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“Brian, what do you think of these pants?”  Nick looked down at the man lounging in the floor during a much-needed “take ten” and wiped a drop of sweat from his eyebrow before turning to examine his rear-end in the floor-length mirror lining one wall of their rehearsal space.  AJ and Kevin simultaneously snorted from behind him.

 

“You’re asking him?” AJ guffawed.  “You might as well ask Baylee!”

 

“Hey!”  Brian retorted.  “My wife happens to have her own clothing line, you know.”

 

“For women!”  Kevin exclaimed with a chuckle.

 

“Not all for women.”

 

“Oh, excuse me.  Also for babies and effeminate men who like to wear women’s scarves.”  Kevin stooped down and tugged at the olive green jersey scarf wrapped around his cousin’s neck.

 

“Right, Mister I Used to Wear Skirts to Awards Shows,” Brian scoffed. “They’re not just women’s scarves.  They’re unisex!”

 

“Then, I’d like to see you put on the one she gave Kris for Christmas,” Kevin replied, crossing his arms across his chest smugly.

 

“Fine,” Brian huffed.  “They’re not all unisex.”

 

“Notice he didn’t deny anything about being effeminate!” Nick

whooped.

 

Brian’s ears burned a lovely shade of bright pink.  “I thought we were talking about your pants.”

 

Howie walked over to where the rest of them were gathered and gave Nick a friendly pat on the shoulder blade.  “Hey Nick-- is ‘what do you think about these pants?’ kind of like ‘do these pants make me look fat’?”  

 

Nick’s smug grin at Brian's expense was replaced by an expression of sheer panic as he turned back to examine his red behind in the mirror.  “Why?  Do they make me look fat?”

 

"Nick, these days, you couldn't look fat if you tried,”  AJ said seriously, understanding the need to build up his little brother.  Lord knows he needed that sometimes too.  “Since when did you care what we think of your pants?” he asked, piquing the curiosity of the rest of his bandmates.

 

Nick frowned and placed his hands on his hips as he examined himself in the mirror.  “Annie hates them,” he said somberly.

 

“Of course she does,” Howie replied matter-of-factly.

 

“Why do you say that?”  

 

Nick shoved a  cold bottle of water into Howie’s stomach, and Howie cradled into his hand with an “ooph.”  Sweat from the bottle left a dark spot on his grey t-shirt, and he opened the bottle and chugged half of it before answering.  “Have you seen them?” he gasped.

 

“What’s wrong with them?” Nick asked defensively.

 

“Well...”  Kevin started pacing back and forth in front of Nick, very business-like.  “One-- they’re red, two-- they’re sweatpants, three--” He ticked the reasons off on his fingers, one by one.  “They’re old.  I mean, you’ve had those things since before Never Gone, and I wasn’t around you much in the years before, so maybe even longer than that?”  Nick nodded meekly in affirmation.  “God, how do you even keep them up?” he asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

 

“Drawstring!” Nick squealed in indignation.

 

“Dude....” AJ breathed, looking down at the floor and shaking his head, with one hand on his hip.  “It’s not 1999 anymore!”

 

“Says the guy wearing a sideways trucker cap!” Nick retorted.

 

“At least I don’t need a shoestring to hold my pants up!”

 

“That’s just because you finally went through puberty and filled out!”

 

“Rrearr!” Howie screeched with his right  hand clawing at the air.  “Retract those claws!”  All eyes fell on him in stunned silence.

 “What?” he asked, putting on his clueless face.  “We’re talking about Nick’s pants here, not taking jabs at each other’s manhood!”

 

“Could have fooled me,” Brian growled with a playful glint in his eye.  

“So let’s get back on track,” Howie redirected, turning his attention to Nick.  “Why do you think Annie hates your pants?”

 

Nick sighed.  “I caught her trying to throw them away this morning.”

 

Brian nearly choked on his water and pulled the almost-empty plastic bottle away from his mouth, coughing and sputtering over his laughter.  “Welcome, man.”

 

“Welcome to what?”

 

“Having a wife,”  Kevin answered, nodding knowingly.

 

“We’re not married yet,”  Nick replied.

 

“Close enough,” AJ and Brian said simultaneously.  

 

“Listen, Nick.”  Kevin reached up to drape his arm around Nick’s shoulders, pulling his neck into the bend of his elbow.  “As scared baby deer in the headlights as Annie was at the beginning of this relationship, you should be excited that she’s already doing things wives do.”

 

Nick eyed his older brother through squinted eyes and contorted his mouth in deep thought.  “So, what you’re telling me is that wives throw your favorite pants in the trash?”

 

“Yes,”  Howie answered for Kevin with absolute sincerity.  

 

“Really?!”

 

Brian laughed.  “You remember that old white UK baseball cap I used to wear everywhere?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Leighanne hated that thing.”

 

“It was nasty, man!” Howie interjected.

 

“It had character!”  Brian rebutted.  “Anyway, I fished that thing out of the garbage like twenty times before it finally went missing five years ago.”

 

“But what I don’t understand is that I didn’t even know she didn’t like them!”  Nick whined.  “I just walk in the laundry room to find her dangling them over the garbage can without so much as a warning.

 She totally blindsided me.”

 

Kevin cocked a bushy eyebrow.  “I find that a little hard to believe.”  

 

“Me too,” Howie chimed in.

 

“Seriously!”

 

“Nicky. Nicky, Nicky...”  AJ sauntered over to Nick and Kevin and grabbed Nick by the elbow, then started leading him around the mass of hardwood floor surrounding them in a large circle.  “Walk with me.  Talk with me.”  Nick widened his eyes in bewilderment.  “Tell me Nick, have you ever gotten ready to go out-- either with or without her-- to someplace like the movies, or the gym, or even the grocery store, and as you’re on the way out the door, she asks you this question:”  AJ pulled his voice up an octave.  “Is that what you’re wearing?”  Howie, Brian, and Kevin all laughed in appreciation.

 

“Yeah...” Nick answered, his voice on edge.  “At least once a week.”

 

"Bingo." AJ winked.  “What’s your answer?”

 

“Yes.”  Nick gulped.  “Is that the wrong answer?”

 

“Oh, no! No. Yes is always the right answer to that question,” Brian answered, rubbing his hands together with a smile.

 

“But won’t that make her mad?”

 

“Yes,” Howie answered seriously.

 

“Do I want her to be mad?”

 

“No,” Brian answered.  

 

“What?!”

 

AJ rubbed Nick’s shoulder blade reassuringly.  “Not mad, just frustrated.”

 

“You want your wives to be frustrated,” Nick said, more as a disbelieving statement than a question.

 

“Not really frustrated,” AJ clarified.  “But when they’re frustrated over something as stupid as a pair of fugly red pants, they’re adorable as hell.”

“It’s kind of hot,” Howie concurred.  The rest of Nick’s Backstreet brothers all nodded in agreement.