Birds In Your Garden - Chap.7

Message Board Posts for Chapter 7 (fictional)

Kevin wandered down the dancer's hallway, hearing music and laughter from various rooms. He knocked on Jana's door and waited, saying hi to Punch as he crossed over into another room. Moments later, Shannon opened the door and let him in, shushing him and pointing to Jana sitting on her feet with her arms over her head and her forehead on the floor.

"Is she sick?" Kevin asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Yoga, oh, enlightened one," Shannon chuckled. "She'll be done in a bit." She patted his shoulder and slipped out of the room.

"I feel like I'm in a church," he whispered, standing next the entrance to the room and folding his arms.

"Your body is a church," Jana teased softly, shifting positions and glancing to him before winking at him. He walked in and sat on the end of the bed and settled back, watching each move she made curiously. He wasn't sure how she got there, but he was watching her lift the toes of her left foot to the top of her head as she arched her back.

"That should hurt," Kevin commented with a grin.

"Only if you don't know what you're doing," she said lightly, changing positions to do the same pose with her right foot.

"Dang," he cooed, turning his head to the side, "I'm not taking advantage of this enough, am I?"

"You're taking plenty of advantage," she commented, moving easily into a few other positions before sitting and pressing her hands together, breathing easily. "Namiste," she said, turning to him.

"What's that supposed to mean anyway? You've said it to me before, haven't you?"

"I'm saluting your higher power, baby," she said, crawling towards him to flop her arms across his legs. He bent over and kissed her quickly. "How was your day?"

"Recovering from a hangover, tackling the boys, talking to AJ," he said easily. "How about yours?"

"Called a Jezebel by my sister, my father is ashamed of me and I spent too much money on a therapy shopping spree," she said, putting her head in his lap. "I might decide to nurse a hangover tonight come to think of it."

He ran his fingers through her hair and sighed gently. "How did your family find out?"

She lifted her head and looked at him. "We live in a town with ten people, Kevin. My family has become the Hatfields. You need to change your name to McCoy, okay? I thought Kevin McCoy had a better ring to it than Kevin Hatfield." She dropped her head back down and sighed.

"I can't believe this," Kevin said in a bewildered tone with a shake of his head. "My family should not be taking this so badly. Or yours."

"No, but you're married to someone they apparently really like," she replied. "And I'm just some lowly dancer come to take you away from all the riches in the world and make you my love slave."

"Well, darlin'," he chuckled, "you have." He tugged her elbow and fell back onto the bed, wrapping his arm around her as she joined him. "You've spoiled me for any other woman, so I'm afraid you have to see me through on this one."

"If I'm not stoned to death first."

"Maybe they'll tar and feather you?" he considered.

"If I float in the pool, does that mean I'm an adulteress?"

"Do your clothes have a scarlet letter on them anywhere?"

"I haven't been tried by the Council yet, I'll get back to you," she said, lifting her head up and giggling at him. "Will you testify on my behalf?"

"If I'm not locked in the stockade, sure."

"Aw, you'd do that for me?" she cooed sarcastically.

"I'd pick every feather off your tarred skin, darlin'," he said with a nod and wink.

She sighed and batted her lashes at him. "Wow, that's love."

"It is, isn't it?" he agreed with a smile.

"But, really, Kev, what're we going to do? It's not even made it to the press yet and they're reacting like this."

"We'll deal with it," he said casually.

She rested her elbows on the mattress and dropped her chin down into her hands. "That's a good answer for someone that's not going to scrutinize your every move. But what about the rest of the world? Are you really sure you want to do this?"

"Jana," he sighed, reaching his hand out to smooth along the back of her head gently, "we don't need permission to be together. I don't need…"

"I'm not talking about need, I'm talking about common sense and rationality," she said calmly. "I'm just making sure that when all this shit happens, we're not going to end up wondering why we started it in the first place."

"You think that's going to happen?"

"I'm scared it might, yes," she answered honestly. "Because your life is about a lot more than just you anymore. It's about four other careers in the spotlight, management, Kristin, your family and millions of fans all over the world that do look to you like you're a Saint of Sexuality or something and a role model. Like it or not."

"You forgot someone," he said, watching the worry in her eyes.

"The music industry," she added.

He pulled himself up onto his elbows and reached out to pull her closer for a kiss. "You, stupid," he said gently. "It's about us. I mean, all this," he motioned around the room, "is dope an' all, but it ain't all that. It's going to end someday, and if keeping it all means I have to live by someone else's rules, they can keep it. I wouldn't let Lou take it, I'm not going to let anyone else take it either."

She tilted her head slightly and smiled. "Are you really that sure? I mean, once the press…"

"Are you?"

