Wednesday, 8/3: Charlotte

"Strange women asleep on our bus. Now that's something I haven't seen in a hot minute."

I cracked an eye open. The guys were all standing over me, smirking.

"Aw, man, she's awake," Nick continued, disappointed. "I was hoping we could leave her on the bus and sneak off."

"Ha, ha." I sat up, and my back cracked. I had fallen asleep at the table, head in my arms. It was anyone's guess how long I'd been there. The inside of my mouth tasted like unwashed socks.

"What time is it?" I wondered aloud. It was only after those words had left my mouth that I looked out the window and noticed that the scenery wasn't moving. "We're already in Charlotte, aren't we?"

"Yep. And we were just gonna stare at you creepily until you woke up." A.J. cast a long-suffering look at Nick. "Unfortunately, this bimbo can't seem to be quiet."

I got to my feet and stretched. "Well, nice of y'all to come and stalkerishly wake me up. Is the rest of the caravan here?"

"Yeah, I think I saw them," Howie said.

"Let me guess - Christine looks like she should be hosting the Miss America finals."

Howie grinned smugly. "Actually, she looks like she got dragged behind one of the equipment semis for about 200 miles."

"You're kidding." I gave him a dirty look. "And you let me sleep through the satisfaction of seeing that?"

Howie shrugged. "Apparently she can't sleep on a bus any better than the rest of us."

"Speak for yourself." Nick scratched his stomach. "I slept like the dead."

"You know what? I will speak for myself." Howie looked mock-murderously between me and Brian, who was leaning against the wall, not saying a word, looking almost as tired as I felt. "I seem to recall a couple of other passengers waking me up in the dead of night, doing God knows what right next to my bed."

Brian shook his head innocently, scratching the back of his head, looking at no one in particular. "I dunno what you're talking about, bro. You must be a light sleeper."

"Yeah, I'm quite sure you're imagining things, Howie," I said just as innocently. I turned to head for my bunk, throwing an overdramatic elbow or two as I made my way past the guys. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to gather my things and get off this bus of death."

"See, shit like that is why we've never had a woman sleep on the bus with us, dude," I heard Howie mutter to Brian as I climbed into my bunk to grab my purse, which I normally never let out of my sight at night. "I mean, I'm not mad, but dude."

"Oh, dude yourself," Brian muttered back. "It's not like any-"

I couldn't resist. I poked my head out of my bunk and grinned mischievously at them. "Hello there, gentlemen. Did you know sound carries really, really well on this bus?"

The mortified looks on both their faces as they quickly exited the bus made me wish I were a little quicker on the draw with my camera.

**

As far as I could tell, Charlotte had the least going for it of any city we'd visited so far. I had no idea what we were doing here and no compunctions about crawling into bed for a few hours as soon as our extraordinarily early check-in was cleared.

A few minutes before noon, my phone rang. It was my usual ringtone, the dramatic sax crescendo in Guster's "Fa Fa." I reached out and grabbed blindly for the phone, then cleared my throat and said as politely as I could, "Hello, Meg Michaels."

"Hello, Miz Michaels," said an equally gracious and formal Nick on the other end. "Will we be enjoying the pleasure of your company at a 1:00 luncheon?"

"Yeah, I just need to get cleaned up." I glanced at the clock. Plenty of time.

"Cleaned up, schmeaned up. We've all seen you in your pajamas, and nobody turned to stone." The gentleman was gone. "In fact, I was thinking maybe we could all come jump on your bed, just for good measure."

I sat up, stretching. The nap had done my cramped body good, and I was feeling mentally refreshed enough to snap back, "I see y'all ate your creepy flakes this morning."

"Very funny. See you downstairs in an hour."

We hung up, and I walked over to the window for a delayed version of my usual morning ritual. Unfortunately, I had no idea what or where I was looking at. A strange city, indeed.

Shortly before 1, I walked into the lobby, notepad in my purse, hair as good as it would get, wearing what had by now become a standard uniform of tee and capris. Only Howie was sitting down there, reading his iPhone through dark sunglasses.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you you'd go blind that way?" I teased him as I sat down in the armchair next to his.

