He always knew he was going to end up in trouble. Always knew that being the good, helpful man was going to get him in trouble. Especially when it came to matters of curiosity.
He snorted slightly from his spot in the chair, shaking his head in disbelief. Trouble, well, he was in it. No … not trouble; if this was trouble, then he wanted to continue being in it. Or her.
But that was a different aspect of his thoughts. He needed to keep them clear.
Curiosity definitely killed the cat. Well, the certain thoughts that he’d never, ever read anything focused on him. Well, or the guys. ‘Cause, let’s face it – it was gross. Who wanted to read about Justin getting it on with some hot chick in the dressing room or Chris getting a blow job from some random chick that ran up and just told him she wanted him?
Not him. Certainly not him.
He fidgeted slightly, closing his eyes tightly. He wasn’t even one to want to read about himself. But, in the pinnacle of his celebrity-status, a mass amount of things written about him had begun to appear and still float around in cyberspace, waiting for him, taunting him to read them.
What he didn’t know what that these sort of things: fictions, blogs, poems and the like were still being written.
And that was where his trouble began.
"Have you updated your Facebook page? Twitter? Myspace?"
He activated the speaker on his iPhone, setting it down as he typed in the address to his Facebook account. Not lately. I thought that was what my publicist was supposed to do, isn’t it?"
The voice on the other line laughed. "Jace, it’s not that hard to go to twitter, write a 140 character summary of your day, your week, whatever and click ‘submit’. Even the smallest update will have people happy you are still being active within the music community."
"All right," he smirked, "woke up and took a long-ass piss. That work?"
"You’re shitty."
"I’m aware of this, Kristy. That is my name. And that summary is the reason why I don’t update. I never have anything to say –" He stopped when she began to laugh hysterically, "well, cyber-wise, anyway!"
"Just write some bs about being in the studio. Write that you are reviewing scripts. Let them in on something, crazy."
He grinned, exiting out of his Facebook account and into his twitter. "You know, I wish I could have just been JCChasez instead of JCChasez1. It’s like, I’m the fake one or something."
"But you have more followers than the other."
"I guess." He signed into his Twitter, it still actively collecting followers at around 14 thousand, plus some. "How about this: "excited to be back in the studio after a good while. New music coming soon!". Not a total lie. I’ve already got some music demoed."
"Or you could just tell them that your inspiration has been lacking."
"Way to break all of their hearts."
He smirked, clicking on the "@JCChasez1" link and letting the messages to him fill up the screen, ignoring what Kristy was saying.
listening to ‘Come to Me’ by @JCChasez1 – sexy!
#Nowplaying ‘All Day Long …’ by @JCChasez1.
@JCChasez1 on #ABDC is sexy! Miss him singing!
You know who I want to serenade me? @JCChasez1. The man can move, the man can sing and he’s just sexy! #Swoon
@JCChasez1 seems lonely. Who here wants to give him some love? I know I do!!
He laughed, clicking the ‘more’ link and letting more pages load. He paused when a mass amount of links directed at him appeared.
Hey, @JCChasez1, I thought you’d wanna see this #ThingsYouNeverExpectedFromSomeoneYouKnow
http://bit.ly/realityandfiction
One hour ago on TweetDeck in reply to LaLaLaLauren
Bet you never saw this coming @JCChasez1 http://bit.ly/realityandfiction
One hour ago on TweetDeck in reply to LaLaLaLauren
Happy Birthday to @JCChasez1 – great friend, great lover, too? http://bit.ly/realityandfiction
One hour ago on Twitter for Blackberry in reply to LaLaLaLauren
Happy Birthday, Sexypants! Here’s one for ‘ya, @JCChasez1 http://bit.ly/realityandfiction
Two hours ago on Twitter for Blackberry in reply to LaLaLaLauren
He clicked the link, almost afraid that it was going to be a virus or worm invading his hard drive. Shockingly, as the page loaded, he was greeted with the face of his best friend’s sister from back home, Lauren. Lauren dressed only in a pair of short shorts and a tank top that clung to every curve on her body.
He swallowed. She had always been gorgeous. Brown hair to mid-shoulder, gray eyes, fair complexion. Gorgeous and the little sister that was untouchable.
"Jace? You hear me?"
He startled, looking down at his phone. "Kristy, I’m gonna have to call you back." He hung up with her, scrolling down the page slowly, not wanting to take his eyes off of the photo above.
So, you’re probably wondering what I’m doing. The truth of the matter is, I am also wondering what I’m doing. Call it a shot in the dark, out on a limb, drunken truths, or whatever off-the-wall and out-of-the-blue things you want, it’s still me being completely out there.
It’s 3AM on August 8, 2010. I’m finishing off my fourth (or was it my fifth?) margarita and I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself. Here, I’ve known this man for 24 of my 28 years of life and I’m still looked at as ‘the little sister’. I’m 28, for Pete’s sake! I have a Masters in Psychology and own my own home! Yet, I’m still ‘the little sister’.
