Chapter Two
This was a whole lot harder than Cassie had expected. She’d never thought of the dating scene as something that required a lot of effort. But, having avoided for the last four or five years, she was now seeing that small talk was really not her thing.
“So…” Cassie began, as they sat down to grab lunch in a small café on the waterfront in downtown Seattle. Lance had agreed meet at her favorite place for lunch. The waiter came and took their orders, leaving a blank space in the conversation. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “Do you really watch the Lion King as porn?”
Lane had just taken a sip of water, and it sprayed out of his mouth as he started to choke. Cassie watched as he gulped down his entire glass of water, trying to stop coughing. She was reaching out to grab her glass of water to offer to him, when her hand hit the edge of it, and it went pouring across the table, onto his lap.
“Ohmigosh! I am SO sorry,” Cassie breathed out as she rushed to his side of the table with her napkin to help with the damage control. Lance had pushed his chair back instinctively as the water had poured onto his lap, and Cassie now kneeled, trying to blot it up.
“SO sorry,” Cassie repeated. “I’m so clumsy sometimes, but it’s worse around you. Everything I do is wrong.”
Lance scratched his chin. “Well, now, if I was a complete jerk and an ass, I would say that what you’re doing is just about right.”
It took her way too many seconds to realize that she was blotting his lap. His lap. It took a few more seconds for her brain to let the rest of her body know that and rush back to her own chair, her face buried in her hands, too embarrassed to look up at him.
Lance finished cleaning the water himself, trying not to laugh. “So, do you normally try to grope guys in public, or am I just lucky?”
“Jshcky,” Cassie mumbled out from behind her hands. She could tell that even her ears were red. It was one thing that she hated about being fair-skinned: the entire world knew when you were embarrassed.
“What?” Lance asked, as he adjusted his chair, smiling across the table.
“I SAID, you’re just lucky!” Cassie exclaimed, causing heads to turn towards her. She ignored them, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at them and tell them to mind their own business.
Lance gave a little chuckle. Normally, Cassie wouldn’t think that someone laughing at her was at all sexy. Somehow, Lance pulled it off. Damn, what that man’s deep laugh was doing to her…
“Well, was that a no?” Cassie asked, still struggling for any kind of conversation with him, trying to bring it back to her original question.
“That, my dear, was a Hell, no!” Lance answered, laughing.
“So your friends just randomly say stuff like that?”
“Oh, well…no, I had been watching the Lion King yesterday morning…it was just something dumb from then, and the guys have a long running contest to see which of them can embarrass me the most…I think Joey is winning by a long shot, Justin coming in second.”
“And JC and Chris?”
“Well, JC’s always kind of out of it…he can never keep up with anyone. Chris is lost in his own world most of the time, too busy being Chris to worry about embarrassing anyone else, although they’ve both tried to get back into the game at some point over the last few years.”
“You’re serious? You’re friends have turned embarrassing you into a contest? And it’s lasted for YEARS!?” Cassie was more than a little surprised. Yesterday had been bad enough; she didn’t know if she’d have been able to handle a contest over her embarrassing moments. A contest that lasted years!
“Yeah, well, it’s not so bad anymore. I’m not nearly so easily embarrassed as I was seven years ago. And I’ve learned not to fight it when both Joey and Justin are ganging up on me.”
Cassie could only shake her head. Now THAT took some toleration! “And I thought I needed patience after working in the Children’s Wing for the last two years.”
As the waiter placed their soup in front of them, Cassie breathed in deeply. “Mmmmm, THE best clam chowder in Seattle, right here!”
“I take it you come here a lot?” Lance asked, smiling at someone taking so much pleasure in their food.
“Every chance I can,” Cassie confirmed, sprinkling crackers and digging in.
Lance nodded, understanding. “I have a place like this back in Mississippi; they make the best seafood gumbo.” He rubbed his tummy, sighing, before picking up his spoon.
“So do you guys do that kind of thing a lot?” Cassie asked as she finished scraping out the last little bit of chowder.
“What kind of thing?”
“You know. Showing up at hospitals to help little kids make collages.”
Lance smiled. “Not so much anymore. Now it’s mostly about raising money for the charity, and not so much the charity.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. We do charity events every year, mostly children’s charity events, but it’s getting rarer for us to ever see or interact with the children that we’re raising the money for. That’s what I really liked about yesterday. It wasn’t just another charity event. It was Jenna, and Alexis, and Jack. It was more about kids than about charity. And you did that.”
