Stacy let herself into her brother's condo with the spare key that he had given her, mindful that he was probably still sleeping despite the late morning hour. With her new husband away on business, she had flown down to Orlando to spend a few days with Lance. They had been quite close growing up, and she missed him. Surveying the cluttered living room, Stacy briefly wondered if she had entered a paper factory instead of a home. Contracts, sheet music, and various other materials of a papyri nature were strewn all over the place, amid the piles of dirty tee-shirts, socks, and sneakers. 'You've gotten quite sloppy in your old age, Lancey-poo,' she thought as she set her bag down. Sneaking upstairs, Stacy confirmed her initial suspicions. Lance was still sleeping, unfortunately he was sleeping hunched over at his desk in the study instead of in his own bed.

"Lance? Lance honey, wake up," Stacy gently shook her kid brother.

"Huh ... Uh … what … Stace?" Lance mumbled. "What are you doing here? Your flight isn't coming in till 10 o'clock tomorrow morning."

"It's 11 o'clock tomorrow morning," Stacy smiled at her very confused sibling.

"What? Oh my goodness! It's that late already? Gosh, I'm sorry Stace. I had promised to pick you up at the airport and –" Lance fumbled for words, still not quite fully cognitive yet.

"It's okay, Lance. How long have you been working here?" Stacy said as she pointed to the messy clutter that hid the surface of the desk.

"Last time I looked at the clock it was only 4:30 in the morning," Lance said, stretching out his muscles, most of which were telling him very painfully that the human body does not appreciate sleeping in a chair all night long. "Wait a minute, how – how did you get here?"

"I called JC and he picked me up and dropped me off here," Stacy replied, trailing off with her answer.

"Oh, I see," Lance said quietly. "I … uh … I guess I'll have to thank him for that."

"Lance, what's going on?" Stacy asked. JC had picked her up and driven her here, but he had adamantly refused to come inside with her, almost as if he was afraid that Lance would be revolted to see his face. "Did you and JC have a fight or something?"

"Nothing's going on, Stace. And you know that JC and I are always fighting about something." Lance told his sister as he moved into the bathroom. "Just make yourself at home, I'll be out in about 15 minutes and then we can go get some lunch." By the time Lance had gotten out of the shower and put on some decent clothing, his sister had cleaned up most of his downstairs area and was settling into the guest bedroom. He found her ruffling through some of the papers that he had left strewn across the couch downstairs, papers that he had gone over for months and months with the lawyers.

"Lance? Is it really this bad?" Stacy asked, shocked at what she had been able to read up till then. "Lou is ripping y'all off to this degree? That fat greedy son of a bitch!" The very fact that profanity was coming out of his sister's mouth was enough to make Lance chuckle.

"Stacy Ellen Bass Lofton! Mama would wash your mouth out with soap if she heard you just now!" Lance laughed at his sister's candor. "Come on, I'm hungry, let's get some food." And with that, brother and sister made their way to one of Lance's favorite places for lunch. It was nothing more than a hole in the wall, but it was good southern country cooking that reminded Lance of home. It wasn't until they were digging into collard greens, mashed potatoes, and country fried steak that Stacy decided to dig again.

"You never answered my questions, Lance," Stacy said as she sipped her iced tea. "What's going on between you and JC? And how long before you kick Lou in his fat ass?"

"First of all, big sis, nothing is going on between me and JC. We bicker, we fight, as we have been for the past four years. His intense dislike for me is equally and fully reciprocated on my part. And second, let me worry about Lou. You're here to enjoy yourself, remember?" Lance answered in his slightly lower than normal bass voice: always a sign to Stacy that he was hiding something.

"Fine, if there's nothing going on between you and JC, then why was he terrified that you would kill him if he stepped inside your front doorway this morning? That boy acted like he was sure that you suspected him to be a leper," Stacy bluntly told her brother. "I thought that after what happened at Christmas that y'all would be –"

"Nothing happened at Christmas, Stace," Lance said defensively. "Now can we drop the subject? I want to spend some time with you, to talk about you and my new brother-in-law, not about my pesky business partner."

"Are you sure that's all he is, Lance?" Stacy prodded. She had seen how happy Lance was for those few hours JC had been with them on Christmas Day. Hesitant, but definitely happy.

"That's all he can ever be, Stace. Now if you'll drop your Perry Mason shtick, how about you and I checking out NASA this afternoon? My old space camp coaches Majors Nelson and Healey are visiting from Houston for a few days. I want to stop by and say hello," Lance said as he paid the check and ushered his sister out the door.

