Strange Relationship

Chapter 13

Carson came in the room, grinning broadly. "Tara and Sasha, my two favorite lounge singers! I haven’t seen you guys in a long time!" He gave us each a light hug and we introduced him to Jen, who was just a teensy bit star struck over him. Sash and I had gotten way past that a long time ago.

"I can’t believe you remember us," I said, considering he met and saw a million girls each day on TRL.

Carson shook his head. "Hanging out with you two,s inging old songs while you," he pointed at me while I tried to make myself invisible due to embarrassment, "were stretched out on that piano? I’ll never forget that scene. You two are hilarious. And who’s this?" he asked about Jen, so I introduced them quickly and they shook hands.

"So you got the tickets?" Sasha demanded, getting right to the point. Man, she can cut straight to the chase.

"Right here," Carson handed them over to her. "And I hope you appreciate the trouble I went through to get these for you. Why aren’t you with Justin, anyway?" he turned to ask me, nosy being that he is.

Sasha stepped in for me as usual. "He’s in Hawaii."

"So? Why aren’t you there with him? It’s fucking Hawaii, man! I’d kill to be here instead of doing this crappy shit," Carson told us. "My girlfriend Jennifer and I could be on a hot beach in Hawaii if I didn’t have to do this fucking show tonight." He looked at me. "Trouble in paradise?" I knew he was talking about Justin and me but I wasn’t sure about telling him anything so I just shrugged.

"Oh-kaay," Carson laughed, "I guess that’s off limits. Listen, I gotta actually go and do some work so I’ll see you guys tonight? Make sure you’re here around six because the line piles up and it’s hard to get in."

Jen laughed. "It’s already packed out there. We could barely get in right now,"

"Use the back entrance," he said then proceeded to write down instructions so we could rattle off directions to the cab driver.

Pretty soon we were back outside in the frigid air. We hailed a taxi after freezing our asses off for twenty minutes and went back to our hotel. Sasha decided to try out her dad’s new credit card and we were staying at the Trump International Towers. I was just grateful that there was no Heavenly Bed.

I know you’re wondering how we ended up in NYC for New Year’s with tickets to MTV’s big new year’s party. Well, Sasha and Carson had kept in touch a little bit - just exchanged phone numbers and talked shit about anything and everything - and on the plane she used one of the in-flight phones to call him and surprisingly, he hooked us up. Sasha said he probably just wanted me to get drunk again and act the fool like I did before, which is completely embarrassing.

Anyhow, we left Hawaii without a word to any one except Mike and we only told him so he wouldn’t worry. I told him he could tell Justin if he wanted to and if he didn’t want to that was fine, too. He tried to talk us out of it, smooth things over, but it was too late. I wasn’t chasing after some guy who insisted on hanging out socially with his ex-girlfriend who was voted the sexiest woman alive in, like, a million years, I told Mike, who had nothing to say after that. So we hopped into a taxi with me crying the whole way to the airport, lying on Jen’s shoulder. We got tickets and after only an hour’s wait, we were on our way to NYC. Sasha made hotel reservations while we were flying so when we landed in JFK airport we headed straight there to dump our bags and do what else - shop! All we had were skimpy hot weather clothes so what better reason to buy new clothes?

All the activity kept me busy but I still thought about Justin the entire time. He was blowing up my cell phone like crazy. He even resorted to calling Sasha who got a great kick out of being able to hang up on him with my approval. I was feeling incredibly fragile, like I might snap at any moment, and I was on the verge of snapping at any moment. There was so much anger built into me because of his lying and all the distrust between the two of us that I didn’t see how we could get past yet another problem in our relationship. I was sick and tired of it. And I was determined to have fun the next night, no matter what. Who gave a fuck what Justin wanted? It was time for me to grow a backbone.

~*~

The MTV party was packed. The three of us held hands, trying to get through the crowd to get to where the drinks were. Surprisingly, the person we bumped into who had liquor was Method Man, who was performing later that night. Sasha immediately hit him up for some of whatever champagne bottle he was holding.

