"Hey, man," Nick said as he walked into Brian's open dressing room that afternoon.

Brian looked up from the notebook he was writing in and nodded. "Hey. What's up? Thank G-d you're here, I need a break from these lyrics."

Nick smiled. "Tomorrow night," he said simply.

Brian frowned. "What?"

"Tomorrow night," Nick repeated.

"I heard you, but what's tomorrow night?" Brian asked in complete confusion.

"What else? It's when I'm going to ask Kayla to the AMA's," Nick explained, clearly exasperated.

"Oh," Brian understood. Then he smirked. "Ohhh," he repeated, adding innuendo to his voice.

Nick rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Listen, to do this in the evening, I'm gonna have to leave the after party early and come back here while she's still out. But that still doesn't leave me a whole lot of time, so...I kinda need help."

"Look no further, man, I'm happy to help," Brian said, grinning.

Nick breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. Now it'll probably be finished before she gets back," he reasoned. Then he frowned. "You know what? Just to be safe...maybe we should get one more person."

Brian shrugged. "Sure. Who?"

Nick frowned in thought. "Lisa?"

"No, don't get a woman to do it. Kayla's friends with too many of them. It'll get back to her somehow," Brian predicted.

"Who then? A.J.?"

Brian started laughing. "He's even worse than any girl. No, if there's one person you can count on to get it done exactly right, it's—"

"Kev," Nick finished wryly. "I knew you were gonna say that."

"Hey, it's the truth. For once his perfectionism will come in handy."

Nick laughed. "That is true. Okay, fine, I'll get Kev to do it too," he decided. "I'll just make it very clear exactly how I want it done."

"Hold on. How exactly would that be? I mean, what are we doing?" Brian cut in. "Her hotel room?"

"Yeah. Candles all around and then rose petals on the floor spelling out 'How about the AMA's.' And I'm gonna have 'to' at the top with a picture of her and then 'love' at the bottom with a picture of me."

"You sure you can get that many rose petals?"

"Already done, my friend," Nick said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I called ahead and made sure they would have some. Candles too."

"Well, I've gotta hand it to you, Frack. You've got this thing covered," Brian observed, sounding impressed.

Nick grinned. "I know. Now all I have to do is get Kevin to agree to help and I'm all set."

"Go for it, man."

"You what?!" Nick exclaimed in Kevin's dressing room a few minutes later.

Kevin winced. "I'm really sorry, Nick, but I already asked her." Nick had just finished explaining what his plan was, his eyes burning with hope and excitement...until Kevin had burst his bubble.

"But...but you have Kristin! You can't have two! That's not fair!" Nick sputtered. "Can't you just uninvite her so I can come to her rescue?"

"Will you calm down? I'm not 'having two.' Kristin's still shooting her movie and can't make it to New York, so I thought I'd take Kayla just for fun," Kevin explained. "And besides, I thought it would be a really nice gesture since she had that crush on me, and—"

"You'd better shut the hell up right now!" Nick interrupted furiously.

Kevin rolled his eyes. "Listen, there will be other awards shows," he reminded his flustered companion.

"That's not the same! This is her first one, Kev!" Nick pointed out. "And also, I don't want to wait any longer to come clean with her."

"Look, if you wanna be with her so bad, just ask her out! I'm not standing in your way of that!" Kevin returned.

Nick just shook his head, rubbing his forehead with his hand as he started to walk away. "Never mind. Just never fucking mind," he muttered as he turned and walked out the door.


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