I never thought it would have lasted as long as it did. Bobbee, to me, always seemed like a fickle person, someone who would hang around you as long as she was getting out of you what she wanted. In some ways, she was fickle. She did use her relationship with JC to get her foot in the publishing business, even if it was just with some teeny mag. But that can be forgiven. Because the rest of the time, she was good for JC. She kept him balanced, kept him grounded, kept him from flying off into the clouds wrapped up in his ambitions. Most of all, she gave him a sense of normalcy.

Normalcy, he needed, because JC is basically a dork. A talented dork, in fact. The kind of guy who could put his passion into anything he decided to do. If he wanted to paint, I'm sure he could. If he wanted to be a professional rock climber, I'm sure he could. If he wanted to create religious mosaics for the walls of churches, I'm damn sure he could. And he would be good at all of it, eventually, because JC wasn't the type who did something half-assed, that is, if he could keep the things going on in his mind in check.

He's a messy perfectionist. He likes things his way, and wants to keep things all neat and organized, but he'll let his surroundings get cluttered, especially while he works on whatever he's currently pouring himself into. Take songwriting, for instance. He's got notebooks full of songs, some only half-written, and others just fragments -- songs that came to him in the middle of the night, songs that he wrote while inspiration hit him on the bus. The notebooks are always a mess though, with pages sticking out or the binding ripped off. He's got a box full of these notebooks that he carries around with him most of the time, sometimes in a backpack, most of the time just in the box. To me, it's not very organized, but you just know, just -know- that if he were to suddenly think of something he wrote once, he would know in exactly which notebook to find it and what page it is on.

He's also forgetful and he loses track of time. He almost missed an interview once because he stayed on the bus playing away at his keyboard for hours. Sometimes I wake up in the early morning and just to go back to sleep, but not before I realize that he's still awake, scratching away in his notebook, headphones on, oblivious that the sun is about to come up. But does he ever almost miss a sound check or dance rehearsal? Nope. Never.

I don't know what kept him focused before Bobbee came along. All I know, is that he fell apart when she left him.

He was fine the first couple of days, or at least he seemed fine. He didn't talk about it, which was expected, except to say that they broke up. We all said we were sorry, and all offered our ears if he needed someone to talk to about it. He said he would be okay. He was doing the macho thing by not letting us know that he was dying inside. He sucked it up and was his normal eccentric self for the interviews we had to do, for the public appearances we had to make to hype the new album. But once we were let go for a break before we had to continue prepping for the tour, he cracked. He didn't leave the house for a week, he didn't return his phone calls. The only indication that he was still alive is that sometimes he left the bathroom light on all night, and one afternoon I saw him step out onto his front porch to collect the pile of mail and newspapers that had gathered there. I waved at him from my front lawn, which I had been mowing -- he gave me a forced smile and a limply raised hand, then sank back into the house.

That's when I realized I needed to do something -- to intervene in the scuffle that normal JC was having with mopey JC. I thought about sending flowers, knowing how JC liked to keep a fresh vase atop his piano. But I also knew that he liked calla lilies, which seemed a little too closely associated with death and mourning for me to send. And then flowers might give him the wrong impression anyway.

So I just went over there, with no warning. I let myself in, because I was sure JC wouldn't get up to answer, and besides, I had a key. And it was after noon, so I was at least somewhat justified when I burst into JC's room and launched myself on the bed. The lump that was JC under the covers stirred, but nothing more.

"JC?" I said, poking him in the back. "Are you alive under there?"

JC groaned.

"Hello?" I continued to poke at him.

"Sorry, wrong number. JC doesn't live here anymore," JC said. He nestled further under the blankets.

"Hmm," I said. "I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way." I smacked JC in the ass before standing up and ripping the covers off the bed.

I ignored him when he screeched, "Hey! Dammit!" and proceeded to shiver as he was only wearing boxers.

"You need to get out of bed," I said. I pulled on his ankle to drag him onto the floor.

"Cut it out, fucker," JC said, still yelling and clinging to the mattress. "I don't have to get out of bed if I don't WANT to."

"JC, you've been in bed for days." Tug. "You have to get up." Tug. "This isn't healthy." Tug.

"Fuck healthy," JC said. He let go of the mattress and I tugged him again. He landed hard on his butt. "I just want to lay here and fester. Fester, fester, fester." He grabbed a pillow to defend himself in case I attacked again.

"JC? What is wrong with you?" I said and sat down on the now empty bed.

"I don't know," JC said. Which was a big, fat lie. He knew exactly what was wrong. He missed her, intensely.

"Okay. Okay," I said. JC was about to get back up on the bed, and a big grin spread across my face. "What do I have to do to get you out of bed?"

"Hrmph. I don't like that look, Joey," he said.

"How about we go out today, and do anything that you want," I said.

"I don't want to do anything," JC said and sat down next to me.

I put my arm around him and rubbed his shoulder. "Come, on. There must be something you want to do."

"Umm. Let's have a sleep marathon?" JC said.

