Twenty

By the time that I got back to Orlando and to AJ’s house it was after midnight. I hadn’t called, or answered my cell phone any of the times that he called. I just couldn’t do it. When the phone would ring I’d pick it up to answer it but I’d begin crying all over again and couldn’t speak. Somehow I talked myself into believing that answering the phone in tears would freak him out worse than letting him hang until I got home. All those thoughts faded though as I pulled into the driveway and sat staring at the house. I could see that the living room light was on and my stomach did flip flops wondering how in the world I was going to explain myself.

I walked in the front door quietly and set the keys and my cell phone down on the small table in the foyer where AJ stored his mail. I then kicked off my sandals and bent down to pick up Jack who was running around in circles at my feet. I hugged his small body to my own and kissed his head as I took a deep breath and stepped into the living room. AJ sat in his leather chair staring at the empty fireplace and my heart broke at the expression on his face. He glanced at me momentarily and then looked away again as I sat down on the ottoman of the chair next to his feet and looked at him cautiously, "Hi…"

"Is your phone broken?" he asked with a twinge of anger in his voice, which made me flinch. I shook my head slowly looking into his eyes. "Was it turned off?"

I shook my head again, "No…"

He sighed angrily, "Are you okay?" I shrugged and I looked down at Jack in my lap as I ran my fingers over his fur. I truthfully didn’t know if I was okay, and I couldn’t answer him. My ears rang in the silence that filled the room and I tried to think of something to say. The ever growing lump in my throat made it harder and harder to breathe though and I couldn’t even look at him in fear of breaking down into tears. "I’m going to bed…" he sighed quietly.

I closed my eyes as he stood up and my tears broke through. I let go of Jack and he trotted out of the room after AJ. I ran the palms of my hands over my legs biting my bottom lip, occasionally letting out a soft sob. My world, which several hours earlier had been full of love and exciting feelings, felt like it was spinning out of control. I looked around the living room and wiped my tears not wanting to cry anymore. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that crying wasn’t one of them.

Part of me was hurt that AJ walked off like he did. It wasn’t that I blamed him for being upset with me… I would have been beside myself if he’d done to me what I did to him. Yet after all of the years we’d been friends, we’d never gone to bed angry with one another. As that thought crossed my mind I stood up and took the stairs two at a time bursting into his bedroom turning the light on. "Eleven years and we’ve never gone to bed angry. We are NOT going to start this now…"

He rolled over in bed and looked at me, "Kel… don’t do this."

"Don’t do what, AJ?" I half yelled as I threw my hands in the air. "Don’t refuse to break a tradition that we’ve had for eleven years? I’m sorry but no. Yell at me. Tell me how bad I hurt you tonight. Break up with me. Do something… but don’t shut me out. Don’t pretend that you all of a sudden have forgotten how to talk to me because you’re pissed off." I stood in the middle of the bedroom staring at him as all of a sudden I had all of my courage back. I refused to back down, and he could see it. "Say something!"

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and looked at me, "Where the hell were you and why didn’t you answer my calls? You knew it was me calling and you just fucking ignored me!"

The pain in his voice caused me to calm down a bit and I sat down on the foot of the bed. "I was at Nick’s."

My heart felt like it was going to explode as I waited for him to respond. He shook his head and looked at me in confusion, "Nick?"

"Yeah…"

"I don’t get it…" he sighed shaking his head.

"I needed to talk to him. I couldn’t stand just sitting here wondering how he really felt about you and me. I could have taken it if you told Brian on your own, or even Howie… but not Nicky. I needed to be there for that one because of the relationship that we’ve had over the years. I can’t explain it… But when you told me that you told him I didn’t think it bothered me so much, but the more I thought about it, the more it did. So before I knew it I was in the car driving to his house."

His shoulders slumped, some of the anger started to fade from him face, "Okay… but why did you ignore me?"

"Because we were fighting. Some things came up that we’d never really discussed before. Things that would get in the way of this tour… So we were hashing it all out. And when you called, I couldn’t answer."

