“Yo.” AJ snapped his fingers in front of Nick’s face before finally resorting to flicking his earlobe.
Grabbing it in the response of pain, Nick rubbed his ear. “What?”
“Where were you just now?” AJ leaned back in his chair at their table and fiddled with his fork.
“No where.” Nick rubbed his nose and avoided AJ’s glare by picking up the restaurant’s menu and looking at it.
“Why are you looking at that?” AJ asked.
“For food.” Nick mumbled.
“Funny how we just ordered five minutes ago,” AJ flicked his hand in the air. “And then you went away.”
Nick didn’t respond. He crossed his ankles and laced his fingers behind his neck, stretching. The patio of café Rumba wasn’t that crowded for lunch, probably due to the cloudy weather today. Nashville reminded Nick a lot of L.A., except with a lot less smog and a little bit more class. He had grown into really like this city and the time they had spent here for their albums and finding songwriters. But he couldn’t enjoy much of anything lately and he couldn’t figure out why.
“You were thinking about her again, huh?” AJ said all of the sudden.
Nick was going to say no, but the look AJ shot him over his iced tea made him change his mind. He sighed, defeated. “Yeah.” Nick followed that answer with a shrug. “I just wish I knew why.”
“Who was she again?” AJ asked before whispering, “Damn, I am hungry…”
“Are you seriously going to listen to me, or just pretend?” Nick snapped.
AJ brought his attention back from searching for their waiter and nodded his head. He took off his sunglasses to show Nick his full listening potential – which impressed Nick. Letting down the gate of his bad mood a little bit, he started to ramble.
“I just keep having these dreams, and they’re either about times when we were kids, or she’s just placed in them randomly, without any meaning. And then I’ll see something on TV, or hear a song I haven’t heard in forever, or talk to someone, and I’ll end up thinking about her. When I was going out to L.A. to shoot for E! and I took some stuff out of storage, I found pictures of us I didn’t even know I still had. It’s like she’s everywhere.”
“That sounds like you’re talking about someone else that shall not be named.” AJ pursed his lips in a warning, shaking his head.
Nick responded with rolling his eyes. “Dude, shut up.”
“You’re the one with the tattoo.” AJ tapped his own wrist, referring to Nick’s inscription of “Old Habits Die Hard”.
“She’s not like that.” Nick replied with annoyance. “She’s not like anyone.”
“Wow.” AJ said with such genuine surprise he didn’t even look at his lunch when it was finally placed in front of him. He reached for the ketchup bottle without taking his eyes off of Nick and began to dump it onto his fries. “What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know.” Nick hung his head and didn’t even feel like beginning to touch his food.
“Is this the girl you keep a picture of in your wallet?” AJ inquired with a mouth full of hamburger.
“How did you know about that?” Nick inquired.
“Brian mentioned it one time. But he said you were real closed off about her.”
Nick nodded and pulled his it out. “Yeah. That’s her. Wanna see her?”
“Of course.” AJ gently took the picture out of Nick’s hands and held it closely to his face.
“That was ten years ago. I don’t know what she looks like now.”
“It doesn’t matter, she is gorgeous.”
“Don’t get any food on it.” Nick ordered.
AJ went to hand the picture back to Nick, but retracted and studied it more closely. “I’m not. I never heard you mentioned her – what’s her name again?”
“Bree.” Nick raised an eyebrow at AJ. “What are you looking so long at?”
“I don’t know, just something about her tells me she’s a really nice girl. I think it’s her eyes.”
Nick scrunched his forehead. “She was. She is.”
“So how come you never talked about her but we knew every gory detail of all your other ladies?” AJ inquired as he stuck a fry in his mouth.
“I’m not sure.”
“Interesting.” AJ observed.
“What?”
“I’ve just never encountered this with you before. You say she’s just a friend?”
Afraid AJ was going to break out into a rendition of Biz Markie, Nick spat out: “That’s what I say.”
“But you don’t know any more.” AJ ventured. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Nick reached across the table and claimed his picture back from AJ. Taking a moment to lay out the memory in his mind, Nick glanced back over at his friend. “You really want to know?”
AJ softened his expression. “I do.”
“Around ten years ago – we were on a small break and I came back home after about a year of being on the road. We had only been writing back and forth to one another and hadn’t done so in a couple of months, but she came to see me. Mandy had just broken up with me, again, or we had gotten to some big fight or something but – I wasn’t in the best mood and knew seeing Bree would cheer me up.”
“Right.”
“Not that way.”
“Did I say that?”
“No, but your mind is always half in the gutter, if not completely.”
“Nick, I’m thirty years old. Can’t you believe that I’ve grown up a little?”
Nick looked at AJ sideways for a second before smirking. “Whatever. Anyway, so she came to see me at my house.”
“Did you do it?”
Nick sighed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m joking. It was a joke.” AJ swallowed his food. “Go on. No more interruptions from the peanut gallery.”
Nick picked at the bun of his chicken sandwich. To sour his mood even more, ever since he had lost his forty or so pounds he couldn’t eat exactly what he wanted anymore. He had grown accustomed it and really liked the healthy new him, but in times like this, when his was down, he just wanted a freaking cheeseburger. Plus, he now had to complete the task of censoring the night so that AJ would in no way be picturing it in his head. He didn’t need the mind of AJ, or any of his band mates for that matter, turning his private thoughts over and over until they felt as if they had been there. It made him a little uneasy just thinking about what he was going to say next.
