"I don't understand." she pulled her leges up and turned her head so she could watch him as he talked. "Is someone mad at you or something?"
"Both."
"Huh?"
"Someone's mad at me AND something. Not OR. Both."
"Who's mad at you?"
He sighed. "My best friend. It's the worst."
"Ouch, that must hurt."
"It's more complicated than that, but yes, it does hurt. A lot, in fact," He glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes. "I'm not sure if I should be talking about this..."
"What? You don't trust me?"
"No offense or anything, but I hardly know you."
"Well, sorry, but I'm only trying to help you out here."
"And I told you that you couldn't help. How many times have I told you that you can't do anything here?"
It was silent for a moment and then Meg spoke up. "I can be your friend," she told him quietly.
A frown surfaced on Justin's face. "I don't want your pity and I don't want you to think-" he stopped. He couldn't possibly finish that sentence. The words had only floated around in his mind before, spinning in circles with no real direction and hardly any substance at all, but now... now they were real. They were concrete just like he was. Everything was so real that it was frightening.
"I don't pity you," she assured him. "And I promise you that I won't think whatever it is that you don't want me to."
"You can't promise that until I tell you."
"Until? So that means that you're gonna tell me?"
Justin shot her a glance. "No! You just don't get it, do you?"
"No, I really DON'T get it. I swear, I just want to listen to you. Don't you know that it's good to talk to someone when something's bothering you?"
"Well, if you're going to think about it like that, then you're too late. I've already talked to JC."
Meg put on a shocked expression. "You told JC and not me!?"
"Meg, like I said before, I hardly KNOW you!"
"It wouldn't hurt to get an objective opinion, you know."
"I don't want your opinions," he muttered, but in his mind, he was thinking that getting a girls perspective on the situation might actually be a good idea. They were good with relationship type things, weren't they?
"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked, seemingly out of the blue.
This time, her expression was truly one of pure shock. "Do I have a BOYFRIEND? What does THAT have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about YOU here."
Justin realized that he didn't quite know how to explain his reasoning. He tried anyway. "I was just thinking that maybe it would be good to get a girl's perspective on things and I was just wondering if you knew stuff about relationships and everything that comes with them."
"Oh." She thought about what he had said. "Are you having ISSUES with your girlfriend?"
"Well, not really. I don't have a girlfriend right now. She's my ex."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Justin, but I don't have a boyfriend. I don't have much experience at all. I'm seventeen, remember?"
Justin nodded. He remembered. How could he forget about someone like Meg? She wasn't the type of person you met everyday.
"But all girls know a thing or two about that sort of stuff. It's like we're born with it. Call it a six sense if you want."
"Really," he said in a bored voice, even though that wasn't the case at all. "Born with a six sense?"
"You know, like that little boy in that movie." When she looked over at him again he was pulling on his shoelaces. He kept on pulling until neither shoe was tied. "So, do you want to talk?"
He nodded slowly. Yes, he wanted to talk, but he knew that he couldn't tell her everything. For one thing, some of it was too crazy for anyone to believe and for another... what if she were to tell people? If he closed his eyes just so, and pictured the cover of one of those trashy magazines, he could almost see the big, bold headline.
'Pop star gets best friend's girlfriend pregnant; a brawl in our midst?'
"Wait, Meg..." he spoke up. "You've gotta understand how I have to be careful here. It's hard to trust anyone in this business."
"I understand. You can tell me whatever you want to tell me. As long as it makes you feel better. Deal?"
He nodded. "I don't have a choice but to be vague," he explained some more. "It's not that I don't like you, it's just the way things work when you're... well, when you're me."
She nodded back. "I really do understand, Justin."
Chris bit into an apple as he dialed Gracie's number. Out in the hallway, he saw Justin sitting further down talking with some girl that he didn't recognize, but he decided not to bother him. Hey, maybe it would be good if Justin could find someone else. "Might get him out of my hair a little," he mumbled to himself.
With his phone to his ear and his half eaten apple in the other hand, he waited not so patiently for Gracie to answer.
"Hello?" he finally heard her soft voice say.
"Gracie," he breathed. "It's me. I just wanted to see how you were doing. Getting your work done? Feeling okay?"
"Hi, Chris. Yes to both questions. I have one more final to study for and then tomorrow I'm heading out to school to get these tests over with. The sooner the better."
