With a chuckle, JC stopped trying to convince him to stay since he was already sitting down and didn't seem like he'd be fighting it for too much longer.
Justin propped his elbows on the bar and his head in his hands as he stared at the different kinds of bottles against the wall. He wondered what it would be like to be a bartender... memorizing names and ingredients and then mixing everything just right. Fun.
A man from behind the bar approached them. "What'll it be?" he asked, reaching under the counter for two glasses.
"A beer for me," JC replied. "And a Coke for my friend here." He gave Justin a slap on the back. "A LARGE Coke."
Justin glared at him. "Thanks, BUDDY," he spat out, only to receive a semi-evil grin.
"No problem. It's on me."
"Sure, it is..." he watched as the drinks were poured and served. It made him thirsty just looking at his Coke. It sat right in front of him in a huge glass with tons of ice, bubbles floating randomly to the surface. He took a gulp and then glanced over at JC.
JC was wrapping his fingers gingerly around his smaller glass. "What a day," he mumbled before holding the it out to Justin. "To... um..." he chuckled at his loss for words.
Justin decided to take over. "To the truth," he said, clinking his glass to JC's. "We've sure as hell had enough of it today."
"Right on," JC gave him a crooked smile and they both took another drink.
"I need to forgive you," Chris told Gracie softly through the phone. "It's not fair to you that I take it out this way. It's not really fair to me either, but Gracie, I have to do what's right."
Gracie was crying. Chris could tell by her irregular breathing and by her sniffles. "I don't want you to do something you don't want to," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I want to be there for you... I HAVE to be. This is my decision and I'm deciding not to be a coward."
She was silent, so he continued. "If you'll let me, Gracie, I want to make a commitment to you and this baby no matter..." he had to take a deep breath before finishing his thought, but his voice was shaking anyway. "No matter who the father is."
"Chris..."
"Gracie," he interrupted her. "Justin's my best friend and even if I'm not too happy with him right now, I'm not going to shut you out of my life. I promise."
Her heart lifted, but she tried not to get too hopeful. Besides, Chris didn't know that this baby was PROBABLY Justin's... Chances were... "Chris, are you sure you want this?" she asked.
"I'm sure." He ran his fingers down the hem of his pillow case, stopping somewhere in the middle and then clutching the pillow to his chest. "I want you here with me, Gracie. Will you come out on tour with us over Thanksgiving break? When does that start anyway?"
"Only one more week of classes and we're off. But Chris, I was thinking... Maybe I should take a break from college. This is a time when I should be thinking of nothing else but this baby and if I'm all stressed out by finals and papers, I don't think it's going to be good for the baby. You know?"
Chris was silent for a moment. "I didn't think about that," he finally said. "Maybe you're right."
"Finals are after Thanksgiving. I'm thinking about taking them this week so I can leave early. I'm already ahead of the rest of the class anyway. It shouldn't be too hard to finish."
"That sounds good," Chris agreed. "We have three days off during Thanksgiving break. I was thinking that maybe we could go spend part of it with my family and then the other part with yours... if that's okay with you."
Gracie smiled, even though she knew he couldn't see her. "That sounds perfect. But... I just have to figure out a way that I'm going to tell my parents the news. Have you told yours?" She immediately regretted that last question. Way to twist the knife...
"Um..." he was almost speechless. "Is that what we're going to do? Are we going to pretend that the baby is mine?"
"Don't say that it's not. We don't know for sure yet," she told him, trying to set it straight.
"But, Gracie... we always..."
"Use protection?" she finished for him. "I know... but still. Those things aren't one hundred percent."
Chris felt tears in his eyes. Of course. Wasn't he always dealt the bad hand? Was this even supposed to make sense? He could tell that she was trying to be positive for his benefit, but he wasn't sure if it was helping. "Let's talk about this later," he finally said.
She nodded, knowing that he couldn't see. "Okay. That's okay with me. Let's take this slow." When she paused, she could hear his breathing on the other line and became scared. Could things really work out after everything that had happened? "I'll call you when I'm done studying here, okay? Tonight. I promise."
As JC got into the bus and looked around, he realized that a chapter in his life was ending. They knew about his thoughts, his feelings and he STILL hadn't gotten his song back. He saw Chris sitting on the edge of the booth in the kitchen area, untying his shoes. The light post from outside the bus was directly outside the window beside him, and a dark shadow was cast on the bus' floor.
The rest of the guys had already slipped safely away in their bunks so JC had him alone.
