"Hey, Hot Stuff, you here?" She called to her room mate, an old nickname that was part of an inside joke.
Silence.
"Guess not," She sighed. She hated being alone. Alone meant time for her mind to wander, and it inevitably wandered to him.
She sighed and decided that instead of avoiding the thought of him, she would allow herself to simply miss him. She would allow herself to remember him and allow herself to cry. Judging from the look of their bedroom, and the state of messiness it was in, Kasey would be gone for awhile.
She pulled a large Rubbermaid box from K-Mart out from under her bed, done entirely in baby blue. She pulled a folded baby blue and white mini blanket off of her bed, a token of a NCU basketball game they'd gone to together. He'd bought that for them to sit on and ended up giving it to her.
She took a deep breath, and hauled the box into the main room, locked the door, and plopped in front of the VCR, raking a hand through her disheveled blonde hair and pulling out a video. She slid it into the VCR and pressed play, then grabbed an old-looking bottle of cologne out of the box of things. It was an old cologne, but it smelled wonderful, and they both loved it. She loved for him to wear it, he loved to wear it. It was a plain bottle with a red cap, and on the bottom right corner, it simply read Maxx.
She spritzed the cologne onto the blanket, wrapped herself in it, and pressed play. The image that popped up nearly broke her heart. There he was, talking to her. Laughing with her.
"Get that out of my face, Brit. Jeez, can you turn that thing off?" His sparkling baby blues made her bite her lip to keep from crying out in pain.
"Yeah, Spears, turn that thing off. That's my camera and I don't want his ugly mug on that sucker," His groupmate, Joey, laughed.
The boy with the sparkling baby blue and curly blonde 'fro flipped the older boy off, then mugged for the camera. "Ya like that, don'tcha?"
"Oh, yeah!" The girl's sarcastic voice floated through the speakers to her. "Ooh baby, ooh baby, take me now!"
"It was an idea," The boy smiled.
Hours later, around eleven, when she had seen every inch of footage every taken of him, along with every photo. She had gone through four albums of pictures of them, dating back to when they had first met, when he was twelve, and she eleven, when they had done a TV show together.
Kasey walked in and sighed. There lay her best friend, her room-mate, international pop princess on break, asleep on a baby blue NCU blanket, tear streaks down her face, Justin Timberlake paraphenelia scattered around her prone form.
She didn't normally cry herself to sleep over the boy, and Kasey was worried. She looked at the magazine article that had done her in and immediately understood. The article about the accident. That did her in, and she hadn't been hopelessly in love with the boy. The boy was gone. The stress had been to much, and he had cracked. Not surprising to anyone who knew him, but no one expected that kind of crack. Not the kind where you disappeared into the crowd, into thin air, never to be found again.
There was a photo of the couple together, framed, next to the girl. No one but Kasey and the rest of *N Sync, and of course the couple in the photograph, knew what that day was. That was their wedding day.
Britney stood in a pair of natural-colored platforms, a short green halter dress with blue paisley, and her trade-mark messy hair, next to her the love of her life, dressed in baggy khakis and a maroonish-burgundy Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt.
Britney still wore the ring on her left ring finger, signifying her marriage to Justin Timberlake. Kasey reached for the note and she could imagine Justin as he wrote out the words that kept Britney alive. You always say I'm your angel, and I am. Don't forget that whenever you need him most, your angel will come back.
"She needs you now, damnit," Kasey swore.
"She's got me now," The owner of the voice was more surprising than the fact that there was a voice there. "She's got me forever."
There stood Justin Timberlake, in all his glory. Kasey stared at him, shocked. "Three months. That's all I needed, you know. I told JC that. I sent him an e-mail. But I bet Jayce changed it and never got that e-mail, didn't he? I knew Jayce woulda replied if he got it."
Kasey simply grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him in for a hug. "I never thought I'd love the sight of your Brillo pad you call hair," She whispered fiercely into his ear.
"I resent that," He said, hugging his wife's best friend back. "But right now I've got to get to my Princess."
Britney's scream woke the entire floor up at one a.m., but no one came stampeding to find out what was going on. They had all seen him walk in. One girl had seen him, and before he got to the door of the hallway, the entire floor was standing in the door, alert, watching and waiting.
She was hysterical, crying and screaming like a twelve year old fan. "Ohmigod, Justin, oh...God, Justin, oh God!" She threw herself into his arms and held him, never wanting to let go. Justin had never been so happy to see Britney, never in his life.
"I love you," Justin muttered while he kissed over every single inch of her face, trying desperately to memorize how she felt in his arms.
Britney grabbed for his left hand and frantically counted through his fingers until she got to his ring finger, where the ring she had purchased for him six months ago was proudly displayed.
Kasey smiled and reached for the phone to call the house *N Sync shared fifteen minutes away. When JC picked up the phone, Kasy had to only whisper two words before she heard a shout of joy, JC screaming for the guys to get in the car, and then the dial tone. Those two simple words - "He's home." Those two simple words did so much for the four men who hadn't slept a full night in three months they'd been so worried.
Kasey stepped into the hallway and saw that the entire dorm and a few from other dorms were crowded into the hallway. Within minutes four men, Joey, JC, Lance, and Chris, were fighting through the crowd. When they saw Kasey, they stopped.
"Timberlake!" JC's bellow shattered the silence.
"JC!" Justin, for the first time in his life, screamed.
He ran out into the hallway, holding Britney's hand, and stared at the four frozen men, mouths open in shock.
JC led the rest of *N Sync to their lost lamb and stood directly in front of him. Britney knew, without a shadow of doubt, that JC was angry at Justin for up and leaving. She also know JC loved Justin more than he was willing to admit and would kill if anyone hurt his pride and joy, the boy he practically raised.
The entire hall was silent with tension as JC's blue orbs stared down Justin's matching ones.
"God, I missed you," JC grabbed Justin and pulled him in tight. "Don't ever do that to me again."
The hallway erupted in cheers as JC reached out to include Britney in the hug, and Lance grabbed Kasey and soon it was a group hug of seven. *N Sync was *N Sync again, and Kasey and Britney both had the loves of their lives in their arms.
"Where were you?" JC finally asked.
Justin smiled sheepishly. "Oklahoma. Quite a few small towns to hide myself in."
"I'm gonna kill you," JC said, hugging him tight again.
"I almost killed myself trying to get back here, but something told me I had to get back tonight. I'm here and that's all that matters."