I think I messed up.

Strike that, I know I messed up.

The ache that went through my heart when I watched Justin walk out that studio door was enough to bring me to tears for hours.  I sat there for at least thirty minutes before I managed to pull it together enough to drive myself home.  I promptly called up Sadie and she came over with chocolate, wine, and a lot of sense.

I messed up.

Fortunately for me, Sadie was a huge help.  She sat and listened and brought those chocolate samplers that have all kinds of different types of candies, I love the ones with the caramel…never mind.  Anyway, she managed to wake me up to the fact that I’ve been slightly unreasonable and I made a huge mistake pushing Justin away like that. 

Her words were, and I quote, “The media are going to say what they want regardless of what you do or don’t do.  Pushing Justin away won’t stop them from speculating, and you’ll only succeed in making yourself miserable in the process.”

Gotta give the girl credit, she’s pretty smart.

Of course, she didn’t have any bright ideas about what I need to do to fix all of this.  I’m hurt that he could walk away like he did, but I kind of understand that I was pushing him to it.  I honestly can’t believe that I told him to stay out of the studio but I felt really stuck.  I didn’t know how to handle all of the pressure and I thought that I could separate our work lives from our private lives by asking him to step back.  Obviously that was a really bad idea.

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t want to separate work from private, because it’s the work that brought us together and made me fall in love with the guy.  I can’t believe that he’s managed to bring me to that level, but I have to own up to it: I’m in love with Justin Timberlake.

I can’t tell you exactly when it happened; although, I think it happened a lot earlier than I really want to admit.  I’ve always had a soft spot for Justin, and it wasn’t until we started dating that I truly realized how important he is to me.  Not only did he make my biggest dreams come true, but he’s supported me throughout the entire thing.  He put a lot of his own projects on the back burner to see that mine were accomplished and that makes me feel like a huge ass for asking him to stay out of the studio.  I can’t really imagine being there without him, either.  He knows me, and he knows my style and no other producer will be able to get the results that Justin can.

I have some serious groveling to do.

I’m still worried about this whole media thing, but Sadie made it blatantly obvious to me that there’s nothing I can do about it all.  I can only go with the flow and keep making my music speak for itself. 

I hate to admit that Justin was right about that, but he was.  He kept telling me that my music was enough but I didn’t want to see it.  I just let it all consume me and I pushed away the most important man in my life (next to my Daddy, of course).

Now I just have to come up with a way to make all this up to Justin.  I’ve never been good at the romantic crap. I’ve always left that to the men in my life.  And looking at my track record, Justin’s the only one that’s ever gotten the romance thing right.  I am so screwed.

We’re going to be in the studio again tomorrow, but Steve will be there and I certainly can’t put the moves on Justin while there are other people in the room.  Well, I could but…that would just be weird.

I grab my phone and scroll through it for Steve’s number.  I know that Justin will probably be a little upset at the waste of money, but there’s only one way to get him alone without him knowing about it.  “Hey Steve, it’s Abbey.”  I respond when he answers the phone.

“Hey Abbey, what’s up?”

“Well, I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind if I cancelled the studio time tomorrow?”

“Is everything okay?”  He sounds concerned so I’m quick to dispel his worries.

“Yeah, everything’s fine.  I just have some personal stuff that needs to be taken care of and I need to do it as soon as possible.  I hope it’s not too big of a problem to cancel on you.”

“Not at all.  Does Justin know you’re doing this?”

I hesitate and then decide that if I’m going to be honest about our relationship I should start being honest now.  “Not yet.  He’s actually the reason I want to cancel.  I made a pretty big blunder with him the other day and now I’ve got some groveling to do.  I figured that I could corner him in the studio tomorrow and I wanted to make sure we were alone.”

“Oh, I see.”  His tone is knowing and oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me to be telling him.  “No problem, Abbey.  The studio is all yours tomorrow.  Good luck.”

“Thanks Steve, I’ll see you on Thursday.”  He hangs up and I let out a sigh.  That’s one thing down, now I need to get to work on my next step.