Chris jumped when JC slid into the booth across from him. "Oh," he said as one of his shoes hit the floor with a thud.
JC watched as Chris bent down to untie the other shoe. He decided to get right into it. "Can I have my song back?" he asked, trying his hardest to keep a strong, straight face.
Chris panicked. Justin hadn't said a word about JC knowing what they had done. Maybe Diane had gone against her word and talked to him about the song... how else would he have found out?
"Wha... what..." he stuttered, looking back and forth from JC to the bus' exit, but it was too late to run away; the bus had already pulled out of the parking lot. "What do you mean? What song?" he played dumb as he inched closer and closer to the end of the bench.
JC almost laughed at the expression on Chris' face. "What have we come to?" he asked suddenly. "When did we start lying about everything?"
Chris gulped. "Look, JC, I'm really, REALLY tired and I've had a SUPER long day, so... I'm just, ah... gonna turn in now."
Before JC could blink, he was gone without a trace. It almost seemed like their brief confrontation had never actually happened. Well, besides for the fact that Chris' left shoe sat innocently in the middle of the isle.
Suddenly, he heard a clunk, and when he looked to see what had fallen, he saw another show on the floor beside Chris' bunk.
Gracie bit her lip as she looked down at her dining room table. It was covered with books, notebooks, papers and in her hand, she held her favorite black pen. When she sat down, her thoughts drifted away from her studies and to her future. For the first time in her young life, she was thinking past the next year. It wasn't only her life that she had to think about, but there was a baby now.
She had five classes to study for and if she wanted to go on tour with Chris after Thanksgiving, then she'd have to take all five finals three weeks early, which meant that she had to teach herself the remainder of each course. She didn't know why she was even attempting it... the stress of it all alone was enough to put her on bed rest... well, not really, but it was a thought.
'You're doing it for Chris,' she kept telling herself over and over again. 'You're doing it for your relationship with him. If you're going to be a mother, you had better fight to keep your child's father in your life. Besides, this will be relatively easy. You're in love with him.'
But wait... Chris probably wasn't going to BE this baby's father... that would be JUSTIN. She kept forgetting.
'Chris can be the father... whether it's biological or not.'
Justin woke up when the bus hit a bump in the road. When he opened the curtain a little bit so he could look out, it was still too dark to be anywhere after six AM.
His head hurt again and he feared that headaches would be a usual occurrence. He'd have to start carrying around ibuprofen in his pockets.
Feeling almost sick, he put his head back on his pillow, pulled his sleeping bag up to his chin and stared out the little crack in the curtains. He knew that he was probably the first one up and he didn't like it. Everyone else was safe in their unconscious thoughts while he was left to face the consequences of alertness.
The things that ran through his mind was what terrified him. Wasn't there an end to the madness?
Chris. Gracie. The baby. Everything was mixing into one big, blob of a thought. IT sat there in his brain like a useless lump that couldn't be moved. He wished that he could go back in time and change things, but that was impossible. He had to live with his mistakes.
'All you've got to do is get Chris to forgive you. Once he's not angry with you anymore, you can relax.'
"Yeah," he whispered. "Until the baby's born. Then he'll remember."
'You expect him to forget?'
Justin sniffed. No, he didn't expect him to forget. Who could forget something that would change their lives forever? He knew HE couldn't.
He pictured what the baby would look like, but it was hard. Not knowing was hard. It broke his heart that no matter what happened, he'd still be upset. If the baby were Chris', then he'd be jealous... and that was REALLY sad. If it were his, then he'd feel more guilty than anything. It was a lose-lose situation for Justin Timberlake.
Wasn't it always?
No... not always.
Minneapolis, Minnesota wasn't much different from Milwaukee, Wisconsin... weather wise, anyway. When JC looked up at the sky and saw a shade of white that had absolutely no depth, he sighed. "My life has no depth," he mumbled to himself as he leaned against the side of the bus.
The driver, James, had stopped at a gas station around seven AM to pick up a few things before they arrived to the hotel and JC, being up, had decided to stop out for some fresh air. He looked down at his tattered, leather jacket and faded, flannel pants and for the first time in a long time, he didn't care about his appearance. Why did it matter? If he felt like crap shouldn't he look the part?
A feeling swept over his entire being. It was the feeling of being trapped in a place he didn't want to be... and that place wasn't Minnesota. Minnesota didn't bother him... it was actually a lot cleaner than a lot of the other places he'd been. No, it wasn't his location in the world, it was his location in himself.
