+++fifteen+++

Maddie left a little while after the *NSYNC entourage did. She and Romero took a cab back to the hotel. Wendy wanted to stay at Carson's and even though Madison knew that she was leaving Wendy alone with a man she drooled over every day and would probably do nasty things to if given the chance, she didn't have the energy to argue with her. Later on, Maddie wouldn't remember paying the cab driver or walking across the lobby to the elevators or unlocking her door or undressing. She remembered riding in the cab and listening to Romero shoot the breeze with the driver about their native homeland of Brazil; but the next thing she was aware of was lying immersed in bubbles in a steaming hot bath. Her mind had been a fog ever since the kiss. The kiss…

'Could you even classify it as a kiss?' she wondered. 'I wonder what the definition of a kiss is. Is there a time limit for a kiss to be a kiss or is it that any time a man's lips touch a woman's it's a kiss? Cause his only touched mine for about half a second…So why the hell have I been thinking about it for the last hour? And why does that one second seem like an eternity? God. I shouldn't feel like this over one little kiss. Brad never made me feel this way. No one has ever made me-oh shit, I'm SO not going there! This is not some cheesy romance novel where the hero sweeps some damsel in distress off her feet, this is my life and I say that this is NOT happening!'

Involuntarily, she thought of the kiss again-Justin's lips pressed against hers. She had been surprised at how soft they were. And how warm. She'd felt that same warmth when he'd grabbed her hand to pull her out to the balcony. It was as if his body temperature was a few degrees higher than everyone else's was. She reflected on how her hand had felt, nestled inside his, his fingers wrapped securely around hers. She wasn't sure but she thought she felt calluses on the pads of his fingertips. That was something of a shocker; one would assume that a big star like him would have everything done for him. Or at the least that he would get manicures. Her mind went back to the mental picture she'd taken of him, standing in the glow of the light coming through the glass doors of the balcony. He had been talking to his friends and she had become enraptured with his mouth, his teeth, his face. The way he smiled, the expressions he made.

She sighed. 'I've got to stop this. No more obsessing about Justin 'Teenie-Magnet' Timberlake. I cannot like him. I won't like him. And even if the sky fell, pigs flew and hell froze over and I did start liking him, which would never happen, I could never be with him cause his fans would probably assassinate me. So that's that.'

She pondered on that for a few moments before another thought occurred to her: 'What did he mean, he shouldn't have said what he did? What the hell did he say and who did he say it to?'

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Justin sat in silence. His friends, for once, had left him in peace. Normally, Justin would have relished this quiet time but today, he hated it. He was torn up with guilt.

'I shouldn't have kissed her. I practically forced myself on her. Damn, I let my ego get the best of me. She was looking at me…' Justin remembered the dazed look on Maddie's face as she stared him up and down and the way it made him feel. There had been times lately that he had begrudged the way he looked. People assumed that he was nothing but a pretty face and consequently didn't take him seriously. And being 'the heartthrob' of the group was not all that it was hyped up to be. Lots of times he was put in the position of having to assume some role, minor as it may be, of superiority over his group mates just because he was the most popular one in the group. They never discussed it so he wasn't sure how his friends felt about it, but he resented it. He wasn't comfortable with being a sex symbol at nineteen. But when Maddie's eyes were on him…he'd thanked every God, Being, Deity he could think of for making him look the way he did. Because he'd read the attraction in Maddie's eyes and rejoiced in it. He'd never felt as attractive as he did then.

He shook his head at his thoughts. 'Geez…I got it bad.'

"So does she kiss better than me?"

Jen's voice propelled him from his thoughts. He looked up at her where she had contorted her body to lean over the back of the seat of the luxury van that was taking them all back to their hotel. "What?"

"I said, 'Does she kiss better than me?'"

"Jen," JC groaned and tried to pull his girlfriend around so that she was sitting correctly in her seat. Jen shook his arm off and redirected her gaze on Justin.

"Jen, I'm not even gonna dignify that with an answer," Justin said and looked out the window at New York City flashing by.

"Well, why not? I won't get mad. We're not together anymore. I love JC."

JC's annoyance at Jen's behavior faded. She'd never said those words before. At least, not when she wasn't on the brink of ecstasy and he didn't trust anything she said then. He looked at her, wonder in his eyes.

Jen caught his gaze and turned so that she was facing him. "I do, you know."

Lance, Joey, Chris and Justin all sat there, jaws open a mile wide, eyebrows arched up to their hairlines. Jen was a very private person. She was quick to tell you when she wasn't happy or pissed off about something but she wasn't as quick with the positive reinforcement. She just assumed that you would do your job correctly and didn't figure to coddle and pamper you with words every step of the way. Not that she didn't have a kind word; they were just usually smothered in sarcasm. Yet here she was, putting her heart on her sleeve and doing it in front of witnesses.

JC reached up to caress the side of her face. He smiled tenderly at her. "Yeah, I know you do," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I love you, too."

The other guys turned away out of respect when JC and Jen leaned in to share what was probably the most passionate kiss they'd ever shared. There was love in this kiss. It had been there before, but because they'd never communicated that emotion verbally before, it had never really manifested itself physically. Now, it was like a budding rose, growing more and more beautiful with each passing moment.

