Kelsie had her hands on her hips, staring at him through angry eyes, and Justin had his arms crossed across his chest, his eyebrows narrowed and his lips pursed in a challenging way. They were standing so close to the other that they could feel the other's hard breathing on their faces. The room was so quiet that if you dropped a pin, you would be able to hear it hit the floor. Contempt was oozing out of their bodies.

Chris was the only brave soul to step forward after a few minutes of just watching the two glare at each other, the violent glint in their eyes begging the other to start something. He raised his hand cautiously and cleared his throat. "Um, should I call 911 or the police or something? Or are you two going to step away from each other slowly without drawing blood in the process?"

Justin's head slowly swiveled around to look at Chris and he clenched the muscles in his jaw tightly before taking a step back from Kelsie and unfolding his arms to let them hang loosely at his side. He refused to look back at Kelsie while he kept taking steps backwards, so finally he turned his back to her and reached down to re-tie his shoelaces.

The other men in the room glanced at each other and then looked at Kelsie, who was taking a few deep breaths to calm herself down. Don't let him get to you, K. He's being childish and immature and that is all you need to remember. Don't let him bring you down.

Justin finally stood back up, and taking a deep breath, he spun around to look at his friends and then his gaze reluctantly landed on the girl that he was loathing. It took a minute for him to spit out his next words, and he hated to admit it to himself, but he did feel better after saying them. "So. Are we going to learn this dance or what?"

"Come ON, Kat, open the door!"

Kelsie pounded her fist against the door for the twentieth time in two minutes. She tried the knob again out of frustration and when nothing clicked, she slammed her back up against the door angrily. "What the hell! She NEVER leaves the door locked." She banged her head against the hard door, wincing at the pain she felt afterward. Just as she was about to do it again, the door swung open and Kelsie stumbled inside the house backwards in shock.

"Kels? What's wrong? I heard this obnoxious pounding at my door as I was getting out of the shower and...", she looked at her best friend in concern. Kelsie's eyes were flaming and her hair was all out of place. "Um, are you okay?" She shut and locked the door behind her and dragged Kelsie into the kitchen.

Kelsie plopped into the first chair she saw and grabbed her hair in frustration. She looked back up at her friend and uttered one word. The one word that Kat had been expecting to hear.

"Him."

What she hadn't expected was the way that Kelsie said it. She was almost growling. "Justin, huh? What did he do now?"

Kelsie's eyes shot back up to Kat and her words came out in fragments. "Everything. He. Is. A. Living. Breathing. SATAN." Suddenly, she jumped up out of the chair, causing it to teeter on it's back legs and then come crashing back down to the floor. She paced back and forth for a minute and groaned. "I don't know how I'm going to last with him. Do you know what he said to me today?"

Kat began to say something but was cut off when Kelsie kept talking.

"I showed them my dance for their STUPID song today and he tells me that he 'doesn't like it and he won't perform it' so I tell him fine and I walk out. If he doesn't like what I've got than he can just go --"

"So what happened after you walked out?"

"Right. So I walk out and Chris runs after me and tells me that I have to come back because Justin was just being irrational and trying to get under my skin. I believe him since Justin is such an immature, arrogant, cocky, ba--"

"And so you go back in and what happens?"

"Yeah, so I go in and Justin approaches me with the pathetic attempt at the words 'I'm sorry.'", she looked up at Katherine with wide eyes. "Not that he MEANT a single BREATH of those two words. Oh no. He didn't even know what in the hell he DID! Pissed me the hell off. I can't even believe that I agreed to work with someone as childish and ob--"

"Kelsie.."

"And THEN, you'll never guess what he does! He actually has the GALL to say something like 'Well, are we going to learn this dance or what?' insinuating that I was the one who was refusing to PERFORM THE DAMN DANCE! Can you BELIEVE him??", she grunted in anger.

"Kelsie, calm down, honey. It's not going to do you any good to get worked up over this."

Kelsie surveyed her best friend carefully. Her long, blonde hair was darkened with the water that clung to the strands and she was holding a peach colored towel in her hand. Kelsie smiled at the t-shirt that Kat had on. She had gotten it for Kat for her eighteenth birthday last year because as soon as she saw it, she knew that it was perfect for Katherine. In bright white letters it said: You've been a naughty boy. GO TO MY ROOM. She had to laugh at it because it was such a silly phrase.

She finally looked back up at Kat who was bent at the waist, thrusting the towel through her hair repeatedly, trying to dry it somewhat. "Yeah...I guess you're right."

Kelsie jumped when she got sprayed with water as Kat flipped her hair back up. She shook her head a little to help the strands fall back into her part and smiled at Kelsie. "I know I am right. I know you well enough to know that it takes a LOT for you to give up...so don't let one arrogant superstar pull you down.", she sighed. "Even if he is absolutely GORGEOUS." She shook herself out of her daze and finished her thought. "Plus, I'm sure that's what he wants you to do -- give up, so he'll have won the battle. Don't lose that confidence that I know you have."

