Chapter 62
By the end of the
week, Brian and Howie had gone back home, and Nick was alone again. And once he was off the chemo and feeling
better, it wasn’t just the loneliness that plagued him, but boredom as
well. He was sick and tired of lying
around, cooped up in his house all the time.
Yet the thought of going out in public scared him. He hadn’t been able to go out and do normal
things for years anyway because of his celebrity status, but now it was even
worse.
Sometimes he still
caught paparazzi or fans lurking on the edge of his property, and he knew all
the major magazines and networks were itching to get an exclusive interview with
him. They had been calling nonstop for
weeks and weeks, and when he did actually pick up the phone – which was rare –
he always told them no. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in the future, when he was in remission
and looking normal again, he would make appearances and talk about his
experience. It was not something he
wanted to do; it was something he knew he should do. For the fans.
He knew they were worried about him; he had gotten tons of cards in the
mail and presents and flowers sent to his home from the obsessive fans who knew
where he lived. And according to Jive,
his fan club had gotten millions more cards and get-well gifts, some of which
had been forwarded to him. He was
appreciative of the support and wanted to give something back, but not now.
The truth was,
superficial as it sounded, the thing that bothered him the most was what the
fans would think if they got a good look at him. He looked nothing like the blonde, blue-eyed,
baby-faced Nick Carter they were used to.
If he had looked bad at his TRL appearance, it was nothing compared to
how he looked now. He had weighed
himself that morning, just for kicks, and calculated how much weight he had
lost since his diagnosis. It had to be
around thirty pounds. Add that to the
twenty-five he had lost over the course of his tour (which seemed like decades
ago, but had really only been about three months), and he had lost close to
sixty pounds total. No one could call
him fat anymore. His clothes hung loose
and baggy on his lanky frame, and he had been forced to buy new pants to
accommodate his thinner waistline. His
stomach, which he had always been horribly insecure about, no longer stuck out
(which meant AJ could no longer poke him and go “Hoo hoo!” like the Pillsbury
Doughboy, a great disappointment for sure).
It was flat now, and when he had used to be able to pinch rolls of fat
away from it, he could now only come up with folds of loose skin. His arms were like sticks, and his face had
thinned considerably, to the point of looking gaunt. His cheeks were hollow, and his skin was a
pasty shade of white. With his
newly-bald head, he thought he looked like an old man, not the vibrant
twenty-three-year-old he had once been.
All he needed now was a cane, and some days, he didn’t think that was
such a bad idea. The fracture in his leg
had healed now, but the bone was still weak from the tumor that had eaten away
at it, and it still gave him pain. Some
days, when his leg was throbbing, and his stomach was churning with nausea from
the chemo, even getting out of bed seemed an impossible task.
But today, it was
different. For the first time in a week,
he actually felt pretty good. His
appetite hadn’t quite returned yet, and he was still very weak from the seven
torturous days he had barfed his way through, but hiding out in the house just
didn’t sound too appealing that day. For
a moment, he considered calling up some of the guys and going out that night…
but then his thoughts drifted back to his grim appearance and the vultures who
continually stalked him, and he grew doubtful.
Sighing, he got up
and wandered into the kitchen. He opened
up the refrigerator and saw a jug of lemonade sitting on the top shelf,
practically beckoning to him. He pulled
it out, poured himself a glass, and sat down at the table to drink it and
think. Jiggling the glass so that the
ice clunked against the sides, he contemplated his options. Go out with the guys and risk getting
recognized, harassed, and mobbed? Or
stay home by himself and be bored to tears?
Lifting the glass to his lips, he tipped it back and took a large drink
of the cold lemonade. But as soon as he
swished the tart yellow liquid around in his mouth, he knew it was a
mistake. He had forgotten the most
recent side effect of the new chemo he had been put on - canker sores. Lots of them - big ones - had formed on his
gums and the inside of his cheeks. They
had not been so noticeable while he was on chemo and not eating, but the sour
lemonade made the them sting horribly.
Wincing in pain, he impulsively spit out the lemonade, letting it spray
all over his kitchen table, and hurried over to take a sip of water from the
faucet to rinse his mouth. He dumped the
rest of his lemonade down the drain and then walked back to his table, which
was now wet with sticky lemonade.
“Shit,” he muttered,
sighing heavily as he looked down upon the mess he had made. And that’s when he knew he had to get out of
the house. He couldn’t take it anymore;
he needed to escape, to go somewhere and take his mind off all the crap.
Not bothering to
clean up the lemonade, he took off for his “office,” which served no purpose
except to house his laptop, which lay untouched on the desk he rarely sat
at. But he sat there now and rummaged
through the drawers in search of his address book. He found the thin, navy blue leather book,
pulled it out, and flipped it open, leafing through the pages until he found
Brent’s phone number. Picking up the
phone, he punched in the digits and listened to the phone ring.
“Hello?” Brent
answered finally.
Nick cleared his
throat. “Hey. It’s me, Nick.”
“Nick!” Brent sounded surprised to hear from him, and
Nick couldn’t blame him. The two hadn’t
talked or seen each other in quite awhile.