"I'm trying to keep my head about it. We both should."

"Don't trust me?" he asked knowingly. He could see something behind her eyes whenever this topic came up. The few times it had in the hotel rooms and hours traveling on the bus, she changed the subject or remembered something else she needed to do. It was his only real hesitation - watching hers.

"Trying to," she said quietly, looking to him. "It's been a pretty intense couple of weeks, and I'm just trying to keep my wits about me. Don't you just, I don't know, freak when you think about all this? How fast it's all going? What you're willing to give up?"

"What about you?" he asked. "What you'll have to give up. It's not only about me, Jana. You get that, right?" He watched her carefully, trying to see if she did. "We go public and you're right there with me; spotlight, gossip columns, no privacy, traveling, being apart a lot of the time… It's not easy being with me."

"It never was," she smirked.

He didn't respond to the smile and sat up fully, turning to look at her seriously. "No, Jana, this is big time. Everything I know of you, even from back home, you're always thinking about what the other person's thinking. But you can't do that now." He kept his eyes on her seriously and shook his head. "You're going to be the center of some serious bullshit. Our families are going to be kind compared to what's going to be said to you and about you. LeighAnne's gotten death threats, their dogs were stolen… Life as you know it will never be the same."

She sat up and took a deep breath, resting an elbow on her knee and dropped her chin into her palm. "Kevin, when I saw you this time around, I knew life would never be the same again. And I've spent way too much time wondering how the hell I was supposed to walk away after seeing you again. Then I've spent way too much time wondering how the hell I was going to stay with you once this whole thing started. And I have no idea where it's actually leading - but I know I don't want to give it up because I'm scared. Weighing it all back and forth, I'm more scared of walking than staying. And scared that if I let you know how hard I've fallen again, you're going to freak out."

"I'm not going to freak out," he said, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Do you realize you left one week after I told you I loved you last time? To the day?" she asked, lifting her head. He shook his head. "Well, you did. And you left without me knowing what you were thinking, leaving me to guess. Guess what I thought?"

"Dang," he breathed slowly. "I didn't even…"

"I know that now," she said. "But it's been twelve years of me telling myself that I scared you off. It's going to take a bit longer than a few weeks of a whirlwind romance and fabulous sex for me to believe that, Kevin. Especially when there's everything else against us like family, fans and your career. And how did we end up being so serious?" she asked, attempting to change the conversation.

"Because we have to be every now and then," he answered. "You gotta know I'm serious about this. It's not something to pass my time, or something I'm trying to do to make up for anything. I know what I'm getting into. If we lose the fans over this we were going to lose them in some other way. The money and the fame ain't what it's all about for me. It's the creative thing. And if I stop touring tomorrow, I still have all that. I'll have plenty I can do, plenty of money. I've invested well. I know how to work. It's not about all that. The fame and fortune could be there for the rest of my life, but if it's at the expense of not being able to be with the ones I love, it's not worth it. I'll quit first. The fans aren't an excuse for backing out - though I'm sure the Firm will think otherwise when the shit hits the fan."

"But your family…"

"Will come around, and yours will too, eventually. If they don't, we'll figure something out. The fellas are all fine with us and trust me, they understand about being happy. We're thankful for what we have, but in the end, just like with Lou, it's about the five of us making it all happen and being happy as we do it. I know the cliché about married men always saying they're going to leave their wife and don't - but I'm not a cliché, Jana. I am leaving her. And I want to because I want to be with you. However we need to do it to make it work, I'll do it. And I promise, I won't leave without telling you ever again."

She dropped her head forward to rest on his chest. "You make it all sound so damn easy."

"Sound, yeah," he said, rubbing her back. "It's the doin' part that's not. But I'm working on it. It'd be nice to scream it from the rooftops and all that, but I do have to think about other things and if it's handled right, we don't have to lose that much. That's what I'm trying to do."

"I don't want you to shout it from the rooftops," she said with a slow smile. "Just whisper it in my ear on occasion, okay?"

He leaned over, brushing her hair behind her ear. "I love you," he whispered before kissing her neck.

"I just don't want to sit here all day or see the inside of another store," Jana whined, flipping through the brochure as she flopped onto her knees on the couch. "Please, come with me? Kevin and Brian are doing some kind of interview, and Nick's entertaining Rachel and James, and Shannon's gone off to do something else with some of the dancers… Howie, please?"

Howie rolled his head and sighed, but smiled. "All right," he gave in. "I'll go with you! You'll culturize me or something yet."

"Culturize?" she laughed, furrowing her forehead. "You're getting a dictionary for Christmas!"

"You knew what I meant," he laughed. "I'm makin' up my own dictionary!"