"Except that."

"You figure out something to do then, because all I want to do is sleep," he said.

"Okay then." I pushed JC towards the bathroom. "I'm going to go downstairs and make breakfast. I want you to shower and be down there in ten minutes."

JC turned around and leaned into my face, standing at attention. "Yes sir."

I turned away. "And brush your goddamn teeth -- your breath smells like roadkill."

JC clapped his hand over his mouth and laughed a little as he shut the bathroom door. I heard him turn on the shower and sigh, and then heard a larger sigh, probably after stepping under the water. I wanted to say, "And stop thinking about Bobbee," but I had been listening for a little too long, heard him moan, and decided I really didn't need to know why he did.

He came downstairs clean but not quite shaven. He poured himself a cup of coffee and I pushed a plate in front of him.

"You did want breakfast, didn't you?" I said.

"Of course I do. I wouldn't miss out on Joey's special scrambled eggs on toast." He cut into the toast and eggs with his fork. "You know, I still haven't figured out your secret ngredient."

"And you never will," I said and hid the pan from view as I sprinkled shredded parmesan cheese into my serving of eggs. I always had to sneak a zip-lock bag of it into his house whenever I made it because he would never keep something like that handy.

When I sat down across from him, I saw that he was eating slowly, chewing deliberately. That possibly meant that it had been a day or two since he last ate. I looked over his face, still hard in the right places, but soft around the eyes. I thought he'd look more worn or pale after a week of doing nothing. But he looked like he always did -- his skinny usual self, high cheek bones making him look a bit like a work of art, except for the presence of chin fuzz, which always seemed the embryonic beginnings of another goatee.

As he lifted his fork to his mouth, he looked up at me. "Okay, so you're looking at me like you want to ask me something," he said and chewed a little more quickly.

"Um, no," I said and forced my eyes down on the plate. "Just looking."

JC dropped his fork and it clanged on the plate. "Hey! There's cheese in this!" He tilted his head at me. "I think I've figured out your secret."

"Maybe," I said. "But what kind of cheese is it?"

JC looked through all the junk in his garage and found that the only ball that wasn't flat was a soccer ball. "It'll do," he said and tossed the ball through the open window before getting in the car. Behind us, our bodyguard was pulling up, and he waved his hand out from the tinted windows. Even though it was the middle of the week and the park was bound to be empty, it was probably a good idea to have him follow us around. You never know how closely some people are watching and following you.

The park was quiet, as I had suspected, save for a few people walking their dogs, taking their powerwalks. Our bodyguard sat back in the shade while JC and I stepped out onto the sunny grass.

"We should make up a game," I said and adjusted my sunglasses. JC was wearing a pair, too, although they were only lightly tinted, so I could still see the movement of his eyes underneath them.

He looked over his shoulder, then around the rest of the park like he was calculating the size of expansive green lawn. "You see that tree over there?" JC asked.

I looked behind me. "Yeah."

"That's the goal. You have to touch the ball to the tree in order to score."

"Okay," I said. "What else?"

"Hmm." He paused. "You don't have to only kick the ball. You can carry it, throw it, dribble it, whatever."

"Tackling?" I said, and shoved him a little.

"Tackling is okay," he said. "But if you rough me up too much, Johnny will kick your ass."

I grinned. "Fair enough."

He looked over his shoulder again and nodded. "Starting point is that rock."

"And we'll make the rest up as we go?"

"Sounds good," he said and bounced the ball on the ground.

A few sweaty hours later, after several breaks and a short wait so JC could climb and get the ball out of a tree, I was decidedly winning. Although we weren't really keeping score, and many times we had to stop in order to add rules like 'No tickling' and 'Joey can't sit on the ball for five minutes waiting until his opponent gets frustrated.'

JC had the ball and was running with it. Running straight towards me with a look that meant he wanted to even the score. He ducked and charged into me, the ball tucked tightly under his left arm, his shoulder hitting me dead center in my stomach. I fell backwards and landed flat on my back as he ran towards the tree. He didn't realize that he knocked the wind out of me until he was twirling around in a victory dance.

Our bodyguard spotted me and I waved to let him know that I was all right as JC ran to my side.

"Shit Joey. I'm sorry," he said. He knelt over me and rubbed my stomach until my breathing returned to normal.

Under most other circumstances, I wouldn't have thought twice about JC's hand on my stomach. But the combination of my labored breathing, the small circular patterns his hand was making, and the way sweat was dripping down his cheek made it difficult to keep down the thoughts of what it was all doing to my groin area.

JC either didn't notice or didn't acknowledge the unsettling electricity in the air, because he helped me sit up and rubbed in the same soothing circles down my back.

We sat a while after that, not finishing our game. When the sun started going down, we picked ourselves out of the grass sticking to the back of our legs, and went back home.

I wasn't sure whether to leave JC then, my mission to get him out of the house accomplished. And as we walked into the foyer, my decision was made for me. As per usual, JC did have a vase of lilies on top of his piano, although the ones there now were droopy and crusty brown along the edges. They probably hadn't been replaced since before we finished the album.

