Oreos for Breakfast: Chapter 28

Oreos For Breakfast: Chapter 28
By the Paperbag Princess and Pumpkin Coach

Okay, that’d been longer than I’d expected. I hoped that Rachel hadn’t fainted from hunger. But who knew it was so difficult to get a key made? I'd finally found somewhere at the mall. And who knew that Waffle House would do take out for you? Rachel was going to be so excited when she saw all the stuff I got her. Waffles and an egg sandwich and raisin toast. I even got the woman to give us extra apple butter. I knew Rachel would like that.

Was she still on the phone? I heard her voice as I opened the door . She was sitting in the living room, dressed in her pajamas. That was a step up from just her robe, which she’d been wearing when I’d left. Looked like she'd showered, too. Her hair was hanging wet down her back. She smiled as I came in, and then she motioned for me to be quiet. Was she doing another interview?

"Deliver by December? J, you know we can do that with our eyes closed. Why not ask for another half-mil and go for August? That way it drops for the fourth quarter."

Who the hell replaced my wanton sex goddess with a business manager?

Laughing to myself, I fixed our food on plates and put on another pot of coffee. I was already starting to feel the effects of too much drama and little sleep. I could just imagine what she was going to feel like when the adrenaline wore off. Driving over to the Waffle House, I’d tried to remember what it had been like when we were nominated for our first Grammy.

I’d only been 18, and I remember someone telling me that there were only half a dozen people under 18 who’d been nominated before or something like that. I was more excited that we got to meet our idols like Elton John. Sure, we’d won MTV awards and European music awards… but this was something else entirely. I knew that for a fact when Kevin cried. Thatfreaked me out. Kevin was never the emotional one. Not in front of us, anyway. You knew that when he was safely in his room he probably threw furniture around and screamed into a pillow, but in front of us, he was always the stoic parent.

I should probably check in with him again, shouldn’t I? Yesterday I’d had two angry messages from him, then one from Jana, telling me that she’d calm him down. It was just freaky when I’d finally talked to him and he was strangely okay about it. We had to get Kevin laid more often.

Ken had called while I was out and assured me that he’d have press stuff figured out by this afternoon and would fax me a schedule. The Bucs game was still on, which was great, because Rachel and I now had a bet on who would win — Philadelphia or Tampa. I knew my Bucs wouldn’t let me down. She’d even threatened to fly her brothers in for the game, just to tease me, but I didn’t think I was ready for dealing with her family yet. My family was bad enough. Aaron had left me three messages before he’d stopped laughing enough to actually talk. Besides, I think Jon might still want to kill me for letting Aaron kiss his daughter.

Ken had been great about everything — the arrest and my solo stuff. I was lucky to have him working with me now. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with Jeff on all this. Ken was like a friend more than a manager, and he understood me. No one else there ever seemed to take the time to know me as a person. I was just 1/5 of Backstreet. But to Ken I was more than that… or less… I was just Nick. And that was kinda cool.

"But I don’t want to headline all summer!"

Rachel’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I ran back into the living room. She smiled and jumped up to hug me when I put our plates down on the table in frontof where she was sitting on the couch.

"You brought me waffles! You do love me!"

"Duh." I joked, kissing her quickly.

She tried to hold her phone and eat at the same time, but couldn’t quite manage it. I took her cell phone from her, moving away quickly before she could grab it back from me. "Jeremy?" I knew it was Jeremy. She only ever used that businesswoman voice with him.

"What the hell are you doing on the phone, Nick? Put Rachel back on!"

"No. She needs to eat something before she passes out. Adrenaline only gets you so far. She’ll call you back."

"Not cool, Nick. We’re in the middle of a conference call here."

"Hi, Nick." Saffron chimed in. Shit. I thought it was just Jeremy.

"Well, I don’t care," I tried to sound adult-like as Rachel covered her mouth so they couldn’t hear her laughing. "I’ve got a real phone around here somewhere. It’s got a speaker thingy. She’ll call you back."

I didn’t wait for Jeremy to scream at me, but just hung up the phone and then turned it off.

"You are gonna be in trouble, little man." she teased as she poured way too much syrup on her waffles. "I love waffles."

