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Tuesday, 8/16: NYC

 

Well, this was a new one: crying on the ferry. All these tears were quite out of character. But somehow, I managed to make it to work, relatively composed. I could always tell Thomas I'd had a terrible allergy attack when I got up. Yeah, that'd go over like a fart in an elevator.

 

No sooner had I sat down at my desk - hadn't even taken off my good old commuting sneakers - than I heard "Michaels!"

 

I rose from my seat, my knees unsure of themselves, and headed for his office, making the most conscious effort of my life in New York to put one foot in front of the other. Please don't have been listening to the radio, please don't have been listening to the radio, please don't have been listening to the radio...

 

As I sat down in that same sagging chair, Thomas leaned back in his own dangerously low chair, his ears almost level with the top of his desk from my perspective, and stared out the window at the skyscrapers around us.

 

"You got that Backstreet Boys story done in one hell of a hurry when you got back yesterday," he said. "Did you already have most of it written before they showed up here?"

 

I nodded, then remembered he wasn't looking at me. "Yeah. Well, I mean, I had a week."

 

He nodded. "Good hustle. I gave it a once-over after you left." He smiled a little. "It was pretty good. Nice personal story, for them and for you. Way to show how the tour feels. Maybe some fine-tuning, but nothing I'll make you hunt them down for."

 

"Thanks." I smiled tentatively. Maybe I was off the hook.

 

His smile faded. He didn't look at me. Instead, he examined a hangnail. "So, I was listening to Z100 this morning while I was shaving, because that's what the wife left on while she was in the shower, and fuck it, I didn't feel like changing it."

 

Shit. He'd been listening to the radio.

 

"And what do I hear but the Backstreet Boys talking to the morning show goons, singing them a little song that they dedicated - what were their words - to 'a good lady friend of ours from the tour.'" Thomas picked up a pen, tapped it on the desk. "Whole thing kinda spoke for itself."

 

Thomas sat up and focused on me now. "Did you hear it?"

 

I couldn't speak. The whole room narrowed to his face as I stared at him, my pulse pounding in my ears, my face hot with the knowledge I was totally busted. There was a small shred of toilet paper stuck to his chin, I noticed. I envisioned his razor slipping in shock as Brian spoke, the bemused "Weeeeeelllllll, sonofabitch" that might have escaped his mouth.

 

He knew. He folded his arms on his desk. His intent gaze didn't waver. "So, anything else you'd like to tell me about how the tour went? And about how the follow-up yesterday went?"

 

My entire career flashed before my eyes. I was sitting in my first college journalism class, bright-eyed, bushy-haired, a three-subject notebook open before me, completely absorbed in a lecture on media ethics. I was hunched over a Mac nearly as old as Steve Jobs himself in the campus paper's newsroom, ignoring the pungent smell of BO and ink as I pounded out a review of some forgettable jam band's show a few hours earlier, their four-minute guitar solos still ringing in my ears. I was on the fringes of the pit at a sold-out Smashing Pumpkins show, brand-new Riverfront Times press pass around my neck, struggling to hold on to my notebook. I was staring up at the Rolling Stonebuilding for the first time. I was looking David Bowie in the eye over Indian food around the corner. I was sitting in this pathetic chair, watching it all unravel because I had somehow given my freshman-year celebrity schoolgirl crush a compelling reason to call me "a hell of a woman" in hasty script on hotel stationery, to sing me a love song in front of God and all the five boroughs.

 

My horror must have been written all over my face, because Thomas rolled his eyes. "For Christ's sake, Michaels, you can stop looking at me like I ran over your dog. I'm not going to fire you."

 

I exhaled and looked at my hands, biting my lip. Thomas' eyes widened with panic, and he fumbled on a side table for a Kleenex. It was his gut reaction whenever I seemed the slightest bit upset, tears or no.

 

"What the hell happened out there?" he demanded.

 

I shrugged finally. "Nothing. Honestly. Nothing." Well, that wasn't completely honest, but considering Thomas had made it clear more than once that he thought "nothing" constituted everything up to but excluding actually screwing a member of the band, it wasn't completely dishonest.

 

"Well, obviously he doesn't feel that way. At the very least, he - whichever he it was -  wanted something to happen." Thomas cocked an eyebrow. "Did you?"

 

Couldn't very well beat around the bush on that one. I took a deep breath. "As a professional, no. I did everything in my power to keep something from happening." That was no lie. Well, it was 95 percent not a lie.

 

Now both eyebrows went up, and Thomas regarded me over the tops of his glasses. "You couldn't possibly have been a professional the entire trip. You had to sleep sometime. You spent every waking moment with those guys. And didn't we agree you'd try the whole gonzo thing? Actually spending time with these people?"

 

I looked at the Kleenex in my hands, now crumpled as I twisted it nervously. I couldn't speak. Even if I still had my job, I was watching my credibility slip through my fingers like so many shreds of the cheap tissue I held.