He shot me an equally jovial look over the tops of his shades. "I'll take my chances." He took off his shades, with a furtive glance from side to side, and looked straight-on at me, a bit apologetically. "I was just giving you and Brian a hard time this morning. You know that, right?"

I smiled. "Of course I do. I just tripped over him last night walking to the front of the bus. Neither one of us could sleep, so we stayed up and did his one-on-one."

Howie nodded a little, raising his eyebrows in surprise, looking nowhere. "I'm impressed he actually did it. I was starting to think you'd have to drug him."

 "No roofie coladas here. Just my own dubious powers of persuasion." I flashed him a winning smile.

Howie didn't smile back. He looked at me again. "He's got no love for the media. I'm kinda surprised you guys are getting along so well."

"I am, too. I was so sure he hated me when I got to Miami." I smiled, trying not to let on how pleased I was as I added, "I'm glad I was wrong."

He leaned back in his armchair, regarding me with an unreadable look on his face. "Brian's had a really crappy few years," he said cautiously. "And I don't think he's really dated since the divorce. Which probably isn't terrible - I can't remember him being single for more than a few months from the time I met him until that happened. But I mean, all of us have been friends for going on 20 years, and not many people know better than us what a stand-up guy he is. He needs someone decent in his life."

I suddenly didn't like the way Howie was looking at me. "And you're telling me this why?"

Howie chewed on his lip, the odd look in his eyes unwavering. "If you had told me Saturday morning he'd not only be on speaking terms with the writer, but sitting up all night talking to her - two nights in a row - I'd've told you you were crazy. He hates journalists, but you probably already know that.

"But...I kinda feel like he's taken a shine to you," he continued. "I catch him just kinda looking at you, when you're working or laughing or basically completely oblivious. And you wanna know what?"

I didn't. He should have known I didn't. My hands were starting to shake, and I clasped them in my lap. But he went on anyway. "I've seen that same look on your face." He paused. "And you're not denying it."

I froze. Shit. Shit shit shit shitting shit. Damn it. Called out.

"Now, I'm not in the business of matchmaking," Howie continued. "And I'm guessing that, being here for work, you're not exactly in a position to do anything about it or care if he feels the same way. And that's fine, for now." He steepled his fingers and looked down at them. "But you oughta know the effect you have on him, because I haven't seen it in a long time. And you oughta think about the effect he has on you, because you're not doing as good a job of hiding it as you think you are."

I opened my mouth to retort, but nothing came out. There was no denying my heart did crazy things around him, and I was still thinking about last night, remembering his warm, gentle hands when he'd caught me as I tripped or when he'd returned my small gesture of compassion, replaying the compliment he'd paid me before going back to bed. There was no ignoring that there was a spark. I'd thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping it out of my interactions with the guys, out of my work. Apparently not.

"I do believe you're professional enough not to let this affect your work," Howie was saying, as if reading my mind. "But I know your work is bound up in your experience with us, and, well, that goes for every facet of your experience."

I finally found words. "What do you want me to do?" I asked with a helpless shrug.

It was intended to be a rhetorical question, but he came right back, chuckling a little. "Well, I'd love it if you made my buddy happy. As long as you love him and you're good to him, I don't really care if you have four heads and smell like garlic. It just happens you're a pretty lady with an awesome personality. Yes, you are, we pretty much all think so," he said meaningfully as I rolled my eyes self-deprecatingly.

In a more serious voice, he added, "All I really want you to do is not hurt him. He's been through enough." He looked past me. "Heads up. He's behind you."

I turned around to see Brian walking up, also sporting sunglasses. My heart turned over. Fine time to see him, when my head was swimming with thoughts of him and what I ought to do about him.

"What are you all discussing so seriously?" Brian said, elbows on the back of my armchair. I instinctively shrank down a little.

"Feminine products." Howie smirked. "I needed specifics from someone who knows these things, see, so I'd know once and for all exactly what kind of a douche you are."

Brian faked a punch to Howie's head. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

**

"Mic check, A.J."

"Ladies, it's nice to have you with us tonight," A.J. intoned seductively into his headset, his voice rumbling through the arena. "Gentlemen, you have the patience of God."

