Chapter Six: Inner Most Thoughts of a Love-sick Pop Star

“It’s 3am, I can’t sleep. Too late to call, this is not like me. But I’m still lifted from the tattoo on the small of your back. The angle of your chin when you were looking back……… Your fingernails running down my spine. All I day I hear your voice like velvet in my mind…… My children in your eyes, something you don’t expect. I had to stop myself from calling all day long. I’m glad you called me first, I wanted to be strong. But you were laughing ‘cause I answered after just one ring. I tried to play it off, but you knew everything.” (**Last Night You Saved My Life – BSB)

Nick tossed and turned looking over at his clock mentally calculating how much longer he had to sleep. It was well past 3AM now and he had to be at a meeting with E! at 9AM but he had to leave early to go pick Aaron and his sisters up on the way.

He hated sleeping alone. For the past two months he hadn’t been forced to, sleeping over at Alyssa’s on the weekends and she stayed over during the week, especially on days when she had to teach. Bobbie had been staying over taking care of Layla anytime he’d been staying over at Alyssa’s. She’d opted to sleep in the downstairs guest room to give Alyssa and him some privacy. He loved having his sister stay with him

But now he had to sleep alone again, not have the warmth of Alyssa’s body next to his, having to wonder why she was so afraid. She’d told him that they were moving too fast again. Hell half of her clothes were being kept at his place while half of his were at hers, just so that they could have a change of clothes. The words she said still rang in his ears.

Two weeks earlier…

Nick stared at her in disbelief, “What do you mean take a break?”

Alyssa sighed, “I mean exactly that, we’re going too fast again, hell we’re practically living together again, half of our closets are in each other’s places.”

Nick put his head in his hands not knowing what else he could do.

Alyssa sat down next to him, “Just for a little while, we need to make sure that this is really what we want.”

Nick looked at her, “Make sure this is what we want, or make sure that this is what you want?” He asked, he had to, he couldn’t not know if she was having second thoughts and doubting their love.

She looked at her hands and replied, “We need time apart. We’ve been nearly inseparable for over a year and a half now. I just…… I’m not used to this kind of intimacy, being so close to someone that I feel like all I have to do is look at you and know what you’re thinking.”

Nick made her look in his eyes seeing such profound fear clouding her eyes, “Is that a bad thing?”

“No, it’s just scaring the hell out of me. Nick I’m 22 years old, I shouldn’t be thinking about how amazing of a father you’re going to make or how much I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

He grinned a little, “Don’t you think it scares me too? That I’m this serious about someone? I don’t want to live without you, not again.”

“We’re not breaking up, we just need to get our heads cleared, when we’re together all we end up doing is each other. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful, but we need a life outside of us. You need to hang with the guys, I need to hang with my girls. We each need to know when to back away from each other and be individuals instead of Nick and Ali. No one ever says one of our names without the other attached it’s like we’ve become one person in everyone else’s eyes.”

He could feel the disappointment rise up in him, “You do love me right?”

She smiled at him, “Yes I love you, with all my heart. I just need time, away from us as a couple, but we’re not breaking up, just slowing down, if we keep going at the rate we are now, within a month I’ll be living back in your house and hell if we’re not careful we might do something really irrational.”

He gave her a confused look, “Like what?”

“Like get married, or get pregnant before we’re ready to. Because I’m not ready yet, I love you, I want to be with you, but I’m not ready for all of that yet. You understand right?”

He took her hand lacing their fingers, “Yeah I do, so how does this plan work?”

End flashback…

And so far the plan hadn’t been working, at least from where he was sitting. He hated the situation they were restricted to seeing each other only once a week, not including weekends. However in a way he noticed a change in how they acted towards each other since the plan had gone into effect. They laughed more, went out a hell of a lot more, talked for hours and hours on end like they used to before they ever let their hearts take control over the relationship.

He noticed that she seemed happier to see him, more receptive when he lavished affection on her in public. Like she was beginning to appreciate him more and more.

Hell even the sex had gotten better, which he thought was nearly impossible to top in the first place. They seemed to touch, kiss, and move with more urgency, more passion like there was a time clock ticking down the seconds they had left together.

He thought this was because they had yet to spend a full night together. Usually after they made love and relaxed for a while, Alyssa would get up, get dressed, saying she had work to do, that she loved him and walk out. She never let him come over much anymore unless it was to pick her up, mostly because she knew he wouldn’t want to leave, and would put up a fight for it.

No one seemed to understand Alyssa’s behavior, and he’d been to pretty much everyone he knew. Kevin and Kristin told him that she’s scared, to give her time. ‘Yeah thanks a lot’ he’d replied angry because he already knew that. He wanted a reason why she was so God damn scared, why she was deliberately pushing him farther and farther away.