 

"Hey, guess what? Everyone slips sometimes. God knows Thompson got way too involved in his stories, or else the end of Campaign Trail wouldn't have been dictated from a sickbed." I heard Thomas blow out a breath. "Obviously, I would rather you didn't slip or sleep with a source. There's gonzo journalism, and there's boinking someone you just interviewed."

 

I didn't look up. A piteous sound came from within me, and I realized as I heard it that it couldn't have been anything but my voice. "What are you going to do, Thomas?"

 

"First, I'm going to tell you to stop bitching." He took off his glasses as I looked up. "Michaels, stop bitching."

 

I couldn't help but smile a little.

 

"Second, I can't control your personal life. You wanna be happy, that's your own damn business. Good for you. God knows it'd put you in the minority around here." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and put his glasses back on. "But seeing's how your personal life apparently has a lot to do with someone you've just written a story about, I can ask you to make a concerted effort to keep it in your pants until the story runs. That's in three weeks. Surely you can hold out that long." He rolled his eyes. "I hope."

 

I nodded. I had told them three weeks. Three weeks it would be. Lasting that long would be a miserable task, but I'd have to do it.

 

Thomas leaned back in his chair. I took that as my cue to leave, rising from the sagging chair on shaky legs, turning to go.

 

"Meg?"

 

There he went using my first name. I turned, surprised.

 

"You do know it's OK to be happy in your personal life, right?" Thomas said softly. "I want it that way. And you should, too. You're only young once, y'know. You shouldn't be married to this job." His tone was downright paternal. He looked away. "Trust me, you don't wanna turn out like your old boss."

 

The rare glimpse of something that almost passed for tenderness caught me off guard. I swallowed hard, composed my features into a cool mask. "What's it matter to you? You're my boss, not my dad." It came out sounding more petulant than sarcastic.

 

Thomas blew out a breath, then looked back down at that hangnail. The tenderness was gone from his face in an instant. "Well, generally a happy writer isn't a pain in the ass." He looked up. Gone was the father figure, back was my irritable editor.

 

"Just chew on that," he said. "Now get out."

 

I walked slowly back to my desk, toed off my sneakers. I felt like I'd already been awake 16 hours. I picked up my phone. A text from Alicia awaited.

 

"So are you gonna go to the show?" she'd written.

 

Three weeks. It seemed like an eternity suddenly, knowing Brian was in my city. I wanted to leave work and go find him. I wanted to hide from him forever.

 

Three weeks.

 

"No," I typed back.

 

 

**

 

Friday, 8/26: NYC

 

"Hold her, squeeze her..."

 

My eyes flew open as my mom's favorite song, "Try a Little Tenderness," my ringtone for her, filled the room. The alarm clock read 5:51. Not even 5 in Quincy. What in God's name was she doing calling at this hour? Panic shot through me. 


I grabbed the phone, my voice still bleary. "Mom?"

 

"Happy birthday to you..."

 

I closed my eyes and smiled as she sang to me. I might have known.

 

"Thanks, Mom," I whispered.

 

"Just think, 31 years ago right now, your father" - she pronounced the word with disinterest - "was driving me to the hospital."

 

She paused, and I heard her slurp her coffee. I could picture her in our old wood-paneled kitchen on Oak Street, sitting at the table in her bathrobe, or maybe already her scrubs, with a cup of java. It would still be pitch-black in Quincy right now; it was barely light out in New York.

 

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

 

"No," I lied, even though it would be more than two hours before I got on the ferry. "Still just waking my brain up."

 

"Any big plans today?"

 

"Work. Covering a show tonight. But I think Alicia and her new lady friend will go with me." I was honestly pretty excited about that part.

 

"Well, do something special for yourself today, honey, hmm?" Her voice was gentle, a touch worried and so sweet it almost hurt to hear it.

 

I smiled. "I'll try."

 

"Good." Another slurp of coffee. "Well, I won't keep you, I've got to be at work at 5:15, but I just wanted to..." Her voice wavered just a bit. "Tell my girl happy birthday."

 

A wave of tenderness. I felt like a little girl. I wanted to lay my head in her lap. Instead, a thousand miles away, I said, "Thanks, Mama. Love you."

 

"Love you too, honey." She hung up.

 

I rolled over and blew out a breath. Well, there was no going back to sleep now.

 

A run suddenly sounded incredible. I'd only made it out a couple times a week since getting home from the tour, which had shattered my routine in so many ways. And I hadn't been out this early in months. But I rolled out of bed, threw on fresh shorts and T-shirt, laced up my sneakers, and hurried out the door before I could change my mind.

 

Dawn on Staten Island: it was easy to forget I lived in New York, as I jogged further away from the ferry, down the side streets and into the neighborhoods. My iPod was on shuffle, and it seemed to know that my brain needed to be cleared on this special day.

