CHAPTER 127

“What in the hell’s wrong with him? He keeps looking at his watch and dancing around like he’s got rash on his ass or something….”

Howie studied Kevin carefully through the glass that separated the control room from the studio. In addition to Kevin’s uncharacteristic animation, he was becoming increasingly impatient with the fact that this track was taking so long to lay. They had already done eight or nine takes and it still wasn’t right. His perfectionism was battling with his desire to get this recording over with.

“It isn’t a rash, Howard,” Brian smirked, leaning over the boards. “He’s got an itch, alright and you’ve got the general location right, but it’s not his ass that needs scratching. Connie’s coming home tonight.”

“What’s the big deal? She’s only been gone a week and tonight is hours away, anyhow. Even Kevin can’t change time.” Howie wiped a smear of salsa from his chin and continued. “He already got an email from her today, anyway. I heard him say so. Christ, he can’t go anywhere anymore without that laptop, can he? And now he has that pager hanging off his pocket all the time…”

“Well, it’s not like he can call her, D,” AJ chimed in.

Howie pushed his hair back with his fingers and flopped down beside Brian at the control panel. “I don’t care,” he frowned, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d live to say this, but I think the boy is totally pussy-whipped.”

Nick, Brian and AJ exchanged glances, a little surprised at Howie’s assessment. Then AJ winked at the other two, leaned in close to Howie’s ear and spoke softly.

“Man, I’d be careful what I said if I were you. Especially with the mike open and all…”

Howie looked like he’d been shot. His eyes bulged and he jumped out of his seat, spilling nachos all over his new and very expensive shirt. A look of sheer panic had washed over his features as his head snapped towards the glass, fully expecting to be reduced to ashes by Kevin’s glare alone. Instead, he found the anal one sitting on a stool, scribbling notes on a sheet of music. AJ, Brian and Nick burst into gales of laughter. The intercom was off. Kevin hadn’t heard a word.

Howie scowled and began to dab at his new shirt with a napkin. “Assholes…”

*****

Connie stood silently in the doorway waiting for the man on the phone to finish his call. It was taking several minutes. She sat her suitcase, briefcase and laptop on the floor leaving her unencumbered except for her small shoulder bag and a yellow folder she carried in her arm. She was trying to be polite but she was anxious to surprise Kevin. Finally, she saw the man hang up the telephone.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Connie nodded eagerly. She pointed to her bags. “Is it alright if I leave these here, out of the way?”

“Uh…. Who are you?”

Connie hesitated, hoping she was in the right place. “My name’s Connie. Connie ’Rourke…” When his only response was a blank stare, she added, “The Boys are recording here today, right?”

“What boys?” the man asked suspiciously. It wasn’t the first time fans had tried to bust into a recording studio.

“The B-Backstreet Boys…” she stammered.

“Why in the world would you think that The Backstreet Boys are here?”

Connie swallowed. The man’s eyes had narrowed, making her feel foolish and a little crazy.

“Maybe I made a mistake,” she muttered. “Would you call a cab for me? I was going to surprise my fiancé…”

“And your fiancé is…?”

Connie was beginning to get a little annoyed with this interrogation. “Kevin. Kevin Richardson.” She sighed, reaching down to grab her suitcase. “I’ll just wait outside. Sorry to…”

“Ooooh – you’re the deaf girl!” the man cried, rising from his chair. “Kevin didn’t say he was expecting anyone and you know how it is – you have to be careful. He’s inside, there…” The man pointed to a door marked with a sign. “The sign says ‘Private’….”

Connie bit her tongue. Bad enough to be identified as ‘the deaf girl’ but the assumption that deafness equaled illiteracy was a bit much.

The door opened into the control room where Howie and AJ stood, twisting a knobs, pushing levers and, apparently, arguing.

“Hi, guys…”

AJ stopped mid-curse, lowered his glasses and looked over his shoulder.

“Well, holy shit, girl! I didn’t think you were coming in ‘till tonight!”

Connie shrugged. “Surprise?”

“Man, I’ll say!” AJ laughed, moving in for a hug.

