Night before last, Nick's sister, BJ came by and she seemed pissed when she found out what her brother had done to one of her best friends. I don't blame her one bit.
On to the good news, they're releasing Minna at noon. "How much longer?"
I chuckle at her enthusiasm. "Minna, relax. I'm anxious to get home too. It's still 3 hours away."
She's been in the hospital for 5 days now and is more than packed, ready to go home (my house is home until she's fully healed), to get out of here. "But Jacey, I wanna go noooooooowwwwwww!" she whines.
Ok, so anxious doesn't cover it. "We have to wait," I tell her as I scoot closer to her on the hospital bed.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmm," she does her mouth and whine.
"Minna, stop sé." I know how to say maybe five things in Irish and that's one of them.
She sighs, defeated. "I hate hospitals with such a passion. I've been using my soaps for two days and I still smell like a hospital! I just want to get put of here so bad!" she bitches.
"I know. I do too. You should take a nap while you wait, Minna," I reason with her, pulling my fingers through her hair. I'm using her weakness against her. She starts to fall asleep and mutters something about not being fair. She's asleep about ten minutes before I get up and go to the bathroom. I wash my hands and hear my cell ringing. I dry my hands and answer. "Hello?"
"Josh, hi, baby." I miss my mom.
"Hi, mom."
"What's this I hear Minna got hurt?"
I talked to Minna about telling my family over the past day and a half, she told me it would be ok. I tell my mom and feel a little better because I haven't even told Kace. I've talked to my best friend a few times since being here with Minna. "So we've been at Sinai for the past five days," I tell her as I look out over the well kept grounds.
"Are you ever going to tell her?"
"In time, now's not it."
"She probably feels the same. Wouldn't James know?"
"Most of what they talk about it just between them."
"Just ask her."
"Mom, sometimes it's not that simple. She has to heal, take care of the shit with Nick, move her things out of his house, move on and get back into the groove."
"Joshua, tell her."
"I will when the time is right," I tell my mom.
"I'll talk to you later. I love you."
"I love you too." As soon as we hang up, Lance calls. "Hey, man."
"How's Min, JC?"
"She's taking a nap right now and is being released at noon," I update him.
"I can get the couch ready." He's always been like a brother to her.
"True, she might feel like relaxing on the couch when we get there. Maybe even watch movies. Play a game or something."
"Alright. I'll get Justin's help and make her favorite snacks and finger foods. We'll set up the living room,too," he tells me.
"Thanks." I lower my tone. "What would you say if I said I wanted to date her?"
"JC, you're adults and like I said a few days ago-she's going to do what she thinks makes her happy."
"So, do you think that would be alright by you?"
"Yeah, ask her and find out. She's most likely not going to turn you down."
"If she does?"
"It's too soon for her. At least tell her how you feel."
"I will. One question."
"What's that?"
"How long have you known?"
"It really started to show the summer she was 16."
"Oh. For her?"
"Since she was 13."
"Thanks."
"Do me one favor?"
"Hmm?"
"Don't be an asshole or like her ex."
"You know me better than that," I remind him.
"Alright, just tell her."
"I will."
I hang up and watch her sleep for the next hour and a half. She stirs and smiles at me. "Josh."
"Minna," I say, a smile gracing my features.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"I like you."
"How so?"
"I like you more than I've liked even Nick."
"I like you the same way," flows out of my lips before I can even think. I smile and brush some hair out of her face.
She sighs, relaxing. "I was hoping that you felt something."
"Anything else on your mind, Minna?"
"Just it's too soon."
"I'll wait for you."
"I'll tell you when I'm ready."
"Can I be honest with you?"
"Always."
"Not talking for seven years killed me on the inside," I admit.
"We talked all the time before he and I got serious."
"Can we start from there?"
"Yes. We have to start somewhere. I think that would be best."
"Minna?"
"Jacey?"
"I can't lose you."
She smiles, leaning in to kiss my forehead. "I'm too stubborn not to fight. It's going to be a long time before that happens."
This makes me relax, knowing it's the truth. "I've had one album do ok and one just completely bomb, been dropped by record companies, now I just write, produce and judge."
"I know. I check online every few months to see what you've been up to. I also talked to the rest of the guys. I was in the studio when you did produced with the Boys."
"I didn't know they told you."
"They did and so did Aaron. When they gay rumor fluttered around, I laughed with James because we both knew damn well it wasn't true. If you were, you would have told James and I. I would bet any amount of money that Tara started that one."
