Michelle grimaced as AJ held a towel wrapped with ice against her leg.
“It hurts,” she said.
“I know,” AJ replied. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey…” Michelle said softly. “Sorry for yelling at you.”
“No problem,” AJ muttered. He was still mad.
“You just need to watch where you’re going next time. Or drink less. And I thought you Backstreet Boys were perfect angels. Tsk tsk.”
AJ gave her a LOOK. “And why did you think that? Ya think we’re pussies?”
“No… it’s not that, it’s just… come on. ‘As long as you love me’? People who sing that don’t get drunk,” Michelle said.
“Well, we sang those kinds of songs when we still had our other management. But you wouldn’t know anything about that or our transition in our music, so I don’t expect you to understand,” AJ said.
“Touchy,” Michelle remarked. “So sorry.”
“Just be quiet and tell me when your leg stops hurting so I can find my girlfriend and get outta here,” AJ said.
“Girlfriend, huh? Is she one of those anorexic supermodels, or does she have really, really big boobs and a risqué’ wardrobe?”
AJ wanted to kill her.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. Hey… don’t look at me that way, I didn’t mean it.”
AJ shook his head in disbelief. No woman had ever talked to him this way before.
“When I was 4, I thought I was going to be a newswoman,” Gretchen told an amused Nick.
“Really? I always wanted to be a performer,” Nick said. “I don’t think there was anything else I wanted to do. Except maybe play basketball; it was a close second.”
Gretchen nodded. “Some people know right from the start what they’ll be, and some find out later.”
Nick glanced at his watch. “Oh gosh, it’s 2 AM! I had no idea, we’ve been talking for 2 hours.”
“Coming as the date of an ‘N Syncer, I didn’t expect to spend the night conversing with a dreaded Backstreet Boy ,” Gretchen said playfully.
“You don’t like us? You’re an ‘N Sync chick?” Nick asked, laughing.
“No, I love you guys!” she said. “I have all of your CDs, even the import one!” She blushed. “I sound like a teenybopper, huh?”
“Not at all,” he said. “You sound sweet.”
She looked down at the ground, all of a sudden feeling shy.
“Well, we’re fans of you too. We have two posters of you up in the tour bus,” Nick said.
Gretchen laughed. “Are you serious!!?”
“Totally. You’re beautiful.”
Gretchen nodded. “I can tell you’ve said that to a lot of girls.”
“No… I don’t say it if I don’t mean it,” Nick told her.
“We’ll see,” Gretchen replied.
“I wonder where everyone is. I’m sure AJ and Howie are out there dancing. Brian and Leighanne are probably sitting down somewhere sipping cokes, and Kevin’s probably found the oldest person on the room to talk to,” Nick said.
“It must be nice to know people inside and out. I hardly even know myself, much less other people,” Gretchen said, not smiling.
Nick tried to look her in the eyes, but she stared at the ground.
“So after… this… when am I going to see you again?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“When we leave here, I’m letting you know right now that I won’t be able to stop thinking about you. When can I see you again?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know… I’ll give you my cell phone and beeper number. We’ll plan something, ok?” she said.
“Good.”
“Do you always get what you want?” she asked smiling.
“Not always.”
When she saw one of her dancers, Krista, approaching, she knew it was time to go.
“Gretchen, we’re all heading back to the hotel.” Krista eyed Nick. “But if you want to stay later…”
“No, I need to go to sleep. We have an early flight in a few hours,” Gretchen said regretfully.
Nick turned to her. “It’s been very nice talking to you.” He motioned for a hug, and she embraced him… but then realized what she was doing and quickly pulled away.
“You have my number,” she said.
“And you have mine,” he replied. “I’ll call you, and that ain’t no lie, ok?”
She smiled. “OK. Bye Nick.”
She took a deep breath and walked away. Shame on her for giving in so easily. Nick would make a good friend; one to talk to when she was on tour and one who would listen to her and who understood how she felt. But anything more? No, she told herself. Not again. I will never let myself fall for someone so easily again. I can’t get burned that way. And besides, she thought. Nick just happens to have millions of girls pining for him, and he could get just about anyone he wanted to.
“It’s been… enlightening,” AJ said harshly.
“Yeah, yeah. Once again, AJ, I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. Forgive me?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t hold a grudge. See you around,” AJ said.
He saw Amanda asleep on a couch. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t come and found him.
“Babe, wake up,” he said, shaking her.
“Hmm?” she asked, drowsy.
“We need to find everyone and go home.”
“OK.”