Cassie looked at him and laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“No, I’m serious. When you started talking about Jenna and the kids and why you’re there…it made it real for me. I admit, that I’m the most serious and business minded one of the guys, and that for me, I don’t often see past that. But you made me see past that. You made me see differently about something I’ve been doing for years.”
Managing a weak smile, Cassie racked her brain. Somehow, this didn’t seem like light, first date conversation that she’d seen in movies. This was just a little bit deeper than that. And it was something that she didn’t know how to deal with.
“I’m sorry. I can tell that made you uncomfortable.”
“No, don’t worry about it.” Cassie shrugged, unconvincingly.
Lance shook his head. “Nope. Never let it be said that I made a lady uncomfortable. You went to the University of Washington. Does that mean you’re from Seattle?”
Cassie smiled. Did Lance realize that this made him a gentleman? By definition of Blast From the Past, of course, but still! Wow. She’d never actually met guys who were perceptive enough to tell when they’d made someone uncomfortable, and smart enough to change the subject if they did.
“Cassie?”
Snapping out of her daydream, Cassie gave a nervous smile. “I’m sorry. I have the worst habit of daydreaming. You were saying?” Somehow, she didn’t think that daydreaming on a date made the best impression.
“I was just asking if you’re from Seattle.”
“Oh. Yeah, born and raised. What about you?”
“A Mississippi boy, born and raised,” Lance admitted proudly as their sandwiches were brought out.
“How’d you end up with the guys?” Cassie asked, interested in how one went about becoming a member of a boy band. And thankfully, the rest of their lunch went as smoothly, and as small talkish.
“How did you start your volunteering at the hospital? Why there?” Lance asked as they left the restaurant and started walking down the street. Cassie was supremely glad that the water on his leather pants was already dry…or else it just didn’t show on the leather. She fought down the urge to walk behind him as she struggled to stay current with the conversation.
“If I was going to volunteer somewhere, it may as well have been the hospital,” Cassie replied, trying to shrug it off.
“What do you mean, if you were going to?”
“Oh, you know,” Cassie said, not wanting to get into the issue. She didn’t mind talking about volunteering at the hospital; it was something that she loved to do. But why she’d started was not something she cared to discuss with people outside her family. “My family’s rich. My mother’s on the board of just about every Seattle charity. It was just expected that I would get into the charity scene too. I wasn’t doing anything the summer after high school, so I just decided to volunteer there.”
“I think it means more to you than that.”
Lance had somehow gotten a hold of her hand while she’d been explaining. He held it as they walked. Cassie had just noticed the simple gesture, and was now having difficulty catching her breath. He was making lazy designs on the back of her hand with his thumb. “What does?” Cassie asked, so distracted she’d forgotten what she’d been saying.
“Working at the hospital,” Lance answered, making her feel like an idiot because she couldn’t keep her thoughts from wandering for even a few minutes.
“Of course it does,” she replied, able to follow that much of the conversation.
Lance grinned. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Cassie wasn’t sure where a date proceeded after the meal part.
“You’re the one who knows Seattle. What’s your favorite thing to do?”
Cassie immediately thought of the docks, but she didn’t thank that was a date-appropriate activity. “Umm, I don’t really have anything favorite I guess.” She shrugged.
“You’re definitely lying to me!” Lance laughed. “You just got the dreamy look on your face that says you’re remembering your favorite thing!”
“Oh.” Cassie started turning red, embarrassed at having been caught lying so easily.
“Seriously, what’s your favorite thing to do, what do you love the most about living in Seattle?”
“Ummm…the docks.”
“The what? The docks?”
“See! That’s why I told you I didn’t have anything! It’s weird!”
“No, no.” Even though he was only slightly smiling, Cassie could tell his eyes were laughing…Was that strange? Being able to tell when a guy was laughing even if he wasn’t? “To the docks we go. Where you can explain why you like it so much.”
With Cassie leading the way to the public docks, they began to meander their way along the waterfront.
“This is your favorite part about living in Seattle?” Lance asked as they reached the wooden docks and began walking along them, past the rows and rows of boats, every size and shape. The ocean-smell was even stronger here: salt-water and something a little fishy.
“Yup,” Cassie answered, deciding to be proud of such an unusual favorite. Lance certainly didn’t seem to mind; he’d agreed to come down here, after all.
