Oreos for Breakfast: Chapter 28

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

Why was Aaron smiling like that at her? Katie was only 12! I scanned the room again, and nothing had changed in the last five minutes. Still no Rachel. Katie was fussing with her coat, avoiding Aaron’s gaze, and I leaned down to her. "Rachel said you love this place."

She nodded, a small smile on her lips. I'd never seen her this quiet. Her parents teased her all the time that she never shut up. Or was that Colleen? No, I was pretty sure it was Katie because she had the friend at the grape picking party who was all nervous around me. Definitely Katie. "She’s coming, right?" she asked me.

"Yep. She and James should be here… Rachel!"

I saw Rachel over by the stairs and waved at her and James. Thank God. Katie was about as relieved as I was, jumping up and throwing her arms around Rachel before I had a chance to do the same thing. James patted Katie’s head and then slid into a chair next to Aaron. "You must be the clone… I mean brother."

"Dude, you are tall!" Aaron responded, ignoring the clone part. James was always teasing me that Mom must have cloned me to make Aaron. Personally, I didn’t really see the resemblance, but everyone said it was there. "I get you on my team if we play basketball later."

"Cool!" I responded, sharing a smile with James. James hated basketball and sucked at it, too. Height could be deceiving.

"Do not tell me that the over-the-top hotel suite has a basketball court, too?"

Aaron shook his head, but immediately started in like he’d known James forever, telling him all about the games and pool table. Before I knew it, James and Aaron were trading gaming tricks.

"You look relieved, buttercup," I whispered as soon as Aaron was distracted. "You have no faith in me, do you?"

"I do… but… Penn Station is big, and it’s easy to get lost. But everything went okay?"

"Well…" Should I tell her about the smile thing? I thought that Aaron was still flirting with Katie and that wasn’t good, was it? I mean, he had a girlfriend already and Katie was so young. Rachel raised an eyebrow at me, and I put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to me for a moment, hoping that no one was paying attention to us. "She was a little freaked by Aaron being there, I think."

"Right. I completely forgot about that. She loves him."

"Well, one look at her, and then I saw that smile. You know, the one you’re always teasing me about… the non-threatening boy smile?"

Rachel threw her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "You're not serious?"

"He won’t stop flirting with her! I’m going to kill him."

"Stop it. She’s only twelve. I doubt she even knows."

Just then we both heard Katie giggle at something Aaron said, and before I knew it, Rachel had moved between them. Yeah, right. She knew. Twelve year old girls weren’t that innocent anymore, were they?

But Katie was still too young for Aaron!

Alright, the punkass kid had to stop smiling at my niece like that. I pulled out the chair between them and handed the coats piled on it to Aaron. "I want to sit next to my niece."

"I figured you'd want to sit next to Nick." Yeah, he looked so innocent as he got up to dump the coats in the chair I'd just vacated.

"Oh, I see him all the time," I said, putting an arm around Katie and giving her a hug.

"I feel so loved," Nick pouted, but he knew exactly why I'd moved over here.

"You're loved, baby," I assured him, and then I bent over the menu with Katie. We discussed food and saving room for dessert and portion sizes at this place, but Katie was being pretty quiet. Was Aaron's flirting freaking her out? Was Aaron's mere presence freaking her out? Because she was usually the chatty one. She was fine with Nick, and she'd known James her whole life. She was letting me keep my arm around her, even leaning into me a little.

Punkass. If Katie was freaked out by him, I was shipping him back to Florida immediately. I'd spent enough time with Aaron lately.

We ordered, and then Katie looked at me and James. "So what kind of meeting did you have today?"

Great. She decides to talk, and that's what she comes up with? James and I exchanged a quick look.

"Management stuff," I told her. "It was boring."

"Was it about the show tomorrow? Was it at MTV?" I barely got a 'no' out before she went on. "Then was it about your new record deal? I bet they're giving you a lot of money. Or was it about the winter tour? Are you opening for somebody? Is it somebody big? Because I can't always go to your shows when you play the little places."

Damn her for being so interested in the business.

"Are you implying that we can't play the big places by ourselves?" Bless James for saving me.

Katie giggled at him. "No. But you're not super huge yet. You have to have more CDs for that."

"Nick was playing pretty huge places with only two albums," I reminded her, and she shrugged, looking over at him.

"Backstreet is different."

"How so?"

"Because they're cute, and all the girls love them."

I laughed, Nick preened, and James pouted at her. "Are you saying that the girls don't love me?"

Katie rolled her eyes. "You're gay. You don't want the girls to love you!"

Aaron thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. So did James and Nick, but Katie still wanted to know what we'd been doing that morning. "So who are you touring with?" she asked, sitting up straighter in her chair with excitement. "I bet it’s someone huge!"

"No one yet," I lied, not looking at James. I hated lying, but I did not want to get into it right now. "We're stuck on that until we figure out which record company we work for."

"EMI come back with an offer yet?" Aaron asked, looking between James and me. James shot me a look at Aaron's mature tone, but I just answered him. Aaron was a very strange mixture of little kid and grown-up, but I'd gotten used to it. Nick, Aaron and I had had a long talk about my contract renegotiations on the drive down from Albany. Aaron actually had some interesting suggestions. He’d learned a lot by watching his big brother.

"Not yet," I admitted.

"Have they come back with anything?" Nick wondered.

"Not a word," James told him. "Our lawyers think they're trying to figure out how to sue us."

"But since it’s been three days, it’s obviously not a simple countersuit," I added. "So we're probably good with that."