"Obviously," she giggled, walking over to him and reaching her hand out. "You're going to play with me! Yay!"

"Where are we going anyway?"

"National Museum," she said. "They've got all sorts of exhibitions. I'm sure we can find something that'll interest you, and no one will expect you to be there, so you won't be mobbed, right?"

"Well, Larry's going to come with us. He'll protect me if it's necessary, but I think you're right. No one is going to expect to see me at some National museum," he laughed.

They wandered through several exhibitions for a few hours, mostly without being bothered. Jana lingered in front of the Monet and Van Gogh paintings, speechless at the color and textures of the works. Howie took his time walking through the Photography section, commenting on how AJ would really like several of them, now that he was getting more interested behind the lens since re-hab.

They finally ended up at a small café nearby to have a late lunch, and Howie sat back for a moment, shaking his head slightly with a smile, listening to Jana talk again about the Monet. Her face lit up, and her hands moved around in description until she noticed him looking and stopped. "What?" she asked hesitantly. "I sound like an idiot, don't I?"

"No!" he protested with a laugh. "I can see you really enjoyed this today."

"I did," she said with a smile. "Thank you so much for keeping me company. If I had to sit in another hotel all day, I was going to jump out the window! And who knows if I'll ever get back here, right? It's such a shame to not see something."

Howie nodded in agreement. "That's the one thing I kinda miss about everything we've done. We've been all over but unless there's a special presentation, we don't get to see a lot of where we are. All those places over there in Europe and we barely got a chance to see much else outside of the arenas and the hotels."

"It's such a shame, isn't it?" she asked. "How come you were free today, anyway?"

"It was my turn," he said simply. "I took on an interview a few days ago, so I got a freebie today. I was just going to hang around and sleep, but I have to admit, this was pretty cool. I'm glad you dragged me with you. Glad to get to spend some real time with you. Now I know why Kevin's so into you."

"Into me?" she chuckled curiously, resting her arms on the table.

"Really into you," he clarified with a nod and settled back, stirring his coffee again. "You're pretty cool."

"Well, thanks," she laughed. "You're not so bad for a pop star yourself."

"I didn't mean it that way!" he said, his eyes widening. "I meant it like, you're really cool." He lifted a shoulder.

"Thanks, I try." She smiled, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Well, it's just…it's been awhile since someone in the group has taken notice of someone else in the group just to…hang out, you know? No one gets time to be alone, so when they get a chance, they take it. And then there are the other kind that just want to hang out because we're famous, not because of who we are. That kind of thing. It's just pretty neat that you want to hang out with someone other than Kevin, considering."

"I see Kevin just about every day, Howie," she said with a quick shake of her head. "He's always talking about you guys. Why wouldn't I want to get to know y'all a bit better?"

"It's just been awhile since one of the girlfriends wanted to just hang with someone other than their boyfriends," he said with a shrug and taking a sip of his coffee.

"Wow," she said a bit taken aback, "you used the 'g' word."

"Is that a bad thing?" he asked.

"I guess not." She shrugged. "I suppose that's another term for what I am."

"We don't think of you as something else."

"Oh, there's plenty of people who think of me as something else."

"Well, we don't," Howie said firmly. "We all think you're pretty okay, actually."

"Have we had a discussion about me then?" she teased, nudging him with her foot.

He looked down to the table with a bit of a blush and glanced back to her. "We might have, yeah. Just in a roundabout kind of way. When Kevin's in the corner being Mr. Romance, we have to say something...and we like you. Outside of being Kevin's 'g-word,'" he teased. "You don't try too hard. It's a good thing. And Nick thinks you're da bomb," he laughed. "You stick up for him. I gotta get you to stick up for me with Nick now." He winked to her playfully. "Get him off my back for a bit."

"I'll see what I can do," she chuckled. "Nick just somehow fell into this little brother thing with me. I don't know why."

"He has that way about him, I guess."

"I guess."

"So, d'you think it's going to take long for Kristin to get the hint? I know she's digging her heels in about letting him go."

"I don't know much about anything when it comes to Kristin," she said, looking down to her coffee cup. "It kind of makes me uncomfortable to think about her, knowing what I'm doing to her. I'd dig my heels in too, and despise the ground I walk on if I were her."

"You could never be like her," Howie said, fiddling with the leftover straw wrapper on the table. "You wouldn't do what she did to Kevin."

"Well, no, but there's got to be some reason he kept going back to her," she said looking to him seriously. "Seven years is a long time to not be sure, don't you think?"

"You want the polite answer or the real one?" Howie asked, lowering his voice slightly.

"There's different answers?" she asked.

