They stepped into the elevator, having to do some jostling around to avoid Billy, the cameraman. Kendra, already sick of the intrusiveness of the whole thing, rolled her eyes.
“OK, what’s all happening tonight, Larry?” Britney asked.
“Sleep. That’s what happening tonight. Y’all need to rest up as much as you can cause you won’t get very much after tomorrow.”
Justin eyed the cameraman. “Is that thing on?”
“It’s always on,” Wendy replied for him.
“And y’all record everything, huh?”
“No shit, Sherlock. That’s kinda the point of a behind-the-scenes special,” Kendra answered dryly.
Justin gave her a ‘kiss my ass’ kind of look and turned to Maddie, pulling her close to him. “I think y’all are gonna have to edit this out cause I can’t wait no more.” He put his hand under her jaw to lift her face to his and kissed her like he’d wanted to down in the lobby.
He tasted of peppermints and toothpaste. Or maybe it was mint toothpaste, Maddie wasn’t sure. And after about two seconds, all thoughts of what he tasted like fled from her mind as she got lost in his kiss. Not even Kendra and Wendy’s loud and rude comments could burst the cloud they were floating on.
“Hello?” Larry tapped Justin on the shoulder. “I hate to interrupt but this is your floor.”
“Damn, if they kiss like that in front of us, I hate to see what they do behind closed doors,” Kendra mumbled to Britney as they stepped off the elevator.
“I heard that,” Maddie said from behind them.
“Good, you hussy.”
“We’ll see y’all later. We should go out or something,” Britney called from in the elevator. Their rooms were two floors up.
“Yeah. Call my room,” Maddie said. The doors closed and she and Justin began to walk down the hall.
“What room are you in?” he asked her.
“Um…” she dug the key out of her pocket, “614.”
“Imma go grab my cell phone. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“K.” She reached up to give him a quick kiss.
“Oh God,” Wendy moaned and slumped against the wall. “Y’all are gonna make me nauseous.”
“You know you love us!” Justin called over his shoulder as he headed back toward the elevator.
Maddie waved to him as he stepped on to the elevator. She was about to turn away when something caught her eye.
Kendra saw the same thing she did. “What is she doing here?” There was no rancor in her tone, just mild curiosity at Kristy Murray's purpose. “What, is she gonna be running the cameras now? I thought her part in this was over.”
Wendy hmmphed. “She strikes me as the type who likes to be in control.” The trio began to walk down the hall as they talked. “She’ll probably be here to whole time to make sure things don’t get outta hand.”
“She seems like she’d be cool if she would let loose and relax. She’s too uptight.”
Kendra scoffed at that. “You’d be nervous, too, if you were in charge of a possible multi-million dollar deal like this. Alls I know is, it’s gonna be a lot of fun if she’s there when we do *NSYNC.”
Wendy and Maddie grinned. “We’re gonna do *NSYNC? We into orgies now?”
“Spectator orgies, no less,” Maddie joined in.
Kendra smacked her lips. “Y’all know what I mean. That whole JC/Jen thing.”
“Yeah,” Wendy agreed. “It’s gotta suck to see your man with a new girl even if you are over him.”
They stopped in the hallway in front of Wendy’s door. Kendra’s room was across the hall from and Maddie’s was next to Kendra’s.
“Hello? Look at me, I got the whole Justin/Britney thing going on.”
“Oh yeah. You and your little pop star menage a trois.”
Maddie smirked and rolled her eyes as Kendra and Wendy laughed.
“Ooh, I bet Britney was hating that kiss in the elevator,” Wendy said, shaking her head.
“Damn! How you gone be kissing the girl’s man right in front of her?” Kendra heckled.
“First of all, he’s not her man. It ain’t like I stole him from her. They were broken up way before I came into the picture. And he kissed me!”
“Who kissed you?”
All three girls jumped as another voice joined their conversation. Maddie calmed her heart then turned to him. “You did.”
In a few steps, he reached her. She slid her hands up his chest and over his shoulders and he grabbed her waist and pulled her to him for a kiss.
Kendra groaned. “If Imma have to keep seeing shit like this, Imma need to get a boyfriend.”
“No shit,” Wendy seconded as she turned and slid her key card into the slot on her door.
Both girls doors thumped solidly as Justin and Maddie, oblivious to the world around them, remained locked in their embrace.