"Okay, space cowboy. But don't think that I'm dropping this subject permanently," Stacy said, giving her brother a fair warning that she was not about to give up on her questioning.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I try to spend as much time as possible with her here in LA. So if you want to call it dating, then I guess that's okay." The words still rang in his ears, more than three hours after Lance has uttered them to Jay Leno, and to the national audience, on The Tonight Show. He had been too shocked then, and he was still shocked now, to show any real emotion. They all had been shocked, really, to hear Lance confess so readily on national television. Shocked because no one knew it was coming; shocked because they all knew it wasn't true. It had come so far out of left field that Justin almost cracked a joke about it, until he had seen Lance's face. Chris had called Lance a sly fox afterwards, keeping his girlfriend a secret from all of them. Joey, well, Joey just had this perplexing look on his face for the rest of the night, as if he was trying to figure out what scheme Lance was cooking up by lying to millions of people, by lying to them, by lying to himself..

"JC? Can I come in?" He heard the quiet knock and then the sound of Joey's voice through the door. He really didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment. He was numb, he couldn't think, he didn't know how to react, or even if it was proper or a given that he should react. He had no claim on Lance. He never had any claim on Lance. Why should he react at all?

"Sure, Joey. What's up?" JC said as he pulled the door open to admit his friend.

"You okay man?" Joey asked.

"Sure, why wouldn’t I be okay?" He answered, turning away so that his eyes wouldn’t betray him. "We had a great show on Leno. Johnny's happy, Lou's happy."

"That's not what I meant, JC," Joey said as he plopped himself onto the single bed. They all had single rooms now, a step that Lance had demanded for this latest round of promotional gigs. "About what Lance said tonight –"

"I'm happy for him, Joey. Really, he deserves someone to care for him," JC said, almost whispering as he fought not to choke up on the words.

"That someone is you, JC, not Danielle Fishel," Joey said quietly.

"That someone is whomever he chooses, Joey. I have no right to say anything, I never had any right to say anything at all," JC whimpered, now desperately fighting with his emotions.

"But I thought after Christmas," Joey started.

"Will everybody just get off my fucking back about Christmas? I just gave him a present, that's all!" JC exploded. "I need a goddamned cold shower, Joey. Let yourself out, will ya?" And with that, he disappeared behind the bathroom doors. And he stood under that shower spray for a very long time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What in the hell are you doing?" Stacy thundered over the phone, causing her husband to look up from his Wall Street Journal with some interest. "James Lance Bass, are you out of that little peapod for a brain of yours?"

"Get off my back, Stace," Lance barked back. He was in no mood to fight with his sister. Like the proverbial shot heard round the world, his little confession the night before had sent shock waves out and around his life. "I don't need this from anyone, least of all you right now."

"I hate to tell you this, little brother, but confessing that you're dating that bowheaded blowfish ain't going to change the fact that you're in love with someone else!" Stacy shouted into the receiver, now really catching her husband's attention. He was about to say something, but her 'don’t you dare interfere at this moment' look told him to wisely hold his tongue. Castration by his wife was definitely not on his to-do list today. "Look Lance, if you want a cover, I have half a dozen friends at Ole Miss or Mississippi State that would gladly take the job. Picking an overweight, overtanned, overboobed airhead from California is not necessarily the best career move!"

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm not in love with anyone right now," Lance fought back, almost believing the statement himself. "I just want to have a good time, is that a friggin' crime nowadays?"

"Tell me this, Lance. Tell me right now that you're not in love with JC. I'll fly out there right now and you can look me in the face and tell me that you're not in love with JC. If you tell me that you can do that, then I'll never mention it again," Stacy shouted at her brother, ignoring the fact that her husband had just spit out most of his coffee onto the newspaper and was looking at her with shocked eyes. She waited for an answer, and she only heard silence. "Uh huh, that's what I thought. You screwed this one up real bad, baby brother. I suggest you find a way to clean it up before I have to go out there and kick your ass!" And with that, Stacy clicked the OFF button on the phone and turned her attention to her husband.

"Lance? JC?" Ford was barely able to mutter the names as he still stared at his wife.

"Yes, two stubborn mules who don’t know what's good for them," Stacy replied, amusedly watching as Ford tried to regain his composure.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Okay, group meeting has started," Chris said as he looked at the other two guys in the room.

"Uh, Chris, if this is a group meeting, then why aren't Lance and JC here?" Justin asked.

"Because this meeting is about them," Chris said. "This has gone on long enough. They don't know what's good for them, so we're just going to have to make them see it."

"What do you have in mind, old man?" Joey finally spoke up.

"We're going to get the horses to water, Joey, and we're going to make damned sure they drink that water as well," Chris smiled as he explained his plan to his two co-conspirators.