Second Chances

She stood backstage, dizzy, wondering what she was doing there. She’d come back to get Brian a drink and then….

Somehow everything seemed different to her. And the view out the window…

There weren’t any sky-scrapers. Instead, she found herself looking out at a blue moon. Suddenly, she remembered. This wasn’t New York City. It was Kentucky.

It was Labor Day in Kentucky. The Backstreet Boys were performing a concert in Brian and Kevin’s home state, and part of the concert was being broadcast on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. This was very fitting, since Jennifer had gone to Harvard, gotten her medical degree, and was currently working on a cure for ALS, a neuromuscular disorder.

She turned as she heard the guys come into the room. They were sweaty and laughing. The concert had gone great. She smiled at Brian as he walked toward her.

Her husband. Of nearly five years now.

“Are you ok, honey?” he asked softly, glancing down at her softly swelling abdomen. She was pregnant with their second child.

She nodded, unable to speak. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this happy. Yet, at the same time, she could remember. She could remember every single day of the past five years, waking up with Brian in her bed. She remembered the joy of shared mornings and the quiet intimacy of late nights spent talking and making love.

She remembered the afternoon nearly three years earlier when she’d given birth to their daughter, Annie. She remembered holding their precious baby in her arms, of rocking her to sleep. She remembered the chubby toddler Annie had become, the way she raced to greet Brian when he came home from touring, since he rarely went without them. She remembered it all. It was so good, so sweet. It was the life she’d always dreamed of having.

She could tell from the way Brian was watching her, from the look in his eyes, that he knew. She stepped forward unhesitatingly, into his embrace, and he held her tightly. She held him just as close.

“Hello, Jenn,” he whispered.

“Bri.” It was all she could manage to say before he kissed her.

It was funny. The pain in her leg. The fever from the bullet wound. Gone. All gone. All of the anger and resentment and bitterness she’d carried with her for so long was gone. Just like that. She’d thought she’d simply be gone as well, but she’d been wrong…

She wasn’t gone. She was back in her own time. But it was a different time. A better time.

And she was Jenn, but…..she wasn’t. She felt so different. So happy. So at peace and so content with her life.

She’d thought that wanting Brian so desperately for five years, that loving him from a distance, hand made her love so powerful, so sharp and strong.

But she realized now that the love she felt in those rapidly fading memories was nothing compared with the incredible love that had grown from having and holding him for the past five years.

She didn’t want to be Jenn. And she wasn’t. Not anymore. Not ever again.

She pulled back to gaze into his eyes, and it was as if he could read her mind. He gave her one of his wonderful, gorgeous smiles. “You’re Jenny now.”

She managed to smile, too, despite the tears in her eyes. “I am. Thank God.” And she was. The memories she had of the past five years of her life with Brian were so much stronger, so much more real than the ghostly echo of that other life she’d had.

Brian kissed her again, and Jenny felt herself sigh.

She was Jenny Littrell, and she was home.