Leaning over, I kissed her, licking the sugary maple syrup off her bottom lip before moving away. "Me, too, buttercup. And I don’t care if Jeremy hates me. Not like I’m his favorite person now, anyway. They can give you ten minutes to eat something, and then you can call them back."

"That’s okay, we were just starting to fight, anyway."

"Yeah, what was that about dropping in the fourth quarter? EMI come back to you?"

She practically jumped out of her skin at that. "Ten million dollars, baby! I can’t even fathom it. We get one at signing and then another million bonus if we deliver an album to them by December. I told them we should demand another half-million and go for August."

"Each?"

She rolled her eyes, "I still don’t roll in your circles, Nick. For the whole band. Still, a quarter million each isn’t horrible. Darien can invest that in the restaurant he and Mari are talking about. Hell, he could start to franchise with that."

"True, but a million each is better and don’t go for August."

She looked at me seriously, "Why not? Delivering an album in December is so not a problem. That’s a whole year!"

"A year where you are touring all spring and then they’re putting you on a summer tour, right?"

She eyed me skeptically, "Yes… how’d you know that?"

He shrugged, stuffing another forkful of waffles into his mouth, "Makes sense. A big summer tour will capitalize on all the pop bands having time off, right? Besides, they can sell the tour for millions more. But only do that if…" It freaked me out when he suddenly became an adult. I was so used to the laid-back Nick that I sometimes forgot that he was the music business veteran here.

"What?" I prodded when he stopped talking, staring down at his waffles like they were fascinating.

"Nothing. What else do you get with this great deal?"

Was he making fun of me? Hell, I didn’t care. This was more money than I’d ever thought I’d see in a lifetime.

"Signing bonus, which I told you about. Summer tour with guarantee that we’ll headline the bigger market radio shows. Three-album deal with first two negotiated now, third to be re-negotiated after the second is delivered. Each will have delivery bonuses and then additional ones for how high they go. It’s complicated."

"Waiting to renegotiate the third is smart. Saffron got you that one."

"Isn’t that risky, though? What if the second album isn’t as good? Then can they drop us for the third?"

"Bigger risk is that the second is huge. Then you’re stuck with the same crappy terms for the third."

"Crappy terms? Is our deal not good enough?" Shit! I knew I should have had Saffron fax the whole thing over to me. Nick should look at it. This deal was shitty, wasn’t it? Fuck!

As if he could see my panic, Nick moved over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it to reassure me. "Buttercup, what you have is never good enough the day after you sign. I’m sure it’s a great deal. But in a year when you are even bigger, it won’t seem good enough. That make sense?"

"Damn, this business proves that stupid saying that the grass is always greener on the other side, doesn’t it?"

He laughed at that one. "Think they invented it, yes. So three albums. More signing bonuses. That’s where you make the money. Tell Darien to screw the recoupables, you’ll never see royalties from the record company anyway."

"That is exactly what Saffron said!"

He smiled., "I learned from the masters. Seriously, the Firm are known for renegotiating good deals for their clients. No doubt you’re getting more press and video promotion budgets thrown in. Your marketing should be out of their pocket."

How come we never talked about this stuff? The Firm was known for this stuff because of Backstreet. This is what they did for them. We spent way too much time being overwrought about stupid stuff and wasting our time having sex, didn’t we? I needed to pick his brain more about the business. Suddenly he stopped himself from talking and fed me the last piece of his raisin toast, "And I’ve said too much, so I’m going upstairs now so you can finish your call."

"But Nick, you know this stuff!"

Shaking his head, he took my plate and stood back up, "Not going there. Not my career. You have to make your own decisions, baby."

Why didn’t he want to help me? Was this retribution for doing the ‘Nsync tour? Was he trying to make sure we failed now? Bastard!

"Stop overanalyzing, baby," he teased , his blue eyes dancing as he smiled . "This is your career, and you and the guys pay Saffron a hell of a lot of money to advise you. She’s the one you should listen to."

"I know… but…"

"We can talk about it later, sure. But right now, this should be you." He pulled me up into his arms and I clung to him for a minute. "You can do this, Rache. It’s a good deal. A million bonus for your next album is huge, baby."

