He still made her heart beat faster. With one look from his cobalt eyes or just the sound of his voice Harley Jenson always found herself coming undone. She had known JC Chasez for years. He moved in the house next door in Orlando when they were fifteen, and she could still see clearly in her mind the day they first met; she could still picture his white T-shirt and blue jeans, and his dark hair that brushed over his forehead.
At the time, Harley hadn't seen anything to spectacular as he stood on her front porch, a smile on his face that revealed to her a gap between his front teeth. She rested her weight on one side with a hand on her hip, her blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. "So," he started. His head was down and when he looked up Harley nearly gasped at the color of his eyes. "Wanna come out and play?" He smirked as if he knew what he said had been the corniest thing to come out his mouth, but also that it would bring a smile to her face. And it had.
From then on, they had been close friends. Harley had her clique of girlfriends she spent most of her time with and JC was with his fellow mousekateers. They always found time for each other, however, if it was a random call from Harley at two in the morning just because she had trouble sleeping, or a Saturday night spent watching movies together and then there were the nights JC climbed into her window upset and needing her comfort.
Harley couldn't pinpoint where in her life she had fallen in love with him. She assumed that it had just happened over a period of time. She could never remember any feelings for him in high school, but when he came back from Europe with *NSYNC and hugged her tightly, whispering in her ear how much he had missed her, she felt lightheaded. It had been the first time she had seen him in years, and while he retained his "boy next door" charm, the endearing gap between his teeth, and the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen, something was different about him. Maybe it had been that he was no longer skinny as she remembered him, but lean. He seemed less of a boy to her and more like a man, which she told herself made sense considering he was now twenty-one rather than fifteen. But he still should not have affected her the way he had. It continued to worsen.
Soon she found her hands trembling when she saw him, her butterflies in her stomach. No thing, nor man, had ever made Harley nervous before and while the new feeling scared her, it felt exhilarating. She loved the feeling of excitement when she heard his voice on the phone, or when he hugged her and whispered hello in her ear. At the same time, it was hard.
JC dated beautiful women, and while Harley had always been confident in herself, she knew she would never compare. She didn't wait around for him, though. She dated and while she tried not to set impossible standards by forcing them to compete with JC, it never seemed to work. They just didn't make her heart skip as he did. There was also the fact that she was still holding on to a dream.
"I'm afraid," he confessed to her one night while they were sitting on the beach in front of his home under the stars. "I'm afraid of failing, of not living up to anyone's expectations."
"Josh, you never have to worry about anyone's expectations but your own."
"But I want to make my family proud…I want to make you proud." His words touched her in a way that she never thought possible.
"You already have," she replied with a smile. "Just by being you."
She felt special whenever he shared a part of him that no one else had seen, and while his girlfriends called him JC, she always called him Josh. It became frustrating, however.
While he sharing his affection with other women, Harley was the source of his comfort and the one with whom he shared his dreams. Then frustration finally reached its climax.
He and an actress had been dating for a months and JC swore up and down that she was the one. Of course, Harley had heard this many times before; she had long ago come to the conclusion that JC was in love with falling in love and confused the excitement with the beginning of a new relationship with true love, and a few months later finding another object of his affection. This time, however, was different. The woman saw through his façade before he realized what he felt wasn't real. "You're not in love with me," she told him. "You can't be because you can't even give all of yourself to me."
JC had gone to Harley immediately, not understanding what the girl had meant. They were sitting at her kitchen counter drinking hot chocolate, a childhood tradition of theirs, when she finally slammed her cup down having had enough of it all. "She means that you can't have your cake and eat it too!" Her brown eyes flashed, and she could feel the heat rising to her face.
"What the hell does that mean?" he questioned, more confused then before.
"It means that we can't keep doing this."
"What exactly are we doing?"
"God, are you really that dense? Josh, you come to me whenever you have a problem, you can't even get up in the morning without calling me first to ask what you should wear!"
"I do not!" he protested. "And I still don't understand what the hell is going on."
"Josh, who else knows that you were afraid of the dark until you were seven?"
"Why would I tell anyone else that? It's a secret-"
"And who else knows that your biggest dream is to eventually be a producer, and the only reason why you haven't pursued that yet is because you love traveling and the adrenaline rush you get from the crowd?"
"I'm still lost here."
"I'm not the one you're supposed to share your dreams with!" she finally exclaimed, tears forming in her eyes.
"Why not? We're best friends-"
"Because, Josh, it's meant to be for the woman you love. I know more about you than any of the women you have ever dated."
JC said he needed to think things over a little more and left. Things after that had been strained between them, and while Harley regretted it, she couldn't help but think that what she had done was right. After all, she finally was able to open up herself a little more to Dean, a man she started dating a few months before the event, and felt for once that she might be truly over the dream that she had built of her and JC. It wasn't before long that Dean proposed to her and she accepted.
Upon hearing the news, JC had a tantrum. "You can't marry him," he told her one night at his home. She had gone to his house the day after the proposal to share the exciting news.
"Excuse me?" Never in Harley's life had she taken an order from any man other than her father.
"No, it's…it's wrong."
Her mouth formed a thin line. "And why is that?"
"Just, because…" he seemed a bit disoriented and couldn't look her in the eyes. "He's not right for you," he finally stated.
The anger and resentment that had been building up toward him for not seeing her that she saw him, for not loving her as she loved him, was finally rising to the point of explosion. "And how would you know who is right for me?" Her voice became louder with every word. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
"I know you, Harley-"
"You have never cared about who I dated before, why now-"
"Because you're not just dating him any longer!" he roared. "He's taking you away from me!"
"What?"
"When you marry him," he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly. "We won't be like we were. We can't have the same kind of friendship-"
"If you're worried that you'll finally have to start doing things on your own and stop depending on me for everything, I'm going to have to tell you to suck it up! It's about time you start growing up."
"No, that's not what I mean…" He looked lost.
"Then what do you mean?"
"I don't know… I don't know what I'm saying…" he trailed off and was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I have work to do in the studio." He looked in her eyes. "Congratulations."
Soon it was a week before her wedding and Harley was in her altered wedding dress, making sure it was the perfect fit, and he stood before her. He looked at her with the same intense blue eyes she was so used to boring into her soul. "You can't do this to me now," she said in a hushed voice.
"Why?" JC questioned. "It's not too late."
"We have nearly two hundred guests, this wedding costs thousands of dollars-"
JC put a finger to her lips and the smirk on his face brought her back through time when he was standing on her front her porch. "Harley, tell me you don't love me and I'll walk away."
"Why are you doing this now? Why couldn't you have figured this out years ago?" Her voice shook.
"You know I always have to do things the hard way." He said with laughter in his voice.
"This isn't funny."
He stepped closer to her and her heartbeat sped so fast she was sure that it would explode. JC cupped her cheek with his hand and Harley leaned into closing her eyes. He brought his lips close to hers, brushing them so slightly she thought she had imagined it. "It's you, Harley. It's always been you. I love you." Harley smiled and finally kissed him the way she had been dreaming of for so long.
Now they were standing face to face in front of nearly three hundred people, and Harley still had trouble believing it was real. Her heart still raced, and her hands still trembled, and Harley hoped he was always inspire these reactions in her. JC smiled at her. Their relationship had not gone the way she hoped it would; it was even better, because when she thought her dream was over, he showed her that he saved the best for last.
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