chapter three

Neither of us said a thing for the longest time. We remained in complete, comfortable silence just lying on the green grass and staring up at the stars overhead.

I shivered when I felt the wind blow, and realized that I was getting colder and colder as the time passed. I rolled along the grass until I bumped into Nick. "I'm cold," I mumbled, huddling up to him.

An arm came down around me. "Yeah it is pretty chilly."

"Definitely," I replied through a yawn. "And I'm getting sleepy," I added, snuggling closer.

"Wanna go in?" he asked softly, patting my arm.

"Okay," I answered. "If you can get me on my feet."

Nick slowly got up on his feet and then reached down and grabbed my hands. Too lazy to help myself at all, I let Nick do most of the work, and flopped around as Nick struggled to get me to my feet.

"Wheeee," I giggled as I slung sideways. "Wheeee again," I said as I flopped to the other side.

Laughing, and with some difficulty, Nick managed to get me on my feet. I brought my head upright, since it had been wobbling to-and-fro, and came nose to nose with Nick. He rested his forehead against mine as we laughed softly.

"You got… grass in your hair," Nick said quietly, as he held onto both my hands with one of his, and the other reached around and pulled the grass pieces out of my hair.

"Thanks," I replied.

Taking my hand in his, Nick led the way back to the front of the hotel.

We had made our way through the Hotel's parking lot, and came through the main doors. The bellhops greeted us, although silently questioned us, most likely wondering what famous pop star’s who were supposed to be 'under-cover' were doing at sometime after three in the morning.

Nick smiled at them as he slipped them five dollars. "Shh, keep it hush-hush. You haven't seen us."

The bellhop nodded. "Right, Sir. I haven't seen you," and he pushed Nick's money back at him. "No, that isn't necessary, Sir. You go and have fun. Your secret is safe."

Nick beamed. "Thanks so much. It's Nick, by the way."

"That was nice," I said as we kept walking.

"Yeah, it was," Nick replied. "Sometimes you get the bellhops that have no idea who you are, so it doesn't matter what you say or do, and sometimes you get the ones that do know and you have to be careful. That's how a lot of that juicy information is leaked, ya know, through bellhops and hotel workers."

"Isn't there some sort of privacy agreement or anything?" I asked.

Nick laughed. "For bellhops? Heck no."

"Well that's dumb then," I reasoned.

"She speaks the voice of logic," Nick smiled, slinging an arm around my shoulder.

And we continued to walk through the hotel lobby, side by side. The lady working at the desk smiled at us, and I smiled back at her. It was past three in the morning, and I had been woken up from a peaceful slumber, and I had just finished running around everywhere; I was tired. I was beyond tired, I think, and that's why I seemed to be having so much trouble walking straight and keeping up with Nick's long strides. It would also probably explain my weird conversation topics, as I was now yattering on about how a squirrel had fallen on my head.

No wonder the lady working the desk had smiled at us. We probably looked quite loony, both of us in swimming clothes, and with Nick walking along, tall and confidant, and me, bouncing along beside him, trying to keep up. I was talking my head off, and Nick listening quietly, throwing in a word or two here and there and laughing at the weird stories I told.

My topic of conversation had gone from squirrels falling on my head, to being a school looser, as such, and how I found it incredibly funny, when Nick suddenly took hold of my arm and pulled me through two big wooden doors with elaborate carvings.

"And I am now in the ballroom," I said suddenly. "Why?" But it was the strangest feeling. It was like my giddiness that had been so apparent two seconds ago had been stripped from me the second I was pulled through the doors. All it was now was seriousness as I looked around the magnificent room.

"Wow," I remarked, "it's beautiful in here. Are we allowed in here?"

Nick silently shrugged still holding on to my arm, as he went to the lights and turned them on, dimming them when they were too bright. He led me over to the big grand piano that was located in the farthest corner of the room. I let him drag me around as I looked around the room, my eyes scanning the high ceilings, and walls.

We sat down, both of us, on the piano bench.

"Play something for me," Nick said quietly, as he watched me lightly run my fingers over the keys.

I looked at him abruptly. "You're the piano player out of the two of us, you play something."

