Chapter
6
Two days later, Nick sat on his sofa at home, cordless phone in
hand.
“This is dumb,” Nick muttered under his breath. “Why would she even want to talk to me
again? This is stupid and pointless.”
He sighed and glanced once again at the little slip of paper with
Angela’s phone number on it. Finally, he
gave in and turned on the phone, quickly dialing the number before he had the
chance to change his mind.
“Hello?” came a woman’s drawl.
“Hi, is Angela there?” Nick asked, figuring he was talking to
Angela’s mother.
“Sure, just a minute,” the woman replied. He heard her yell for her daughter in the
background.
Moments later, Angela came to the phone. “Hello?” she asked.
”Hi, Angela,” Nick said. “This is
Nick. Nick Carter.”
He heard her draw in a breath, and the line was silent for a
moment. “Nick,” Angela said
finally. “Hi! How are you?”
“I’m okay. How about you?”
he asked.
“Pretty good,” she replied.
“So what’s up?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’m just
hanging around the house,” Nick said casually.
“Yeah, me too,” she said.
“Trying to get up the energy to work on a report for class tomorrow.”
“Oh. What school do you go
to?” Nick asked.
“Columbia Junior College,” she replied. “I started as a freshman there this
fall. I’ll be transferring to the
University of South Carolina probably next year.”
“Cool,” Nick said. “What
are you majoring in?”
“Education,” she replied.
“Oh. Cool,” he said.
“Yup. I want to teach
junior high,” she said. “Seventh or
eighth grade. Mostly literature and
English.”
“Oh,” said Nick again.
“Sounds… interesting.”
Angela laughed. “Yeah, it
might sound kinda lame, but I think it’ll be fun. I’ve always loved reading and writing, so I
think I’d like to teach it too.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll be lame,” Nick said quickly. “And I’m sure you’ll be great at it.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Nick said.
There was a moment of silence.
Finally, Angela broke it by saying, “Well, Nick, sorry to cut this
conversation short, but I really need to get working on that report. I’ve procrastinated too long, and I’m pushed
for time now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Nick said quickly.
“It’s not your fault,” Angela said. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Thanks for calling. Email me sometime.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Bye.”
“Bye,” Angela said, and hung up.
***
Weeks later, Nick could not get Angela out of his mind. He and she had become good friends over the
internet, by emailing each other and chatting together on IM.
Nick had thought at first that his attraction to her could be
caused by one of two things – either it was simply because of her stunning
looks, or because her brother has saved his life. But now, after getting to know her better,
Nick decided that although both those factors contributed to his liking of
Angela, neither of them were his real reason.
He liked her because she was a great person. It was as simply as that. Besides being beautiful and somewhat related
to the man who has saved Nick’s life, Angela had a great personality, and he
liked her for that immensely.
In the meantime, Angela liked Nick the same. It was a hard thing for her to admit to
herself. She had never been one to get
pathetic crushes on pop singers, of all people, and thinking that she could
have a crush on this one made her want to cringe. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t develop crushes easily anyway, and
when she did, they never turned out to be anything. They were never meaningful. They never lasted. But this so-called crush felt different than
the others. Angela was not sure why,
but she could just sense it.
And that was not good. It
was not good for her to be liking Nick.
In fact, because of who her family was, it was nearly forbidden. Her step-mother wanted nothing to do with any
member of the Backstreet Boys, the biggest rivals of her late son’s own music
group.
Angela sighed. The feelings
she had discovered she had for Nick were not going to go away, and so there was
no way she could just ignore them. But
there was no way she could act on them either.
This was too much for her, a dilemma she didn’t want to face at that
moment.
***