"Do you want to order some pizza?" I said as we walked into the kitchen. "Maybe have a few beers, watch TV?"

"Sure."

"You do have beer, don't you?" I said and smiled.

"Do I ever not have beer?"

I wiped sweat off my forehead and caught a whiff of the smell I had developed. "I think I need to take a shower."

JC laughed and picked up the phone. "Okay. I'll order the pizza, you go upstairs and wash the stink off."

"JC?" I said as I walked to the stairs.

"Yeah?"

"Don't you dare get onions on the pizza," I said.

I could hear him laughing as he ordered.

When I came out of his bathroom toweling off my head, I saw his notebook. I picked it up from the desk and read the two pages that were open to me before I heard JC yell, "Pizza's here." I put down the notebook, hopefully leaving it just as I had found it.

We mostly watched Cartoon Network and Comedy Central, as we didn't want the mood to turn when and if MTV showed news about our new album. But the night slowed and we both had a few too many beers -- the mixture of alcohol and boredom dragging us into introspection.

"I should tell you something," I said. "I looked at your notebook earlier."

"Oh," JC said. But then he smiled. "Didn't find much, did ya?"

"No, I didn't," I said. "You just had the lyrics to 'I Want You Back' written over and over."

"Yeah," he said. "I've had writer's block, and that song stuck in my head, so I end up just writing that instead."

"But isn't that a depressing song?" I said. The beer was finally catching up to me. "Especially when..."

"Especially when your girlfriend just dumped you?" JC said. "Is that what you were going to say?"

"I'm sorry, JC, I--"

"Don't be. It's not a depressing song," he said. "For me, at least it's not."

"What?"

"Well, first of all, it was our first big single," he said. He picked at the toppings on the leftover pizza. "And, maybe more importantly, that song makes me think of you." He waited a second to look up at me, like he was a little scared of what he was saying. "When we perform it, there's that part, you know, right when I start into the second verse. There's that moment where I make eye contact with you -- you're always doing something silly like sticking your tongue out at me, and it always makes me smile."

And about then, I couldn't have formed a sentence if I had wanted too. Because JC was scooting closer to me on the couch and putting an arm around me.

"Thank you," he said. He kissed the corner of my mouth, then hovered near my face until I turned it toward him. Then he properly kissed me -- his lips gently pushing, contracting against mine. He pulled away slowly, our bottom lips insisting on sticking together.

Then JC was quiet, and so was I, because a possibility that had always been there was staring us down, promising to be whatever either of us would need it to be, only if we let it happen without haste.

When the beer stopped making our heads so fuzzy, JC starting talking again.

"I wasn't happy being with her, and she knew it," JC said. "So rather than going on pretending that things were working out, she left me, hoping that it would make me get on with my life."

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say anything back or just let him talk. He leaned against me, one arm still around my shoulder, his other hand sliding up and down along my arm.

"But then I realized that everything that I had been doing with my life was wrong -- except the music. The music was the only thing that has ever seemed right. And lately, even that has seemed to be lacking something -- maybe in the way that we rushed this new album because we have the idea in our heads that it isn't going to last much longer."

His voice became softer. "Joey, sometimes I don't know if I can keep treading water like this -- just barely keeping my head above the surface so everyone thinks I'm still okay."

I rubbed the back of his neck, which felt incredibly tight. So tight that maybe if he didn't say what he was saying to me now, the muscles might have snapped.

"I want to drown sometimes," he continued. "I want to feel myself slowly, slowly slipping under -- just as long as I don't have to hold onto anything."

As he sniffled and buried his face in my shoulder it occurred to me that this wasn't about Bobbee anymore, that she had just been the catalyst, that all this grip and tension and longing had been lingering under the surface of JC's skin waiting for the little scratch that would send it all gushing out.

"JC?"

"Yeah?" He was still tracing his finger through the hairs on my arm.

"Do you want her back?"

"No, I don't," he said.

I held him closer, and thought about the lyrics to a song that we had heard on the radio while driving home from the park:

Three o'clock in the morning / It's quiet and there's no one around / Just the bang and the clatter / As an angel hits the ground

After a long silence, where the only sounds were our breathing and the incessant tick-tock and occasional soft chime of the grandfather clock down the hall, I decided that JC must have fallen asleep. I slipped out from underneath him with the intent going home, but as I pulled a blanket over him, I got caught in his wide open, bright blue eyes -- I've seen them so many times before, but this time they were different.

"Stay," he said.

I walked up the stairs with him, my arm loosely around his waist, and there were no expectations about what might happen when we got up to his bedroom. He might kiss me softly and I would kiss him back, or maybe he would just want to curl around me and fall asleep knowing I was there for him. But whatever would happen, as his hand ran across my back I knew that the night would be enough. And tomorrow, tomorrow JC would wake up before I did and stand at the window watching the clouds turn colors and know that the day would keep its trust -- it would be something he could look forward to.