"The polite answer is that he didn't want to hurt her and tried his best," he started. "The real answer is, he was allowed to take advantage of her and did. She thinks it was love when really, what it was was having your cake and eating it too. He used her. Not nice to say, but it's what he did. She turned around and used him. The difference is, when he used her, he didn't make any long-term promises or anything like that. When she used him, she made him promise something he didn't want to just to get her way. Neither one of them should have been in that relationship, if you ask me. I think that's why he did end up marrying her, because he felt bad about using her as a back-up all those years."

"So, why would he suddenly not feel bad anymore? Isn't this worse?"

"I think he does feel bad, to a degree, but I know Kevin. I know that when he did marry her, he really did try and she doesn't seem to be meeting him halfway. I think if they'd both worked on it, they might have found some happy medium, but she doesn't want to give in to him. Like seven years of him screwing around on her gives her the right to not have to, or something."

"So, if I wasn't in the picture, you think he'd still try to make it work with her?" she asked, suddenly feeling as if she wanted to be sick. She could feel her stomach tighten and a lump harden at the back of her throat.

"I don't think so," Howie said with an easy shake of his head. "He was pretty tired of trying before you came along. She didn't take him seriously until she found out about you. Now she's all willing to work things out, but come on… I don't think it's because she loves him. I think it's because it's easier to say she loves him than be out in the world trying to find someone else." Howie looked up and saw Jana biting her lips together nervously. He smiled at her, finishing with a wink and reached out to take her hand. "I think he needed someone like you to come around and make him realize what he was missing," he said kindly. "You may be the one that makes brings him back to life, and even though Kristin is nice enough, I just don't think they have what it takes to go the distance. With or without you, this was bound to happen sooner or later. I just figured it would be Kristin that would leave Kevin."

"Well, maybe I should sit back and wait?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow at him.

He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Sometimes?" Howie lifted his chin and tilted his head. "I know he doesn't like to believe it, but sometimes, Kevin needs more of a push. Keep pushing. I think it'll be worth it for you."

"I'm not pushing," she protested. "He is. He started this whole thing. I tried to walk away, but I'm weak. What can I say?"

"Most girls are when he tries." Howie tried. "It's that Kentucky charm."

"Please, I grew up in Kentucky, it ain't all that. It's those damn eyes," she sighed with exasperation.

Howie grinned at her with a chuckle. "It's more than that. I've seen you two." He nodded slowly.

"Well, okay, but those eyes don't hurt," she defended.

"I've known Kevin for a long time, Jana. I haven't seen something this real in him in a long time. And like I said, I like Kristin, but," he looked over his shoulder and leaned closer, "I really shouldn't say this, but I like you better." He winked to her. "I can relate to you. Kristin and I don't really have much to talk about, but you'll just jump right on in about just about anything. I like that I don't have to try to make conversation. It's like with Em and Rachel, too."

"Em?" she asked. "I know who Rachel is, but who's Em?"

Howie leaned back and smiled broadly with a chuckle. "Remember the photographer from Wisconsin? Really pretty? Married to that Blur dude?" She nodded. "That's Em. Kevin's had a silent crush on her for years now. We tease him constantly about it when she's around. But she's kinda like you too. She just knows what to say and is honest about everything. Really rare with the crowds we mix with sometimes."

"Well, I'll take it as a compliment," she said with a nod. "You all really are just a bunch of nice guys. I was a bit nervous, having worked with Nsync, if there'd be some kind of resentment."

He shook his head and waved a hand at her. "They're cool," he said with a lift of his shoulder. "It's the fans and the media that make it into something bigger - but I do kinda wish they weren't coming up on our coattails like they seem to sometimes. There's enough competition out there without having to compete with someone on your own team, you know? But, whatever, they're cool. They know how it is and respect us for it, for the most part. Besides, you're not walking around boasting about working with them and comparing us to them. You take us for being Backstreet, and we take you for one of our dancers now. It's fair, I'd say."

Larry walked by tapping a finger against his watch and headed towards the door. Howie nodded and pushed his chair back, offering his hand out to help Jana up. "Duty calls," he said with a smile. "Thank you so much for a great day. Really. I had a great time hanging out with you."

"Thank you for indulging me," she replied, wrapping her arm around his waist and dropping her head to his shoulder in a quick embrace. "I really enjoyed it."

Message Board Posts for Chapter 7 (fictional)

Birds In Your Garden Disclaimer | Email Coriander

Read the companion story:
Oreos for Breakfast (Nick Fanfic)
by The Pumpkin Coach & Paperbag Princess

c. 2001, 2002 by Coriander
Some content not suitable for children. You have been warned.

Subscribe to tf-updates

Powered by groups.yahoo.com