I think that the best way to show Justin I’m serious is to prove to him that I can handle our relationship being public.  I don’t want to do anything really drastic, but I also want to do something to really show him that I’m serious about us.  He means a lot to me.  I want him to know that.

Grabbing my lap top, I log onto my myspace page and take a deep breath before opening a new blog.  If people are going to report about my relationship with Justin I should at least make sure they’re using true information right from the source.

I hope this works.

~*~

The last time I was this nervous to be seeing Justin was the first time we met.  I can remember that meeting like it was yesterday and I can’t believe how far we’ve come from that moment.

I wipe my hands down my jeans and sit back against the sound board, watching the door and waiting for him to show up.  I arrived an hour before our start time today to make sure that I was here before him.  I know he likes to get to the studio early so I wanted to beat him here.  I’ve got my print-out with me and I’ve also got my apology speech all figured out in my head.

I glace at my watch, he should be here any minute.  I resist the urge to pace; I don’t want him to catch me in the middle of a nervous rant or something.  I don’t need to scare him off on top of pissing him off.  That would be just my luck.  The door opens and I jump a little, a ‘sorry’ perched on the tip of my tongue, but the apology dies when I see that it’s not Justin but Sadie.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Don’t sound so excited to see me.”  She gives me a grin that I can’t return.  I was psyching myself out for Justin; I didn’t expect to see Sadie.

“Sorry, Sade, I thought you were Justin.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m here about.”  She glances down at her feet nervously and I can tell that whatever news she has for me isn’t good.  “He’s not coming.”

My jaw falls and the ache has returned to my heart.  Those are probably the worst three words I could hear at the moment.  He’s not coming.  “Wh-why?”  I will not cry; I will not cry.

“He called me a few minutes ago and told me to tell you that he wasn’t coming because it’s what you wanted.  He said that he didn’t want to upset you anymore and that I should have Steve called if he needed anything.”  She looks pained to tell me and I can understand why.

He’s not coming.

“I’m so sorry, Abbey.”  She can’t seem to look at me in the eyes.  Honestly, I can’t bring myself to look at her, either.  I know once I see the pity on her face I’ll lose any resolve I have and break down.  I was sure that he would come here today and I’d apologize and show him what I did last night and we’d kiss and make up.  I mean, I knew I was going to have to work at it, but I never thought that he wouldn’t show up to the studio.  I guess I really did a lot of damage on this one.

“Did he say anything else?”  I chance a look at her and she shakes her head.

“No.  I tried to get him to come but he seemed convinced that you didn’t want him here.”

I nod, taking a shaky breath and looking down at the paper in my hands.  “What do I do now, Sadie?”  It’s a huge blow to my confidence that he didn’t show up.  I never thought that I’d upset him this much.  I guess I wasn’t really thinking about how he’d feel when I started to make all those decisions.

That was a really stupid thing to do.

“He’s at his house, I know that much.”  She states, watching me carefully.  I sit silently, keeping the tears at bay and wishing I could crawl into a hole and hide.  “Abbey,” her voice brings me up from my pity party and I look at her.  “Go after him.”

“What?” 

“Go. After. Him.”  She says again, slowly.  I stare at her a minute more, unsure.

“You think that would work?”  I’m hesitant.  I really don’t want to get my hopes up only to have them dashed when he doesn’t want to see me.

“Yes!”  She’s practically yelling at me and I’m taken aback.  I’ve never seen her this worked up before.  “For God’s sake, darling, go after the man and make up with him.  He’s obviously not going to come to you…so go get him!”

I sit for a second longer before grabbing my purse and heading out the door.  She’s right.  I can’t just sit back and wait for him to come to me.  If I want to make a proper apology I’m going to have to go to him.  God, I hope I can do this.

I jump in my car and head toward Justin’s, mentally pep-talking myself the whole ride there.  I don’t want to mess this up. 

The hurt and emptiness I felt when I watched Justin walk out of the studio was enough to last me a lifetime.  I really don’t want to lose him or his friendship.  He means way too much to me.  I know that I still have a lot to work out, especially with this whole media thing, but I think I can manage it all as long as I’ve still got Justin.  I know, I know…cheesiest line ever, but it’s the truth.

