“Are you and
Laurie coming to the show tonight or going back to the hotel?” Chris
asked. He was sitting in the chair
getting his hair styled for that evening’s show.
“Umm,” she said and didn’t meet his
eyes in the mirror. “There’s a little
bar down the street called ‘Cowboys’ that I thought Laurie and I could go to…
it’s Ladies’ Night and…”
“No.”
“Pardon me?”
“After the stunt you and Laurie pulled
two weeks ago, I don’t think you should be going to a bar together.”
“But Chris…”
“No.”
Michelle laughed. “You can’t seriously be telling me what I
can’t do.”
His dark eyes glared at her in the
mirror.
“Chris… last time I checked, you
weren’t my father.”
Apparently this was the wrong thing to
say, because Chris jumped out of the chair, startling the hairdresser and
walked up to Michelle.
“Fine, then you can go.” He
growled. “But take someone with you.”
“I’ll be taking Laurie…”
“That’s not what I meant and you know
it. You’re my girlfriend and I know you
don’t like security being around you, but sometimes you need it as much as I
do.”
“Yeah, like there will be a lot of
teenies in a bar.” She snorted.
“Just do it.” He snapped and sat back
in the chair.
“I think someone needs to take some
pain medication,” she muttered to herself and walked out of the room just as JC
walked in.
JC glanced back at Michelle as she left
and sat down in the chair next to Chris.
“Does she talk to herself often?” He
chuckled.
Chris shot a glare at him.
“Ok, apparently she was right about the
pain medication. What’s up your ass?”
“She’s decided that she’s taking Laurie
to a bar down the street…”
“What?
Umm, no, I don’t think so.”
“It’s a little late now. I said she could go as long as she took
someone with her.”
“Laurie’s not going.” JC said defiantly.
“Well then you’d better find her and
tell her… because if Michelle gets to her first...”
“Shit…” JC groaned and looked at his
watch. “We only have fifteen minutes
before we hit the stage.” He sighed.
“I’m sure they’ll have their cell phones on them if we need to get a
hold of them.”
“We can only hope.” Chris muttered.
**********
“So what are you going to wear
tonight?” Michelle grinned. She had
driven with Laurie back to the hotel and they were grabbing a quick bite to eat
from room service before they went out for the evening.
“Probably just jeans and a t-shirt…
isn’t that the standard fare for bars?”
“Pretty much, I was just curious. I just want to go out because I don’t know
how much longer I’ll be able to.”
“What do you mean?” Laurie asked and
looked up from her dinner.
Michelle blushed a little. “Chris and I have decided that we’re going
to try to have a baby.”
Laurie shrieked. “Really?
That’s fantastic!”
“It took him a while to convince me,
but he finally managed.” She grinned.
“So are you almost done eating yet?
I wanna go!”
“Fine.
Just let me go back to my room to change.”
“You mean JC’s room?” Michelle said
slyly.
“Umm… yeah.” Laurie smiled and ducked
out of the room.
**********
“It’s loud in here,” Laurie yelled as
she and Michelle sat in a booth near the middle of the bar.
Country music was blaring from the
speakers and there were at least twenty people line dancing on the floor.
“I know, isn’t it great?” Michelle
asked as she signaled the waitress to come over. “Lance would love it here.”
Laurie somehow doubted that. Even though it was Ladies’ Night, there were
more men than women and Laurie had a bad feeling that they were going to
attract the wrong kind of attention.
“You know… maybe we should have brought
someone with us.”
“What for? I don’t think there’s anyone here who looks like an *NSYNC fan…”
Michelle’s eyes surveyed the bar.
“Except maybe that girl over there.
She has a FuMan t-shirt on.”
Laurie followed the direction Michelle
was looking in.
“I – I think I know her.” She
concentrated a little harder on the women through the thick smoke. “I’m almost positive I went to school with
her.”
Sure enough, the woman looked their way
and grinned. She immediately approached
their table.
“Laurie!” She exclaimed. “How are you?”
“I’m great Holley, how are you? What are you doing in Dallas?”
“My husband wanted to buy a ranch, so
we moved out here. What about you? Are you married?”
“For three months,” she replied, unsure
of how much she could share with her old friend. “He travels a lot, so I can pretty much do as I please.”
“That sounds wonderful.” Holley
smiled. “Listen, if you two don’t want
to hang out here, you can come back to my place and we can play cards or
something… I can show you around.”
“That would be better than being here,”
Laurie laughed and looked at Michelle when she cleared her throat. “Oh, I’m sorry. Holley, this is Michelle.”
“Nice to meet you,” Michelle
paused. “Nice shirt.”
“You like it? I'm absolutely crazy about this clothing line. My sister bought me one of the shirts last
Christmas and it was just so comfortable that I had to go out and buy
more. I think I own more shirts than I
do jeans.” She laughed.
Michelle beamed with pride and made a
mental note to tell Chris later. She
reached for her wallet to pay the bill and Holley shook her head.
“It’s on me. My brother-in-law owns this bar… I’ll just tell him and then we
can leave.”
Laurie and Michelle waited for Holley
at the front door and left with her five minutes later.
**********
(1:00 am – July 9)
“JC!” Chris yelled and banged on the
door of JC’s room. “JC open this damn
door before I break it down!”
“You’re going to wake up the entire
hotel if you don’t keep it down, Kirkpatrick.” Lonnie admonished from his post.
Chris ignored him and narrowly avoided
punching JC in the face when he opened the door.
“What?”
“Is Laurie with you?”
“No, as far as I know, she’s still with
Michelle. Why?”
“Because I’ve been trying to get a hold
of both of them for the past hour and neither are answering their cell phones.”
“I know,” JC moved to the side and let
Chris into his room. “I’ve been trying
to call Laurie since we got back.”
“I’m gonna kill her.” Chris fumed.
“No you won’t, you’d miss the sex.” JC
laughed.
“Shut up.” He said and decided to hit
below the belt. “I bet Craig wouldn’t
let Laurie stay out so late.”
JC whipped his head around to glare at
Chris and a dangerous look entered his silver-blue eyes. He unconsciously made a fist at his side.
“Take it back.”
Chris wouldn’t. He was in a fighting mood. He decided to take another shot. “In fact, maybe if Craig were around more,
Laurie would have no interest in you.”
He cocked his head to the side.
“After all, even Alexandria has no interest in you.”
JC closed his eyes and counted to
ten. “I’m going to pretend that you
only said that because of the medication you’re on.”
“Ha!” Chris barked. “I haven’t taken any since this afternoon.”
That was all JC needed. “Good.” He stated. “Then you’ll feel it when I do this.”
And promptly punched Chris in the
mouth.