“No, I didn’t tell them. I’m afraid they aren’t gonna approve of this,” she replied.
“What do you mean?” he demanded defensively.
“It’s not you, Nick. It’s the idea of me dating a guy who’s gone all the time, a guy who’s almost twenty, a famous guy, a guy in my brother’s band…take your pick.”
“Explain this to me,” he said. His voice lost its edge, but he was obviously not happy. “I mean, I understand the gone all the time part, but what about the other three?”
“The guy who’s almost twenty? They’re overprotective, and they still think of me as being twelve. The famous guy? They don’t want me to be swamped by jealous fans and such. And the guy in my brother’s band, they don’t want me to mess up your success. They don’t want me distracting you from the Backstreet Boys. When Brian first started dating Leighanne, they hated it because they were afraid she was going to come between him and you guys somehow. I know it’s crazy, but that’s my parents. I love them to death, and they love you, but I don’t think they’d approve of me dating you.”
He sighed. “What does Brian think?”
Shifting uncomfortably, she looked down at her hands and started playing with a loose thread on her tee-shirt. “He thinks I told them,” she mumbled, knowing Nick was gonna love that.
“Huh?”
She cleared her throat. “He…he thinks I told them.”
“Madeleine Littrell! Did you lie to him?”
“I wouldn’t call it lying. I would just call it…avoiding the truth. He assumed I told them, and I didn’t correct him. I mean, why bother?”
“What is the difference? Why can’t you tell him you haven’t told them?”
“Because then he would tell them because he’d be scared they’d rip him apart for not telling them. They’ll probably rip him apart for letting us date anyway. Right now, he thinks they don’t mind. What he doesn’t know and what they don’t know can’t hurt them.”
“Mattie!”
“Relax! I’ll tell them sooner or later.”
He let the subject drop, but truthfully, he was extremely hurt by the fact that she wouldn’t tell her parents about him. Was she that ashamed of him? Maybe this wasn’t the picture perfect relationship it seemed to be…