AJ helped her up, and the two went off to find the rest of their group. Leighanne and Brian were talking to Puff Daddy and Jennifer Lopez when AJ and Amanda found them.
“We need to get going, dude,” AJ said to Brian. Brian nodded.
The 4 of them found Kevin and Howie sitting down talking to some girls. Nick had been wandering around trying to find them.
The 7 of them got into their limo and headed back to the hotel. Leighanne and Amanda were going to be leaving on flights in a few hours. The Backstreet Boys would be leaving for Canada the next night. As the limo went to the hotel, the guys and girls talked about the night’s events. Brian was in heaven after having a long conversation with Bryan McKnight, and Kevin was pretty happy with the flirting he had done, as was Howie. AJ told everyone about running into Michelle Colback.
“She’s a pretentious little brat and I hope her Oscar falls out of a window and breaks,” AJ snarled.
“I met her once, and she seemed pretty nice,” Howie said.
“She’s not. Trust me,” AJ said.
“What about you Nick? We didn’t see much of you all night,” Brian said.
Nick looked up, as if he had been in a trance. “What?”
“What did you do all night?”
“Oh… I talked with Gretchen Jones.”
“For 3 hours?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah. We lost track of time and… she’s really someone worth getting to know. We exchanged numbers and all.”
“Moving on from Mandy that quick, huh?” Leighanne asked. She and Mandy were sort of friends.
“No… it’s not that. Besides, tonight was the first time I talked to her. Give it some time.” Nick smiled fondly, and then said, mostly to himself, “She said she has all of our CDs. That was cute.”
“Oh no… he’s gone, he’s lost it,” AJ joked.
“I have not ,” Nick said defensively.
“I think he has,” Brian whispered to Kevin.
Nick just laughed. He had never “lost it” over a girl. This was going to be no exception.
Gretchen bit her lip as the plane lifted off. She opened her purse and pulled out the slip of paper that Nick had written his cell phone and beeper numbers on. She stared at it for a minute, and then put it away.
Krista sat next to her, asleep. The rest of her dancers were also on the plane. The band was not going to the charity concert, so Gretchen would have to sing live to pre-recorded music.
Krista stirred suddenly, and turned to Gretchen.
“So,” Krista said. “Now that I have a chance to talk to you, what happened with Nick Carter? What happened to JC?”
“I don’t know. I feel really guilty, because I left without telling him bye. I hope he’s not mad or anything. But anyway, me and Nick just talked for awhile. He’s the first person I’ve been able to talk to like that in awhile. But… I don’t know. I just felt and still feel kind of… happy, and frankly that scares me. I don’t want to start having feelings for someone again, and I don’t want to go through another heartache. I don’t know… and should I call him first? Or should I wait for him to call? Or what if he never calls? I will feel so stupid if he doesn’t call.”
“Calm down, Gretchen. I’m sure he will call you. When I came over to y’all, he was looking at you as if you were something special. And you are!! You don’t have anything to worry about, he’s absolutely smitten!”
“That’s something to worry about! Because I do like him, and if he is ‘smitten’ with me or whatever, I might start dating him, and then inevitably get my heart broken.”
“Gretchen, just because one guy broke your heart… devastated you… doesn’t mean that all guys will do that. Just… don’t fret about it, ok? Fate will lead you where you need to be. OK?” Krista asked.
“OK. Thanks, Kris. You make me feel a lot better.”
Michelle’s mother laughed as Michelle told her about what had happened with AJ.
“He sounds just like you- stubborn, feisty…” her mom said.
“Oh, mom…”
“I have to leave in an hour, I better start packing,” her mom said.
“Make sure you get Jennifer Love Hewitt’s autographed picture to Eric. He’s going to love me forever,” Michelle told her mother.
“You and your brother… I could never believe that a brother and sister so close in age could be so close. But you guys were special.” Her mom smiled fondly.
Michelle kissed her mother’s cheek. “Start packing. I’ll help you in a minute.”
Kevin was sitting with the rest of the guys at the airport when his cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello, can I speak to Kevin Richardson?” a deep, male voice asked.
“This is he, who’s speaking?”
“This is Dr. George Manning from Tampa Bay Hospital in Tampa, and I’m sorry to bother you if you’re busy, but knowing that you’re from Florida, and that your dad died from cancer, we here at the hospital were wondering if you would be willing and available to participate in this fundraiser we’re having. The proceeds will go to the research for finding a cure to different kinds of cancer, and having a celebrity who can really relate to the cause would make the results turn out wonderfully. The days of the fundraiser are October 17th and 18th… do you think you’d be able to come?”