They wandered down the row of boats, looking at all of the names, trying to figure out what the owners had been thinking for some of them.
Cassie stopped in front of an empty space. “This is where the PB Bunny usually is. I guess Jackson’s out somewhere right now. He usually does manage to score on the weekends.”
“You know the guy who owns this boat? And I certainly hope you mean score in a purely innocent fashion.”
Cassie shook her head. “Nope. I walked by here once when Jackson was bringing down some food and drinks, preparing for his weekend getaway. Asked him what the name of his boat meant. I thought it was a peanut-butter bunny.”
Lance, finally seeing the significance of the name, started laughing. “Peanut butter?”
“I was seventeen!” Cassie defended, laughing with him. “I only realized it meant Playboy after he asked me to step off into the sunset for the weekend.”
Lance stopped laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You were seventeen!”
Cassie shrugged. “Jackson’s a jerk. Not a big surprise there. When I told him my last name was Spencer, he backed off pretty quickly…not too many who are people willing to piss off Andrew Spencer. And anybody who has enough money in Seattle to own a boat called the Playboy Bunny knows who my dad is.”
“Right now, I’m really glad that your dad’s name means something in this town,” Lance said, nodding.
“Oooh, you have to see this one over here,” Cassie said excitedly, when she saw that The Magellan was in.
That was when Cassie remembered the one thing she hated about the wooden docks. Raised planks of wood and her clumsy self…they just did NOT mix! As she tripped over the stupid thing, she fell against Lance, who being unprepared for the impact, promptly fell backwards into the water behind him. Cassie stared in horror as his arms flailed in a last attempt for balance as he was falling in. It was actually kind of funny, if she’d been in any sort of humorous mood-he looked like a cartoon character when they realized that they had just run over the cliff’s edge, and looking down, recognized that they were about to fall…
He came up sputtering. She was still standing there in shock, one hand over her mouth. Slowly moving forward, she crouched down, her eyes still wide, her hand still over her mouth. Taking it away, she rushed out, “Ohmigod. I just know those were some ridiculously expensive leather pants.”
“Cassie…” Lance growled as he pushed his hair out of his face and moved back towards the dock.
“And leather looks soooo good on you too,” Cassie added mournfully, still not fully comprehending that she had just pushed Lance into the cold waters of the northwest pacific. She turned thoughtful. “Hmmm…it might look even better wet, come to think of it.”
“Really, you think so?” Lance asked sarcastically as he held onto the edge of the dock, no longer having to tread water.
Cassie realized she had been thinking aloud again, and closed her eyes slowly. She opened them to find Lance still slightly growling at her. “Oops.” She turned red.
“That’s great…now will you help me out. Please!” He held up one of his hands, his other braced against he dock.
Cassie fell for the oldest trick in the book. Feeling so bad, she automatically held her hand out to help Lance. So done, he pulled her right in.
She came up gasping for air. “Oh, you did NOT just do that!” she shrieked. “No, no, no!”
Lance started laughing. “Oh. Yes, yes I did!”
Cassie grabbed onto him. “Lance! It’s cold!”
“Really, I hadn’t noticed!” He easily lifted himself out of the water, away from her hands, sitting on the edge, his legs still in the water. Standing up, he asked, “Now, do you want help?”
She started laughing. “No, I just want to stay right here. It’s so pleasantly warm, AFTER ALL!” She held her hand up, fighting down the urge to pull him back in. Not that she would have had a chance, she realized, as he easily pulled her out. Hmm…maybe she had lost TOO much weight, she thought, if even when she tried to jerk him down, he still lifted her out without effort.
They stood there on the dock, and Cassie was glad that the September afternoon was warm and sunny, even if the water was not.
“You know, if I believed in omens, I’d say that this was a really bad sign for us,” Lance admitted wringing out the bottom of his t-shirt.
“Really? WHICH PART!?” Cassie replied, still unbelieving that so much could go wrong in the same guy’s presence in only two days. Lance only laughed.
“Seeing as how this can be such a dangerous pastime, WHY do you spend so much time down here?”
“For the boats that aren’t here?”
“Huh? Sorry, you kind of lost me there. You come to see the boats that aren’t here? Like the Playboy?” Lance shook the water out of his hair as he waited for explanation.
Cassie gave him Jenna’s you’re-an-idiot-glare. “You see that boat WAY out there?”
Lance stared at the little black speck distant on the horizon…he nodded.