I turn into his driveway and take a deep breath.  Here goes everything.

It takes a minute for Justin to answer the door after I ring the bell and when he opens it I’m slightly surprised at how he looks.  His eyes are red rimmed and he’s got dark circles underneath them.  It looks as if he’s been crying all night.

“Hey,”  It’s a timid hello but I don’t think I can manage anything else.

“Abbey.”  It chills me a little to hear him call me by my first name.  It’s strange and my nerves have just doubled in my stomach.

“You weren’t at the studio today…”  He cuts me off before I can finish.

“I thought you didn’t want me there.”  I deserve the bitter tone, I do. 

“I know I said that and I am so sorry.  It was selfish of me and I was going to tell you that today when you got to the studio.”  He stands in the door way, just watching me.  “Can I come in?”  He seems to contemplate the idea for a moment before stepping inside and leaving the door open.  I follow him into the kitchen and take a tentative seat at the breakfast bar.

“Did Steve have anything to say about you leaving early?”  He opens the fridge and stares into it and I can’t help but think he’s too upset to even look at me.

“I called him last night and told him not to come in today.”  At this he does look at me and the surprise is evident on his face.  “I wanted to talk to you alone and I figured that you would be too upset to come see me so I was going to talk to you when you came in to the studio.”

He grabs a juice from the fridge and leans back against the counter, watching me.  I fumble around in my purse for a second before grabbing the piece of paper I’d printed out this morning and unfolding it.  I glance up at him, his blue eyes piercing.

“What’s that?”  He nods at the paper in my hands.

“It’s a blog.”  I start, staring down at the paper.  “I wrote it last night and printed it off because I wanted you to hear it.”  I look back up at him and wait but he doesn’t say anything else so I take it as a sign to start reading.

             Lately there have been a lot of rumors going around about me and my love life.  People have been speculating that Justin Timberlake and I are more than just manager and artist.  I’m here to tell you that they’re right. 

I’ve known Justin for almost two years now and he’s always been a very special person to me.  He’s the one that showed me that making music could be an amazing process and he helped me to achieve my wildest dreams.  Over the past couple of months I’ve started to notice that Justin managed to stir up some rather fuzzy feelings inside me, and we started dating toward the end of our tour. 

All the rumors that I’m a money grubbing whore are totally off base, in case you were wondering.  I’d been long broken up with John Woods by the time I’d started crushing on my boss, and Justin had been single just as long.  We didn’t cheat on anyone and I certainly wasn’t using him to further my career.  I think I’m capable of doing that on my own now. 

Yes, he’s still my manager and he’s still my main producer, but now he’s my boyfriend too.  I know you’re probably all wondering why I’ve decided to share all this on my Myspace, and I’m wondering it myself.  Lately, though, I’ve been wrapped up in all the media coverage and rumors that I’ve neglected my relationship with Justin and I’ve done some hurtful things.  In an attempt to take control of my private life and to prove that I’m not as paranoid as I may seem, I decided to share this with all of you fans and let you know the truth first hand. 

I’m in love with Justin Timberlake. 

Now you know and there should be no more doubt or speculation, on anyone’s behalf. 

I stop reading, scared to look up at him.  There’s a thick silence between us for what seems like hours before he pushes himself off of the counter and makes his way over to me.  His fingers grasp my chin lightly and he pulls my head up so I can see him.  The smile on his face is enough to melt my heart and relieve all of those fears.

“That was really sweet, Jude.”  He grins, leaning down to capture my mouth in a searing kiss.  I allow him to kiss me for a while before I lean back and pull away.

“I’m so sorry, Justin.”  He shakes his head at my apology.

“Don’t say anything else.  I don’t want you to ruin the moment.”  I gasp, smacking his arm as he lets out a laugh.  I love that laugh.

“Jackass,”

“Yeah, but I’m the jackass you’re in love with.”  I grin up at him.

Can’t argue with that one.