Chris smiled as he fell down in a chair by the elevators. "No kidding. I want you here with me." Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a flash of blue, but when he turned his head to investigate, there was nothing there.
"...with you too," he caught the end of her sentence.
"I'm sorry, Gracie. What did you say?" His eyes scanned the area around him, searching for any sign of something that was out of place. He had the strangest feeling that he was being watched.
"Just that I wanted to be with you too. Are you okay? You sound... shaky."
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just... well, never mind. It's not important." He felt silly and paranoid and he didn't want her to know about his crazy suspicion.
"Where are you?" her voice had an interrogating tone to it and it made him feel even worse.
"Outside my hotel room. Hey, let's talk about this later." Suddenly, he felt afraid to move and he got the sinking feeling that the phone was his only link to safety.
What was he thinking? Why was he acting so irrational? No one was watching him and he had nothing to be afraid of. Paranoid was the right word of it. "Hold on a second, Gracie." He pulled the phone away from his ear and put his hand over the mouth piece. Something was out there, he was sure of it. Something was just around the corner watching him, waiting for him to come into view and then, WHAM! Chris would be a goner. He stood up but was afraid to turn around, so looked to his left and right only moving his eyes. He wanted to call for Justin, but felt stupid, so he decided to make a run for it.
Justin was just about to go into it with Meg when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. "What was that?" he asked his friend, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the lounge area on their floor. "Did you see that?
Meg rolled her eyes. "No, I didn't. Not only are you going crazy, Justin Timberlake, but now you're starting to hulucinate."
Justin frowned at her. "I swear to God, I saw something." He stood up and brushed off his jeans as he stared suspiciously down the hall.
"Where are you going?" Meg asked, following suit. "I thought we were going to talk."
Justin gave her a sideways glance as he took a few steps in the direction of the lounge. "Not with your attitude we're not." And he was off.
She tried to follow him down the hall, but realized that she left her purse on the floor, so she turned around and picked it up. When she looked to see where Justin had ran off to, He was gone.
"Justin?" she called.
No answer.
With a shrug, she walked down the hall at a quick pace, all the while pulling her lip gloss out of her purse and applying it. Suddenly, she slammed right into someone. "Oh, sorry, I-" she started to apologize, but stopped when she looked up and saw who it was.
Justin looked down at her, frowning. He took the lip gloss away from her, capped it and put it back into the palm of her hand. "What were you doing, running up and down hallways not watching where you're going?"
Meg blinked at him as she shoved the lip gloss into her purse. "I thought you left," she said, but when the right side of his mouth went up into a smirk, she smiled at him and brushed her hair away from her face. "I forgot my purse, so I turned around to get it and-"
"Meg, I was teasing," he interrupted, lightly grabbing her shoulders. "And just so you know, I wasn't seeing things back there. It was a cop looking for some girls that he thinks he saw try and sneak up here. He didn't want them bothering us."
"Oh," she said, noticing that he still had a good hold on her shoulders. She glanced down at his left hand and he quickly let go.
"Sorry," he mumbled, looking away.
"Justin-"
"I said I was sorry!" He seemed agitated as he began pacing back and forth in front of her. "My life is one big jumble right now and I can't even think straight!"
"Justin-"
He looked at her. "You don't know what it's like, Meg. Gracie's PREGNANT and she doesn't know who the father is, Chris just found out and he's going nuts... I'M going nuts..." He stopped in front of her, his face turning an odd shade of pink. "The whole damn world is-"
"JUSTIN!" she practically yelled.
He lowered his hands from the air and looked straight at her. "What?"
"All I was going to say was that it's okay. Geez! Calm down a little," she told him, taking his hand and giving it a good squeeze.
Justin took a deep breath, closed his eyes and took in the silence.
"Um, Justin?" Meg said, breaking it.
He opened his eyes. "Yeah?"
"Who's Gracie?"
Chris slammed the door of his hotel room behind himself and leaned against it, taking deep breaths. Who the hell was following him?
'You moron,' he thought. 'You get followed by teenage girls every day. What makes you think this time is different?"
But he had a feeling... a feeling that something strange was going on. Slowly, he raised his phone to his ear and prepared to speak. "Gracie?" he said, barely a squeak escaping his lips. "You still there?"
"I'm here, Chris. Is everything okay? You sound... disturbed."
He gulped. "I think I was being followed."
"Chris? Is that you?" JC asked, coming out of the bathroom. His eyes met Chris' and he frowned. "You look flushed."