After Brent found out about Nick’s cancer, their friendship had seemed
to taper off. Nick knew it was half his
fault for never getting in touch with Brent, but he couldn’t help but wonder if
Brent wanted it that way, if he wanted to distance himself from Nick. If that was true, well… again, Nick couldn’t
blame him. It hurt, oh yes, but he also
understood. It had to be hard to sit
there and watch one your closest friends slowly deteriorate from a scary thing
like cancer.
Nick remembered
feeling sort of the same way after Brian’s heart surgery five years earlier…
after the surgery, he would have avoided that hospital like the plague if Kevin
and the others had let him, but of course, they didn’t, forcing him to come
along on their daily visits. Nick remembered
vividly the awkwardness he felt, perched in a stiff-backed chair as far away
from Brian’s bed as he could get, barely even making small talk with the man
that was his best friend. It wasn’t
Brian that was the problem; it was what had happened to Brian. It had scared Nick to death, seeing Brian so
pale and weak and imagining someone actually cutting into his chest, into his
heart. He felt horribly guilty, but he
couldn’t deny the fact that just being around Brian freaked him out. This had lasted for about a week, and once it
began to sink in that Brian really was all right, he had begun to relax, and
their relationship had gone back to normal.
Nick was hoping the
same thing would happen with him and Brent (and his other friends as
well). That was another reason he was
calling – he hoped that hanging out with Brent would help prove to his friend
that he was all right, that he was still the same old Nick, despite the fact
that he looked like a freak.
“Hey,” Nick said
again with a little chuckle. “Wassup?”
“Oh, uh, not too
much, man. How about you? How’s it going?” Brent asked casually, making
standard small talk. Nick smiled a
little on his end of line, knowing instinctively that “How’s it going?” meant
so much more than that. It meant, “how
are you feeling”… “no, how are you really feeling?”… “how’s your
cancer?”… “are you getting better?”… “are you dying?”… “how are you dealing?”
and so on.
“Okay,” Nick
replied, knowing that saying, “Oh, it’s going good” would both be and sound
like a total lie.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah… so anyway,
you doin’ anything tonight?” Nick asked, deciding just to get to the point and
not bother with the strained small talk any longer.
“Oh… um…” There was a long pause, and finally Brent
said, “yeah… me and some of the guys are gonna hit a few clubs and stuff.”
“Sounds like a good
time,” commented Nick, expecting to be invited along. He knew that if he was working or on tour and
called Brent up on a free night in Tampa, he would be asked to go with them in a
heartbeat. But that was not the case
this time.
“Yeah, well, you
know…” Brent trailed off unenthusiastically.
“It’ll be the same old, same old.
Lots of drinking and dancing with the chicks and stuff…” He was trying to make it sound uninteresting,
probably so that Nick wouldn’t want to come.
Nick knew how that kind of thing worked.
“Yeah,” he played
along. “I’m sure you’ll have a good time
though.”
“We’ll see,” replied
Brent, then added hurriedly, “too bad you can’t come. I know you’re not supposed to drink, and I’m
sure you don’t feel up to going out dancing and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Nick said
hollowly and did not elaborate. He
considered insisting that he did feel up to going out and inviting himself
along, but it was apparent that Brent didn’t want him to go. And when he thought about it, Brent was
probably right. He now knew firsthand
why he wasn’t supposed to drink while on chemo, and he sure as hell didn’t want
to repeat that experience. And
spending the night in an array of equally stuffy, crowded clubs didn’t sound
all that appealing either. He wanted to
go out, but that wasn’t quite what he had had in mind.
Suddenly, he didn’t
feel like talking much anymore. “Well, I
gotta go now,” he said quickly to Brent.
“Just wanted to call and say hey.”
“That’s okay,”
replied Brent. “I gotta go anyway. Talk to ya later, dude.”
He hung up with a
click, and so did Nick, a range of emotions brewing within him. Angry, hurt, and left out, he shoved the
address book back into his drawer and slammed it shut. There was no use trying Lane, James, or
Frank; they were surely some of “the guys” Brent had mentioned.
So much for going
out that night.
He supposed he’d
just stay at home with his dogs and his Gamecube after all.
Maybe he’d order a
pizza. Or maybe he’d just heat up a
frozen one (“it’s not delivery; it’s DiGiorno”) to avoid scaring away the pizza
delivery boy.
All alone with a box
of pizza, a stack of video games, and his pugs for company. How sad.
That thought just
depressed him, so he yanked open his desk drawer once more, determined to find
someone to hang out with that night. But
as he paged through the address book, he realized that Brent, Lane, James, and
Frank were pretty much the only close friends he had nearby anymore. It was hard to keep friends when you were a
celebrity; he had found that out the hard way.
Not that he had ever had a lot of friends anyway; in fact, he had been
something of a social reject growing up, always picked on and excluded from his
classmates at school. His best friends
had been, for the most part, his siblings.
Sad, but true. But that made it
even better when he had become a Backstreet Boy – he had gained not only a
career and fame, but four best friends and “brothers” and the privilege of
being able to gloat at the people who had tormented him as a child. Too bad he wasn’t so lucky anymore…
With a sigh, Nick
slowly slid the address book back into its drawer and started to close it,
resigning himself to the “pizza, Nintendo, dogs” idea. But then he was hit with an idea. Tossing the address book aside, he hoisted
out the fat, heavy, Tampa phonebook instead and flipped it open. He found what he was looking for, picked up
the phone again, and started dialing.
***