"But when…"

"When I was in the car driving home?" I interrupted and he nodded. "I was upset.  I cried half of the way home and I didn’t want to answer the phone crying. I knew that you were freaking out wondering where I was and if I was okay. But I couldn’t do it. I just needed time to think and be alone. It all just hit me you know? The shit with Nick, the tour, this new relationship between you and me… Everything I know is changing. You’ve just got our relationship to worry about. Touring for you isn’t anything new. But I’m leaving home for a year, working on this extremely important job, I’m in love with my best friend, and I’m dealing with what that does to my other friends. There’s just so much going through my head right now and I can’t… I couldn’t… I’m sorry that I hurt you, and that I worried you. You have every right to be upset with me. Just please don’t shut me out…" I stared down at my hands and slid the ring that was on my finger on and off. "I can’t take that…"

Suddenly feeling helpless again I didn’t move or attempt to talk anymore. I simply sat there pulling my ring on and off quietly. AJ sighed and crawled down to the end of the bed and sat next to me. He reached out and pulled me into a hug, which opened my floodgates again, and I cried on his shoulder. "I won’t shut you out, baby…" he whispered in my ear as he pulled me tighter to his body. "Just…" He pulled back from the hug slightly and looked into my eyes, "Don’t worry me like this. Don’t disappear on me. Even if you don’t want to tell me where you are, just say that you need some space. I need to know if you’re okay… cause if I don’t, my head plays all sorts of games on me. I start thinking the worse, picturing all of these horrible things happening to you, or that you just decided to walk away…"

"I would never just walk away… not from you…"

He nodded, "I know. But I’ve seen you do it before with other people and I can’t help it sometimes… I’m always worried that people are going to leave… you know that."

I nodded and pulled him back into a hug. His sense of trust had been pretty warped over the years by his father, ex girlfriends, and people who called themselves his friends and then only ended up using him for his fame and then walked away. I knew that I was one of the few people who he trusted completely, and so I knew in my heart what it did to him when I didn’t show up for dinner and then didn’t answer his calls that night. Guilt coursed through my veins and I held him as close as I possibly could, "I’m so sorry…"

He shushed me and took my face in his hands looking into my eyes, "I was just scared because I love you so much… I’m sorry that I tried to shut you out. Thank you for not letting me do it though."

"I did it because I love you too…" I whispered and kissed him gently on the lips before wrapping my arms back around his waist.

"So this was like our first argument as a couple…"he chuckled and I smiled.

"I guess it was," I smiled as I played with the hair at the back of his neck with my fingertips.

He ran his hands up and down my back gently as we held our embrace and then he began kissing my neck softly. "Guess that means we’ve gotta have make up sex then huh?"