“That’s why. That’s my dream.”
“Your dream? What is? Being on a boat?” At Cassie’s nod, Lance continued, “Why?”
Cassie thought about it for a moment, as she squeezed the extra water out of her shoulder-length hair. “My sister, Jo Beth, is really into old time Jazz. She has a Billie Holiday song, called Sailboat in the Moonlight. It’s so romantic, and dreamy. It’s like, when you’re out on the boat, there’s no reality. Just dreams. It’s like an escape. I would love to go on a boat trip, to just sail away from the here and now, have no worries. Just exist, out on the water, in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why don’t you?” Lance asked as he stared at the distant boat that Cassie was so fascinated with. “Maybe we could rent one for the rest of the day…”
She turned around a little sheepishly. The most embarrassing part of her dream: that it would never be possible. “I get seasick. Really bad. Really easily.”
Lance tilted his head back and laughed. Cassie watched his Adam’s apple moving up and down, his wet t-shirt plastered to the chest she had felt all too closely yesterday, and the way the leather pants really did look better on him wet. Oh, wow…sexy and a half!
**********
Cassie took her shoes off at the front door of her family’s condominium where Lance’s taxi had just dropped her off at, trying to sneak in quietly. If her parents saw her sopping wet, they would go ballistic. Though they tried not to be overprotective, tried to let her lead a normal life, they still had their she’s-a-porcelain-doll moments.
After she got out of the shower and threw her salt-water soaked clothes into the washer, she wandered down the hall to her sister’s room. Peeking in the doorway, she saw Jo Beth stretched out on her bed, reading one of her romance novels, Louis Armstrong coming from the CD player. Cassie rolled her eyes as she went in and jumped onto the bed. Settling her legs over her sister’s, she tightened her bathrobe and leaned back against the wall.
“I just had the best time!”
Jo Beth hadn’t looked up the entire time, and she gave only a noncommittal murmur now. “Mmhmmm.”
“He was so amazing. I was an idiot, but he didn’t seem to mind.” Cassie stared off dreamily.
“Mmhmmm.”
“He’s different. Somehow.”
“Mmhmmm.”
“He’s so famous, but he seems really down to earth.”
“Mmhmmm.”
“And he actually listens!” Cassie cried as she swatted Jo Beth with a pillow.
“Mmhmmm.”
“Jo Beth!!”
“What?!” she cried, finally looking up from her book and turning her head to see her sister. “I’m reading here!”
“And I’m trying to tell you about my date with Lance!”
“Date? Lance who?” Jo Beth asked as she turned back to her book.
“Lance Bass. Remember? I told you last night. But, you were reading then too, of course, so it’s no wonder that you’ve forgotten.”
“You went on a date with Lance Bass?” Finally, something that got Jo Beth’s attention!
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Cassie yelled, exasperated. Even after being sisters for the last sixteen years, she still didn’t understand how Jo Beth could read so much and ignore so many people so easily.
“Why? Why would you ever go on a date? You avoided the dating scene in college. Why him, and why of all times, now?”
“I don’t know! We were at the hospital, and I talked with him. He was so different…he didn’t space out while I talked about the hospital, he actually listened. He actually cared. And then he asked me if I would go out with him today. It was so out-of-the-blue, and I said yes.”
“Cassie! You can’t do this to him, when you know that you won’t be around to follow it through!”
“Do you think I don’t know that? That I don’t feel bad enough? C’mon Jo Beth, you know me better than that!”
“So what happens now?” Jo Beth asked, sighing, as she turned back to her book.
“Well, they pull out tomorrow at like six in the morning. There’s nothing to happen. He’s leaving.”
**********
Of course, the doorbell ringing at nine o’clock that night WOULD prove her a liar!
Cassie was sitting in the living room, watching Pretty Woman and eating Chinese food with her mother and Jo Beth, a Saturday evening tradition in the Spencer household. Her eight-year-old brother came tearing out of his room and dashed to the front door, screaming that he’d get it.
The three women looked at each other confused. The downstairs doorman hadn’t called in to say that any visitors were on their way up.
“Wait, Michael-” Cassie called out, but it was too late and half of a second later, he was swinging the door open, revealing…Lance Bass on her doorstep. He smiled down at the little boy.
“Who are you?” Michael asked, forgetting all manners that their mother had taught him over his short lifespan, staring at the guy who looked slightly familiar to him.