"You know damn straight that you play better than me," he said softly.

I laughed. "I suppose I do, don't I?" I joked.

"Play something," he urged.

"Like what?"

He shrugged. "Anything. Just play for me."

"Okay," I said before I placed my fingers over the keys and then started to play "Heaven In Your Eyes aka I need you tonight’, digging my fingers into the keys. After the introduction I started to sing in a deep operatic voice.

"No!" Nick laughed, covering his ears with his hands. "No, anything but that."

"Well," I shrugged. "I don't know what to play. That's like the only song I know, or that you would know."

"It doesn't have to be something I would know, or like a pop song or something," Nick replied. "Just play for me. Go wild. You're in this big wide room, the acoustics in here are amazing, and you're on this huge, amazing piano. Go nuts."

"You go nuts first," I said quietly, moving over so Nick could have centre.

"But I want to see you go nuts," Nick replied, pulling my arm back and sliding me over back to centre key. "Let the creativity go."

I smiled, "I have none. You're far more creative than me."

Nick just looked at me with that look that people give you to show you that you couldn't be more wrong when you say something.

"What?" I questioned. "You are. You, who write these amazing songs with wonderful lyrics that reach out to people, and a voice that kills every girl, are so, so far, far more talented than I am. I, dear Nick, can't even write a song." (AN~has Christina ever written her own song? I know Nick SORT of has, with Aaron and stuff…)

"I don't believe that," Nick said quietly.

We were so close. Our sides were touching ever so lightly. My head, if I lifted it back enough, could touch his shoulder. His head was slightly bent, his hair falling around his face.

"Have you ever tried?"

I shrugged, turning my gaze away from Nick's eyes to the black and ivory keys in front of me, running my fingers over them again, pressing down on random notes. "Yeah, I've tried. I've made up small extremely repetitive tunes, and I've written poems, but I can never seem to join the both of them together. It never works. They never just go, ya know? They don't flow together, or the tune doesn't fit the poem. And besides, my poetry is bizarre and my tunes even weirder. They just repeat themselves in different keys and different variations."

"You know," Nick started to talk softly, "I was six when I wrote my first song. It was about ants, and how they crawled through the grass and the dirt." I looked up at him, strangely startled by this revelation. "It was, I tell no lie," he smiled. "And it sucked. It sucked big time. It was just kind of never-ending and it made little sense, and it didn't flow, and the tune, I swear it was some strange combination between two Billy Joel songs."

I laughed quietly. Just picturing the Nick that I knew now as a little boy was funny. I pictured him with bright florescent yellow hair, and big blue eyes that bugged out of his head, very tiny and stick-like.

"I did it because my older cousin Jay-Jay liked to. And he showed me some of his songs, that weren't that great either, but at the time I thought they were the coolest. And ya know, Jay-Jay being my big cousin, I wanted to be like him. So I tried it. And I wrote songs about the dumbest things. I wrote songs about the trees, and the birds, and the sky and the sun. I wrote it all, really, in a sense. And I always got so frustrated, because whatever I wrote Jay-Jay always seemed to write so much better than me. I'd like to think that half my problem was that I never wrote them down, since I was six and I couldn't really write, and so when I showed Jay-Jay I sort of ended up forgetting it and it would be me, like, making it up on the spot. And then Jay would go 'hey, listen to this,' and it would just be so much better, or so I thought. But I mean Jay was eight, and even though it's only like two years, he had some experience and what not. He could at least spell."

I smiled at him as he told me the story.

"But I just got so frustrated because Jay’s would always seem better than mine, no matter what I did, until one time I wrote a song about Aaron, when he was first born, and how I loved him and how cool of a little brother he was. And I liked that song. I was proud of that song because I think for the first time it was like the first song that had ever meant anything to me. Before, all my songs were so pointless and pathetically stupid, and they were about something that I didn't care about and knew nothing about. And then this Aaron song, I knew what I was trying to get across, I knew what I wanted to say, and I loved my brother and I cared about him, and so it actually meant something to me. And I still remember it, because to me, that's the song that I actually count as the first song that I ever really wrote. Because this one I ended up writing down," he paused, smiling at the memory. "When I showed Jay, he was really excited about it. He thought it was the best, and for the first time he really seemed into something that I had written. And we worked on it for a while together, and we showed Aaron, and he loved it, even though he didn’t understand it, he giggled and smiled. And we showed my parents. It brought my mom to tears. It was pretty cool, yeah."

