Chapter Four
Midday
"Chloe, I dunno about all this."
"But Shanna…" Chloe halted, exasperated. She was making a desperate attempt to make her friend understand the depths of her feelings for Nick, but it didn’t seem to be working. "..I just love him," she finished meekly.
She could almost see Shanna’s reassuring smile through the telephone receiver. "You’re my friend," Shanna told her gently. "I’m just worried about you. There’s always the possibility that it’s not really Nick Carter you’re talking to, you know."
Chloe sighed. No there’s not, she thought defensively. It IS Nick, it is!! "I know," she said aloud, hoping against hope that Shanna would just somehow understand. She needed a friend right now, someone she could talk to. Telling her so-called best friend Jen about any of this was out of the question, she didn’t even like the Backstreet Boys in the
first place! Shanna was her closest friend in this situation, and Chloe was afraid that, if she didn’t choose her words carefully, she would be all alone. "You need to talk to him yourself," she suggested.
She heard Shanna’s gasp on the other end of the line. "You’re kidding," she breathed, completely forgetting her earlier warnings. "Me? Talk to Nick Carter? Really!?"
Chloe laughed. "Sure! I mean, maybe you can test him, since I can’t. And if he makes any mistakes, you’ll know it’s not him. But I’m pretty sure it is."
"Oh wow!" was Shanna’s response. She was giddy now, and had abandoned her motherly cautions. Even though she was two years older than Chloe, Shanna harbored the same drive and ambition, and when she got excited, there was nothing to slow her down. "When can I talk to him?"
"Umm…well, I’ll be talking to him tonight, so I will ask him then, OK?"
She could hear Shanna making clapping noises. "Oh wow!" she repeated over and over. "Thanks!"
Chloe grinned. "No problem," she assured her friend. "But I gotta go, OK? I have to email Nick…and I have time now, since my stupid father took away my acting and modeling classes."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry ‘bout that," Shanna sympathized. "I’m sure he’ll let you back in before the play date."
"I hope so," Chloe said. "See you later."
"Bye," Shanna replied. "Let me know when I can talk to Nick. And be careful, OK?"
"I will," Chloe said hastily, and hung up the phone.
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"Baby, can you see me?"
Chloe’s face lit up, as Nick came into view before her. It was 8 o’clock that night, and Nick has just instructed her to close her eyes, as he transported her somewhere special. "I can see you," she told him, stepping forward into her boyfriend’s open arms.
"Happy two-month anniversary," he whispered as the smell of his Gravity cologne surrounded her. Chloe felt her heart warm. He remembered! she thought, excitement sweeping through her. "Happy anniversary sweetie," she said softly,
tilting her head up to his. His full, faintly smiling lips closed over hers, and the two kissed, love drawing them together.
"I love you, baby," Nick said suddenly, unexpected. "I love you so much."
Chloe was drawn into the seriousness of his gaze, and she reached up to stroke his face. "I love you too," she said, a bit confused. There was something in his eyes that troubled her. "What’s the matter?"
She could see tears spring into Nick’s eyes, and she gasped, surprised. "Baby…" Nick started, then faltered. His eyes never left Chloe’s.
"Nick, sweetie, what’s wrong?" she asked, worried now. "Tell me, please. Is it something I did?"
In response, Nick drew her in close, tilting her head against his chest and massaging her back in a slow circular motion. "No, baby, of course it’s not you," he said faintly.
Chloe closed her eyes, fearing what was about to happen. "Nick….?"
The heaviness of Nick’s sigh caught Chloe off guard, and as the tears began to fall off his cheeks, Chloe felt herself surrender to the moment. "I love you," he whispered again, and he started to fade away from her arms.
"Nick!" Chloe screamed, reaching out desperately to hold onto him. But he was fading into the nighttime sky, and before long Chloe was standing alone.
She began to cry, and she started to doubt the sturdiness of her legs. She took no notice of the scene to which Nick had brought her that night until she fell to the ground beneath her, and realized that she had fallen onto a bed of sand. Nick had brought her to the beach…the same place he’d asked her to officially be his girlfriend. The same full moon and the same sea of stars blanketed the sky as that crisp February evening, but this time it was April. It was supposed to be their two-month anniversary, and yet here she was alone.
It took Chloe a minute to realize that all she had to do to be reunited with Nick was to open her eyes. He was after all, right across from her, right on the other side of her computer screen. The tears stopped immediately, and Chloe closed her eyes against this beautiful beach-side scene, bringing herself back to reality, and back to Nick.
"Nick!" she typed quickly, relieved that he was still there, waiting for her.
"Chloe…" was his solemn response.
"Sweetie, why did you leave? What’s wrong?" Chloe pleaded, typing swiftly.
