Chapter 29

            When the seven of them walked out of the hospital, they were greeted by the five large tour buses that had been taking the boys throughout the country since the beginning of summer. 

            “This definitely isn’t something you see everyday,” Andrea laughed.  “Are you coming on Nick’s bus with me….or are you riding on AJ’s bus?” she whispered to her cousin who had found her way to Andrea’s side. 

            “I am going on Alex’s bus, but I’m kind of scared about it.  We have some stuff to talk about and you know how I don’t deal with confrontation very well.”

            “Yeah, I know.  But if you want to make it work with him, you going to have to deal with this.  We didn’t even get a chance to talk yet about what we are to do when we get to Cincy.  What are you thinking we should do?”

            “I don’t know, I mean this trip was supposed to be just us, and you ‘finding yourself’ again, which I guess has happened remarkably fast by the way, but wouldn’t it be kind of crazy to just go on our own and be sitting in the audience watching them perform and drive around the country without them thinking the whole time how much we like them and how much they like us?  Do you know what I mean?”

            “Of course I know what you mean.  But at the same time, I think it’s kind of crazy that we’ve just become attached to them after a few days and we would be touring around with them like we are supposed to be there.  We are going to have to leave them sometime, I mean we can’t leave Wisconsin and you move to California and me to Florida, which just won’t work.  And I feel really weird right now anyway falling in love with someone like this.  I keep thinking this is all some crazy ass dream and I’m going to wake up in our hotel room.”  Andrea paused and sighed.  She saw Nick motioning for her to get on the bus and her stomach turned upside down.  “After you and Alex talk you’ll have a better idea of where you two are headed.  Call me when you’re done and we will figure out what we are going to do, okay?”

            “10-4,” Annie joked as she walked onto AJ’s bus.  Andrea stepped onto Nick’s and the caravan of tour buses slowly pulled out of the hospital parking lot with Cincinnati as the destination. 

            “Come here baby and sit down,” AJ suggested to Annie as soon as the bus started moving.  Annie appeased him and took a seat next to him on the couch.  She turned her body so it was facing him and propped her leg up on the couch so she was sitting half Indian style with the other leg hanging off the couch.  She looks so cute when she sits like that Alex thought to himself.  Concentrate Alex, stop thinking cute thoughts about her, you have a job to do. 

            “Alex, I want to start, if that’s okay,” she told him.  If she was actually going to have this conversation, she wanted to have the leverage on it and control of it.  He just nodded, anxious to see what she had to say.  She took a deep breath, exhaled, and began.  “First of all, I want to apologize again for the way I acted in your hotel room last night.  I did not mean to freak out and leave.  I am not trying to make excuses for myself, but I want you to know I am not very good with confrontation and my instinct is to run away or avoid it.”  She stopped to catch her breath and regroup.  Why am I so nervous?  I feel like I am in the fourth grade and I’m giving my very first speech in front of my entire class or something. 

            She took a couple more deep breaths and continued.  “The reason I was so scared and afraid of being in a relationship with you is that I was hurt terribly by my ex-fiancé.  Like, to the point where I swore off relationships with men altogether after it happened.  You are the first person I’ve even gotten close to, other than one night stands or casual sex, since the breakup.  I’m not proud of how I’ve handled the whole situation with Antoine and the situation with you, but I really didn’t know any other way to until now.”  She stopped again, this time more for Alex than herself.  She wanted to give him a chance to interject if he felt so compelled to.

            “Can I ask what happened with you and Antoine?” he asked, poking fun at her ex’s name. 

            “You can ask,” she said smiling at him, “but before you say anything else about his name, you should know he was from France.  It’s not like his parents hated him and named him that out of spite or anything.”  They both chuckled a little bit, and it felt good to Annie to make fun of him.  Stupid bastard should rot in hell instead of having jokes made about his name though, she thought coldly, her eyes glazing over in anger.  AJ touched her leg and the anger instantaneously disappeared.  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.  “I still get really angry when I think about him.”