(The next day—approximately 11:30 AM)
Maddie was a fireball of energy. Even Chris was amazed. The girl couldn’t sit still. While Chris was in shock over her liveliness, Justin was dazed by the enormity of her family. They had trickled in over the course of the morning. The first to arrive was Maddie’s mom’s third ex-husband, Mark, with his wife Michelle and their two very energetic sons. Not five minutes later, Maddie’s mom, Bonnie, arrived with her fourth, very jovial, very rich chain-smoking husband, Augustino, who, Justin knew, Maddie’s mom had been a signature away from divorcing then Auggie (as Maddie called him) had retired, giving him the time and attention Bonnie so desperately needed. To say that Bonnie was a free spirit would be putting it mildly. She wore a caftan and matching turban in the most shocking pink Justin had ever seen. But somehow she managed to look...soft…earthy.
The Morses—Nicole, Travis, Jake, Mike, Paul and Ron—had arrived next and Justin couldn’t stop smiling, he was so happy to see them. Finally, faces he knew, names he knew, people who could help him figure out who was who, who had been married to whom, and who was married to whom now. Maddie was so busy with all the last minute details that pop up before opening night that Justin had been left to play host, to keep them informed and entertained. And, boy, did they have questions. He knew exactly how things worked on his tour, but on Maddie’s he was clueless. And he really wanted to make a good impression on these people so he’d he been saying he wasn’t really sure, he’d check with Maddie a lot. And just when he thought he had everything straight, the next wave of family began to arrive.
Bonnie’s second husband, Steve, and his wife, Trish, who was Ron’s first wife (how the hell THAT happened, and how they all remained friends, Justin had no idea and didn’t even want to try to guess) and their three children made the noisiest entrance. The two-year-old was crying for a beloved doll that had been left at home in Georgia, the five-year-old was wailing because her little brother was and the eight-year-old was a walking question mark. She wanted to know about everything and everybody. Including Justin.
“Are you Mickey’s boyfriend?” she asked him.
Justin looked to Travis, brow furrowed in confusion. “Mickey?”
“Maddie’s initials are MKM. She saw that a couple of years ago and started calling Maddie Mickey. MK.”
“Oh.” Justin squatted down to look into the little girl’s eyes. She was a cute kid, with big brown eyes and little brown ringlets. He felt a pang in his heart, a longing for his own kid brothers. “Yes, I’m Mickey’s boyfriend.”
With that innate sense of timing that only the very young and the very old had, Lily waited until there was a lull in the conversations around them to ask in a very loud voice, “Do you and Mickey have sex?”
Justin’s jaw dropped and his breath got caught somewhere between his chest and his throat. He could feel the blood rushing to his face. All he wanted to do at that moment was melt away into a very small puddle, away from the shocked yet questioning eyes of Maddie’s kin.
“Cause mommy and daddy said that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do. They have sex cause they love each other.”
“Yes, and mommy and daddy also told you about respecting other people’s privacy.” Trish rushed over to scoop the girl up in her arms, wishing she could take back the last twenty seconds. With her face almost as red as his, she said to Justin, “I’m so sorry. She saw this show on TV so we had to have the sex talk with her so now she…ugh…sorry.”
Justin was dumbfounded. He wanted to reassure the lady, but what do you say after something like that? He looked around to find Wes and Jacob barely suppressing their laughter and Wendy with a huge grin on her face. Justin avoided looking anywhere near Ron’s direction for fear the truth would be written on his face. He was so happy when a shout of laughter rang out. He knew that laugh and he had never been so happy to see the guys, as they sauntered into the cafeteria of the arena, girlfriends and bodyguards in tow, as he was then.
The attention was diverted off of him and pandemonium ruled for the next few minutes as he tried, in vain, to remember all the names well enough for introductions. It endeared him to her family, though, that he tried so hard.
Everyone had just begun to settle down when Romero, Wendy and Maddie walked into the room, setting Maddie’s family in a frenzy of hugs, kissing and well-wishing. Justin sat back and watched the reunion. She looked so happy; her smile was so beautiful it made his heart ache. He thought back to his first ‘official’ concert. It had been in 1995, at Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World. A lot of his family had shown up but nowhere near the size of the gathering of Maddie’s family. Of course, this concert was a lot bigger and more high profile that *NSYNC’s first had been.
He became aware of Maddie, standing in the middle of a group of women, staring at him. In fact, they were all staring at him. Then one of the women (Michelle?) leaned in and said something that sounded magical in Spanish. Maddie blushed and the other ladies burst into laughter. Cheeks flaming and eyes still on him, Maddie replied and sent a saucy wink his way. He knew they were talking about him. He flashed the group an awkward smile then turned to search for…anybody. He hadn’t gone two steps before the ladies let out another roar of laughter. With the tips of his ears burning, he walked over to join a group his group mates.