"Hold on, Gracie," Chris said into the phone. "JC's in my room."
"Your room?" JC asked defensivly as Chris lowered the phone to his side. "Have you forgotten that we're SHARING a room?"
"I was completely unaware of this arrangement," Chris claimed, his eyes narrowing.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Just like you're sure you don't know anything about my song." JC looked away, frustrated, and picked his backpack up from the floor. Chris watched as he pulled out the notebook and walked over to him. JC narrowed his eyes. "You might want to tell Gracie you'll call her back later. We need to have a little chat... and it might take awhile."
"Gracie..." Justin sighed as he leaned against the wall. "She's the ex I was telling you about before."
Meg looked at him with a concerned expression. "You really are in quite a bind... arn't you?" It was more of a statement than a question.
"You don't know the half of it," he told her. "Now do you see what I meant when I said there was nothing you can do?
Meg nodded. "I see what you meant, but you're wrong. I might not be able to fix things, but I can still be your friend. How many people do you have to talk about this to right now? How many people even KNOW about it?"
"Not many," Justin answered. "Only Chris and JC know and I really don't want everything to get spread around like gossip. This is something I'm not too proud of."
She reached into her purse and started digging around.
"What are you looking for?" he wondered.
Meg didn't say anything. She pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. "Turn around," she told him and he did so. She wrote her name and number on it against his back, and then handed it to him. "You can call me on my cell anytime after three if you need to talk... and whenever on the weekends."
After looking at it for a moment, he put it into his pocket and gave her a smile. "Thanks. I might just take you up on that."
She smiled back.
"Hey," he said. "You wanna get some lunch before I have to hit the venue? I can call room service and we can just hang out in my room for awhile. What do you say?"
Meg nodded. "Sounds like a plan!"
Justin put his hand lightly on her back and led her to his room.
"Gracie, I'm gonna have to call you back. JC's being a total..." Chris looked up at JC's disapproving glance. "I'm gonna have to call you back," he repeated. "Love you. Bye." He hung up the phone and shoved it into his pocket. "That was very rude, JC. I happened to be having an important conversation with my gilrfriend."
"Can't be as important as the one I'm about to have with you," JC countered as he gestured toward one of the beds. "Now, sit."
Chris didn't obey. "I swear," he almost growled at his groupmate. "Justin and I only looked at that one page and that was it. I don't know what you're so upset about!"
JC almost laughed. "Looked? Um, excuse me, Chris, but if you had just LOOKED at it, that would mean it would still be in the notebook, wouldn't it!?"
"This isn't a big deal!" Chris yelled back. "The song was good! I LIKED it!"
"That is SO not the point, Chris. The point is that you snooped through my personal belongings and tore out a page of my private notebook! I-" he stopped suddenly, regaining his train of thought. "Actually, on second thought, if you would just give me my song back, I'll forget about it okay?"
Chris didn't say anything. He just stared at JC as if he were nuts.
"What? Do I have something on my face?"
Chris shook his head. "JC, you don't understand, I-"
"I understand completely, Chris. You took my song, and I want it back. Now, where is it?"
"Fine. I'll give it back," he shrugged as he walked to his suitcase and pulled out the wrinkled sheet of notebook paper. "But you still don't understand..."
JC stormed over to him and snatched the paper out of his hand. "Thank you for returning my stolen property," he huffed. "And if you don't mind, I'd really appreciate it if you stayed the hell out of my things?"
"What? What did you just say?" Chris said right back to him. "I think I heard you wrong! I thought you said that I should stay out of YOUR things! I'd like to REMIND you, JC, that if you would have never crossed the line from your business to mine, then Justin would have never showed me that notebook."
JC crossed his arms across his chest and stared at Chris with a mean frown on his face. "This is so different than that," he spat out.
"Yeah, what you did was worse."
"Whatever." JC spun around, angrily shoved the paper inside of his notebook and stuffed it back inside his backpack. "Just don't read my notebook again."
"I wouldn't want to enter your warped mind anyway," Chris shot back.
JC ignored him, picked up his hotel key and left the room.
Chris sighed as the door slammed. Hey, now it wasn't his fault that Diane Warren still had JC's song... after all, he'd tried to TELL JC... but JC just wouldn't listen.
Chapter 4 (not ready)
Identities
Chris {Fiction}
Justin {Fiction}
My Fiction
I'll Never Stop {Fiction}
Email me: irishgirl982@yahoo.com