The truth is, for ten of those 24 years, I’ve been in love with the same man. It’s kind of hard to hold onto relationships when you’ve got your mind elsewhere, set on someone who looks at you as if you were blood. Family. A little sister.
It sucks when you’re dating someone for a year and in the midst of making love to them, all you see is their blue eyes that crinkle when smiling or doing something humorous and their smile. Sucks that when they hold you and you inhale their scent, you are picturing it the way the other person would be holding you, inhaling his scent and not the one of the man you were with.
It sucks that you know it’ll never be anyone but him for you, but in his eyes, it’s anyone but you.
I’ve always had a vivid imagination. Maybe that is why I took on Psychology; I knew I could see things others didn’t. Except when it came to my life. What I see, no one else does. What I see, compared to others is one of make-believe. He is my make-believe. I should just live in ‘Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood’. Maybe there, my make-believe will disappear and I’ll actually have a life of my own and not one that consists of dreams and wishes.
I know there is no ‘Neighborhood’. There is no reality to my fictional mind. All I have, is my imagination. My pen and my pad. And maybe this computer.
What I am trying to say is, Happy Birthday, Joshua Scott. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you from the moment you handed me that bouquet of lilies (my favorite flower) on my graduation day and told me there was no one else in this world more proud of my accomplishments than you.
Me, simply graduating high school when you were selling millions of albums worldwide. You were proud of me.
What you didn't know then, was that my feeling of there being no one else in the world more amazing than you began to grow.
I don't know why I'm doing this, honestly. I don't know why I'm making this an entry to a blog I will never, ever let anyone else see after the end of tonight once I delete it fully off of my blog, my computer and from my own memory. Maybe I'm hoping that if I get the words out, lay myself on the line, just once, it'll be worth it in the end. Even if it doesn't end well. That, even if he doesn't ever see this, I finally let myself feel aloud how I've been feeling the past ten years. What once was a teenaged crush and a young adult fascination with this man who saw me at the most awkward, my most upsetting and my most established days of my life has turned into something that I don't know how to control. How exactly do you tell your heart that what it wants is possibly the most dangerous thing for it? The most heartbreaking (pun not intended)?
I'm 'the little sister', remember? We never get looked at as anything else but. Even when we're standing in their front lawn holding a sign up that says 'I'm not little anymore! I'm a grown woman who loves you!' - it still doesn't matter.
But what I want to know is, when will it matter?
I am guessing, for me, anyway, that the answer is never. I never get that happy ending. In the battle with reality versus fiction, reality always wins and my little bubble of hope bursts and I'm sent hurdling back down to earth in the most painstakingly way.
Maybe I should see a doctor. I think I've finally lost it.
Posted on August 8th, 2010. 3:45AM
He had nearly forgotten how to breathe. The sudden rise of panic in his chest signaled for a deep inhale as he let the words settle. The blog was written in the middle of the night while he lie in bed, worrying about where his life had come to. She was spilling her heart out and he was trying not to let his own fall to the floor in regret of the past 33, almost 34 years.
He never regretted a single decision he had made regarding his career. That, that was never a question.
But what had she been thinking? Maybe she knew that he was rarely on twitter and it was a way to vent out her emotions, knowing that the entry itself would be deleted by the end of the day, anyway. Had she even wanted him to read it in the first place?
He reached for the mouse, aiming the arrow at the small printer on the right-hand side of his screen and clicked it, pushing away from the desk waiting for the printer to kick on. Tucking his phone into the waistband of his lounge pants, he walked down the hallway towards the stairs.
He froze, looking at photos that his mother hand hung just above eyesight. A few of the family, a few of the group, some of he of friends. Nothing too out of the ordinary. But one photo, encased in a deep mahogany frame, made his heart pause a moment or two.
There, tucked underneath his arm and cradling a bouquet of lilies, smiling as widely as she could without hurting her cheeks, stood Lauren, graduation cap on top of his head, his arm lazily wrapped around her shoulders with a smile that matched the casual draping of his hand. Her hair had been longer back then, a lighter shade of brown with big curls and half clipped up. He remembered when he put his cheek to the top of her head before the photo, it had tickled. He remembered that when he inhaled, he smelled only the lilies and the mixture of blackberry, vanilla and amber. The lilies reminded him of standing outside in a meadow, enjoying the sun beating down on him while at the time, the scent of the young, graduated woman beside him brought his hair on the back of his neck to stand on end; he wasn't sure why. It wasn't a bad, prickly-feeling, either; he just didn't know what exactly it meant.
He touched the frame with his fingertips, a sad smile forming on his face. He had read that you can never really capture the moment you fall in love with someone, though many know - but here, for the last ten years, he's had the proof of someone falling in love with him resting in a photo that he passed every day with or without someone joining him. That his past loves may have came and went, but he still had the girl, no, woman who had (keyword, had) been secretly in love with him all along just hanging out, waiting for him.
He couldn't think straight. His head felt as if he were fighting a downward spiral, slightly nervous feeling, mostly dizzy; his heart was beating at an almost panicked rate; why was it, that in regards to her, he never knew what he felt?