"Wow," I said quietly. "That's really interesting, because I mean now… Now you are like this amazing songwriter. Or so I think. You've just got all this talent stocked up somewhere inside you. It's incredible,"

I smiled. "Disgusting, I tell you. Absolutely disgusting," I joked, nudging him.

"But my point is so do you," Nick replied softly. "I mean everyone probably does. I told you that because I was trying to tell you that in the beginning, songwriting wasn't easy for me either. They were dumb and stupid," he paused momentarily. "There are some people out there that have a natural gift, that can do it just so easily that it's insane how easily it comes to them. Jay’s one of those people, almost. He had the natural knack for it, like the real true deep down natural knack for it. Not like some people out there that I know, but he had maybe half of it, or a quarter of it. He had this drive for songwriting or something. He knew he wanted to do it, and he liked doing it, it just took practice for him to be good at it."

He stopped, and started to run his fingers over the keys, mindlessly playing this quiet haunting tune. It was just a few notes over and over again but it was catchy.

"I did it because my cousin was doing it and I wanted to be like him." Shrugging, he continued, "So I might have got into it for the wrong reasons; because I was being a follower. But you know, I'm glad I did it-"

"I am too," I whispered quietly, interrupting.

He smiled at me but didn't say anything other than continuing on with his story. "But it isn't really important why I started doing it, the point is that when I did start, I had fun doing it. Even though the songs sucked greatly, I still had fun. And I had fun showing jay and my mom, even though Jay laughed, and my mom praised me because she was my mother and they're supposed to. And it brought Jay and I closer together. I mean, not really, cause we've always been close, because we're relatives and we just are. But I think the songwriting brought us closer even more; it helped. But my point is that I wasn't good at it when I first started. Neither was Jay really. I mean he had the drive, and he had more nature than I did, but we both had to nurture it along, ya know? We both had to work at it. For me, it took a whole heck of a lot of practice to get where I am now, and it took practice to write down a poem and then get a melody to go along with it, or vice-versa. And there are so, so many bad songs that I can think of, more bad than good, actually. But that Aaron song was like an opener for me. Because it just kind of opened something for me and I started writing more songs about my siblings, and I discovered that it's easier to write about something that you actually care about, and know what you're talking about it. Sometimes they take a little longer, and they're most frustrating, but they end up being the good ones. The ones you like, even though no one else might. But it was hard in the beginning, and really, really frustrating," he said softly. "And it's like… It's like there's this barrier inside your head. One side is words, and one side is music, and trying to get them to go together is insanely hard. But I'll let you know a little secret, it takes a while, but that barrier eventually goes away. You do break that barrier and then getting those words and melodies go together is as easy as pie, because now, songwriting is no big frustrating thing for me. It comes so natural, and I just do it now, so easy. I can hear things and I can see words inside my head, and they just go together. So for me, it took practice, for Jay it took practice, the backstreet boys too. I mean, each of us had a nature for it, some small semi knack for it, but we all had to nurture it along. And my point is, Chris, you can't just give up after one song that turned out extremely bad. A lot of bad songs will come out of you, and a lot of them are bad, but they get there. They all get there. It just takes practice and time, and you've gotta work at it a little bit. But if you like doing it, and have fun doing it, even though they may suck, but if you still have fun and love it, then don't give up. Keep doing it and you'll break that strange barrier inside your head and it'll all be so easy."

I smiled at him, "But Nick dear, it's not just one or two, it's like all of them."

He shrugged, "Keep doing it. Now play something for me."

"Okay, you want me to play?" I asked.

"I want you to play," he repeated.

"Anything?"

"Anything, I don't care."

"Alright then," I said, before getting myself comfortable on the piano bench, and then place my fingers on the keys.