I pulled away and looked up at him, wanting so badly to believe him. "Really?"

Nodding, he kissed me again, and then he handed me back my phone. "Call your band back."

"TRL call in on Monday. All the entertainment shows led with it today, so hopefully by the AMAs next week we can move on to talking about something else. Sound good?"

"Yeah…" I was still scribbling notes on the fax Ken had sent over. Was I calling TRL, or were they calling me? Did they have my cell number? When were Rachel and I scheduled to fly to LA? That was Monday, right?

"Nick, you got that? Need me to re-fax you the schedule?"

"Nah, I’ve got it here, Ken. Thanks, looks great. I just need to figure out when Rachel and I are flying out to LA. That’s Monday, too."

"In the evening. That way you can call into TRL. Saffie knows. She’s booking the flight for Rachel. Great news for them, by the way. Is Rachel excited?"

"About the Grammys or the deal with EMI?"

"Both! Saffie did a great job with the renegotiating."

"They didn’t sign anything yet, though. Things change very quickly, don’t they?"

"Sometimes…" Ken was quiet for a moment, and I heard a muffled sound on his end. "Hey, I got someone here who needs me. She thinks it’s a solid deal, right? You’ll tell her that?"

"Not getting into it, Ken. Her decision, not mine."

"Yeah, but…"

I just cut him off, telling him I had to go. I wasn’t getting into this with Rachel or Ken. She’d make her own decision. The last thing I needed was this falling through because I made some lame suggestion. They were paying the Firm a lot of money to advise them.

Suddenly something fell with a heavy ‘thud’ onto my desk, and I looked up at Rachel. She’d finally changed into jeans and a T-shirt and our phones had stopped ringing. Were we free to talk now?

"Read it!"

I stared at the stack of papers on my desk. What the hell… oh shit. I pushed the papers back toward her. "No way. I just told Ken…"

"What did Ken say? He said it’s a horrible deal, didn’t he? What else should I be looking for? Because we’ve read it like ten times, and it doesn’t look bad to us. But what do we know? Darien still thinks recoupables suck and I don’t think the video budget is big enough. But what do I know?"

She was quickly heading into panic. I could see it in her face. Pulling her down onto my lap, I kissed her just to make her stop talking for a moment. "Take a breath, buttercup."

"Can’t… it’s… so much money, Nick."

"I know it is. But let’s think logically, okay? If the record company can give you ten million in just bonuses and signing awards, how much are they standing to make?"

Her eyes got wide at that suggestion, and I couldn’t help but laugh. "But the weird thing is, that it doesn’t matter. Because ten million is good. It’s great. You’re a small band with a few hits."

"But you said we were huge!"

"And I meant it… do you know what our deal with Jive is worth?"

She shook her head and I leaned over, whispering , "65 million."

"Shit. I knew you were rich, but…"

"But you don’t see it all, baby. And for every million you do see, they see ten or twenty times that! If you want to be really jaded, talk to Kevin sometime. It’s all relative, is what I’m saying. We sold millions of albums and only had three hundred thousand dollars to show for it when we renegotiated. Before the Firm started helping us, we thought those checks for a few thousand dollars were amazing."

"I get it," she whispered back. "We should sign."

"You should do whatever you want to do, buttercup. Whatever you and the guys think is the best you can do."

"I don’t want to worry about it anymore, Nick."

She sighed, and I felt all the weight that was on her shoulders. I guess one of the good things about being so young when all this happened to me was that I hadn't really understood it all. If I had, I probably never would have been able to make a decision.

"Then sign it, baby. Sign it and move on. Because this is just the tip of the iceberg."

She lifted her head, her eyes meeting mine, and she smiled again. "One more call and then… can we go to a movie or something? Get out of here and away from the phones?"

"Sounds like a plan, Rache. What do you want to see?"

"You pick." She smiled back at me as she hit a button on her phone. "I’ll be two minutes."

She disappeared into the hallway, but I heard her as Jeremy picked up, "Okay, J. I’m done debating. I’m in."

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