In the following week, Chris tried not to worry too much about Allie. He had little to no time to dwell on the girl and her crazy scheme, anyhow, since work ran him and his mates ragged. Every night, all five of them came home drenched in sweat, barely able to see straight or string more than three words together, and Chris had just enough strength to take a shower, grab something to eat, and crawl into bed; he was out like a light the second his head hit his pillow.

Surprisingly, no further calls from Allie came that entire week. Even on Friday, his voicemail had no new messages. Chris didn’t think it was possible to dread a call and long for it so much at the same time. He never would have believed he could harbor so much concern for a person he would have unhesitatingly pegged to the wall with foot-long masonry nails.

On Friday, after the guys had wrapped up work earlier than usual and were walking out of the studio with a bit more spring in their steps than usual, JC announced, “Well, boys, whad’ya say we celebrate the start of the weekend with a nice big steak dinner at Sizzler? I’m buying.”

“Better make that a blank check,” said Joey, “because I plan to order not only a nice big steak, but everything else they’ve got on the menu, too.”

“Somehow I’m convinced you’ll actually be able to keep all that food down, Joe,” Lance said with a smirk.

Chris said, “I wager fifty bucks that Joey can keep down the appetizer, the main course, and the dessert, all in the biggest sizes available.”

Joey cocked his brows. “Is that a challenge, old timer?”

“This from the man who ate the biggest Friendly’s sundae and lived to tell it,” said Justin, patting Chris’s belly as he would a dog.

Whipping out his own wallet from his rear pocket, Joey declared, “I wager a hundred and fifty bucks that Chris will have the least clean plate of all of us at dinner’s end.”

Now it was Chris’s turn to elevate his brows. “Oh, yeah? Just you wait, Joe; you’ll eat those words.”

“Let’s hope those words don’t give him indigestion,” Lance said with a hearty laugh.

“If a heart attack doesn’t get him first,” Justin also laughed.

JC rolled his eyes and used both hands to smack Lance and Justin’s heads at the exact same time. “Okay, people, enough with the wisecracks already!”

As Lance and Justin rubbed their sore spots, Chris said, “Careful, JC; don’t want to crack those poor, pretty heads.”

“Yeah, they’re cracking up enough already,” said Joey.

JC’s mouth curled in a half-smile, even as he insisted, “No more puns, now. I mean it.”

“Anybody want a peanut?” asked Joey, and even Chris couldn’t keep a straight face.

When they reached the parking lot, they split up to go to their own cars. Chris whistled “Space Cowboy” as he juggled his car keys from hand to hand, but then his whistling stopped cold when he discovered something on his windshield, wedged between his wiper blades.

It was a photograph of him and Allie, taken the previous year. Allie, garbed in a seductive, glittery blue dress, had her arms wrapped as far around Chris’s neck as they could reach, and her cheek nestled against his. As if that weren’t bewildering in itself, someone had torn the picture clean in half—with Chris on one half and Allie on the other—and scrawled something over both faces in solid black ink.

When Chris held up both pieces to the waning daylight, he could make out the phrase: SHE’S OUT OF MY LIFE.

While he couldn’t quite identify the handwriting itself, the words were large and swooping, and somewhat disjointed.

Chris felt the force of this message as he would a punch to the gut. It literally stole his breath away. For at least a full minute, he couldn’t move at all; he couldn’t even get his hands to cooperate. All he could do was gape at the vandalized photo while the lyrics to the designated song caromed through his brain like a cruel playground chant:

“She’s out of my life.
She’s out of my life.

When at last Chris’s body regained its proper function, he opened his car door; due to the awful shaking of his hands, it was a wonder he didn’t lose his keys. He more or less collapsed into the driver’s seat, and shut the door with barely enough force. He would have torn the picture into even smaller bits and thrown those bits out the window. Instead, he found himself stashing the evidence in his glove compartment.

Even after the compartment was shut, Chris continued to sit there, his breath coming in short, hard bursts. Even when he closed his eyes and covered his face with both hands, he could still see that lurid memo.

Who would do this? he couldn’t stop asking himself. 

Who would have enough gall to pull off such a freakish prank?

Surely none of the other four guys could be responsible. Surely none of them would stoop that low. Not even Joey had such taste.

There could only be one culprit…but it wasn’t. 

It wouldn’t be.

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Somehow, Chris’s car made it to the Sizzler in one piece. He was the last to pull into the parking lot, and all four of his mates were already in the restaurant when he stepped through the door. The place was fairly crowded that evening, but not enough to instill claustrophobia.

“Hey, old buddy, what kept you?” asked Joey when Chris joined their line.

“We were just starting to worry,” said Lance.

Chris said nothing.

Upon closer observance, the other four furrowed their brows and Lance asked softly, “Chris, what’s wrong? Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m okay.” Chris had yet to meet their solicitous gazes.

JC stepped closer and placed both hands gently on Chris’s shoulders. “Look at yourself, man! You’re whiter than a bedsheet.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Justin asked.

Lifting his head only a few degrees, Chris mumbled, “I’m just a little run-down from today’s rehearsal. Really, guys, I…I’ll be fine.”

None of them appeared at all convinced, but they asked no further questions.

Even when they were sitting in a private booth with their dinners, Chris had to practically force-feed himself; anything he put in his mouth had no more flavor than cardboard. He did manage to make decent talk throughout the meal, but his jokes and laughter easily sounded more contrived to anyone’s ears. Joey ended up winning the bet after all, and Chris forked over the fifty dollars without a fuss.

When they were on their way back to the condo, Michael Jackson’s “She’s Out of My Life” cropped up on Chris’s radio. As enthusiastically as Chris would have sung along under different circumstances, as readily as he would have kissed the ground the King of Pop himself walked on, he put out his hand and shut the whole thing off in half a second.