I ran my fingers along, not playing anything and not digging in hard enough for any sound to come out, as I thought about what I could play. I decided that the 'Children's Sonata' by Schumann was one of the prettiest sonatas I had ever heard, and so that's exactly what I played. It was also the only one I had memorized.

When I had finished, no one moved. Nick remained deathly still, and I kept my hands on the keys, head bent, and letting the sound resonate throughout the ballroom.

"That… was amazing," Nick finally said something.

I looked at him. "Shut up," I said softly, with a smile.

"Told you that you could play way better than I can."

"Yeah, alright," I replied. I was slightly embarrassed.

"What was that?" he asked.

"What I just played? It was Robert Schumann's 'Children's Sonata', in G minor, I think."

"It was really pretty."

"Thanks."

A brief silence fell between us as we sat on the piano bench. I was sitting centre with my feet resting on the peddles, and Nick had straddled the piano bench. I felt Nick's hand brush my arm as his arm moved to tuck a stray piece of hair behind his ears.

I slowly raised my head, so find Nick staring at me. "You have… Really pretty eyes," I whispered, and then grinned.

He grinned back at me. "Shut up…"

Suddenly the dim light that had dimly lit the room was turned on as bright as it could go, hurting both our eyes and we squinted with a groan.

"What are you two doing in here?" a man with a deep voice boomed.

I jumped up and away from the piano, breathing in deep since the voice had scared me. Nick quickly followed.

"Well?" he demanded.

"I… We… I were… We-" I stuttered.

"We were just sitting in here," Nick replied calmly. "We're sorry, we didn't know that we weren't allowed in here."

"I'm sorry," I quietly added. "It won't happen again."

The little fat man wearing a blue sports jacket with the hotel symbol embroidered on the chest's pocket stood at the door with his arms crossed. "Very well then. Let's go."

Nick gently placed his hand on the small of my back and let me be the leader, but I didn't budge. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye with a faint grin on his lips, and then took my hand and pulled me long. "I'm sorry, Sir. It won't happen again," Nick said. "But please, just don't tell anyone?"

The short man looked at us with dark beady eyes and a sweaty brow. "It better not happen again." He then stopped short as perhaps a sudden realization fell upon him, maybe figuring out who Nick and I were. "But no, I will not tell anyone for your sakea, Mr. Carter and Ms. Aguilera. Just make sure-"

Nick shook his head. "No Sir, it won't. It won't happen again."

As Nick and I walked along towards the elevators he laughed. "Chicken."

"He was mean," I remarked.

Nick shrugged. "So what? I'm here. I won't let anything happen."

I shook my head with a smile. "Oh yeah, nothing to fear because macho man Nick is here, right?"

"Damn straight."

We rode up the elevator in silence and waited patiently till we got to our floor. We then got off, and walked down the hall to Nick's room. He was the lucky one who got the room all to himself tonight.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow?" I asked.

He grabbed my rist and swung it back and forth gently. "You make it sound like we just had a date," he said softly with a laugh.

I shrugged, watching him swing my hand back and forth. "Well… I had fun."

"So did I," he smiled.

"And I'm glad that I ran off from the pool, to do have this great night, even though we did almost get caught by that mean, fat man," I said. "And even if you made my bed grow cold."

"I think we could make your bed quite warm again," Nick looked at me, an evil grin playing on his lips. "If you wanted to, that is."

I withdrew my arm away from Nick's hand and took three steps back. "Not to night," I laughed.

"Tomorrow then?"

"How about never?"

"Sounds great."

"Hey!" I laughed.

He shrugged. "You passed."

I took four steps closer and then shyly put my arms around his shoulders while I stood on my tiptoes. I gave him a gentle squeeze and I whispered in his ear, "You're the best."

Nick, at first, didn't comply. He just stood there as I hugged him. But as soon as I said that he was the best, he quickly and tightly put his arms around me and drew me closer. "You're bester," he whispered and then lightly pushed me away. "Night."

"Night," I smiled and then walked the rest of the way down to my room.

Nick had just shut his hotel room's door when I realized a very important thought. I didn't have my keycard with me. Sighing, I walked back down to Nick's room and lightly rapped on his door.