"Chloe…" he typed again. "Chloe, my managers found out about you."
She gasped, frightened not by the words, but by the way they’d been presented. "So….." she wrote out slowly, feigning bewilderment.
"I am not allowed to have a girlfriend, Chloe," Nick told her. "The managers found out, and they are cutting off my Internet access."
Chloe cried out in disbelief. "NO!" she typed quickly. "They can’t…can they?"
She could almost see the tears falling from Nick’s eyes. "They can…and they are. I’m so sorry baby, I don’t know what to do."
Chloe’s eyes were freely dampened now. "I can’t lose you," she typed more slowly. "Baby, please come back to the beach, I want to be with you."
"I don’t have long…" Nick warned her.
"It’s OK," Chloe assured him. "Please Nick, I want to be with you tonight. We’ll figure something out."
"OK," Nick agreed. "Close your eyes, Chloe."
With a hint of relief in her breath, Chloe closed her eyes, and opened them again to find Nick in front of her. He was, indeed, crying, and he took her promptly in his arms. Rocking her back and forth on the sandy earth below them, he whispered over and over "I’m so sorry, baby."
Chloe looked up again, meeting his moist eyes. It occurred to her then, what Nick had done when she had cried confessing her anorexia. With gentle love, she stood on her tiptoes and began to kiss his tears as they fell. He had his eyes closed, and held his head down, reveling in the love of this perfect girl. The tenderness of her lips on his cheeks caused something to come alive within him, and soon his lips had found hers, and he was kissing her, with an intense urging and unheeded desire. Her hands busied themselves in his hair, and he wrapped his arms around her thin waist, drawing her as close as he could. For the moment, the two lovers forgot the restrictions of their star crossed rendez-vous, and surrendered themselves to the fire of the moment.
"I love you baby," Nick whispered, kissing her ear and burying his head in the crook of her neck.
The words took on new meaning as Chloe entwined herself in Nick’s arms, kissing him urgently. "I love you," she answered.
Her back found its place in the sand as Nick laid her down underneath him. The full moon above them provided the only light to the nighttime sky, though it may as well have been pitch black outside for the aspects of the world Chloe could see beyond the aura of Nick’s love. They were together, like they were supposed to be on their anniversary. As he kissed her, the lost part inside Chloe came alive again, and she felt herself freed. Freed from her father’s condescending remarks about her acting and modeling, freed from the pain of being physically sick once
again…but most importantly, Chloe felt herself being freed from the harshness of her entire reality. Nick was the passageway between her dreams and her reality, and the tenderness of his love brought her to a new place of happiness, and a brand new reality.
"Chloe," Nick whispered after awhile, pulling away just enough to allow a breath to escape his perfect mouth. "I’m sorry baby."
Chloe, underneath him, gave Nick a quizzical look. "What do you mean? You didn’t do anything."
"This could be our last night together," Nick said, unwillingly facing the validity of being separated from his girlfriend. "And we didn’t even talk about it, hardly."
"Nick," Chloe said quietly, as Nick sat up and drew her into his arms. She sat, resting against his chest, feeling his heart beating in time with her own. "All I want is to be with you. In these two months, you’ve come to know me better than anyone else ever has. I’ve opened up to you, and you understand. I trust you with my soul, my happiness…I trust you with my life, Nick. I want you to know that no matter what happens, no matter what your managers say, they can’t make me stop loving you. They can’t stop the feelings we have. They may be able to separate us physically, but that is not what is important. What is important is that our souls are connected, now and forever, and no one can take that away from us. My father took away my acting and modeling classes, because of my eating. Before you, that would have been everything to me, it was the only way out of my dad’s restrictions, and expectations. But now…now, it
is you that I won’t lose. I love you more than life, and I would die for you, baby. I believe that if we are meant to be, and we are, then everything will work out. We might be ---"
Nick interrupted her not with words, but with the look in his eyes. Chloe, in mid-sentence, had noticed the tears that had started to fall from Nick’s eyes again. "Oh Nick, I’m so sorry," she said, feeling horrible.
She’d found it, she’d tapped into his very humanity, discovered his capacity to appreciate, to honor, and most importantly, to love. With a simple smile, Chloe twisted from her position and kissed Nick again and again, slowly, and full of love. "Of course I love you for you," she
murmured. "I love you for being the person that you are. I would give anything for you, Nick. You jump, I jump."
Nick’s eyes glowed, and he continued with the quote from Titanic. "I promise to never let go," he whispered in her ear.
The two refrained from words then and lost themselves in the romanticism of their anniversary, left their realities behind, and entered a world where truth was valid to only themselves. And for the first time in Chloe’s life, her dream WAS her reality.
