- Text Size +

Chapter 46

Emily left the next morning as planned. Both Noelle and AJ brought her to the airport and walked her to the security gate. The goodbyes were emotional, as goodbyes always were, but AJ promised to visit as soon as he could and Noelle knew that she’d see her best friend again in a couple months when she came back from Florida with AJ.

With that, life was back in full swing. Within a few weeks, Noelle’s hectic school schedule started and AJ was thrown head first back into the world of Backstreet. The Boys only had a couple more weeks to finish the album before their release date was going to have to be pushed back. That meant a series of late nights with producers both alone and with the other guys.

In a coffee shop across the street from the Backstreet Boys recording studio, Noelle tapped her pen against her opened text book impatiently. Earlier in the evening, Noelle’s Embryology study group had met there to study for an upcoming exam. After speaking to AJ that morning, Noelle had agreed to ride with one of her group members to the café. AJ had promised that he’d be finished recording by dinnertime and that they would finally be able to have a meal together as their schedules had kept them from spending any time together since Emily left.

Now, it was almost 8 o’clock and all of her group members had long since departed. AJ had sent her a text message about an hour ago saying that his session was going to run late, but she hadn’t gotten anything since then.

She looked over her shoulder out the front window of the shop to make sure that AJ wasn’t finally crossing the street. With a sigh, she turned back toward her book. The shop was going to be closing in an hour. It was starting to look like she was either going to have to bust into that recording studio—regardless of who she was liable to run into—or catch a cab back home.

Without a second thought, Noelle decided to wait until 9 o’clock to make that judgment call. She propped her elbow up on the table and rested her head in her hand as she turned back to her books and continued to read and take notes. She was completely focused on the study material in front of her until she heard chiming coming from the door, signaling that a new customer had entered.

Slowly, Noelle glanced up. She locked eyes with the new patron and froze. His piercing blue eyes were intense, but as seemingly surprised to see her as she was to see him.

Brian.

It had been a year since she’d seen those gorgeous blue eyes, but they still were able to take her breath away. She turned and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window-front behind her to make sure that there wasn’t a gorgeous blonde woman waiting out on the street. It appeared that he was alone and in that instant, she couldn’t help but to wonder if AJ was up to this impromptu meeting after all.

Noelle watched as Brian ordered his coffee and then slowly made his way over to where she was sitting.

Nervously, Brian stirred the cream and sugar around in his new cup of coffee. Suddenly, he was like he didn’t need it. His every nerve ending was electrified. The object of his every dream, want and desire was sitting just a few feet in front of him. She was as beautiful as the last time that he’d seen her. Her hair was a little shorter and maybe a tad bit darker, but it could have appeared that way because of the blonde-overload that engulfed California. As he closed in on Noelle’s table, his heart thumped loudly in his chest.

“Hi,” Brian said casually when he approached. The word sounded hollow coming out of his mouth, but he didn’t know what else to say. He was lucky the words ‘hey, I’m still madly in love with you, let’s get married and have lots of babies’ didn't come out instead.

“Hi,” Noelle replied back, just as lamely. Her mouth suddenly felt really dry. She wanted to look away; she wanted to pretend like she uninterested, unmoved by his presence, but her eyes refused to take their gaze away from the man in front of her.

“May I?” Brian asked, gesturing down to the chair at the table across from her.

“Yeah,” Noelle said. “Of course, sure.”

Brian took a sip of his coffee, wincing at the pain as the hot liquid burned the roof of his mouth, and then cleared his throat. In his mind, this random meeting hadn’t been so awkward. “So, um, how have you been?”

“I’m good,” Noelle replied, brushing some of the hair out of her eyes. She gestured down at her books. “Back in school, studying… you know.”

“That’s really great,” Brian replied with a short nod. “I’m just recording, working on the new album and all that.”

“Right.” Noelle exhaled a deep breath. She closed her eyes, shook her head and decided to come right out with the assumption she’d made when she saw Brian enter the café. “Did Alex send you over here? ‘Hey buddy, grab us some coffee’ or something?”

Brian laughed softly and shook his head. “No, I haven’t even seen him. I was working with Red tonight, he’s working with Claude. It’s going to be a long night for him. He should be just getting into the studio now.”

Noelle groaned and shook her head, finally sitting up and leaning back against the cushioned back of the seat. “Are you serious? The asshole has had me sitting here for hours waiting to go to dinner and he’s not even close to being finished?”

Brian laughed again and shook his head. “Nowhere near it. I think he must be waiting for you to get tired of sitting here and storm the studio or something.”

Noelle leaned back and ran her hands through her hair with a sigh. “I guess I should call a taxi or something, then. Damn Alex.”

“You don’t have to call a taxi,” Brian spit out before he had a chance to catch the words. “I mean, I could bring you home. I’ve got a car.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she replied slowly.

“It’s just a drive home,” Brian urged, slightly annoyed that he was that reluctant to get in the car with him. “There’s no need to waste your money on a cab.”

Noelle started to refuse again, but then her phone buzzed on the table. It was a text from AJ:

Sorry, doesn’t look like I’m going to make it out. Come over here. We’ll order in. Know you’re afraid of big-bad-Brian, but don’t think he’s here.

Noelle sighed and closed the message. “Well, it looks like that about confirms that.”

“It’s just a ride home, Elle,” Brian repeated, using the shortened version of her name that melted her heart every time his voice uttered it.

This time, Noelle was nodding before she could stop herself. “Okay, fine. I don’t live too far from here anyhow.”

“Good,” Brian responded. “I’m parked across the street.”