 

31. It didn't feel like it, I thought as hard rock drove my footsteps in a rhythmic speed. Even in New York, where adulthood was different, more solitary, more youthful in a way, most of the 31-year-olds I knew had managed to get married off, had at least started to think about starting families, had bought apartments rather than rent. It had been ingrained into my head, growing up in the sticks, that a childless and unmarried 31-year-old was nothing short of an unaccountable freak. There, adulthood was forever synonymous with marriage, kids, a house. Maybe I was still projecting, after 13 years away.

 

I had a demanding job that all but required me to be married to it. Everyone around here did, but it had felt no less solitary this last month. Indeed, the last month of the first year of my 30s had been a challenging one in that respect.

 

The fast, insistent running music abruptly shuffled to a mournful acoustic guitar. I stopped to catch my breath -- only to have it stolen from me when a voice all too bittersweetly familiar filled my ears:

 

You are my fire
The one desire

 

I squeezed my eyes shut against emotions still so raw that it felt like I'd been punched. In my ears, unstoppable, from 12 years in the past, Brian went on:

 

Believe when I say
I want it that way

 

I wanted to change it. I forced myself not to. I dragged in a shaky breath and started running again. And then there was Nick, with a dose of reality he never could have predicted I'd need:

 

But we are two worlds apart 
Can't reach to your heart

 

I ran faster, pushing myself hard. Yep, that was no lie. Brian was on the other side of the country. Complete radio silence for a week and a half now. He had finally listened when I'd told him to leave me alone. It was a bitter victory.

 

When you say
That I want it that way

 

All five guys' voices soared together:

 

Tell me why
Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Tell me why
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why
I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way

 

Heartache. Mistake. Both words I'd used that day in the park, unsure then or now whether I'd truly felt them. Both words I couldn't take back. I had made my bed.

 

I gritted my teeth and barreled ahead, pushing way harder than usual, almost punishingly hard. My heart actually ached. The casual observer might have thought I was being chased, running from some invisible specter. Maybe I was only running from myself, I thought: the ultimate metaphor, the ultimate cliché.

 

A.J. started singing:

 

Am I your fire?
The one desire?
Yes, I know it's too late...

 

My story would publish in 10 days, not that I was counting. I had told Brian to read the story. He could make up his mind from there. I had a feeling I'd made it up for him. I had begun to think that stunning radio serenade was less a statement of purpose than of farewell. I tried not to think about it at all.

 

I was a fool, the ultimate fool. I knew what I had always wanted from a relationship and never gotten, what I had never permitted myself to do or feel as a journalist, what I had done to keep those two parts of my life separate. Love had come along, too messy to fit that mold, and I had pushed it away.

 

Kevin, the one I'd never met, was singing now:

 

Now I can see that we've fallen apart 
From the way that it used to be, yeah
No matter the distance, I want you to know
That deep down inside of me...

 

I ran fiercely, down the long, gentle hill to the ferry terminal. Sweat was pouring off my protesting body. It occurred to me that walking to the terminal later to head to work might be a new adventure.

 

Ain't nothin' but a heartache 
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way

 

I rounded the corner to the terminal, still deserted at 6:20, the city still twinkling as the sun edged over the horizon. This was my city, I thought as I ran. I was a New Yorker, and nothing could change that. I'd made my life here. I'd chosen it.

 

It was enough, at 31. It would have to be.

 

I stopped, hands on my knees, gasping for breath. The song was over. My lungs were burning. Tears were streaming down my face. I coughed hard, and it felt suspiciously like a dry heave. My everything hurt. I was a block from my apartment, but I was two or three more strides from collapsing. It was the hardest I'd run in months, driven by the voices of four guys I'd never expected to change my life.

 

The ultimate cliché, I thought, and I looked up to see my birthday dawning.

 

 

**

 

"So, you get the ol' 'blah blah blah years ago I was in labor with you' speech yet today?" Thomas deadpanned as he passed my desk, unusually fat briefcase in hand.

 

I swiveled away from my keyboard, away from my album review. "How'd you guess?"

 

"Because I still get one every year." He said this matter-of-factly, without a smile, as if it were just another inalienable truth. The sky was blue. The Pope was Catholic. Our mothers were sweet.

 

His grouchiness made me smile in spite of myself. "Yes. She woke me up at the crack of dawn. Sang to me and everything."

 

"Good to hear." He thunked his briefcase down on my desk, opened it, and produced a dented plastic clamshell that held a pink-topped cupcake. "Happy anniversary of the day you started dying."

 

A wave of fondness suffused me. "Your sentimentality is peerless, as ever. Thanks, Thomas."

 

"Don't say the old slave driver never did anything for you." He offered me a small but genuine smile, and then he picked up his briefcase and continued to his office.