“And not a moment too soon…” Howie chimed in, rolling his eyes.

Connie looked over AJ’s shoulder and raised her brows. “Trouble?”

AJ turned long enough to pass Howie a glare. “Nah, honeybun… I think the old man is just anxious to see you, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m anxious to see him, too. Where is the ‘old man’, anyway?”

Howie pointed through the glass and Connie stepped up to take a look. Kevin was hunkered down on the floor, stabbing a sheet of music with a pen while Brian and Nick made faces at each other.

“Say ‘Hello’,” AJ grinned bouncing over to the boards and flipping on the mike.

Connie smiled back and stepped over to the sound board. “Hey, baby…” she purred into the microphone.

Kevin fell right back on his ass, stunned and momentarily confused.

“Connie? Connie is that you?” He was squinting towards the control room, one hand shielding his eyes.

“In the exfoliated flesh…,” she giggled. “Surprise!”

Kevin struggled to get up, grinning from ear to ear.

AJ shook his head at Howie. “Oh God. He’s got the ‘scrunched up nose’ thing goin’ on. He’s gonna be stupid….”

“He’s not being stupid,” Howie corrected, staring through the glass with a smirk. “I already told ‘ya. He’s whipped. Whipped bad.”

Howie’s smirk disappeared when Kevin’s idiotic grin flipped upside down and the infamous Richardson glare fixed itself on the nacho covered Latin.

“What’d you say, D?” Kevin growled through the glass.

Howie paused, trying to come up with a good answer but all he could seem to do was mumble the word ‘fuck’ under his breath. It was all AJ could do not to bust out laughing but he managed to control himself enough to take pity on his friend and try to step in for the save. He leaned into the mike and spoke in his most innocent voice.

“He said you slipped, Kev. Slipped bad… You know – just a second ago.”

Kevin stared at the pair for several seconds. He wasn’t sure he bought AJ’s explanation but he really didn’t care too much at the moment. He wanted to hug the redhead with the exfoliated ass. He shot Howie one more scowl and then went into command mode.

“BREAK! Connie! Get your ass in here! Nick and Brian, get you asses out of here! And AJ – turn off the damn mike!”

Connie threw down her purse and folder and trotted through the door to the control room and into the waiting arms of her lover, passing Brian and Nick who were to be sequestered – along with AJ and Howie - on the other side of the glass.

*****

“Jesus, how long is this reunion gonna take?” Brain sighed, drumming his fingers on the console.

Ten minutes had passed and Kevin didn’t look like he was ready to get back to work. The track was almost done. In fact, for all they knew, it might be done. They had yet to hear the last take.

Nick was considering the ‘big picture’. “Aww, cut ‘em some slack. This’ll put Kev in a happy mood. With any luck at all, we’ll be able to get out of here with just one listen and do the final polish later. If he’s pissy, we could be here all night.”

“Blondie speaks the truth,” AJ agreed, lighting a cigarette. “We may as well get comfortable for a little longer.”

AJ reached up and out, stretching the kinks out of his arms and back and in doing so, accidentally knocked Connie’s purse and folder into the floor, scattering the contents of both.

“Shit,” he muttered, stooping down to gather up Connie’s things.

Connie’s papers had spread across the carpeted floor and AJ got down on his knees to pick up the small bundles consisting of several pages each and stapled in the corner. Of course, he had to see what they were. They all had notes written on them in blue ink and they all had ‘A’s’ across the upper right hand corner. After a closer perusal, he surmised that these were stories. He remembered Kevin mentioning that Connie was taking a writing class and that she should be getting a final evaluation soon. It looked like the pages had been faxed to her, probably during the course of her business trip. AJ was impressed. It looked like she had done well.

He was bored anyway, waiting to Kevin and Connie to finish their hellos, so he flipped through the pages, seeing if there was anything of interest. It didn’t appear so. The titles on the pages included recaps of the assignments themselves – Third Person Suspense – ‘Criminal Intent’, Personal Recollections – ‘The Baseball Game’, and so on.

AJ sighed. Looked like he wasn’t going to find any entertainment in Connie’s yellow folder. Then he got to the last bundle of papers.