“Yeah, we did.”
AJ’s brown eyes expanded as he paused in surprise. “I said it was a joke.”
“She was going away to college and I didn’t know when I would see her again. I had this whole idea in my head that she was my soul mate or some crazy shit like that.”
“And you were wrong?”
“I was eighteen and I was really naïve…I felt that she had known me before I became rich and famous, so therefore she must love the real me. Not the Nick up on stage, not the Nick in the recording studio, not the Nick in the glossy stupid magazines, but me.”
“I understand exactly what you mean.” AJ nodded. “But how do you know that’s not true anyway? Regardless of your ideals of love back then?”
“I don’t know, anymore. I never got a chance to find out.”
“How come?”
“Because I never spoke to her after that.”
AJ smacked his own forehead. “Are you serious? Did you not see that girl in the picture? Did you not just confess how much you were in love with her?”
Nick straightened in his chair. “I didn’t say I was in love with her, AJ. I don’t know what I am…was…were…whatever. This is why I can’t tell you shit.”
“Why, because I’m smart?” AJ took the check presented to him from the waiter. “I’m not letting you pay for this. You’re too pathetic right now for me to let you pay for your own meal.”
Nick’s tension in his body dissipated a bit and he rubbed his face from exhaustion. He knew AJ was right – not about the being in love part, but definitely about being stupid. Despite the manner in which AJ went about it, Nick understood he was being the brother to him he always was. All the other guys were married off and starting families – AJ was the last one who could really relate to his problems. Nick felt a moment of gratitude for that and gave AJ a small smile.
“Thanks, man.” Nick said. “How can I get rid of all this so I can get on with my life here?”
“Well,” AJ began. “If you can’t stop thinking about something, maybe there’s a reason why.”
“You think I should call her or something?” Nick asked and anxiety was already making its way into his body.
“No, I think this calls for much more than a phone call. Where is she living now? You should go see her before we’re back in studio again and you won’t have any time.”
“Wait a second.” A flash of clarity came into Nick’s head. “I think she might be here, in Tennessee.”
“It’s fate.” AJ folded his hands across his chest, satisfied.
“That’s a crazy coincidence…” Nick replied as he pulled his Blackberry out his pocket. “I could be wrong though. I swear my mom sent me an email about it.”
Thumbing through what was mostly meaningless emails, Nick found the piece he was looking for. His mother had forwarded him an email from Bree’s mom about a week ago, giving the family updates and happening to mention that Bree was in town to see her. Nick couldn’t believe his mother who had been estranged from him before had this much intuition about his feelings lately. Nick tried to recall if he had asked about Bree in a recent phone call at all, trying to get some sort of current information about her to soothe his thoughts. Whatever the chain of events leading up to this opportunity, Nick didn’t care. He just now how to gather up some sort of bravery to go out and see her.
“Just don’t put too much on it, okay, buddy?” AJ said with concern. “I don’t know what you expect, but either way, it’s not going to go the way you planned. It never does.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t go.” Nick sighed. “This is probably just a phase since – I’m over all this dating bullshit and I guess I’m just trying to loop back to people that meant a lot to me, trying to find the right one.”
“For the love of God, please don’t go back to everyone.” AJ pleaded. “Let’s just start with Bree and work our way up, skipping a lot along the way.”
Nick tapped his chin in thought, silently amused to AJ’s desperate plea. “Okay.”
“Okay!” AJ exclaimed and stood up from the table. “You go see her, and I will go back to the hotel and what I do best: sit on my ass and wait.”
“What do I say to her, though?” Nick asked as they made their way to the car. “‘Sorry I never talked to you again after I slept with you, but hey, how are things?’”.
AJ pulled out his keys and unlocked the black SUV. “Why did you never talk to her, anyway?”
“I was freaked out. That next morning, she said she wanted to be more than friends with me.” Nick confessed. “She wanted to try out a relationship, even though it would’ve been long distance. She laid it all out on the line for me – she told me the other guys she’d dated through high school she always compared to me and they never matched up.”
“That’s some heavy stuff.” AJ commented. “But she was a young girl, you know, maybe she just got caught up in the moment. Were you her first?”
“I don’t think so, no.” Nick went on. “But I just couldn’t see us working out without destroying our friendship. We parted on good terms with the understanding that everything would go back to normal. But I got back together with Mandy, we went back on tour, and she went away to college. I stopped trying to keep in touch with her. I just felt too bad. I felt like I had broken her heart, and I couldn’t face her.” Nick looked over from the passenger’s seat to AJ. “I’m a coward, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re not.” AJ replied. “You’re going tonight. You’ll work it all out.”
Despite AJ's uncondtional yet sometimes twisted support, Nick still doubted himself. As they rolled along the highway back to their hotel, Nick tried to script a dialogue in his head. After five minutes or so, he realized it was totally pointless since he couldn't even fathom what Bree would say back to him. Would she turn him away? Would she yell and scream? Would she cry? Dear God, please don't let her cry. He might've become jaded over the time they spent apart and been through more than most people in a life time, but he knew he couldn't see her cry. He would have to take this on faith. A huge, giant, chasm-size leap of faith.
Author's Chapter Notes:
[ I'm so bad at picking chapter names x) ]
Chapter End Notes:
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