“I would absolutely love to have a part in that, but I need to check our schedule first. Can you give me a number that I can get back to?”
The doctor gave Kevin a phone number, and as Kevin wrote it down, he felt this urgent, strong pull at him. Something that told him he just had to go to this fundraiser.
Kevin explained to the rest of the guys what was going on, and they all agreed that he should do it.
She was the youngest writer on the staff of PEOPLE magazine. At 25, writing for a magazine like that was a huge accomplishment. She had only been working for a local New Jersey newspaper for 2 years when she got hired for PEOPLE.
Now she was wishing she was back at the newspaper. She was supposed to find a last-minute idea for an article to go along with the week’s feature on Madonna. She just had no clue.
“Madonna’s about to have a baby… I guess I could write about her relationship with the baby’s father…” Kara turned to her laptop, and connected to the Internet. Within minutes of using a search engine, she had found enough information to write a decent article. Usually all the articles were worked on for longer than 2 hours, and by more than one person, but this was a last-minute thing that wasn’t important enough to be worked on by more than one person, but important enough to get Kara in trouble if she didn’t finish it on time.
2 hours later, Kara laid the finished article on her staff editor’s desk in a manila folder, locked up her office, and headed home. She lived a few minutes away from the PEOPLE office building in New York City. Her home was actually an apartment, which suited her fine. The salary she got was good, so she could afford to have a really nice apartment, and pretty car (a Mercury), a cat, and cable TV.
She dated casually, with different guys. They usually got freaked out when they found out how many brothers she had – six. And when they found out she was a 1st cousin of JC Chasez, a member of ‘N Sync (she didn’t do the name-dropping thing. They would see pictures and ask.), they’d ask if they could get Britney Spears’s autograph. It was all the same.
She had even attempted to date a member of ‘N Sync- Chris Kirkpatrick. Boy, had that not worked out!
Kara was a joker, one of those people that always had everyone around her laughing. Since Chris was like that too, they had got on well, and had gone on a few dates. It had stopped because, #1: JC didn’t like it. He was very protective of his older cousin, and #2: since neither Kara nor Chris were very serious people, the relationship would have never gotten serious. Both of them needed someone who was serious to keep them grounded.
“With my overprotective brothers and cousin, I’ll end up being an old maid.”
“Why are you being so quiet?” Gretchen asked.
“I need to tell you something,” Krista said.
“What is it?”
“Promise you won’t be mad?”
“Unless you killed somebody, I won’t be mad.”
“I wasn’t exactly honest with you…” Krista started. “You know how I told you that I didn’t know where JC went at the ET party?”
“Yeah…”
“I lied. He was… with me.”
“Huh?”
“I saw you talking to Nick, and you looked preoccupied, so I asked JC to dance. After that, we just danced all night. He’s an amazing dancer, Gretchen. You just wouldn’t believe… But we started talking… like you and Nick did, and we really clicked. I like him… Is th- is that okay?”
“Of course, Kris, I have no claim on him. You know that! Go right ahead.”
Krista beamed. “I’m glad you said that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Dr. Manning? This is Kevin Richardson.”
“Ah, Kevin. It’s great to hear from you! Do you think you’ll be able to come?”
“Definitely. We’re off that particular week, so I’ll come down and help y’all out.”
“Great! Absolutely great! Let me give you some details…”
Kevin listened intently. The fundraiser was going to a telethon of sorts. It would be held by the hospital, and Kevin would promote it. Hopefully, they would raise a lot of money.
A senior at Florida State University, Lynnsey was majoring in nursing. But she hadn’t been spending day and night at the hospital for extra research… it was much more serious than that. 2 weeks earlier, Lynnsey’s dad, Mark, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He had been a smoker from the age of 18 to 32, and he had stopped when Lynnsey was born. Now 54, he was on chemotherapy and radiation. The radiation was to shrink a tumor in his throat. The tumor was not cancerous. The doctors told Lynnsey’s mom, Gina, and Lynnsey, the only child, that there was good reason to be optimistic… they didn’t think the cancer had spread too far. Still, her dad could only breathe with an oxygen mask for awhile, and he looked deathly pale. Lynnsey felt like a wreck- worrying about school and her dad was getting to her.
‘I want to get away, I just wanna fly away.’ The Lenny Kravitz song ran through her head endlessly.
She still had a term paper to write and two more chapters of the book to read, but that didn’t seem important anymore. She grabbed her purse, left the dorm, and headed to the hospital.