 

I opened the clamshell. Chocolate with pink frosting, turquoise sprinkles and a strawberry Runt on top. It was the most delicious-looking thing ever today. My intent was only to eat one small bite for now, but I gobbled the whole thing in three. Well, God knew I'd earned it by running myself into a sore-muscled stupor this morning.

 

Back to the album review. I had two to knock out for the next edition, plus a thousand words on Two Door Cinema Club. Not a bad gig, if you could get it.

 

It was nearly lunchtime when my cellphone rang. I cast a distracted glance in its direction. And then I did a double-take. A Facetime call? From Howie Dorough?

 

I snatched up the phone and hurried toward the conference room as I answered the call, a grin spreading across my face. "Gentlemen."

 

Howie was holding the phone at the end of an outstretched arm, with Nick and A.J. crowded in next to him in the shot. The trio broke into a raucous rendition of "Happy Birthday" before I closed the door, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught a few annoyed glances from my coworkers.

 

My face hurt from smiling as they sang. "Well, this is just a real nice surprise."

 

"We had to call and give you some shit." A.J. grinned. "Bet you didn't think we'd remember."

 

I laughed. "Remember? I don't even remember telling y'all when my birthday was."

 

Nick smirked. "You didn't. We tweetstalked you."

 

I searched the shot, not caring that they could see me. "Where's, uh..." My mouth went dry.

 

Howie rolled his eyes. "Brian's still asleep. With earplugs in. The bus crashing into a nuclear reactor wouldn't wake him up."

 

"Besides, you two had so obviously eaten your awkward flakes for breakfast when we were in New York, I figured he wouldn't want any part of it anyway." A.J. smirked, scratching the back of his head.

 

My heart sank. My face must have visibly fallen along with it, because all three of them winced. "Duuuude," Howie said to A.J., stretching the word out for a full two seconds. "It's her birthday, for God's sakes."

 

"Sorry. That was rude." A.J. looked so apologetic that I had to laugh.

 

"It's fine, really," I said. I pasted a smile on my face. "I'm just touched you guys thought to call me. Thank you. Where are you?"

 

"In the desert on a horse with no name," A.J. quipped.

 

"We're on the way to Vegas," Nick clarified. "Dude, Howie, you gotta show her the scenery."

 

The shot jostled, and then Howie was pressing the camera to the window, the shot was refocusing, and I was watching the desert roll by, all craggy reddish-beige cliffs and sandy plains. I had never seen the wild desert in person, even after several trips to LA and Vegas for work. It was breathtaking, so very different from the cityscapes of New York, the hills of old Columbia, the cornfields of my native Quincy. I couldn't hide my pleasure, my awe. I was still grinning when the phone was pulled away from the window, replaced with the guys' faces.

 

"Pretty good birthday present?" Nick grinned back at me.

 

"That was lovely. Really. Thanks." I glanced at the clock. "Guys, y'know, I'm at work. And I really need to get back to it." A chorus of reluctant grumbles and baleful looks. I feigned sympathy. "Awww, are you that torn up about it? Do you want me to give you boys a call soon?"

 

"Darn right we do," Howie said cheerfully. "You've smelled our farts. Don't be a stranger."

 

I smiled fondly, my heart swelling. If I had gained nothing else from this, I had gained friends -- three crazy, sweet, famous, totally unlikely friends.

 

"Besides, you know you're gonna hear about it from us when we see the story," A.J. added. "When's that come out again?"

 

"The 5th. Labor Day."

 

"Oh, that's timing," Howie said. "Our last show of the U.S. leg is the 3rd. We'll all be off and back home." He made a face, sighed dramatically. "Guess we won't be Facetiming you again with our reactions."

 

"Well, they won't much matter, because the bullet's already out of the gun even as we speak," I said sweetly. "So if you had any objections, tough shit."

 

A chorus of muttered "yeah, yeah." "All right, Miz Michaels, you'd best get back to work," Nick said. He winked at me. "Ya slacker."

 

"Oh, but I didn't even tell you what your call reminded me of," I said. "This isn't even the first time you guys have sung to me today."

 

"Whaddaya mean?" A.J. said, confusion on his face.

 

I grinned. "You showed up for my run today and told me you wanted it that way. Creepsters." 

 

The last thing I saw as I hung up was the three of them laughing hysterically.

 

I stuck my phone in my pocket and walked back out into the newsroom. My heart was full from the guys' unexpected remembrance, and yet it felt chipped, a tiny piece missing. Maybe it would always feel that way now.

 

"The hell was that about?" one of the other music writers, a burly, sideburned fellow named Drew who had a pair of huge headphones around his neck, said as I walked back to my desk.

 

I smiled a little. "Some friends of mine just called to wish me a happy birthday."

 

Drew's eyes were already back on his screen, disinterested. "Oh, it's your birthday?"