He was trapped inside the feeling that dwelled deep within his soul and he didn't know how to escape. He had that sinking feeling that he couldn't fix things this time.
Just then, he spotted James coming out of the gas station. It was time to go back into the bus, into his lonely bunk and try once again to forget his tortured thoughts.
The concert scene was crazy in Minneapolis. There were more girls than usual hanging outside their hotel and more than one group of them had tried to sneak up.
Justin looked down at the crowd on the street from his room. He glanced back at JC, who was sleeping on the other bed and looking almost lifeless. When he looked back down to the street, his eye caught something.
Across the street, there were two police officers talking with a girl. She was waving her arms and pointing up towards his hotel. The officers didn't look too happy, but they were listening anyway. "Oh, my God..." Justin said more loudly than planned.
JC jumped up from his slumber. "What?" he asked as he ran a hand through his tangled hair.
"Nothing," Justin mumbled, still gazing down into the streets. "Never mind." He turned around, glanced at JC and then headed for the door. "I'll be back later," he said in a rushed voice and before JC knew it, he was gone.
"Mistake number one," JC said to the closed door. "Sharing a room with Justin Timberlake."
Justin rushed to the end of the hall where he knew a security guard would be. "I need a favor," he spat out.
The guard looked at him a second before he recognized his curls. This was obviously one of those Nsync guys. "Depending on what the favor is..." he countered. "I can only do things within the rules, sir."
Justin's eyes widened. He knew he could pull this off. "This is in the rules, officer, I can assure you."
Seriously, sir," the girl was saying. "This pen belongs to Justin Timberlake." She was waving an expensive looking pen in his face and he took a step backwards. Ever since he became a police officer he knew he would have to deal with things like this.
"I'm sorry, miss," he sighed. "But like I said before, I can't let someone up just because they say that they have Justin's pen."
"I never said you had to let me up. I just want you to give him his pen back!"
Right as he was rolling his eyes, he felt a tap on his shoulder. One of the hotel security guards was standing next to him.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but I've had orders to escort this young lady up to the nineteenth floor."
Both the officer's eyes and the girl's eyes widened. "Are you sure?" they asked in unison.
"I couldn't be more sure."
The girl shot the officer a glare. "Told you so," she said.
Justin saw her step out of the elevator, the guard and police officer at her sides. "Meg!" he exclaimed. "I just looked out of my window and saw you and I had to know what you were doing in Minneapolis!"
She held up his pen. "You dropped this."
"You came all the way to Minneapolis to return my PEN?" His eyes drifted to the two men and he grabbed the sleeve of her coat. "C'mon." He pulled her to the end of the hallway.
"Well, someone vandalized my school so they gave us two days off while they cleaned it up. Some of my friends were coming here to shop till they dropped," she rolled her eyes, "at the Mall of America so I just hitched a ride."
"But to give me a pen?"
She looked down at her shoes. "Well, I kinda wanted to say I was sorry. I treated you like shit yesterday when you just wanted someone to talk to. I'm really sorry. It was wrong."
"It's okay. To tell you the truth, you're the least of my problems. Don't worry about me. I'm fine."
"But you're not. Right?"
Justin leaned against the wall. Inside, he was hurting, but he didn't want her to know. The pain was so mixed up within his soul, that he couldn't imagine that she wouldn't be able to see it. "No really, I'm okay."
"Justin, if you want to talk, I'll listen."
She wasn't buying it. He was looking through her, or past her, but not at her. She knew and he didn't have to hide it anymore with her. "Okay," he said in a voice that was just above a whisper. "I'll admit it. I'm not okay. I feel like... like the rug has been pulled out from underneath me and I'm falling and falling..." He stopped talking for a moment and closed his eyes. "I don't know which way is up anymore and it scares me."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
His eyes flew open. "What's there to say? Nothing can fix this, I promise."
"Sure. How do you know that I can't help you unless you tell me? Maybe I'm some magical witch that can fix everyone's problems. The truth is... you don't know."
He almost laughed. "Yeah right. I wish." If that were only true, not only would HE be better off, but the whole would be trouble free.
"Still, Justin, you can't know for sure that I can't help. How can you?"
He sank to the floor and watched as she sat down next to him. "It's too late. Listen to me when I tell you that NOTHING can be done. I've acted like an idiot and I made some bad decisions. Please, listen... it's WAY too late."
Chapter 3
Identities
Chris {Fiction}
Justin {Fiction}
My Fiction
I'll Never Stop {Fiction}
Email me: irishgirl982@yahoo.com