The tech next to me adjusted a knob, then muttered into his headset, "Mic check, Nick."

"I can barely hear you, dude," Nick said, his voice much louder around us than the tech's must have been in his ear. "The mic sounds pretty good, but you might want to check the in-ear sound on this one."

"Roger that," the tech said.

I was sitting in the sound booth, my camera rolling. After putting my foot down with myself, I had decided to shoot some video during sound check. The tech hadn't seemed to mind much, as long as I stayed out of the way and didn't breathe too loudly.

So here I was, 50 feet from the stage, watching the technical side of sound check and attempting to share it with our readers. So far, all I'd learned - and all my readers would learn - was that sound check wasn't nearly as much fun for the techs as for the guys, who were goofing around onstage.

"Mic check, Brian."

Brian cleared his throat dramatically, and mock vocal exercises - "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me" - filled the arena.

"Mic check, Howie."

Howie threw Brian a who-are-you-kidding look. "You, you, you, you, you, you, you."

"Dude, why you gotta ride me like that today?" Brian protested, a smirk forming on his face. "Ever since I woke up this morning..."

The tech, a tall and painfully skinny guy with black-rimmed glasses, rolled his eyes. "All right, guys, why don't you try doing some real work? Drop the headsets, try the cordless mics."

As I filmed, the guys grabbed the cordless mics, warmed up a little, harmonized, sang silly made-up lyrics to a familiar tune.

"We gonna sing a real song here?" Nick asked.

"Yeah, how about...hmmm." A.J. paused for a moment. "Why don't we do ‘Helpless When She Smiles'? We could be rockin' that a little harder."

They all nodded in agreement. I made a mental note to shut off the camera after the first chorus. No sense in a 10-minute video.

"Somebody want to start me off here?" A.J. asked.

Howie hopped down from his stool, walked over to the piano and played a few notes of a ballad. A.J. nodded his thanks and started singing:

She keeps her secrets in her eyes

She wraps the truth inside her lies

Just when I can't say what she's done to me, she comes to me

And leads me back to paradise

As he got warmed up, he got really into it, leaning forward, hand gestures, eyes squeezed shut, the whole nine yards.

She's so hard to hold

But I can't let go

And now the others joined in:

I'm a house of cards in a hurricane

A reckless fire in the pouring rain

She cuts me and the pain is all I wanna feel

She'll dance away just like a child

She drives me crazy, drives me wild

But I'm helpless when she smiles

I nodded, smiling a little, and shut off the camera. It was a heartfelt song about the kind of mystifying, enigmatic woman some girls hoped they'd become, and I wondered who had inspired it.

And now it was Brian's turn:

Maybe I'd fight it if I could

It hurts so bad, but feels so good

I swallowed hard. Suddenly, there was something to these words. He turned ever so slightly toward the sound booth, and his eyes met mine as he went on:

She opens up just like a rose to me, when she's close to me

Anything she asks me to, I would

Last night popped into my head. And even from this distance, I could see it mirrored in his eyes.

My heart stopped. I couldn't breathe. In all likelihood I was clinically dead, but the way he looked at me made me feel incredibly alive, electrically charged.

It's out of control

But I can't let go

And it was back to the chorus, and they were all into it now, but I was no longer listening, frozen in my seat, lost in thought.

A memory flooded me: my first semester of college, when I was consumed by a crush on a guy in one of my classes. He'd look over at me in class and smile. Sometimes, he'd walk out of class with me. I had started to get optimistic, and upbeat love songs had spoken to me all the louder. I'd listen to ditties like "As Long As You Love Me" with a swoony sigh and imagine, in my more pathetic moments, that it was Mr. Spanish 104 singing to me, pouring out his heart, assuring me of his unconditional love. Instead, he had trampled on my little heart within weeks.

Thirteen years later, a guy who captivated me was actually maybe singing a swoony, crushy Backstreet Boys song to me. And it was a Backstreet Boy. I couldn't have made it up if I'd wanted to. The professional in me, the person who was supposed to be working, wished I had. It wasn't making my life any easier, on top of Howie calling me out.

If I was being honest, a little part of me had always wanted to be the kind of woman in this song. And now, maybe I was. To the person singing it.

