Chapter
3
Hours later, when the concert was long over, the nine of them
found themselves sitting at a large table in the sports bar and grille located
on the ground floor of their hotel. It
was after midnight, and the bar was filled with drunken men who couldn’t care
less about the Backstreet Boys.
Glad that they were out of the limelight, the group had chosen a
table in the back corner of the room.
Now they sat around it, flipping through the menus. None of them had eaten since that afternoon,
and they were starving, especially the five guys.
When a waitress came to take their order, Krystle ordered the most
expensive meal on the menu, and when the food came, she only picked at it. When the others had finished, three-fourths
of Krystle’s large meal sat on her plate, untouched.
“You want a box for that, honey?” asked the waitress, as she set
their bill down on the table.
“Oh, no thanks,” Krystle replied, as Howie pulled out his wallet.
Bianca rolled her eyes and shot a dirty look down the table at
Krystle. She couldn’t believe how rude
Krystle was to Howie, ordering the most expensive item on the menu, not eating
it, and making him pay for it. Of
course, Howie was so rich that it didn’t matter, but she still thought it was
rude. She came from an average,
middle-class family and was used to saving money; she knew better than to just
squander money away like that.
“You ready, Bean?” AJ asked, finishing the rest of his Coke. While the other guys had all ordered beers, AJ
had stuck to soda. Ever since he had
gone into rehab the previous summer, he had been completely sober and planned
to stay that way. He knew that if he had
one beer, he would just want another, so he refused to drink even one beer.
Bianca admired his decision and always ordered non-alcoholic drinks as well
when she was around him. She wasn’t much
of a drinker anyway, so it was no big sacrifice on her part.
“I’m ready,” she replied, grabbing her purse and standing up. The four other guys and three girls rose from
their seats as well, and together, the group left the sports bar. They were met by security outside the door,
who escorted them up to their rooms.
“Goodnight, guys,” AJ and Bianca said to the others when they
reached their door and disappeared into their room for the night.
***
“Oh, would you two just shut up already!” Howie groaned, burying
his head beneath his pillow. It was the
following night (or two mornings later, rather, since it was after 2:00 am),
and all Howie wanted to do was sleep.
The concert earlier their night, the second of their three Miami
concerts, had gone spectacularly, but the high had worn off, and Howie was no
exhausted. All he wanted was to go to
sleep. But the sounds of AJ and Bianca’s
loud, angry voices drifted through the wall that separated their suite from
Howie and Krystle’s, keeping him awake.
“You want me to go tell them to shut up?” Krystle asked softly
from beside him.
“That would be nice,” Howie murmured.
Krystle leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Go to sleep. I’ll take care of it,” she said
and climbed out of bed. He heard her
leave the hotel room and closed his eyes.
Minutes later, the shouting next door stopped, and he finally drifted
off to sleep.
***
“So, what were you and Bianca fighting about?” Krystle asked AJ.
“Oh, nothing. It was stupid
really. She was just talking about
stopping to visit some of her old friends from North Carolina when we stop in
Raleigh, and she mentioned some old boyfriend of hers, and I got jealous,” he
said. “I know that sounds ridiculous,
but I don’t want her going over to some guy’s house that she used to date.”
“No, no, I understand,” Krystle assured him. “How do you think I would feel if Howie
wanted to invite one of his exes on tour with us? Even if he said they were just friends, I
wouldn’t like it.”
AJ smiled in relief. “Okay,
good. I’m glad you don’t think I’m just
stuck in the jealous boyfriend role.”
“No, not at all,” replied Krystle, smiling sweetly at him.
Krystle had come to AJ and Bianca’s suite just a few minutes
earlier, complaining about the noise they were making. Embarrassed, the couple had immediately shut
up, and AJ had left to go down to the bar and cool off, leaving Bianca alone in
the suite to sleep. In the hall, he had
met up with Krystle.
“Just getting a little midnight snack,” she said, holding up a
pack of M&M’s.
“Sorry for waking you up,” he had apologized.
“Oh, no, you didn’t. I
couldn’t sleep anyway.”
So, AJ had invited Krystle down to the bar and grille with
him. Now the pair sat across from each
other at a table for two, waiting to order drinks.
“I’m going to head to the bathroom,” AJ said, standing up. “If the waitress comes, just order me a large
Coke.”