Brian and Leighanne just shrugged completely bewildered. Chris, David, James and Brent would just slide another beer in his direction. Alex, well Alex told him that she might be cutting again, which sent him into a frenzy searching her arms, legs, everything, even her apartment to see if she was indeed cutting again, which of course she wasn’t. Olivia simply said ‘because she’s being stupid’.

Yeah, that helps. He rolled his eyes at the thought.

Kellie and Lori were mystified and rather pissed off at Alyssa for this turn of events. They went on and on about how she needs to stop over analyzing every single thing and just feel and go from there. Yeah, he definitely agreed there, but still no explanation.

Jenna had posed the idea that Alyssa was afraid of letting her heart take over, letting the seriousness of her feelings really take hold. She said if they did then he wouldn’t have to wonder if she were ready or not to settle down that she’d be planning things already. And to him that made a little bit of sense but still not much in the way of deciphering his girlfriend’s weird behavior.

The best one he’d gotten was from Mary…

Four days ago…

“Mary I can’t understand it, one minute we’re so close to being fully back together, and so happy, then the next she’s like ‘no we’re moving too fast’. I don’t get it!” Nick exclaimed exhausted just from spitting everything out.

Mary thought a moment as Nick looked around the room hoping she hadn’t hung up on him. “Darlin,” She began, “It’s her father.”

“What?”

“She’s not over his death. She’s pushing you away because she’s afraid that you’re going to be taken away from her.”

In Alyssa logic, it made sense, in normal people logic, complete mystery. “But we had that conversation right after he died, that I wouldn’t let anything like that happen to us.” Nick countered playing devil’s advocate.

Mary sighed, “I know honey, I know. But she’s pushing you away for the same reason. It’s not the whole reason but it’s part of it.”

“Do you know the rest of it?”

“I think it may have to do with Brandon. She connects with him the way she connected with you when you two were friends. And I think she’s afraid that means she doesn’t love you like she knows she does.”

End Flashback…

Brandon…

That could be a reason, but she promised him that nothing was going on, that they were only friends. But he couldn’t say that the whole Brandon situation didn’t make him just the least bit jealous. Nick had been preparing for the worst since she told him she needed a break.

That she could be with Brandon when she wasn’t with him, that she could be falling in love with him and confused and scared about who she loved more. He shook his head, he knew Alyssa better than that. Sure she might screw up, over think things to the point where she made a decision that hurt herself and everyone she loved but she wouldn’t do something that stupid right?

She might end up sleeping with Brandon.

No, he couldn’t think about that, he didn’t want to have to share that part of her with anyone else, least of all some pretty boy actor. What does Brandon have that he doesn’t? Definitely doesn’t have more money, nope fame wasn’t a factor…

He shouldn’t hate Brandon, the guy had been nothing but nice to him, telling him how lucky they both were to have found such wonderful women. Brandon had a girlfriend, he didn’t seem like the disloyal type right? Nick wasn’t the disloyal type either but Alyssa had been the only girlfriend he had ever had that he didn’t end up cheating on.

Amanda, what a disaster that had been, both had chalked it up to being young and stupid. Tiffany, the fact that he rarely ever saw her, and that she was rebound girl number two since Amanda, explained that dating catastrophe.

More than half the women after her were just sex, an object he used to give himself pleasure and tossed away afterwards. He had everything he wanted in a girlfriend in Alyssa back then, except for any physical perks that comes with a relationship, so he kept her for the emotional connection he craved, and countless numbers of others for the physical desires he thought he and Alyssa could never share.

Then Paris came along, girl made him crazy, she was sweet, the perfect girlfriend the first few months they started dating, but she grew bored as she so often does and started to create drama. Cheating on him and having a ‘friend’ leak it to the tabloids, then writing him love letters vowing that she’d never stray from him again, that she’d found her match in him that there was and never could be anyone else. He’d fallen for it once, maybe twice, but after that he stopped caring, started cheating hiding it at first only telling her what he did to see her get a hurt look on her face, like she’d done to him so many times.

And who was there, the entire time standing by his side telling him that everything happened for a reason, that maybe she wasn’t the girl for him? Alyssa, the one he knew he loved, knew he wanted to marry, have kids with, grow old with. But even all that security he had in her seemed to be on thin ice.

Nick turned to the clock again seeing it was nearly 6AM. Damn, now he had to be awake, and alert. He sighed getting up turning off his alarm he’d set the night before going into the bathroom to take a shower. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to spend another sleepless night without her.