“I’m Lance, a friend of Cassie’s. Who are you?”
“I’m her brother,” he replied, proudly.
“So, that would make you…Michael, right?”
Michael nodded, thrilled that someone he finally recognized from TV would know who he was.
“Nothing?” Jo Beth asked dryly as their mother paused the movie.
“Uhh…” Cassie stalled as she scrambled off their couch. She looked back and forth from Mrs. Spencer’s confused expression to Lance standing in the doorway. “Lance, this is my mom, Jo Beth, and Michael. And this is Lance,” she finished hurriedly as she slipped out the door and closed it behind her, not wanting to see her mom’s surprised and then questioning looks anymore.
“Bad timing?” Lance asked, his eyebrows raised as he looked at the door she had just pushed him out through.
“Oh, no…just…my mom asks a lot of questions,” she said.
“Yes, I can see how that would be a problem,” Lance agreed with mock severity.
“Never mind. What are you doing here…and how did you get in without the doormen buzzing us?”
“Oh, that,” Lance replied, waving his hand. “He had an eleven year old daughter, so I signed an autograph for him. He told me which apartment you guys were in, and I guess he just forgot to check and see if I was on the list or needed to be buzzed up.”
“Yeah, that would be Henry. And Lance, he has no daughter,” Cassie said, laughing.
“Ah. A closet fan.”
“Yup. I thought I heard him singing ‘If I wasn’t a celebrity’ the other day…”
“You know the song. Does that mean you’re a fan?”
“Ummm…well, not really. But I have heard some of your stuff,” Cassie assured him quickly.
“Don’t worry,” Lance said, smiling. “I’m not going to hate you forever if you aren’t.”
“Oh, well, now that’s a relief,” Cassie said, pretending to faint with relief. “Not to be rude, Lance, but what are you doing here?”
“Oh…well. I dunno.” He shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“Nope. We leave in less than twelve hours. I should be back at the hotel, getting my last night of sleep in a real bed for a long time. I just wanted to see what you were doing. If you wanted to do anything.”
“Oh. Well, actually. I’m watching a movie with my mom and sister.”
“Oh,” Lance nodded, in that I-was-just-shot-down-but-I’m-really-not-embarrassed…really kind of way.
“No! It’s just that this is tradition. Pretty Woman and Chinese food every Saturday night for as long as I can remember. It might seem kind of weird to watch the same movie every week, but it’s just something that we do.”
“Oh. Okay then. Well, I leave in the morning…so…Canicallyou?”
“What?” Cassie asked, trying to unjumble his rush of words. He was like Devon Sawa in Now and Then. Only she hadn’t heard the word “kiss” anywhere in his jumble…more’s the pity.
“Can I call you after I leave Seattle. Just to talk to you?”
“Sure. I gave you my number last night, right?”
“Yeah.” Lance rocked back and forth on his heels. “Okay, I guess I’ll be going then.”
Cassie knew it was coming. She just knew it. Or maybe she just wished for it so hard that it happened. Either way, one second it looked like Lance was going to just turn around and walk away, and the next he was leaning down to her, she was closing her eyes.
Cassie could honestly say that she had never been kissed, not in the Drew Barrymore fashion (well, if she was really being honest, the only time she’d ever been kissed at all had been at her ninth grade formal”all wet and sloppy)…although she would never say it because it was just a little too embarrassing to admit that when she was twenty-years-old.
But from here on out, THAT WOULD BE A LIE! The floor shifted, the world tilted, the heaven’s sang…it was like every stupid cliché she could think of from Jo Beth’s romance novels.
And it had to happen when the doctor’s were giving her maybe two months left to live. If that.
As Lance began to walk away again, she saw it leaving, what she had felt, with the only guy she had ever felt it with. “Lance, wait!”
He was already at the elevator and turned after pressing the down button. “Yeah?”
“Well, uh…” Cassie licked her lips, and cleared a throat gone suddenly dry. “Well, I mean, it might be just Jo Beth, our mom, and me that have watched the movie, but it’s always been a standing invitation to our dad and Michael. And we always have tons of extra food. If you wanna watch a chick flick with us.”
She knew that her offer was lame, when he had probably had something like clubbing in mind…which was why she almost dropped dead in shock when Lance walked away from the elevator and asked, “Any extra egg rolls?”
Cassie nodded, her eyes almost falling out of her head.
“Well, I have always liked Julia Roberts…”
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