And he was going to trample the hell out of my little heart, too.

"Yo, Meg. Meg!"

"I think she's in a coma."

I snapped back to reality. The guys' voices had filled the arena around me.

"Sound tech said we sounded fine," Nick said. "What do you think?"

I pasted a smile on my face and offered them two thumbs-up.

"Think we should keep the song on the set list for tonight?" Brian asked.

His eyes bored into me again. I wanted to crawl under the table. Instead, I said, "I sure think so, but you'd better keep some mops nearby if you do."

Brian raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

"Because whatever girl you happen to make eye contact with while you sing that song is going to melt into a puddle," I said sweetly. "Actually, I could use a mop right now. You can't see my legs, but they're actually completely gone." I pointed below the table. "If you were trying to test something out on me by singing to me, you succeeded."

All the guys stared at Brian, who suddenly glanced at his bare wrist. "Gosh, would you look at the time?"

**

I hung my head. "Oh, God, Alicia, I'm so screwed."

"I'm sorry, what are you whining about?"

I glared at the phone, even though I knew Alicia couldn't see me. "Oh, thank you. Your sensitivity is, as always, without parallel."

"Dude, I don't know what you want me to tell you when you won't tell me what's going on. I've been home for all of two hours, and here's a wild throw from left. All you've told me is that the assignment isn't going like you planned. That could mean anything."

I had ducked into a coffeehouse two blocks from the venue, citing its free wi-fi - 3G wasn't cutting it for uploading the video, I told the guys - and my need for a few minutes' me time. As the video uploaded from my computer to the great realm of the Internet, a sudden, growing panic had swallowed me, and I had called Alicia, only to find myself speechless when she picked up.

"Whatever it is, you know you can tell me," Alicia was saying. "When have I ever judged you?"

I hesitated, and then the words spilled out like a flood. "I think there's something going on with me and one of the guys and we've been hanging out off the record and he told me about his divorce and I think he just sang me a song and he has great hands and I think the other guys know and I don't know what to do and I'm totally screwed."

A moment's silence, then snickering. "Peggy Jo, you sly dog."

"Not helping," I grumbled through clenched teeth.

"I know." Alicia blew out a breath. "OK. So many questions right now, but let me see if I can distill this. You like this guy. Apparently he likes you. If this were real life, I wouldn't see a problem. Your garden-variety divorce does not constitute a problem when you're a single New Yorker in your 30s. And neither does his having a kid, if he does," she added.

"But this isn't real life. This is a story."

"Yeah. And that's the problem." Alicia was silent for a moment. "Do you think you can get through the week and never talk to him again?"

The idea horrified me. I couldn't imagine walking away from these feelings, from this connection, bizarre and surprising though it was. It was the smart thing to do, but not the realistic thing.

"I'll...take your silence as a no," Alicia said.

"Yeah." My voice was almost a whisper.

She clucked her tongue thoughtfully. "Do you think you'll ever have to cover these guys again?"

"Probably not." I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my forehead. "I can't imagine we'll be writing about them a whole ton. And even if we are, I'd like to think this earned me some goodwill with Thomas."

"OK. So once you're done with this, you might not actually have a conflict of interest to stop you."

I hadn't thought about it that way. I was trying not to think beyond this week.

"So what's to stop you from just fending him off until you're done reporting?" she went on. "Or until you're done writing? Or, probably best of all, until the story runs and you've put your professional relationship with him to bed once and for all?"

I swallowed hard. My voice was back to a whisper. "I...I don't want to fend him off."

"You're going to have to, hon." Her voice was a little reassuring, a little exasperated. "You have a job to do. And then, once you don't, you can go after him for all you're worth."

I sighed. "But I feel like once I'm not around him anymore, it won't be the same. Like, the spell will be broken."

"That's a risk you take, Meg," she said gently.

I leaned my head forward until my forehead touched my knees. I needed this tough love, this practical advice, but it didn't make me want to face the music any more.

"Even if you're right about all this, there's one other factor you haven't considered." I held out a hand, almost touching the floor, and examined my fingernails. "As you know, I'm complete chicken shit."

Alicia chuckled. "Now that part isn't my problem."