"Hell yeah, girl," he said, "y’all can have this. They got a shitload of this in the green room." Then he started flirting with Sasha while Jen and I gazed at him with love-struck eyes. We’d loved Meth since he came out with his first single and couldn’t believe he was standing in front of us. Of course, he had a huge gold plate covering his chest and was completely covered in bling, which I still have never understood why everyone always wanted to be iced out, but live and let live, I suppose. He pulled all of us over to where his little crew was and everyone was already wasted despite it only being eight o’clock. The table was littered with bottles of champagne, some opened, some not.

"Here," he said in his famous gruff voice, shoving a bottle at each of us. "Get yo’ drink on, girls. Let’s dance," he told Sasha and they disappeared into the crown leaving me and Jen with who I suspected was Ghostface Killah and The Rza but wasn’t quite sure. After a few sips of champagne I just came out and asked them and they were so nice! We spent most of the night hanging with them, drinking and talking shit.

Of course, then they tried to hit on us.

"So you feel like rolling with us back to the hotel after midnight?" Ghostface asked me, and I, at a loss for words, said the only thing I could think of.

"I have a boyfriend, sorry" I told him.

Rza jumped in. "Where’s your man? He just left you alone on New Year’s? What kinda dummy would do that shit?” That was the most he’d spoken all night. Rza was very quiet and just sat, listening to all of our conversations.

Jen answered for me. "We - or she - left him because he was flirting with his ex-girlfriend for, like, the fiftieth time. So we decided to bounce from Hawaii to here."

"Y’all left Hawaii to come here? What is your boyfriend doing in Hawaii anyway?" The Rza suddenly became quite talkative.

Knowing they would clown me when I told them he was a boy-bander, I sort of mumbled, "He’s in ‘N Sync. They’re doing a concert there."

"What? Huh? What’d you say?" Rza and Ghostface both asked. Jen, in rare form because she was drunk, actually spoke up and repeated it for them loud and clear.

"He’s in that boy band, ‘N Sync. They were doing two concerts in Hawaii over New Year’s so that’s why he’s there. And he’s an asshole."

Rza leaned forward. "Which one are you dating? The kid trying to grow an Afro or what? The dude with yarn in his hair?" I found it hilarious that members of the Wu-Tang Clan knew who ‘N Sync was.

"The one with the afro," I said ashamedly, because Justin’s hair was completely out of control now. He could hardly walk around without a bandanna or something on his head just so he could see through the curls that flopped down in his face.

Those curls. I sighed, forgetting all about MTV and Wu-Tang. God I missed us laying together with his head in my lap, twisting his hair with my fingers and massaging his scalp. I missed us snuggling together for no reason, just craving to be near one another all the time. I missed my kisses and caresses, being called T. Damn it, I just missed him, period. So in order to stop being so depressed, I really started hitting the champagne hard and danced with some people on the main floor. We even managed to get on TV - well we were in the back, but we were still on TV - because they were talking to Method Man and he let us hang around him. He said we would make him look like a pimp and once we were drunk, we were down for anything.

So while Carson and Jennifer Love Hewitt interviewed him briefly, we hung around Meth with our arms around his waist or whatever, trying to appear cool. It was actually a lot of fun. Carson was completely wasted but somehow managed to get through the live broadcast, which featured the premiere of Backstreet Boys new video so I knew Justin or someone he knew would be taping the show to check up on their competition. Hopefully he’d see me wrapped around Meth and feel like shit.

You know, the way I felt when I saw the picture of him wrapped around Britney? At least I wasn’t screwing Method Man, although he was hella sexy. But he didn’t try to really run any game on us, just treated us like we were his little sisters or something.

All night was a blur - I think we stayed till around 4 AM, drinking and dancing with anyone and everyone. I remember meeting Gwen Stefani and the rest of No Doubt and being blown away. As for the rest of the celebrities, I have no clue who I talked to. You know how tequila gets to me.

At long last, we caught a cab ride back to our hotel and all of us collapsed, drunk and tired as hell. I lazily reached for my cell phone - I left it in the room on purpose - I saw that I had, like, seven messages. Gee, wonder who they’re from?

Tired of Justin, I decided to listen to them so I could respond when I finally talked to him again. Each message was him begging to tell me where I was, to apologize for hurting me, swearing that he wasn’t with Britney at all and that he missed me. The more I listened, the more anxious he got.