            “So what did he do to make you so angry?”

            “He cheated on me.  And not just cheated, like really dirty and low cheated.  He slept with his secretary, in our bed while I was at the studio producing a jingle for his company.”  AJ looked at her compassionately, his own guilt about being unfaithful to a few of his girlfriends rising in his throat.  “And,” she continued, “When her and her husband were over for dinner one night, she and Antoine had sex in my newly redecorated bathroom, which cost me a small fortune I might add, while I was making dinner and entertaining her husband because we didn’t know where they were!” 

            “Oh honey, I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” he said quietly, knowing first hand how much it hurts to be cheated on.  He’d seen that same look on his girlfriends’ faces, and he heard the same frustration in all their voices when they’d found out what he had done.  “I can understand now why you reacted the way you did at the thought of being in a possible relationship.”  He looked down at his hands, knowing that he had to come clean with her about his past infidelity issues…that is if she didn’t already know about them.  It was pretty much broadcast throughout the entire fucking world I think. 

            “What are you thinking about?” she asked him, seeing that his eyes had blank look about them. 

            “There’s something that I need to tell you,” he started, taking her hands in his.  “It’s not the person I am anymore, you have to trust me when I say that, but I made some mistakes in past relationships too.”

            “You cheated on a couple of your girlfriends, I know,” she said before he had a chance too.  “I may not be the biggest ‘know everything about the Backstreet Boys’ person in the world, but I do follow some stuff,” she said matter of factly.  “That was another reason I was so unsure about ‘us’.  I didn’t want to the adage of ‘once a cheater always a cheater’ to be proven by me.”  He continued to look down at his hands, and she hoped that she did not hurt him by what she said. 

            “I understand,” he simply said.  “I don’t blame you one bit.” He looked up and grabbed a hold of her by the arms, squeezing slightly.  “But you have to believe me that it’s not like that anymore; I’m not like that anymore!”  He was practically shaking her as he said it, as if he were desperate to prove it to her. 

            “Alex, I know that so much has changed in your life since then.  I am so proud of everything you’ve accomplished and changed in your life, and I do believe you when you say you’re not that person anymore.  I want to take this next step with you and move past just being friends with benefits.  I just have to convince myself that I can do this, convince myself that I can be in love again that not every man is the enemy.”  She made an evil face at the end, trying to get him to laugh.  It worked.

            “You’re so kooky and I love that about you,” he said as he pulled her into a hug.  “So, let me see if I got this right-you were hurt, you don’t want to be hurt again, you want to be in love again, and you want me to be the one you fall in love with?”  He smirked as he said it, waiting for her response.  She smiled, Alex unable to see because they were still embracing, and cleared her throat.  She turned her head so that her lips were brushing against his hot, tender ear lobes and her breath was beating down on his neck. 

            “I’ve already fallen in love with you,” she whispered sensually into his ear, quickly followed by a gentle nibble on his flesh.  “But other than that, you got it.”  She grabbed the hair on the back of his head and yanked it back, forcing him to turn his face toward hers.  She slammed her lips into his, her tongue plunging into his mouth and colliding with his tongue.  They kissed zealously, almost frantically, as if they were afraid the moment would end too soon. 

            When they finally broke apart, both were breathless and red with desire and perspiration.  Alex leaned into her again, as if he were going to repeat what they just experienced, but only grazed his lips against hers and moved on to her ear.  “I’ve already fallen in love with you too,” he moaned into her ear so low it made it vibrate.  A sigh escaped her lips, followed by a simple request. 

            “Will you do something with me that I haven’t done in a really long time?  Will you make love to me?”  The tone in her voice was so sincere and destitute, Alex knew exactly what she meant by her question.  She did not want to be fucked, or screwed, or boned, she wanted to romanced, taken care of, she wanted it to be deep and passionate, not cheap and casual. 

            Without saying a word, he grabbed her hand and led her to the bed in the back of the bus.  They made gentle, sweet, deep love until they both collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted, and completely satisfied.