She had been right though; she was 'the little sister'. Her older brother Lucas had been his best friend since they were 8 after he and his family moved a little more into the heart of Bowie. She was the average annoyance at four, dressed in whatever floral dress her mom had decided on, pigtails and bows and jelly sandals. She was sugar, spice, sweet and sassy. With a hand on her hip and her lip jut out, she had everyone under her spell.
He couldn't lie, though; he noticed her. He noticed her a lot once puberty hit and she followed shortly behind. Of course, Lucas, in the prime of his puberty and voice changing, threatened any and all who dared look at his little sister. The same little sister who suddenly had breasts at 13.
Suddenly, she was changing, evolving into her own kind. He noticed when she was 16, 17 years old. She was rarely around, always having a different boyfriend and always having girl friends. She drove her father's handed down Jeep Grand Cherokee, hunter green to the black of his own Cherokee (not Grand) had been.
When she became as independent as she had during her junior and senior years, he came to the realization that he missed seeing her around, missed hearing her soft voice in her room talking on the phone and laughing.
He definitely did not miss the boyfriends.
He sat down on his couch, pulling his phone out of the waistband and held it in his hands. Dialing out, he sighed as he put the phone to his ear.
"Yes, JC?"
"Kristy." His voice was quiet, unsure. "I gotta ask you something."
She laughed. "What is it that you need to ask me, Jace?"
"When was the last time you updated and checked my messages on Twitter?"
"I checked your messages earlier this morning; why?"
He grew quiet for a moment, letting the words run through his head. I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you. I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you. I'm -
"JC?"
He licked his lips, inhaling and exhaling slowly. "You saw those messages, then."
"The birthday ones? Which, by the way, Happy Birthday ..."
"No. The ones with the link."
This time, it was Kristy who became quiet for a moment. "Yes, I saw. She and I didn't think you would -"
"Wait. Wait a minute; you saw it?"
"I ... I was actually the one who told her to do it. We both knew that you didn't ever go on there."
"Yet, you had every intention of telling me to check my account, anyway."
"It had to be said, Jace. She was miserable. Just broke up with yet another guy, misses you ... it was better this way."
He closed his eyes, immediately flooded with images of her behind his eyelides. "I've gotta go," he said softly. "I'll talk to you later, Kristy."
He set the phone down, lying down on the couch and staring at the blank television screen. What was he supposed to do? He obviously cared about her; she had been in his life for over 20 years. She wasn't just some random woman who came and went just like a one-night stand. This was Lauren he was talking about - the only woman who seemed to be permanent in his life, regardless of where it took him.
He got up quickly, grabbing his cell phone and typing out her number. He needed to talk to her. Seeing her was impossible; she still lived in Bowie and he was still in Los Angeles.
She picked up within five rings.
"Hey, Josh. Happy Birthday!"
"Thanks, Laur," he managed to said softly, pausing as he looked to find the right words, "Listen ..."
It grew still on the other end of the line. He usually heard her multi-tasking as she spoke, but he knew she had stopped doing whatever she had been doing to focus all of her attention he and his words. "You saw it, didn't you?"
He frowned, hearing her disappointment. It saddened him that the thought of him reading what she wrote did not make her happy. "Uh, yeah, I did ... and I was just wondering something ..." When she didn't speak, he had worried she hung up on him. "Lauren?"
"I'm here," she said softly. "What did you want to know?"
He licked his lips, cradling the phone between his shoulder and ear as he wiped his suddenly clammy hands against the cotton of the pants. "What you wrote," he began, clearing his throat nervously, "was it, was it true?"
She sighed. "Every word."
"Lauren -"
She stopped him. "Look, Jace, it's okay. I'm a big girl. I can take a hint. No harm done. Just go on about your life in California and I'll go on with mine back home. Forget it was even written, forget I even felt that way. I know that I'm gonna wanna forget that it even happened."
"Lauren, c'mon now, can't we at least talk about it?" He leaned forward, hand over his forehead and rubbing it back and forth. All he could picture was her form, sitting on her own couch at home with her knees tucked up underneath her, a look of defeat on her face. It killed him. All he wanted to do was rid of her it. "You just told me you loved me, for crying out loud ..."
"Technically, I didn't; the computer did."
"No, your words told me. Lauren -"
"Look, I gotta go, Josh. I'll uh, I'll talk to you later, okay? Happy Birthday."
"Lauren -" he sighed, hearing the dead air after she disconnected the call.
He wasn't sure why, but upon the realization of her hanging up on him, his heart plummeted to the ground. He pictured her trying her best to contain herself as she did whatever she had been doing before he called and finally giving up, retiring to her room as she often did when she did not want to face the world.
He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be standing on the other side of that door, demanding she open up; that she face the world again. With him.
He suddenly realized why his emotions were always bubbled up and confused when he thought of her, thought of her smell: he had been falling in love with her, too.
In love for ten years (give or take a little) and never knew. He really took the description of 'clueless' to another level.
He grabbed the phone once more, dialing another number. He had to fix this. "Kristy, I need you to do me a favor ..."