Kelsie digested that little speech before chuckling out loud. "Yeah. Man, here I am sulking over how bad my job is...I should be grateful because this is my only bad experience to date. He thinks he's going to win this, does he? Oh noo...he sure as hell won't get anywhere near the victory line if it's the last thing I do."

Kat laughed. "Whoa whoa...I didn't neccesarily mean start a war here. Just take each day as it comes. You'll thank me for making you take this job when you and Justin get married someday."

Kelsie grinned and started to agree until she caught that last part of her friend's sentence. "WHOA! WHAT!?"

Katherine smirked. "C'mon, Kelsie, you know you want him."

"Ha! The only thing I want of him is his head on a platter. Or better yet - mounted on my wall so I can throw darts at it when I'm bored."

They both giggled at the thought and rolled their eyes. Kat checked the clock on the wall and seeing it was only ten o'clock she walked into the family room and plopped down on the couch, knowing that Kelsie was right behind her. "Want to watch a movie?"

"Definitely. That'll get my mind off of the choreography. When is Luke coming home? He's working tonight, right?"

Kat shrugged. "Why? Kellllsie, how many times do I have to tell you to stop fantazising about my OLD brother?", she laughed watching as Kelsie's face wrinkled in disgust. "Probably around eleven thirty-twelve since he's on the night shift."

Kelsie sighed and kicked off her sneakers as the TV lit up with color. She glanced at her friend and smiled. Note to self: I owe her.

The dark velvet that had overtaken the vast sky for the past few hours was now slowly fading into a light grey as the sun began its very first stages of its long attempt at waking itself up. The stars still twinkled dimly and the moon was making its way back to its daytime dwelling place. All was quiet and the atmosphere was beautiful just encased in this silence. It was that one time of the full day when nothing was happening -- the many inhabitants on the earth were hibernating deep in their slumber, the roads were clear and the only animals awake were the few nocturnal ones that just made the night seem more peaceful.

It was no different in the bedroom of Justin Timberlake. The curtains that remained closed most of the day for privacy reasons now served their purpose by encompasing the room in pure darkness -- the only sign of light coming from the bright numbers that announced the time to anyone that was willing to look at it. Justin lay sprawled in the middle of a mass of wrinkled sheets, his lean body wrapped tightly in the white covers. His curly head rested peacefully against the soft comfort that the huge feather pillow lent him and his arm was tucked underneath his cheek.

If anyone were to have seen him at that very moment, they would automatically presume that he was out cold and that even a full-fledged marching band wouldn't be able to wake the child up. That's what it LOOKED like, anyway. If that same person were to look inside of his head, they would find out that he hadn't had a very restful sleep. He had been tossing and turning all night, so many different things racing through his mind that he couldn't even keep track of them all. His body ached from the long practice session that himself and the group had underwent to learn the steps to Kelsie's dance. She had worked him as hard as he would go or at least as much as his body could take. Or maybe he was just telling himself that it was her. He knew that deep inside of him, that little speck of motivation he was known for had broken out of his system and was pushing him on overdrive to learn the steps as fast as possible since the group was lacking in time to get their whole album choreographed before the tour started. It was all coming at him so fast that he didn't know if he could handle it. Was this supposed to happen so fast? Was all this sudden superstardom supposed to take off as unexpected as it was happening? Was he supposed to be everything that he already was at such a young age? Was he --

The shrill scream of the phone that sat next to Justin's bed was the final straw for him. While the world had been in silence, HIS world was in total chaos. His hand came out from under his cheek and slammed on top of the white phone, struggling to pick it up and draw it to his ear. This had better not be a damn fan. He lazily pressed it against his face and yawned loudly into the reciever before grumbling an answer. "What?"

A high pitched, very feminine voice echoed into his ear. A voice that was very familiar and one that always made him smile. Except for right now. "Hey Justin! Whatcha doin'?"

He groaned softly into his pillow and looked at the alarm clock. Rubbing his eyes that were yearning for rest, he sighed into the reciever. "Baby? What are you doing? It's three thirty in the morning..." He scratched the top of his head and twisted and turned in his bed until he was comfortable, the phone still at his ear.

"Oh! I'm so sorry baby, I forgot that you're in Florida. I just got in from partying!"

He yawned again. "You were partying without me, huh? What's the occasion?"

"I got the job, Ju!"

He smiled at her excited tone of voice. He couldn't help but wish that she was with him right now because somehow she always made him happier. But instead, she was more than three thousand miles away from him, following her own dreams. "I'm so proud of you, babe. I believed in you all along."

"I know and I just had to tell you right away! I'm sorry for waking you up, Justin. Go back to sleep now and I'll be back in your arms before you know it. Love you..."

He never heard the rest of her words because he was already fast asleep, thankful that she had called him, even if it was at three o'clock in the morning, because her voice had somehow found a way to rock him into a peaceful slumber.