This makes me laugh because she never liked Tara and just after we wrapped the shoot for the 'BMU' video, she beat her senseless. She walked away with a busted lip and Tara had a black eye and a concussion. Leilei got her point across and told me she knew Tara was being unfaithful. A few months later, I caught her in bed with her ex and that was it, I ended it right then. "Probably. Tara was vengeful about the fact that you beat her ass in less than fifteen minutes and nobody could help her because the door was locked."
"She deserved it. Nobody cheats on my friends and gets away with it. No man cheats on a woman he claims to love, either."
"I thought those were just rumors?"
"Until I caught him in bed with his ex almost four months ago."
"Were you still with him when...?" I trail.
"I made him agree to the fact that once I have alcohol in my system, there's no stopping me and he knows it. It's worse when it comes to you, I know he's cheated, and he gave me freedom for that night. I told him for the weekend, I wanted to try living together and not be a couple. I was going to slowly pull away and leave. I saw you and bad to struggle to remember your name. We had a shot of JD and I don't regret a thing that happened. It's been almost two months and I am done with Nick. He's the past and he will never be in my life the same way again."
"Were you serious when you said what you did before leaving?"
"Yes. I just thought it wouldn't happen this way. I thought I'd catch him again, scream 'what the fuck', pack, leave and run into you a couple months later. Maybe start spending time to know you again and slowly work toward a relationship over a few weeks or months."
"Somethings just aren't meant to happen how you want them to."
"Yeah, I know."
"I'm always here for you."
"I know what I want."
"You don't always get what you want."
"You don't always know you writes you letters." She looks at me coyly.
"What does that mean, Minna?"
"I wrote you a letter with a poem every year for Valentine's day, New Year's, your birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas."
"You wrote the 'miss you' letters?"
"Yes, every year for you. I would hear your name or voice and write to you. I would mail them out the week before if I were in Cali, otherwise I'd mail them two or three weeks before."
"I had the letters timed down to three days of when they'd show and Lance kept saying he knows who wrote them by the spiraling letters and the initials."
"LM."
"LJ would have given it away, but signing it LM and me not piecing it together didn't."
I've done nothing except make her smile and feel better than she has been lately. "You make me feel like everything is going to turn out right, everything will be ok and that I'm actually safe," she blurts out.
I furrow my eyebrows and tilt my head slightly to the right. "Didn't he ever make you feel like that?"
"No, not as much as you do. It scares me."
"If anything, I hope you realize I'd walk away from you if I ever got that mad."
"I know, but you also have to understand that this is all I know."
"I understand and will wait until you're ready to relearn what love and a relationship is and how they're supposed to work."
"Ms. Dale? Here are your discharge papers and instructions. These are your prescriptions for ibuprofen and vicodin. Don't combine them and use the vicodin first and then the ibuprofen."
"I don't want the vicodin, just the ibuprofen. Could you increase the refills?"
"Sure," the nurse answers wearily. We wait the few minutes for the nurse to come back with just the ibuprofen script and Minna has already sign the discharge papers. We go to the pharmacy before leaving the hospital and I'm not happy with what we see outside the door.
The second we get outside cameras are flashing, being shoved in our faces and the paparazzi are asking us questions. "Did Nick Carter beat you?"
"Who are you dating?"
"How did you get the injuries?"
"Are you the mystery woman?"
"Are you cheating on Nick Carter?"
"Are you dating JC?"
"Are you pregnant?"
She answers the questions in one sentence, "None of your business about what injuries I have, how they happened, I'm not the mystery woman, I'm single, not cheating and I'm not pregnant." Her head had lifted long enough to answer the paps and we walked off as soon as it left her mouth. She gets in my SLS and we head back to my house. I make sure to park in the garage, close the door and help her inside. "Always hated the paps."
"Same here."
"Now we can eat in semi-silence!" she says with laughter. She covers her right hip and hisses with pain. "Ow. Damn stitches. It hurts so bad. Do me a favor? Two ibuprofen please?"
"Water, juice?"
"Got OJ?"
"Um," I walk over to the fridge and see it's stocked to the nines. "Yes, apple juice-"
"APPLE JUICE! Aaron went shopping."
"Guess so. Did he always do your food shopping when he was around?"
"Only when I'd tell him I was sick or something," she tells me, putting her right foot on the coffee table as she sits back on the couch.
"Oh, makes sense," I respond, bringing her the juice and medicine. "Do you want to watch a movie?"
"Upstairs are the first three Twilight movies and the first six Harry Potter movies, please?" she asks, leaning her head back to see me. She smiles.
I hand her the pain med and juice before I head upstairs to grab the blu-ray discs she asked me to get, making sure to grab her 'movie bag'. It's a duffel filled with all her DVD and blu-ray movies that she never leaves behind. She made Aaron sneak back to his brother's house when he had left for tour. "What do you have for movies?"
