It was about five seconds before David found his voice again.
“Samantha Grace you listen to me,” he said. I cowered. I knew he was mad at me when he called me that. I hated for him to be mad at me.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“If you let this whole charade go on it’s gonna be a lot more and a lot bigger trouble than any of us can handle. You need to get Nick out here somehow and we have to switch back. I know exactly how much I’m owed for how long I’ve been here,” he said.
“But David,” I whined.
“Get him out here and I don’t want it to be more than 2 days. We leave LA on Monday,” he said. I looked at the calendar. It was Saturday. We didn’t have long.
“I’ll do it,” the words caused more pain than a car accident that smashed in your face and scarred you for life. I had no choice. David was right. Sooner or later someone would have noticed a difference and pinned us for our game. We had to move fast.
“You there Sam?” he asked.
“I’m here, I’ll catch Nick at his house and tell him. We’ll page you when we get the details finalized,” I responded.
“Okay, gotcha,” and he hung up. I ran out the door and down the street to Nick’s house. My feet pounded against the concrete but I gave no thought to the pain I would be feeling later. I had to get to him. With every step I had more of a sense of urgency. This would test my love for him and my confidence in myself.
“Nick!” I screamed as I fell onto his lawn panting. He heard my voice and came running out of the house.
“What’s the matter? What happened?” he asked.
“David…we…have…to…go,” I gasped.
“Slow down and take a deep breath, what do we need to do?” I sucked in air.
“We need to go to LA and switch you back,” I said.
“Why?”
“David’s having trouble on his end and he knows they’re gonna find out soon, we can’t let that happen,” I said.
“But I don’t wanna go back, I never wanna be a Backstreet Boy again. Not after this time I’ve spent with you,” he said.
“No Nick, you’re going back,” I said.
“Sam no, what about us?” he asked.
“We’ve survived as friends for this long, what makes you think we’ll die as lovers?” He couldn’t argue with that. He knew it was true just as well as I did.
“Alright what do we need to do?” he asked. I took a deep breath.