Brian threw down some money for a tip as Noelle closed her text book and gathered her things. They both stood from the table and left the shop silently. When they were out onto the street, Brian reached out to take Noelle’s books from her arms, ignoring her disjointed, mumbled refusal of help. They crossed the street wordlessly. Brian opened the passenger side door of his rented BMW and let Noelle climb in. He gave her textbooks back and then closed her into the car before walking around the car and getting into the driver’s side.

“Where to?” Brian asked as he put the car in gear.

“I live off of 45th by the USC campus,” Noelle replied.

Brian nodded as he put the car in reverse. He slung his arm over the back of Noelle’s seat and turned to look out the back window as he backed up. Noelle could feel his body heat radiated from his arm that was inches from her shoulders. She sat tensely in the passenger seat until he dropped his arm back to the center console to put the car into drive and pulled out onto the highway.

Aside from the soft sounds of the radio, the pair stayed quiet. Noelle drummed her fingernails over the hard cover of her book as Brian tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel in beat to the song that was playing on the radio. In such close proximity to each other, it was starting to get hard to breath.

With a sigh, Brian was the first to speak again.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t want this to be awkward. Things have never been awkward for us. I hate that we’re having trouble holding a normal conversation right now.”

“It’s just been a long time, Brian,” Noelle answered without looking at him.

“Has that much really changed?” Brian shot back.

That was a loaded question if there ever was one. Whether either of them knew everything there was to know or not, some things had changed, but the important things had stayed the same.

“Not enough, I guess,” Noelle replied finally.

Brian glanced over at her. The words were on the tip of his tongue. His heart was screaming, Tell her, tell her everything but his mind was urging him, Not yet, it’s not the right time.

“I’m sorry,” Brian replied. “Maybe I should have just walked the other way tonight.”

“No,” Noelle said, quickly turning to finally look over at him. “I wouldn’t have wanted that at all. I’m glad to see you. Really glad. Too glad.”

All of the pain of the night that they’d said goodbye flooded Brian’s memories. All of the time that he and Noelle had lost missing each other for no reasons other than the fear of regret played like a silent slideshow in his mind.

Just as Brian was opening his mouth to say the words that would either change everything or nothing at all, Noelle started to laugh softly to herself. Brian stayed silent and waited for her to explain what she had found humorous.

“So, I heard that you’ve become a master twitterer,” she said after a second.

She had been searching her mind for topics of conversation. She remembered that AJ had mentioned something about the possibility of Brian being lonely one day. Apparently, he was on twitter overload and sending out twit-pics for fans to find him. Noelle thought that it was sweet that Brian wanted to give back to the fans. AJ thought it was slightly crazy.

“I chirp, actually,” Brian replied, playfully snarky. “Are you one of my followers or something?”

Noelle quickly shook her head. “No way. I’ve had enough people tell me what they think about in a public forum. I don’t need to subject myself to that again.”

Brian let out a small chuckle and shook his head. He could completely understand where she was coming from. At least he had more fans than haters. Sadly, he couldn’t say that about Noelle. Luckily, in this stage of his separation from Leighanne, things had managed to stay pretty well under wraps. Fans were still asking all about where Leighanne was and mentioning how thankful they were that we were working things out.

Yeah fans, so much for that.

Brian respectfully accepted their remarks, but didn’t comment back about the situation one way or another. If the media was going to find out about his divorce, it was going to be because of him this time, not because of some paparazzo or because of a fan with a big mouth.

“That’s my apartment complex up on the left,” Noelle said after another second of silence. “You can pull in right up front.”

Brian did as she instructed and then threw the car into park. He knew that she was going to be climbing out of the car and leaving him behind again a the emptiness that he’d felt in the last year without her would resurface instantaneously. He didn’t want to feel that loss again. He didn’t want her to walk away from him.

Tell her. Tell her.

Not yet. It’s not time.

Tell her.

No.

His inner monologue was yelling back and forth. He watched as she reached for the door handle. She was speaking, telling him thank you for the ride, but he wasn’t really hearing what she was saying.

Tell her. Tell her. Don’t let her go without knowing.

His heart was winning, but she was starting to leave the car. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her wrist to keep her from going any further. Noelle snapped back around, expecting him to say something, anything. Instead, he moved in slowly and planted his lips on hers. She tried to fight him for a moment, but her defenses quickly fell away. Noelle’s books fell off of her lap onto the floor of the car with a thud as she turned and wrapped her hands around Brian’s neck. Brian wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer and closer until Noelle had no choice but to jump over the console and into his lap.

Each of Noelle’s shoes fell to the floor at Brian’s feet with a thump as her legs dangled on each side of the steering wheel. Brian’s hands slid up her back under her shirt until they reached the clasp of her bra.

Suddenly, he had the urge to stop were this was headed. They were in a car in front of Noelle’s apartment complex, making out like horny teenagers. There were things to talk about, things to be discussed and if Brian didn’t tell her everything, he knew that Noelle would feel like a dirty slut again and all for nothing.

Noelle had stopped thinking a long time ago. She was enjoying the feeling of Brian’s hands on her body and the way his lips matched hers so perfectly. At that moment, she didn’t care about the repercussions. She moved her mouth down to the spot at the nook of his throat that she knew drove him crazy.

Before a single moan could escape his lips, Brian blurted, “Leighanne and I are getting divorced.”

With that, Noelle shot back down to Earth. She pulled back and sat straight up in his lap. Confusion was etched onto her face. She was trying to decide if he’d come to that conclusion during that moment of passion of if this was something that had already been decided.

Brian closed his eyes, mentally chastising himself for his being such a huge failure. “Maybe we should go inside and talk.”