Jen's heart was so full she thought it would burst. It was a very complicated situation, when she'd started to develop feelings for JC while she was dating Justin. They only went out a few times but it was evident to everyone that there was more emotion on Justin's side than Jen's. It seemed like some sordid tale from a daytime soap opera. JC had been dating Jen's friend, Kristy, and Kristy had gotten Justin and Jen together. JC realized soon on that he and Kristy wanted very different things out of life and simply were not compatible so he had broken it off. Kristy had seemed unfazed by this, so he'd assumed that she felt pretty much the same way. He had gone to Jen for advice on how to handle the situation and she'd told him that Kristy would appreciate it more if he were straight up with her about his feelings. That was the first time he felt anything more than friendly towards her. He'd then proceeded to mentally kick himself in the ass for lusting after his best friend's girl. Although, Jen and Justin had never technically been together (according to them), he still felt guilty. He remembered the day Justin had revealed to him that he knew how he felt about Jen.

It was a month before the new album was to be released. JC should have been in the throes of nervous anticipation, just like everyone else who had worked on this album. But all he could think of was Jen and how wretched he felt every time he saw her in Justin's arms or every time Justin kissed her or touched her or did any of the things that JC wasn't allowed to do. He was insanely jealous and equally as guilty. He felt guilty because he was jealous and he was jealous because he wanted to be the one that Jen turned to; he wanted his to be the lap she sat on, the ear she whispered sweet nothings into. He dreaded the day when Jen and Justin took their relationship to a more intimate level. His only salvation was that he only had to see them together two days a week. Jen was a student at the Arizona State University and flew up on weekends to wherever they were.

They'd had a photo shoot that day in a field, a change of pace from the usual warehouse with backdrops they normally did shots in. JC had wandered off to think; about Jen, about his feelings for her; about ways to stop those feelings. He never heard Justin approach him. He jumped slightly when he heard the voice behind him.

"It's OK, you know."

JC whirled around, hand to his racing heart, to face a very solemn-looking Justin. "Jesus, J, you scared the crap out of me."

Justin continued to scrutinize him. The smile fell from JC's face. "What's OK, J?" he asked quietly.

"That you have feelings for Jen."

"What? You're crazy, man. Jen's your girl, she's with you."

Justin put his hands in his pockets and walked around JC to stare at the countryside around them. He was silent for a moment. "You didn't deny it." He turned to regard his friend. "You didn't deny it, Jace."

"Justin…I-"

"It's OK," he looked up at the sky, dotted with thick white cumulus clouds and wispy, barely there cirrus ones. "I think I'm going to break up with her."

"What? Why?"

He lowered his head so his eyes met JC's. "Cause she doesn't look at me the way she looks at you."

JC was staggered. He was truly at a loss for words. Justin took advantage of his confusion to brush past him and walk to join the rest of the group. By the time JC found his tongue again, Justin was wrestling in the dirt with Lance.

Jen and Justin broke up a week later. They never gave a reason. The other guys must have guessed, or JC and Jen must have shown it in some way, because eventually they began to treat them as if they were a couple and within a few weeks, they were. No one ever spoke of it, the way JC and Jen got together. They all could see that both were different people, better people, when they were together. In the beginning, they'd felt weird showing emotion around the guys. It was as if they thought someone was going to jump up and point out that Jen was with the wrong guy. But that never happened. But for the first month or so, they never kissed when the others were around, barely held hands, barely acknowledged that they were together. It took more well-meaning words from Justin, this time addressed to them both in front of the whole group, for them to feel as if it was OK; OK for them to kiss; OK for them to cuddle together in JC's bunk on bus rides; OK for them to sleep in the same room at hotels; OK for them to be together.

In the four months they'd been together, JC had never been entirely sure of Jen's feelings for him. He was hesitant to come right out and ask for fear that the answer would not be the one he wanted to hear. He was also afraid to confess his deepening feelings for her for the same reason. But now…now, she had professed her love for him and done it in a fashion that ensured that JC would never doubt that what she said was true. He knew that they were both in for some merciless teasing once the shock wore off, but he was anticipating it; he was in love and his love loved him back. And as far as he was concerned, that's all there was to it.

No one spoke of it but they'd all been silently relieved when Justin developed this fascination with a then little-known singer named Madison Morse. And as Maddie's popularity grew, so did Justin's ardor for her. It got to the point where the kid spent every waking hour on the Internet, looking for new facts or pictures about her. The same mailing lists he had scoffed at when the subject was *NSYNC, he now rejoiced because this was his link to others who shared his obsession. He tried to hide the lists from his friends but he was an open person, wont to speak before thinking, and had inadvertently spilled the beans. If it had been JC or Lance, or even Joey, they might have given him a strange look and kept on going. But no, it happened in front of Chris, the oldest child in the world, and he immediately broadcast it to everyone with hearing distance and then demanded to see them.

And then they met her and she seemed to be one of the most unaffected people they'd ever met. The glamour and brilliance of Hollywood didn't faze her a bit and she had openly admitted that she was a fan of theirs. In fact, she had said that the new CD should have come with a Surgeon General's warning because it was highly addictive. But for some reason, she'd shied away from Justin. At first they figured that she might have been awed by the mighty 'Justin Timberlake: Pop Star Extraordinaire' persona that he had working for him. But soon enough, they began to see that she wasn't cowed by the figure Justin presented; she just didn't like him. A few words from Romero to Johnny had cleared up the mystery of why. Justin had apologized to Maddie and her cousin and her cousin's family. He'd sent flowers to Kelly at her school and put the card he signed in a very conspicuous place so that all her friends would see it. He'd even gone so far as to arrange for Kelly and three of her friends to get backstage passes to the show in Dallas. Maddie thanked him for all of this but still had that edge of hostility whenever she spoke to him. That edge had been fading away. She smiled more readily to him and did not immediately search for his group mates when she saw him. But now he feared that that edge of hostility would become a boulder of rancor, forever blocking the path to any sort of relationship with her. All because he couldn't keep his hands to himself.

Chpt 16
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