"Oh, by the way, your role in 'Killer Movie' sucked hardcore." Did I mention how bluntly honest and random she can be sometimes?
"Yeah, I know. I wanted more than a serious role and they turned me down."
"Well, fuck em. Uh, let me think a minute. I only have 3700 movies of mine down here," she admits.
"How many do you own?"
"Over 20,000." She motions for the bag and I put it next to her, sitting beside her. We go through the bag and she's got every movie I've known she likes. There's the 'Child's Play' series, 'Nightmare On Elm Street' movies, 'Candyman', Jason movies, 'Freddy Vs Jason', Van Damme movies, Jet Li movies, Aaliyah Haughton movies, Justin's movies, 'The Hollow', all Disney movies (she loves Disney-name it, she has it if it's ever been on DVD or blu-ray), Dwayne Johnson movies (she thinks he's sexy and met him a handful of times-'he is a wall of pure rock hard muscles'), Transformers movies (she loves the Autobots, says Shia is cute, and Megan Fox is 'bangable'), Stephen King works, '10 Things I Hate About You', Julia Stiles, 'Brink!' (she met Von Detten back in 2000 and got her first kiss from him at Madison Square Garden, but Lance has no idea), and home movies in this bag. "Put this one in," she suggests, handing me a DVD marked 'Home Vids 39 Final Cut'.
"Why this one?"
"Please, Jacey?"
I put it in, press play as I sit back down and see her doing the dance for 'It's Gonna Be Me' with us on the video set. It's clips of her on the video sets, during rehearsals, on tour with us, during appearances, album promos, recording and major highlights of time with her and around the NSA album. "I can't believe you did more back handsprings than I did. Minna, I swear you cheated."
"To this day?"
"Yes," I say with a chuckle.
We watch the movie and a scene strikes up old memories.
"Justin! James! Joey! Chris! Put me down!"
Justin does that evil smile he does when he's about to be a jack ass. "Did she say to put her down?" The other three nod.
"JACEY! HELP ME!"
They let me grab her and pushed us both in. We surface, she climbs out, strips down to her bikini and runs after Chris first. She knocks each of them into the pool-Chris, Joey, Lance and Justin pulls him to her as she rams into him full force, taking her in with him. I strip to my shorts and jump in to play chicken. It's where one person is the base and someone sits on their shoulders. There's usually only four of us playing, unless we have friends or family over. When it's more than the five of us, we have more than two teams and a ref. She and Lance usually teamed up, but sometimes she'd team up with me or J. "Minna, be on my team!" I call to her.
"Ok," she says, a mischievous smile on her lips as she swims over to me near the stairs. She climbs on my shoulders. "J-Dog first."
"He's teamed with Trace."
"James is like my brother," she retorts faster than I can come up with another excuse. She tugs my hair in his direction. We were teamed up like this-Minna & I, Justin & Trace, Lance & Darren, Joey & Chris, and Tyler played referee. I walked over to Justin and Trace, she pushed Justin, made them go off balance and when they regained composure, turned on us. She and Justin locked hands and began to struggle to knock the other over. After a few minutes of an intense shoving match and my quick footing, she won. She did a quick crowd cheer and pointed at Chris and Joey, essentially marking them as her next victims. We go over to them and she takes them down in fifteen minutes, doing another crowd cheer. She points to the last opposing team, Lance and Darren. She shoves him harder than the others and laughs manically. She talks shit as she struggles with Lance. "C'mon, country bumpkin."
"You're a bumpkin too, Min."
"James, c'mon, what happened to you being stronger than me?"
"I can beat you if I want."
"Do it."
"Maybe I don't want to."
"Chicken."
"Am not."
"Are too. Wuss." She really gets into this and she may instigate Chris, Justin and Joey (she always got them out of trouble somehow).
"Am not," he says through gritted teeth, pushing harder.
"Are too."
"Stop being a brat."
"I'm not, just don't want you to play nice just cuz I'm a girl!"
"I'm not!"
"You are!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
This argument goes on as Darren and I maneuver around the pool, trying to stay upright as they continue the playful banter and shoving match with everyone else cheering on both teams. She finally shoves him hard enough to knock him over and I do a victory spin. I face away from the long end of the pool and my feet are pulled from under me suddenly, forcing us to fall back into the center of the pool. She shrieks and pinches her nose, closes her mouth, making sure to flip everyone off as we go under. We let go and swim to the surface. "Who did that?" I swim in circles. Justin and Chris are laughing, signaling they are the culprits.
She giggles at the scene and I had to chuckle. She had turned 16 on May 5, the day after Lance turned 21. It was just days before the tour was going to kick off and we were having a blast at her place she shared with Darren.
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