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Brian slowly regained consciousness, his mind still hazy from fainting. He looked up and saw Holly shouting his name.
"Yeah… ok… jut let me get up," he slowly rose to his feet and shook his head. "Wow! That was weird!"
"I didn't think you'd FAINT when you saw my room!" Holly said worriedly, her brow furrowing.
"Well it's quite the room," Brian joked, remembering what had made him faint.
"Yeah," Holly mumbled, her face reddening. "Well… we don't have to go in there,"
"No! I want to," Brian smiled. "With all that hard work you put into it, it'd be a shame not to!" They walked into her room and Brian took in the sight in front of him. The first thing he noticed was the floor. The entire carpeted floor was a repeated image of his own face. He turned to Holly questioningly.
She grinned sheepishly. "It cost me a fortune, but I got your picture scanned onto my entire carpet!" He noticed the walls next. They were typical of some of the pictures fans had sent him. Every inch of the walls and ceiling was plastered with posters of him.
"Do you like the other guys too?" Brian asked.
"Yeah! Of course! I have lots of their posters and stuff too, it's just that you… you're my favourite," her face flushed with embarrassment. She had never expected him to ever see her room! Suddenly her face went white and she ran over to her desk and tipped over a framed picture. She glanced toward Brian, seeing that he hadn't noticed. He was too busy admiring the rest of her room.
"I see," Brian said. "Wow! Look at these!" He said, walking over to a shelf on one of the walls. There were five handmade dolls, one of each of the Backstreet Boys. Brian immediately picked up the one of himself. "You really made this realistic!" he said, pulling up one of the sleeves to reveal his tattoo.
"Yeah… I even did your tattoo," she said. "It's got the necklace, too. You know that cross one you always used to wear?"
"Yeah," Brian said. "I can't believe I lost it!"
"You can have the doll if you'd like," Holly offered.
"Nah," Brian said. He saw the look on her face and quickly apologized. "Not that I don't like it! It's great, actually. It's just that you spent so much time on it, and I wouldn't want to take it away from you! Plus, with me travelling so much, I'd probably lose it."
"Yeah, I guess so," Holly agreed. She walked over to the east corner of the large room. A computer sat on a desk cluttered with scraps of paper on which Holly had jotted numerous things.
"Do you have a computer?" Holly asked, turning to Brian.
"No, but sometimes I use Nick's. He's more into that stuff than I am," Brian said, picking up the mouse and turning it over. He rolled the ball around with his thumb then set the mouse back down on the desk.
"I have two websites. One for the Backstreet Boys as a whole and one dedicated to Brian… I mean, you," she chuckled. "Never in my entire life did I think I'd meet a Backstreet Boy… least of all you. I've never even been to a concert! This is so overwhelming…"
"Don't give me so much credit!" Brian laughed. "You make me sound like a god, or something!" She said nothing, but looked at him.
"You don't honestly think that highly of me, do you?" he asked, seriously.
"You have no idea how few people are even half-decent anymore," Holly said sadly, hanging her head. "You're one of those few."
"How could you possibly know?" Brian asked. "I mean, you just met me yesterday!"
"I've watched interview after interview you've done, I've read tons of articles, I've read the songs you've written-" Holly began.
"That's not always the real me," Brian denied. "It's hard to be yourself when you know the entire world is watching. You don't want to say anything bad."
"Yeah, but some of your true personality has to have shone through after this many years," Holly argued. "It would be impossible for me to have been watching you for this long, and not have a clue who you really are."
"You have a point there," Brian agreed. "It still feels strange when a fan comes up and practically tells me my life story, and yet I don't even know her name," Brian pondered.
"I get that, but a little differently," Holly said, taking a deep breath before plunging on with her schpiel. “When I'm on the Internet, I never use my real identity. I always use an alter ego. She's the same age as me, she lives in the same place, but just because I use a different name, I feel like I'm living a lie. It seems like no one really knows anything about me at all, just because I use an alias."
"I never use one," Brian said. "No one ever believes me anyway, so it's ok to say I'm Brian Littrell."
"Has anyone ever thought you were telling the truth?" Holly asked, sitting down on her bed.
"I think a lot of people want to believe, but deep down in the back of their minds, they know it can't really be me," he answered. "When we used to have a fanclub, I called this one fan who had written me a letter. I talked to her for a good half-hour, but the whole time, she was in complete denial. Even up until the very end, she still thought it was some prank her friends had pulled on her," he laughed, remembering the event.
"I see her point, though," Holly commented. "Short of meeting me in the flesh, there's nothing you could have possibly done that would prove to me that you're who you say you are."
"What makes you think that?" Brian asked, moving to sit beside her on her bed, covered by a Backstreet Boys comforter.
"I'm a fan," she started. "Anything I know about you, someone else knows. Before yesterday, there was nothing that only you and I knew."
"You mean there is now?" Brian asked, propping up his chin with his hand.
"Yeah. If you called me a month from now and told me 'hey, it's me, the guy who told you to climb down the trellis', I'd know it was you," she explained.
"I see," Brian said. "I'll have to do that sometime."
"Do what?" Holly asked, dumbfounded. "Call me?" The last words barely squeaked out of her mouth.
“Yeah! Why not?" Brian assured her.
"I-I didn't think you kept in touch with fans!" she protested.
Brian looked around the room, then eyed her, suspiciously. "You call yourself 'a fan'?"
"Well… well what else does it look like?" she asked, her expression perfectly serious.
"It looks like an episode of FANatic, that's what!" Brian chuckled.
“Episode of FANatic? What's that?” Holly question, pondering what he meant. “Well, I guess I am a bit fanatical and extreme," she nodded her head in agreement.
"I was just talking about a show on MTV," Brian explained, without going into details. "So are we gonna go shopping, or what?" he asked, raising himself from the bed.
Holly said nothing, but stared at the spot where Brian had just been sitting. "You SAT on my bed."
"I sat on your bed," Brian repeated, smiling. He reached over and took her hand to help her up. Her gaze settled on his hand, and she froze with the realization of who she was actually talking to. She made no movement to take his gesture, but continued staring at his hand.
Brian leaned in so close that Holly could feel his hot breath on her neck. "You know, I'm a regular person," he drawled in his sweet southern accent. Their gazes met for a moment, and Holly blushed. She looked down in embarrassment, but when she rose her head, he was still there. She moved her face a little closer to his until their noses touched. She was about to kiss him when her conscience kicked in.
"I-I guess it hasn't really hit me until now," she mumbled, leaning back and letting him pull her up off the bed. "But I suppose you're only a normal person, right? You must find all fans pretty weird to plaster your face all over the place."
"I'm only a normal person?" Brian asked, hurt.
"No! I didn't mean it that way! I mean, you don't have a huge ego or anything like a lot of stars," Holly explained.
A thoughtful expression came over Brian's face, and he looked up at the ceiling. "Even after all these years, it still feels strange to be called a star. I don't think I fit into the whole star persona."
"I'm glad you don't," Holly said. "I couldn't have my man acting conceited!"
"Oh, so I'm your man now?" Brian asked, his eyes widening.
"Yup!" Holly joked.
"So are we gonna get this shopping done or what?" Brian asked, and they left the house a few minutes later. As much as Brian was eager to get back to his life with Leighanne, thoughts of Holly lingered in the back of his mind. He still wasn't sure: was she really his soul mate?
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