“Sure,” Krystle replied, watching as he walked off. When the waitress came to take her order, she
said, “One strawberry daiquiri and one large Coke.” Then, glancing quickly at the restrooms in the
back of the room, she added, “And, uh, add a little gin to that Coke too.”
“Sure thing,” the waitress replied and bustled off to get their
drinks.
AJ returned moments later to find a large glass of Coke waiting
for him. His throat dry from arguing
with Bianca, he drank it down in a few long sips and ordered a refill.
Unbeknownst to him, a few more drinks later, AJ’s sobriety was
gone, and his judgment was fading fast.
***
AJ awoke hours later to find himself in a small, unfamiliar room,
lying in bed with a black-haired woman beside him, her bare back facing
him. He sat up quickly, shaking the
double bed, and immediately lay back down again, his head pounding.
The girl next to him stirred and rolled over in her sleep. When AJ caught sight of her face, he gasped
in horror.
“Krystle?!”
Howie’s girlfriend’s brown eyes fluttered open. When they focused on AJ, she herself sat bolt
upright in shock, pulling the covers tightly to her bare chest. “AJ!
Wh-what… oh my God!”
“What the hell is going on here?” AJ asked, looking around in
confusion. “Where are we?”
“We’re in another hotel room, it looks like,” Krystle said softly,
looking around the room with wide eyes.
She seemed just as bewildered as AJ.
“I-I guess I had too many daiquiris last night and got a little
tipsy. I don’t remember much of
anything.”
“Neither do I,” AJ said, rubbing his throbbing head. It felt like he had a hangover. But how could he? He hadn’t drank last night; he hadn’t drank
since last summer. All he’d had was a
few sodas! “You don’t remember me
ordering anything alcoholic last night, do you?” he asked Krystle.
“Um… yeah, I think you did,” Krystle said, tipping her head to the
side as she tried to remember the night before.
“You started out with Coke, I know, but then you said you wanted a beer. I tried to tell you no, that you shouldn’t,
but you said that just one would be fine.
I was already a little drunk myself I guess. My judgment wasn’t all
there. I let you order it, and then I
guess you must have drunk a few more after that. I don’t really remember.”
“Oh no…” AJ moaned, hanging his head. All those months of sobriety were gone, just
like that. He was back where he had
started, back at step one. He had not just
had one beer, he had had many, and he had somehow ended up in another hotel
room with Krystle and had woken up to find himself naked in bed with her. “Krystle, did we… did we do anything last
night?” he asked hesitantly, but he already knew the answer. How could they have gotten naked in bed
without doing what he was dreading finding out they had done?
Krystle’s eyes filled with tears.
“I guess we must have,” she sniffed, her chin quivering. “Oh, God, AJ, Howie’s going to kill me when
he finds out!”
“You? He’s going to kill
ME!” AJ cried. “And so is Bianca!”
“Well… well, maybe they don’t have to know,” Krystle said. “What time is it?”
AJ looked around for a clock.
He spotted one sitting on the desk across the room and said, “Only six.”
“Well, I’m sure no one’s up yet.
We’ll just go get back in bed before Bianca and Howie wake up, and
they’ll never know we were gone. If
anyone asks, we were down in the bar very late, just talking, and then we went
back to bed.”
AJ wasn’t sure her plan would work, but it was worth a shot. He would do anything to keep Howie and Bianca
from finding out what he had done.
He and Krystle quickly picked their clothes up from the floor of
the room and got dressed. They went out
into the hall to find they were in a room on the second floor. How they had ended up there was a mystery to
AJ. He couldn’t remember booking the
room the night before, but how else would they have found a way in? Mystified, AJ closed the door of the room and
decided to just go back up to his own suite and pretend nothing had happened.
He sent Krystle up first by herself, just in case anyone was
roaming their hallway. He did not want
the two of them to be seen together.
Five minutes later, he took the elevator up to their floor himself. The hallway was deserted, thankfully, and AJ
hurried down to his suite and let himself in, praying that Bianca was still
sleeping.
To his relief, he found her sound asleep on her side of the bed,
and he quickly stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed beside
her. He closed his eyes, trying to get
back to sleep, but it took a long time.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Krystle, and his guilty conscience was
eating away at him. But finally, his
body relaxed, and he drifted off into the innocence of sleep.
***
