Oreos for Breakfast: Chapter 30

Oreos For Breakfast: Chapter 30
By the Paperbag Princess and Pumpkin Coach

"Move," I said to Kevin as I stood up.

Of course he didn't move. He just looked up at me with those calm green eyes and I wanted to hit him. I hadn't seen him in about two months, and today was too soon. I was just not in the mood to listen to Kevin telling me what to do. I'd spent the last two months in the studio all by myself. At first it was weird, but I had really gotten used to making all my own decisions.

I really didn't want to hear Kevin tell me where to sit. Rachel was in the row behind us, but that was too far away.

I might not want to see Kevin, but I sure as hell wanted to be sitting next to Rachel. The Grammys were long and boring. Why should I sit next to Kevin when I could be with my girl?

Em was sitting behind us, and I smiled at her. "Wanna trade seats?"

"Nick, we have assigned seats for a reason," Kevin scolded.

We had about 30 seconds before the commercial break was over, and I didn't want to be fighting with Kevin when the cameras were back on. "We are not going to win, Kev. Move, so that Em can sit here."

He turned to look at her, and I just stepped over his legs. 15 seconds later, Em was sitting next to Kevin, and I was holding Rachel's hand. Much better. She was finally back in America, and we'd had a whole twenty minutes alone this afternoon before we were both dragged away to do band things.

She leaned forward, kissing me quickly, and I stroked her face. "You look so tired, baby."

"Great, thanks, I'm on national TV and I look like hell," she said.

"You look amazing." She did. She had on a short black dress with a million sparkly things on it, and her hair was piled on top of her head, showing off her neck. "But your eyes are tired."

"Jet lag," she shrugged. "I'm all sorts of fucked up. And this is going to take forever, isn't it?"

I nodded. "The Grammys are very long."

"I just wanna go home and look at my gift basket!" she whined, and I laughed.

"Yeah, when do we get to do that?" Em asked, looking over from her conversation with Kevin.

"We?" Rachel said to her in mock outrage. "I don't believe that you got a gift basket."

Em pouted at her. "You have like an entire room full of crap up there. I can't steal one tiny little thing? If we win, shouldn't I get a gift basket?"

"You can have some of my stuff, Emmie," Kevin told her, making her smile. Suck up.

"Yeah, Kevin will give you stuff. He's got a million of those things. This is my first one!"

It would go so well with her Grammy. I knew they were going to win tonight. I was sure of it. I was even pretty sure that they were going to win Group Pop Vocal, which was where we were nominated.

I honestly didn't care. We never won. If we hadn't won for "I Want It That Way," we were not going to win for this crappy song that was just filler on the greatest hits. I wanted Rachel to win. They deserved it. Sudden Silence was the sort of band that won Grammys. Critics loved them, even if they were selling lots of albums.

"Do you have a speech ready?" I whispered to Rachel, pretending to be interested in whatever award they were presenting now.

"We're not going to win anything."

I kissed her cheek. "You so are."

An hour later, I was right. They'd lost the video award, much to Em's disappointment, but the presenter said "And the winner is… Sudden Silence" for Pop Vocal.

The rest of my band wasn't quite as excited as I was. But fuck them. We weren't going to win anyway, so it should go to Sudden Silence. It's not like Nsync beat us out for a Grammy. Then we'd have to kill someone.

Rachel was in shock, and I had to pull her out of her seat so that the rest of the band could get up to get on stage. They started down the aisle after high-fiving me, but she just stood there for a second, while the announcer said "This is Sudden Silence's second nomination, and first win."

She had tears in her eyes when she looked up at me, and I kissed her. Let the cameras see that. "I love you," I said, pushing her towards the stage. "You deserve this."

James was on the steps leading to the stage, holding out his hand, and she grinned back at me, catching my eye for a moment, but then ran up to him. Darien was already at the microphone, thanking the world, by the time she stood behind him, holding her Grammy in both hands. They were heavy. I had held one a couple of years ago when we presented something.

I don't know what Darien said, because I couldn't take my eyes off Rachel. When they'd won the AMA last month, she'd had to talk, and she was mostly in shock. Now she looked so happy and proud, it brought tears to my eyes.

James stepped up the microphone, and Jeremy slipped his arm around her, leaning down to whisper something that made her look up at him with a huge smile, and my heart sank. She'd just smiled at me like that, before she ran up to the stage. That was my smile. He didn't get that one any more.

At least he shouldn't. They'd spent the last month in Europe. I wasn't really sure what had happened there. I got plenty of emails from her, but not many phone calls and…

I had to stop this. Nothing had happened between Jeremy and Rachel. I was sure of it. I just missed her so much. Part of me was upset that they'd won, because now she wouldn't be sitting next to me for the rest of the show. I'd have seat fillers, since Em was in my old seat.

