smiled, and I set about making Amelia an egg salad sandwich.  “I’m great!  I was really missing Cassandra, so I thought I’d make a surprise visit.”  He winked at Cassie.  “I hope you ladies don’t mind my dropping in like this.”

“Oh we don’t mind at all!  Good to see you again!”  Chrissy answered, her voice syrupy sweet.  Somebody needed to give that girl an Oscar.

I opened the refrigerator door behind them and grabbed a can of Sprite.  I pushed it closed with my hip and started carrying the can and the plate with Amy’s sandwich on it back towards the bedrooms. Everyone turned to look at me and I froze.  I’d hoped Chrissy would keep him engaged long enough for me to slip back out unnoticed, but no such luck.  I gulped.  “The egg salad looks awesome, Carson.  I hope you don’t mind, but I have this weird fear of people watching me eat, so I’m going to take it back to my room to enjoy it.”  My voice shook as I talked, and Cassie looked at me like I was crazy.  Mel, on the other hand, was trying so hard not to laugh that she literally had tears in her eyes.

“Um...okay,”  Carson said slowly.  “When you’re finished, I’d like to talk to all of you for a bit.”  Oh, I couldn’t wait.

I turned on my heel and darted back to Amy’s room as fast as I could without causing the sandwich to slide off the plate and splat onto the floor.  I opened the door to find Kevin now wedged in between AJ and Amy on the bed and browsing the baby name book again.  “What about Joseph?” he asked aloud as I walked inside.

“Are you serious?”  I asked incredulously as I placed the plate and can of pop on the nightstand.  

“We can’t name him Joseph, Kevin,” Howie said seriously.  

“Oh,” Kevin said, recognizing the snafu.  “Sorry.”  I nodded, silently accepting his apology.

“Who says we are naming him?”  Amelia asked, holding up air quotes with her fingers as she said the word “we.”  

Howie shrugged as he grabbed my hand and pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around my waist protectively.  “I just thought it was kind of cool that all of his aunts and uncles were sitting around while you two argued over what you’re going to name him,” he told her, then turned his attention to me.  “How’s it going out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug.  “I’m in here eating my sandwich.”

“What?”

“Well, I had to come up with an excuse to bring that-”  I pointed to Amy’s sandwich.  She was currently mid-bite. “In here.  I have a weird phobia about eating in front of people, okay?”  Howie pursed his lips while Nick, Brian, and AJ burst out laughing.  

“Shh!” Kevin said harshly.  “Do you really want Carson Daly finding out that we’re back here in my pregnant baby mama’s bedroom?”  I couldn’t help it.  Howie tried to keep his composure, but I laughed right with them this time.  “You people are killing me,” he sighed as we quieted ourselves as quickly as we could.  “What are you going to tell him when he asks about the commotion back here?”  

I shrugged as I gave Howie a quick peck on the cheek and headed for the door, picking up Amelia’s almost empty plate along the way.  Wow, she and baby Ewan must have really been hungry, judging by how quickly she’d scarfed down that sandwich.  “I’ll come up with something,” I assured him.

Kevin raised an eyebrow and grinned.  “Something as good as your sandwich audience phobia?”  I chucked a piece of bread crust at his head before I pulled the door shut behind me.  

The other girls and Carson were seated around the table talking and eating.when I came back into the kitchen.  Since there were only four chairs, Cassie was perched comfortably on Carson’s knee.  He played with her hair with one hand while he shoveled chips into his mouth with the other.  I cleared my throat loudly to announce my presence, and everyone turned to look at me.  “So, I was telling Carson about how you always turn up your sitcom reruns too loud, and the laughter coming from your room must have been The Golden Girls,”  Mel said with the slightest of smirks.  She was obviously highly amused by the situation.  

I gulped.  “Full House, actually.  Gotta love Uncle Jesse. What was it you wanted to talk to us about, Carson?”  I asked, eager to change the subject.  The sooner he said whatever it was he needed to say, the better.  Hopefully, then, we’d be able to lure him out of the house long enough to get the guys out of Amy’s bedroom.  I worried that “Tweedle-frick and Tweedle-frack” wouldn’t be able to behave themselves much longer.