“Uh-oh…,” he said out loud, capturing the attention of his three bandmates. He looked like the cat who ate the canary.

In his hands was assignment #6: Erotica – ‘Silent Frenzies’.

Chapter 128

Kevin seemed entranced with Connie’s review of her trip – although her itinerary was the last thing on his mind - and she was basking in his attention, so much so, that neither of them noticed the four heads that were bent over the stapled pages, their eyes riveted on Connie’s erotic story.

“Shit, AJ! Slow down! I haven’t finished the page yet!”

“Goddamn… This sounds like something outta Penthouse. You know, those letters people send in…”

“Kinda interesting reading a woman’s point of view…”

“You think this is for real?”

“If it is, Kevin’s the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the planet…”

“Sounds like he’s the biggest son-of-a-bitch on the planet, too…”

“Well, we know better than that. That would be me…”

“We shouldn’t be reading this…”

“Christ, this shit is givin’ me wood…”

“Aw, man – this stuff is bullshit. Look at the people’s names! They’re fake! This ain’t about Kevin and Connie…”

Three pairs of eyes rose from the page and fixed themselves on Nick. Brian was the one who finally said it.

“Nick, the characters names are Bonnie and Devon….”

“Yeah! That’s what I mean…”

“Soooooo…. Doesn’t that sound like somebody we know?”

All of them could see the connection slip slowly into Nick’s eyes. He looked at his bandmates, slowly raised his eyes and stared through the glass for a moment at Connie and Kevin and then returned his gaze back to the trio, each of whom were slowly nodding their heads.

“Well, fuck me…” he whispered in amazement.

“You wish…”

“Shut-up Howie! AJ, turn back. I wanna read that about that shower massage thing again….. and while we’re at it…. what’s an altoid?”

*****

“It feels good to be home, but I’d better let you get back to work. Will you be much longer, do you think?”

Kevin ran his finger down wayward curl and pushed the strand behind Connie’s ear.

“Nah, we should be done soon. In fact, maybe we should just call it a day. I’m sure the kids are getting restless..” Kevin glanced towards the glass, surprised to see all four of them studying a yellow folder with a rapt attention he didn’t think was possible. He strolled over to the window and tapped on the glass.

“You guys want to finish this later?” Then, “What’s so fascinating there, anyway?”

AJ, Howie, Nick and Brian’s heads shot up. They were practically tripping over themselves, trying to shove Connie’s papers back into place hoping to cover their tracks. Too many hands were involved and, as a result, pages went flying. Kevin watched as AJ’s eyes met Connie’s. Puzzled, he turned to Connie, wondering what in the hell was going on. Her eyes were wide and she had paled considerably. Obviously, she recognized what they were reading. All four of them looked like they had just been caught in bed with somebody else’s wife. Guilt was plastered all over their little Backstreet faces. Something was up, for sure. Kevin headed for the control room door, with Connie on his tail. When he entered, all four were trying very hard to act ‘casual’. Nick went so far as to start whistling.

“What’s goin’ on?” Kevin asked, his eyes traveling to the folder which now lay closed on a nearby table.

He was answered with a four part harmony rendition of ‘Nothing…’

“Who’s folder is that?” Kevin nodded towards the table.

Again, he was met with shrugs and claims of ignorance despite the fact that, even from across the room, he could see the name ‘C. O’Rourke’ spelled out across the yellow file in black marker. They had to know who it belonged to. After a short, but decidedly uncomfortable silence, Brian spoke.

“Well, if we’re gonna wrap this up later, I’m gonna head on out. See ‘ya!”

Kevin almost felt a breeze as his cousin swept past him. The others followed right behind.

“Me, too! I’m beat!”

“Yeah, me, too. I’m heading for New York tomorrow but I’ll be back in a couple of days…”

“Think I’ll call Dee. Bye!”

Connie and Kevin were alone. The folder still lay on the table. Kevin walked across the room, reached down, picked it up and stared. At least his brows weren’t dipping – yet. Connie thought she might be sick. It hadn’t been hard for her to figure out what the four traitors had been reading.