Good, I thought. Now he can know what it feels like to be played. Just to be mean, I texted him. The entire message said was:

Happy New Year! It’s 4 AM in the Big Apple and the MTV party was off the Hook! Hope you and your girlfriend had fun at midnight!

After I sent the message, I stumbled into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, and then we all fell into bed and slept until maybe one o’clock the next day. I’d managed to ignore my cell ringing until then and it finally pissed me off enough that I actually picked up.

"Hello?!" I demanded, annoyed to be awakened before I was ready.

Gee, guess who it was. "Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been fucking going crazy, worried about you. How could you just fucking disappear on me like that?" He paused to take a breath. "What did you do last night? How’d you get into the MTV party? Why the hell did you leave when we were supposed to be working things out?"

My hangover was not getting any better, listening to his demanding questions, so I answered as succinctly as possible. "We got tickets to the party from Carson. I left because I was sick of seeing you and Britney laughing it up like best friends right in my face. And if we were really working on things, you wouldn’t have been chatting her ass up in the corner of the club. Two can play at that game, J. If you can talk to ex-girlfriends or whatever, I can talk to whoever I want. Any more questions?"

"How in the hell did you get in touch with Carson? Did you hook up with somebody there, T? Because I know you were drunk."

I snickered. "I wasn’t drunk, J, I was wasted. All I know is I’m now good friends with the Wu-Tang Clan. We hung out with them all night long and had a ball. How’d your concert go?"

He snapped, "Don’t ask me about some fucking concert. Did you hook up with anybody, T? Just to get even with me? Because I swear to God I’ll kill the guy … did you fuck somebody else?"

That pissed me off. "What do you think, now I’m some fucking whore who’ll sleep with anyone? Fuck you,Justin. God only knows what you and Brit got up to last night. You had no trouble being in her face when I was there, I can only imagine what happened once you knew I was gone."

"Fuck this! I didn’t do shit! All I’ve been doing is calling you, all worried and shit. I screwed up during the concert so many times because I was worried about you, and you’re hanging out at MTV with the Wu. This is some shit, you know that, Tara? You could’ve at least called me and let me know you weren’t dead or something."

I sighed. Maybe I was wrong for leaving without saying a word to anyone but Mike, but he didn’t look like he’d miss me much when I left and I told him so.

"Not miss you? I was all over the hotel looking for you, getting the manager to open y’alls door to see if you were in there. I’ve been going crazy here. Tara, you promised that we’d try to fix things and then you just left. That’s fucked up … I was sitting all alone on New Year’s - not anywhere near Britney - wishing you were here. I miss you so much, baby … when am I gonna see you again?" Now that we’d talked for a bit, Justin had calmed down and gone into whiny mode. I wasn’t feeling ready to help him with it.

Sighing again, I stretched my legs out underneath the comforter on the bed. "I don’t know. Maybe we need a little more time apart. Maybe we got back together too soon, J. I have to trust you and right now I just don’t," I replied honestly. "Seeing you won’t make it any better - all we’d end up doing is having sex and trying to forget about our situation and I’m tired of doing the same old thing over and over. Maybe if we just talk on the phone for a couple of weeks, maybe after that I’ll come to Florida and see you."

He was almost about to scream from frustration, I could tell. But that wasn’t my problem. "You mean I can’t see you for weeks? Why don’t I just meet you back at your house and-"

"No, Justin! I said time apart and I mean it. For once, just try to honor my wishes instead of doing just what you want. Let’s do something my way for a change." I was sick and tired of catering to his every whim all of the time; it was time he proved himself to me and I told him so."

"Fine! I’ll change … I’ll do whatever you say, T. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it and fix everything."

I shook my head as I gazed at the ceiling. "You should come up with something on your own, Justin. You’re a grown man … why do I have to tell you what to do? Figure it out on your own. Now I’m going back to sleep … talk to you later." I hung the phone up and immediately turned it off because I knew he would just call right back.

Enough of the bullshit. He may have made millions and maybe he was a huge star, but he was just Justin Randall Timberlake to me. Just another deadbeat boyfriend so far. If he wanted me, he was going to have to come correct.

The ball was in his court now. I was just waiting for the first serve.