"No!"
"You can't do this!"
"That's so unfair!" I sat back in my seat and sighed angrily. Brian put his hands on my shoulders and began to message them.
"You can't break us up like this!" Joanne exclaimed.
"What's done is done," Donna sighed. The sixteen of us (including AJ's mom, Denise) sat there looking at our three managers, Donna, Diane (who had also become N'Sync's manager when they joined JIVE Records) and Lou Pearlman.
"This can't be happening," I heard Rachel sigh as she leaned into Nick's arms.
"We put you with your friends," Dianne said, hopefully.
"But you broke up all the couples," Denise argued in our defense. "You knew that wasn't going to play well with anyone."
"You should at least put Maribeth and AJ together along with Brian and Alex," Justin said, standing next to me.
"I mean, c'mon!" Jamie argued, taking Howie's hand. "It's not like I don't want to be with Howie, but they just got married and Maribeth is pregnant for crying out loud."
"It's not as if she's due in a the next two months or anything," Donna argued.
"Look," Lou cut in. "What's done is done and it's not gonna change."
"Screw you," I said, getting up and walking out of the room. I walked down the hall for a bit, then stopped and leaned my back against it. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, my knees pulled up against my chest and my head buried in my hands. I heard the conference room door open and footsteps come in my direction. Someone knelt down in front of me. A hand went under my chin and brought my eyes up to meet Brian's.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Of course I'm not okay," I said, a tear rolling down my cheek. "We've only been married a little more than two weeks and now they're trying to separate us."
"I guess they just wanted us to look 'single' in the public eye," he said, sitting down and pulling me into his lap.
"But we're not single and I'm never going to deny that."
"And neither will I," Brian said, nuzzling my neck, "but we don't have any other option than going where they tell us to."
"We can always kill them," I said, hopefully.
"Yeah, but even then, I don't think they'd let us stay in the same jail cell," Brian laughed, kissing the back of my neck.
"I still say we kill them."
"And I second that."
"I third that, whatever it was." We looked up to see Maribeth and AJ coming out of the room.
"Okay, what was it?" AJ asked.
"I suggested that we kill the managers," I said. AJ sat down across from me and Brian.
"I still don't understand why they're doing this, but I had to laugh in there," Maribeth said, sitting down on AJ's lap.
"Why'd you have to laugh?" I asked.
"I've never seen Justin and Chris argue like that," she answered, smiling. "Not even with each other, though."
"Yeah," AJ agreed. "When we laughed, I think Justin was ready to pounce on Lou! They really care about you, Lex."
"You know, I always knew I let them hang around for something," I said, jokingly. "I just never knew what. I guess now I know."
"Hey! I take offense to that!" Justin said, joining us. He sat down and laid his head in my lap.
"Take all the offense you want," I said, smiling. "And thanks for sticking up for me in there."
"Anything for you," he said, making kissy noises at me. I rolled my eyes and Brian laughed good-naturedly. "But Joey was causing the real spectacle."
"Why, what was he doing?" Maribeth asked, concerned.
"He was putting up the same fight that Chris and I were doing, but he's also mad that he didn't get the East Coast like he suggested. He really wants to see Jess."
"I'll be sure to send her a ticket over to him," I laughed, making a mental note to call my sister when I got home.
"Besides the fact that I know I'm not with AJ, what are the groups?" Maribeth asked.
"Well," I said, "on the East Coast, there's me, AJ, Justin, Chris, and Howie. The West Coast is you, Joanne . . . oh no."
"What's 'oh no'?" AJ asked.
"Putting your fiancée and Joanne together could be compared to one of two things," Justin explained, "either putting a dog and a cat together . . ."
"Or putting Kevin and Nick together," I finished.
"Oh," AJ said. "Cat fight. Not good."
"We'll be fine, I promise," Maribeth said. "Or, at least, I will."
"Well, Brian will be there to keep an eye on you two," I said. "Anyway, there's also Nick and Joey with you guys, then Rachel, Jamie, JC, Kevin, and Lance are touring the middle of the country."
"Wait, going back to the cat-fight thing. You think I'm stupid enough to get in the middle of the two of them?" Brian asked, incredulously.
"At least you'll be there if anything happens," AJ said to Brian. "Your probably the one I trust the most with handling MB's pregnancy of anything happens."
"How do you know you can trust me?" Brian asked, raising his eyebrows.
"For two reasons," AJ said, simply. "One, she'll kill you if you make a move, and two, Alex and I will kill you if you make a move or if something else goes wrong. It'll just depend on who gets to your throat first." I laughed and kissed Brian on the cheek.
"I still can't believe word of your pregnancy got out that fast, MB," Brian commented.
"How come?" I asked.
"I've never seen any reporter jump on a story that fast."
"Then you obviously never heard stories from our school," Justin commented. Maribeth and I snickered.
"One story got from the junior high, to the high school, then the elementary schools in two minutes, flat," I said.
"You're exaggerating," AJ said.
"Wanna test me?" I asked. He nodded, smiling mischievously. "Okay, what grade were we in?" I asked Maribeth.
"Well, it was Justin's last year at McKinley, so . . . we were in eighth," she answered. "I can't believe you're gonna tell them this story."
"Have to prove a point to your man," I shrugged. I turned back to AJ. "Okay, in our school district, we had seven elementary schools that went from k to six, a junior high that went from seventh to ninth, and the high school went from tenth to twelfth. Let's just say that the incident involved me, Maribeth, Jason, a game of truth or dare, a few cans of whipped-cream, and the principals Rolls-Royce."
"You didn't," Brian said, his mouth hanging open.
"I did," I said, smiling at the memory. "And I mean I. Jason dared me, Maribeth supplied the cans, but I was the one who actually desecrated the poor man's car. The teachers never found out who did it, but the entire school district knew within two minutes. I know that because the last school bell rang as soon as I was finished. I ran home and before I even got a foot in the door, my brother was screaming at me, Jessica was giving me the thumbs up sign, and my little sister was in hysterics. I have to say that was the funniest thing I have ever done. I made it a point not to ruin the car, though. The guy was a bastard and even though he did deserve it, I still wasn't gonna do it."
"I still can't believe that you had the guts to do it in the first place," AJ said.
"She wasn't exactly a little angel," Maribeth said, grinning at me, "no matter how much her teachers thought she was."
"Maybe not a 'little angel' then," Brian said, "but my 'little angel' now."
"Sappiness ahoy!" AJ said as Justin made a gagging noise. I was about to comment, but Denise interrupted us.
"Can you guys come in here for a minute?" she asked, looking at us sorrowfully. We looked at each other and got up, trudging into the room.
"I still think you did this on purpose," Joey said, smiling at me and Maribeth slightly as we walked in to the room.
"We should have been able to arrange the groups ourselves," Joanne said.
"Look, what's done is done and it's not going to change." Lou growled as he repeated the phrase again. "The tour's only going to last one and a half months, anyway."
"What?!?" everyone said in unison.
"Now if you'll just look these over . . ." Lou continued, ignoring our outburst.
"That's it, Lou," I said, holding up a hand. "I'm not listening to any more of your crap today. I'll go wherever you want, I'm just not going to hear anymore today." With that, everyone left the room, leaving the three managers behind.