“Come on, Kevin. Take me home. I’ll make it worth your while,” Connie laughed nervously.

“Just a minute…” He opened the yellow cover and began reading.

‘Silent Frenzies’ was not on top of the stack, but it was number two. Unfortunately, it didn’t take Kevin long to get there. He had dismissed the first story as incapable of holding the intense interest he had witnessed earlier. The next set of pages, however, proved to be a different story – so to speak. Connie tried to soften the impact.

“Now, Kevin… Don’t get all…”

“Shut up.”

Connie saw him speak the words but his eyes never left the page. His irises seemed to darken as she watched his pupils drop from line to line, his face growing pinker with each sentence. He flipped a page. After a moment she saw his jaw tighten as his lips disappeared. Then his two brows united as one, forming a canopy of anger over narrowed eyes. He flipped again, without so much as a glance in her direction. Soon, Connie noticed that his breaths looked a little ragged. At last, Kevin folded the pages back together and closed the folder. This had to be the longest ten minutes of her life and Connie felt like she had held her breath for the entire time. When he finally looked at her, a cloud of heat washed over her body, as if hell had opened up beneath her feet. Kevin didn’t say a word. He just stared. It became clear that he was waiting for some sort of comment or explanation.

“Bet you didn’t know I had such an imagination…”

“What I didn’t know is that you were taking notes.”

His countenance was difficult for Connie to read. Kevin seemed to be speaking fairly quietly, like he was calm and cool, but his eyes remained dark and accusing. She suspected that he was making a valiant try to control himself.

“It’s fiction, Kevin! For Pete’s sake! It was an assignment…”

Connie saw him chuckle but his face was cold and humorless. “I believe the assignment said ‘Erotica’. That wasn’t ‘erotica’…”

“Yes it was !” Connie protested. “I got an ‘A’!”

Kevin exploded.

“You got a fuckin’ ‘A’ on PORN, not ‘erotica’! I cannot believe this! The goddamn instructor probably read the goddamn thing over and over, pumpin’ his pencil dick every time! Fuck, Connie! I’d give you a motherfuckin’ ‘A’, too! Not only did he not have to pay to get his rocks off, he knew who wrote it. What the hell do you think went through his mind when he read this?” Kevin got close and screamed into Connie’s face. “The cocksucker thought about YOU! That’s what! That’s bad enough but you also got my – how did you put it? – ‘full and heavy testicles’ in the middle of it!”

“But the character isn’t me,” Connie whispered through trembling lips, “ or you! It was just an assignment….”

“Oh! I guess I misjudged!” Kevin slapped his forehead in mock realization, displaying cutting sarcasm. “When I read about altoids and blow jobs, it just sounded so fuckin’ familiar! And I guess the characters names are just a weird kind of coincidence!” Kevin shook is head. “Honestly, Connie…. I would think you could have done a little better than ‘Bonnie and Devon’….”

“But…”

“You even wrote about your clit, for God’s sake! Jesus Christ! For somebody who didn’t even know what a fuckin’ orgasm was a year ago, you really outdid yourself!”

Connie’s eyes closed, squeezing a lonely tear down her cheek. She would have preferred a physical slap over the emotional low blow that Kevin just threw at her. How could he use that? It had been so hard for her to admit her incapacity and now he was using it to humiliate her. Although she had received a lot of personal satisfaction and confidence though her writing class, she wished now that she had never taken it. That particular assignment had been so difficult for her to write. She had virtually no sexual history before Kevin, unless you counted her sadistic relationship with Trevor. That wasn’t erotic – it was sick. Maybe, on some level, the story was about her and her physical reaction to their lovemaking. She didn’t think she was telling any secrets – locations and character descriptions didn’t really resemble her or Kevin or anyplace they had had sex except in a very general way. Bottom line, Kevin thought her story was pornography. She had thought it was emotional and beautiful. She was trying very hard to control her emotions but was defeated. Before Kevin could say another word, she was sobbing as if her heart was breaking.