"In the meantime, we've got offers from all over the place." That conversation deflected all further mentions of a winter tour and took up most of lunch. As sick as I was of talking about my record contract, it was safer than talking about touring. By the time we got to the frozen hot chocolates, Katie seemed more relaxed, even looking around me a couple of times to giggle with Aaron.

Giggling was fine. But I might have her sleep in my room tonight.

The girls and James safely ensconced in finding Katie the perfect outfit for tomorrow night at Bloomingdale’s, Aaron and I were free to head back to the hotel where he was slaughtering me at video games. His cell phone rang, and he didn't move his gaze from the TV screen. "Answer that, wouldya?"

"Why should I answer your phone?"

"Because you're about to die anyway. Ha!" He zapped me, and I punched him before picking up the phone. It was probably Mom, and she'd just call me next if Aaron didn't answer. Mom was persistent that way.

"Aaron's phone," I answered, staring at the screen. How did he do that? He just had more time to play video games than I did. If I just sat around getting home schooled all day, I'd know all the secrets, too.

"Is Aaron there?" A female voice asked. "It's Lindsay."

Lindsay? Who the hell was Lindsay?

Good thing I didn't ask if it was Hilary, which I was just about to do.

Why would that be bad? My barely 14-year-old brother could not be dating two girls at once! Didn’t Angel have a friend named Lindsay? Yeah, Lindsay was just a friend from Florida, and Hilary was the girlfriend.

Right?

"Let me see if he's free, Lindsay."

Aaron was grabbing the phone out of my hand before I finished saying her name. He hadn't even reset the game. He raised an eyebrow at me and left the room.

What was that knowing look? 14 was way too young for knowing looks.

When I was 14, I wasn't even…

When I was 14, I was touring Europe. I wasn't doing much with girls, but everyone else in the band was. Mom or Dad was always around for me. Well… not always. There had been a few times…

I didn't want to think about my brother doing those things. How could he? Mom went everywhere with him. He didn't even have the other guys in the band to plot things with. Howie had always been particularly good at distracting Mom if there was a girl I wanted to talk to. Not that I could talk to half of them, since we were in Europe and not all the girls spoke English, but there were other ways to communicate…

Dude. My brother had a sex life.

Turning off the TV, I considered going to find him and ask what was going on. But I didn't want to know. Besides, what if I was wrong? What if Lindsay really was just a friend and I was freaking out over nothing?

Half an hour later, I was pretty convinced it was something more than nothing. He walked back into the room like nothing had happened, and sat in front of the TV again. "Put the games back on."

I had ESPN on, but I wasn't paying attention to it. "Who's Lindsay?"

He shrugged and got up to switch the PlayStation back on. "A girl."

"I thought you were with that Hilary Duff girl."

"I'm 14, Nick. I don't have to be with just one girl."

Shit. I was right.

"Mom says I shouldn't date just one of them. They're famous, I'm famous, we're busy."

"They're famous?"

He gave me a long suffering look and threw himself into the chair near me, realizing we weren't going back to the games yet. "Lindsay. Lohan. She's in movies."

Was she? Whatever. I knew Hilary Duff had some show on Disney, and Aaron had been on it.

Mom must love that. She was always trying to set me up with famous girls. Of course now I was with Rachel… but that wasn't Mom's set up. Besides, Rachel wasn't famous when I met her.

"Katie's nice. She…"

I cut him off. "Stay away from her, Aaron. You've got two girls already."

"But they're not here."

I just looked at him for a second. "So you're going to hook up with Katie just because she's here? First of all, she's only 12. Second of all, touch her and Rachel will kill you. Then Katie's dad will kill you. And I'll finish you off."

Aaron tried to laugh, but I just stared him down. "I mean it. Dude, you are way too young to be talking like this."

"I'm 14."

"Barely!"

"I'm not a…"

"I don't even want to hear the rest of that sentence." I really didn't. Not a virgin? Not an asshole? It didn't matter. They were probably both lies.

"Since when are you so moral and upstanding?" he snarled. "You've been with hundreds of girls."

I laughed. "Hardly. Besides, since I've been with Rachel…"

He cut me off. "I know you've cheated on her."

"No, I haven't!" Lie. Funny, how easy that was.

He just looked at me. "I hear things, Nick. I know you broke up for a while, and I know it was because you cheated on her with some fan girl. So don't act like you're so perfect."

"I'm not! I just… fine, I cheated on Rachel. And I lost her for a while, and I'm never doing that again." He started to say something, but I kept going. "I know you're just a kid, and Mom's probably right. You shouldn't be exclusive with any girl right now. But don't be an asshole, Aaron. Don't sleep around while you're telling some girl she's the only one."

"I'm not." But he couldn't meet my eyes.

"Hilary know about Lindsay?"

He shrugged. That was a no.

"Lindsay know about Hilary?"

He shrugged again.

"That's just being an asshole. One of them is going to find out. Hell, I almost asked Lindsay on the phone if she was Hilary. Somebody's going to find out, then you're going to fight, and she's going to tell the other girl, and they're both going to hate you."

"And if I tell them, the same thing happens."

"No, if you…" I stopped myself. "Yeah. Which is why you shouldn't be an asshole. There's no good way of getting out of it."

"But they're both really cute, and nice and…"

I whacked him upside the head. "They're both way too good for an asshole like you, Aaron. You act like this, you lose them both." Settling back on the couch, I sighed. "Ah, teenage drama. I suppose this is a coming of age thing. But I don't think I was really a total asshole until Mandy."

"So I'm a couple of years ahead of you, then. Give up, brother. I'm always going to beat you."

I whacked him again.

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