When he got to her room, he put the bear behind his back and walked in. She grinned when she saw him. “Hey! I thought you’d gotten sick of me or something.”
“Of course not. I actually had a lot of work to do yesterday,” he stated. The teddy bear came out from behind his back. “I guess this guy realized I needed to make it up to you, so he followed me here all the way from home.”
She laughed. “All the way here, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll name him Nick. He’s cute.”
“Does that suggest that you think I’m cute?” he asked jokingly.
“Hmm…maybe in a scraggly kind of puppy dog way,” she teased.
“Ooh, ouch, maybe I should take him back.”
“Nope, he apparently wanted to be here with me if he followed you all the way here,” she said, propping him up next to her on her pillow. “So what were you up to yesterday? I just realized I know absolutely nothing about you.”
He smiled nervously. “There’s not too much to know about me.”
“How old are you? What do you do? Why do you come visit me every day instead of doing important things with your time?”
“I’m twenty-two. I sing. I come to visit you because it IS an important thing to do with my time.”
“Okay. You sing. Tell me about that,” she suggested. She was trying to get him to admit who he was.
“I do mainly pop stuff…I’m in a band.”
“Does your band have a name?” she asked, trying to keep a straight face.
“Yes…”
After a few seconds of silence, she groaned. “Well, what is it?”
“The Backstreet Boys,” he mumbled.
“You’re a Backstreet Boy? Yeah, right. You’re such a liar.” Oh, gosh, was she having fun with this!
He fell for her challenge. “Don’t believe me? I can call one of the other guys and they can tell you.”
“Go ahead. I dare you.”
Shrugging, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Brian’s number. The phone rang once before his friend picked up. “Hey, Frick.”
“Oh, hey, Frack!”
“I need you to tell this girl what I do for a living. She won’t believe me.” He handed the phone to Heather.
“Um, hi…” she said awkwardly. She hadn’t actually expected Nick to do it.
“Hey, you must be Heather, huh?” Brian said.
“How did you know?”
“Nick talks about you nonstop. So you wanna know what he does for a living?”
“Yes, I do.”
“He sings.”
“What’s the name of his band?”
“The Backstreet Boys.”
“Okay, thanks, Brian,” she said.
“How do you know my name?”
“My sister’s a bit of a Backstreet Boys fan,” she stated. “I know Frick and Frack.”
“Then why didn’t you know who Nick was?”
She rolled her eyes playfully at Nick, who was making faces at her. “Because it’s not every day a Backstreet Boy visits you in the hospital! I couldn’t believe one was visiting me. I should probably go. Nick is mouthing, ‘I told you so.’”
“Okay. Bye, Heather! Tell Nick I said bye!”
She hung up the phone. “So you talk about me nonstop, huh?”
“No, that’s not true! I just mentioned you a few times to the guys. So now do you believe me?”
“Yeah, I knew who you were since Beth told me the other day. I just wanted to mess with your mind a bit,” she explained as a grin spread across her face.
“See? You’re being cheerful now. You’re smiling.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m an optimist.”
“No, but it does mean that maybe you’re not as cynical as I thought you were.”
“Oh, leave me alone, Nickolas,” she laughed, hitting him with a pillow.