Connie’s tearful eruption knocked the wind out of Kevin’s sails and threw him for a loop. He was expecting her to be upset. He had wanted her to be upset, but not like this. Not bawling her eyes out. Oh, he was mad - and he felt he had a right to be - but it wasn’t the end of the goddamn world… If she had just said she hadn’t understood but she did now and she was sorry and it would never happen again, it would’ve been okay… I would’ve gotten over it. Jesus, she didn’t have to take it this hard….

“Connie? Connie! Stop it now. Don’t cry…”

“You…. yelled and said…. ugly…. things!”

“You shouldn’t have written about us, Connie. You know how I feel about personal things bein’ nobody else’s business…”

“I… didn’t mean…. for it to be personal,…. Kevin! I changed stuff! Places…. and props…. were different….”

“Props? What props?”

Kevin had his hands on Connie’s shoulders as he leaned down into her face, trying to understand her words. It was all she could do to speak between sobs. He wasn’t sure what had happened. A minute ago he was full of angry and well deserved righteous indignation. Now, he kinda felt like a Class A Shit.

“Altoids,” Connie choked. “I didn’t use altoids that…that….time…. I used ‘Red Hots’….”

“Oh…”

“And…and… you didn’t use a feather on me. You…you used a silk scarf….”

“True….” Kevin murmured, trying to calm her. Inwardly, he was rolling his eyes.

“And that time…in….New York… You did me in the audio visual room, not in the…janitor’s closet….”

“Okay…”

“I didn’t mean for it to get so personal, Kevin. I didn’t exactly know what to write about that kind of stuff except what I knew. I didn’t think anybody would see it except for the teacher and he doesn’t know who you are. I really tried to change stuff but you’re right. I should’ve done better with the names.”

“S’alright…”

“Do you think the guys noticed any similarity?”

Kevin cringed. He had temporarily forgotten all about those horny bastards pouring over Connie’s folder. He had no doubt that those assholes would make the connection. Connie looked at him expectantly, eyes wide and brimming with tears. Her chin was crinkled up like a three year old child’s, ready to collapse again with the tiniest push.

Kevin shook his head. “Nah. Those numb-nuts wouldn’t get it if the damn story had naked pictures of us in it…”

Connie almost smiled. “Well, I did write about how ‘big’ Devon’s…uh….”

Kevin supplied the word. “Manhood?”

“Yes,” Connie blushed. “….how big his ‘manhood’ was.”

“Guess I’m busted, after all….” Kevin nodded. The remark brought a smile to Connie’s lips which Kevin responded to by wiping the residue of tears away with his thumbs. “Look… I was upset and I screamed. I was just surprised to see you write like that, that’s all. Let’s just try to put this behind us, okay?” In reality, Kevin wasn’t positive he could do that, but things had gotten out of control. He felt violated but he knew that Connie had not deliberately tried to upset him. She had to learn to be more careful. “You ready to go home now, baby?”

Connie nodded shyly and crossed the room to retrieve her purse and folder. It was then that Kevin noticed what she was wearing – the same clothes she had worn when she left.

“I see you have those ‘thong’ jeans on,” he mentioned when she turned back to him.

“Yes. I thought I’d wear them home especially for you. I’m glad you noticed.” The she added with a smile, “I was hoping to ‘provocatate’ you.”

Kevin couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. He was convinced she would be the death of him. – that this angel must be a demon in disguise. No one in his life had ever made him so happy. No one in his life had ever made him so mad. No one had ever caused him the confusion, doubt, anxiety and thrill that she had. They had just had a mother of a fight. He had felt completely justified in his anger yet she had managed to turn it around on him in a matter of seconds – not by malicious manipulation but by honest innocence. She was only writing what she knew and all she knew was him. She had managed to twist his anger into a lopsided sense of pride. Now she stood in front of him, his size and strength no match for the petite redhead with contrary curls and a river of mascara running down her cheeks.

“Well, you know how I feel about thongs,” Kevin chuckled.

“Oh…. I’m not wearing a thong. Sorry, baby…”

“I like panties, too,” he grinned

Connie brushed past him to the door with an apologetic shrug.

“Sorry. No panties, either…”

It took him a moment to realize the clear implication of Connie’s revelation. She was already through the door.

Shit…….