I giggled as he continued kissing my neck and began pulling his clothes off with a smile, "Oh I suppose… If we must…"

~~~~~

"Brian if you don’t stop splashing me I’m going to kick your Kentucky ass!" I groaned loudly as I attempted to lounge on a raft in Kevin’s pool. A long standing Backstreet tradition was to have a daylong cookout/pool party as a group before a tour began and Brian apparently had one too many happy pills that day and was running around torturing us all.

"You better watch out Brian…" Kristen giggled from the edge of the pool.

"Kel you’re in a pool, you’re supposed to be wet…" Brian laughed and held his hand up to smack the water at me again.

I shot him a look, "How much do you value your privacy, Brian?"

His hand fell back to his side, "Huh?"

"Your privacy. How much do you value it?" I smiled looking at him over my sunglasses.

Brian looked at Kristen and back to me, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I’m on a contract to do a pictorial book of you right?"

"Yeah…"

"And I get free range over what I take pictures of right?"

"Yeah…"

"Well… if you value your privacy you will not splash me again. Because if you do…" I grinned evilly, "I’ll embarrass the hell out of you by taking some picture of you in your skank holey underwear and put it in the book. By the second day that book is in print your ass will be all over the Internet and on Backstreet fan sites for the rest of your life…"

"You wouldn’t…"

"Wanna test me?"

Brian sighed and shook his head, "You suck…"

"Occasionally yes…" I grinned. Brian groaned and turned his back to me to talk to Kristen. I meanwhile slid off of my raft and slid up behind Brian as Kristen kept him in conversation. When he least expected it I tackled him from behind and sent us both underwater.

"Kel!" he gasped as we surfaced and he wiped water out of his eyes.

"You’re in a poo,l Bri… ‘you’re supposed to be wet,’" I giggled mocking his twang perfectly.

"You’re such a pain in the ass…" he laughed shaking his head at me.

"Mmm hmm… but you love me…" I smiled and hugged him.

"Usually…" he smiled and I stuck my tongue out at him. "So…"

"Uh oh…" I laughed. "I know that ‘so…’ what is it?"

Brian motioned with his head for me to follow him and we swam a little further away from the edge of the pool and Kristen. He lowered his voice a bit, "What’s up with AJ?"

"What do you mean what’s up with AJ?" I smiled as I tread in the water.

"Look at him…" Brian said and I looked across the pool to where AJ was sitting on the edge with his feet in the water. He was talking to Kevin who was tending to the grill and drinking a beer.

"Yeah?"

"LOOK at him, Kel. When do you ever remember him just sitting around like this at one of these parties?"

I looked at AJ for a moment and sighed looking back at Brian, "You’re right…" I chewed on the inside of my cheek and watched AJ for a little while. He wasn’t as animated as he usually was, and he’d been sitting there by Kevin for a while. "Has he said anything to you?"

"Nope…" he said shaking his head. "And while we’re at it… what crawled up Nick’s ass today?"

I smiled and shook my head, "Long story… I’m gunna go check on Age though, he’s kinda’ my responsibility now."

Brian grinned and nodded, "Yeah… and I guess Nick is still mine. Damn I need a woman…"

"Yeah you do…" I giggled and kissed Brian’s cheek and swam away from him toward AJ. When I reached him I was in the shallow end of the pool and I stood up wrapping my arms around his waist standing between his legs. "Hey, sexy…"

"Hey, beautiful…" he said quietly.

"Got a kiss for me?" I smiled giving him my best puppy eyes. He nodded with a slight smile and leaned down placing his lips against mine gently.

"Thanks…" I smiled. "So whatcha up to?"

"Nuthin’…"

"Kev… you boring AJ with the ways of the grill again?" I giggled.

"Naw… he’s torturing himself by sitting by me," Kevin laughed looking down at me, spatula in hand.

"I’m gunna steal him then…"

"Go for it…"

"Come on baby get wet with me…" I grinned and tugged at AJ’s hand. He couldn’t help but chuckle at my comment and slid into the pool dropping to his knees so that the water was up to his chest. I knelt too and wrapped my arms loosely around his neck as he wrapped his arms around my waist and put his chin on my shoulder. For the longest time we didn’t talk, we just hugged there in the water silently. I pulled back from the embrace, still holding onto him and backed us further into the deeper water where he could stand up then I wrapped my legs around his waist. His hands roamed my back slowly as he looked into my eyes and we waded in the water. "Feel like talkin’?" I finally asked breaking the silence. He shrugged silently and I sighed as I kissed his neck, "What’s wrong, baby?"

"Just thinking…"

"Okay…"

AJ sighed and pulled back to see my face, "What happened between you and Nick the other night? You said that you fought and that you were crying. Today he’s looking at you weird, and I swear every time I look at him he looks like he’s ready to explode…"

"Honey, don’t worry about Nicky… he’s just being Nick. You know how he gets when he’s upset. He holds a grudge for a little while and then he’s fine."

AJ looked over my shoulder at Nick and shook his head looking back at me, "No…"

I smiled nervously, "No?"

"No. You didn’t answer me. What did you fight about?"

I sighed and put my feet back on the bottom of the pool and looked up at him trying to figure out what to tell him. I couldn’t tell him the whole truth; it would hurt him too much to know what was going on with Nick.  About how much I still cared for him despite the love I had for AJ. Yet I knew he needed to know something. Clearly it was tearing him up wondering what was going on, and seeing that I was his girlfriend, I needed to offer up something. "You know how Nick and I were really close and then all of a sudden we weren’t?" AJ nodded giving me his undivided attention. "Well that’s what we fought about. We fought about what happened to make us drift apart and he still has a hard time understanding it, so it was really frustrating for us both."

"So what was it though? What made you two drift? I always wondered it, but never asked."

"Well…" I started, my heart beating fast. "I don’t know honey. He’s always been a little jealous of the friendship that I have with you. He valued my friendship with him because I never looked down at him like he was some stupid little kid you know? But despite that he’s always seen me as ‘yours.’ So he had some issues there. And then when he found out that we were finally together, it just pushed it that much more, and dug up his old feelings. He doesn’t really think that us being together and being on tour and working together is a good idea either."  It wasn’t a lie, just not the whole truth.

"That’s none of his damn business…" he sighed angrily.

"Honey… it’s okay. He’ll be fine. He’ll see that it’s going to be okay. He just needs a little time to cool off. Don’t make this worse than it is. Kill him with kindness you know? If we act like everything is okay… because it IS okay, then he’ll be okay too." AJ looked down at me and I took his sunglasses off of his face, "I hate it when I can’t see your eyes…" I smiled.

He smiled back at me, "I know you do." He wrapped his arms around me and held me close to his body again. "You sure it’s okay? He’s not bothering you or treating you bad?"

I managed to get him to turn around so that his back was to Nick and I was looking at him. Nick watched us closely with an emotionless stare and didn’t move as Brian sat next to him joking around trying to get him to smile. My heart hurt watching him knowing that he was feeling badly at least in part because of me. I looked away from Nick and back to AJ’s eyes and smiled, "Yeah, baby… it’s fine…"