Sudden Silence left the stage, and they went to a commercial break. AJ turned around in his seat, grinning. "Hey, at least it wasn't Nsync."

"They weren't even nominated, Alex," Kevin had to say, and I had to sit on my hands to keep from smacking him.

"But they could have been," Brian said. "If we weren't going to win, at least it went to Sudden Silence."

"Thank you!" I said.

"They should have been nominated in rock-" Kevin started to say, and I interrupted him.

"Are you trying to piss me off, Kev? Because you're doing a really fucking good job of it."

Em raised an eyebrow at me. "Shall I assume that you don't want your seat back?"

"You can have it," I told her. "Aren't you glad that Sudden Silence won?"

"No, because they should have won video. I got all dressed up for nothing!" Em knew just how to play Kevin. Now he had to tell her how good she looked, and they talked about her dress while the rest of us discussed how great it was the Sudden Silence had won, and then I had to be nice to the seat fillers. Two of them were Backstreet fans, so it wasn't so bad.

Twenty minutes and two bad musical performances later, a young woman came over to me. "Mr. Carter? Ms. Connor has asked that you join her backstage."

I considered her for a second. Rachel had… no, she probably hadn't. Right now, she should be in the press room answering questions, and then she'd be with all the entertainment news shows, one after the other. She might be thinking of me, but she was too busy to do anything about it.

"What show are you from?"

She smiled, caught. "Entertainment Tonight. We may want to get you congratulating her on tape."

Screw it. We weren't nominated for anything else, and the rest of the show would be boring.

I hated press conferences. Okay, I'd only ever done one, when we won the AMA last month. But we stood there in front of a million reporters, and flashbulbs went off all around us and we had to answer a million shouted questions. It was a little overwhelming. I probably looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights in every picture. Great.

As if that wasn't bad enough, now we had to go to private rooms with all the entertainment news shows. Entertainment news. Wasn't that a sort of oxymoron? Entertainment should not be creating news.

Well, except when my band won a fucking Grammy. Jeremy had referred to it as such a couple of times in the press conference. My fucking bar band had won a fucking Grammy. That was pretty big news in my world.

And my family's. I wanted two minutes to call Mom. I hadn't gotten to talk tonight, so I didn't get to say anything about Dad, like I had last month. Not that I needed to, but… I wanted to talk to my mom.

I grabbed Lola's arm as she started towards one of the assistant people backstage. We were hung up outside of E!'s room, because No Doubt or someone was in there. "Do I have a second to call my mom?"

"Can they film you doing it?"

"Who?"

Lola rolled her eyes. "Someone will, I'm sure. I'm half surprised they haven't gotten Nick back here. People love the emotional angle, Rache. You've got a dead Dad and a famous boyfriend. You rock."

I wrinkled my nose at her, making her laugh. I knew she was just making fun of the entertainment media, but…

She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and handed it to me. "Hide behind James. I don't think there's a quiet corner in this entire building for you to hide in."

She went off to talk to whomever she needed to, and I moved behind James, dialing my home number. Mom answered on the third ring. "If this isn't my daughter, I'm hanging up."

"It's me, Mommy! Don't hang up!"

She laughed. "Thank god. You have no idea how many people have called here in the last few minutes, but I wanted to keep the line clear. Rachel! You won!"

"I know!" I yelled back, and James laughed. "I've only got a couple of minutes before I have to go and talk to… someone. It's not like I have anything new and exciting to say about winning a fucking Grammy. Besides the fact that we won!"

"I'm so proud of you, honey. Not that you have to win an award for me to be proud, you know that, but… well, I'm proud. We all are. James' family is here, too."

"Oh, put them on. He's right here." I shoved the phone at James, checking to see if Lola was back yet. She was still in conversation with someone, flipping through papers on her clipboard. This clipboard was glittery. Jeremy had gotten it for her to use as her dressed up clipboard.

"I wanna call my mom!" Darien complained, poking me.

"I asked first," I responded, sticking out my tongue. "You can call your mom later. Maybe Extra will want to film the touching moment."

They did. But Entertainment Tonight got me Nick, and I didn't care who filmed that. There were a million people there as we filed into their private press room, but I saw Nick hiding behind one of the cameras, and I ran over to him, throwing myself into his arms. "Where did you come from?"

"I think we make good copy."

I kissed him. "I love having a famous boyfriend."

"There are a few perks." We grinned at each other, but Lola pulled me away.

"You can be all lovey-dovey later. Now you have to work."

That seemed like all I got to do lately.

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