Three seconds later Nick peaked his head around the door. "Reconsidered your previous decision?" he asked.

"No, I forgot my keycard and Brit has the spare one," I said.

"Brilliance," Nick commented, and then opened the door so I could come in. "Welcome yourself."

"I know it's your room to yourself and everything call Brit…" I replied as I walked straight into his bedroom and to the phone.

Nick suddenly was behind me and had his hand around my wrist, pulling me away from the side door.

"Okay, you're doing no such thing," he said, turning me around to face him.

I smiled up at him. "Pardon?"

He smiled down at me. "You're not going."

"But I'm not staying…?" It was more a question than a statement.

"You know you can't leave," Nick replied. "You know you can't resist me, now that you're here, in this room with me."

"What are you talking about?" I laughed. "I can so leave. And I can so resist you."

He grinned. "No, you can't."

"Yes, I can," I replied.

"But you don't want to," he said quietly. I didn't like it how Nick was very good at reading my mind, almost. "Stay."

"Pardon?" I asked quietly.

"Stay," he repeated, coming closer. "Stay, as in I don't want you to go."

I looked at up him, my head tilted to the side. "Okay," I whispered.

Nick nearly fell over with surprise. "Woah, you're giving in too easily nowadays."

I shrugged. "Well I'm locked out, and I'm tired and all I'm doing is going to sleep in your bed, so I don't think it's giving in. It was just getting you to ask me to stay so I wouldn't have to ask, because then I would either have no room to sleep in, or I'd have to wake people up, and then they wouldn't be happy and then we would get caught and get in trouble."

Nick threw me one of his button up shirts, it was huge compared to me, I put it on over my dry swimming clothes and took my board shorts off, I was definitely having a shower in the morning, even though I had one downstairs…

He laughed, shaking his head. "Whatever," and then pushed me so I fell back on the bed. "Get comfy. I get that side"

I quickly scrambled to the side that Nick had claimed as his and got under the covers when Nick had gone into the bathroom.

He came back out. "Chris," he laughed.

I smiled up at him innocently. "Turn out the light, okay?"

"Unbelievable," he was muttering. "I turn my back for one second and then they steal my bed, after I was kind enough to offer them a place to sleep. Unbelievable, just unbelievable."

"And quit muttering," I yawned, and then shut my eyes and tried to ignore Nick as he went about his bedtime duties.

I felt the bed sink as Nick sat down at the foot of it, purposely making my feet uncomfortable.

"Nick…" I groaned, lightly kicking him.

"Hey," he defended himself, repositioning himself so that he was sitting on my feet. "picking out what I want to wear tomorrow" I realized he had already changed.

"Can't you do it… like on the chair or something?" I asked.

"No, bed's better."

"Whatever," I replied.

He stood up and all was quiet until I realized he was watching me sleep. I was lying on my side, slightly curled up into a ball, with my hands underneath my cheek and my eyes tightly shut since the light was bothersome, and so was Nick. When I realized he was waiting for me to look at him, I lazily opened my eyes and stared at him out of the corner of them. "What…?"

"I want you watching," he said quietly. "For you are about to miss the most fantabulous show ever."

I turned over on my back in amusement. "Fantabulous? Okay, you gonna strip for me?"

"You betcha," he replied with a grin, and then started swinging to some unheard music. First his sweatshirt came off. He swung his hips in a slight circular motion and slowly pulled his sweatshirt over his head.

I started to giggle like crazy as he spun around, swinging his sweatshirt above his head and then let it fly, so it landed on the round table that was near the window.

Next came his gray T-shirt that he had on underneath. After dancing around a little bit more, he stopped so that his back was facing me, but kept his hips still going. He lifted his arms, and reached around to pull the collars of the T-shirt up, and then slowly pulled it over his head, revealing more of his rather muscular back to me as he did so. He turned around seductively, pulling the shirt over his shoulders and onto his arms, and then slowly let his shirt slide. He let it drop until he had it hanging by a finger, and then casually tossed it away. It landed on the lamp's shade, which sat right beside the bed on the bedside table, dimming the light a tad and giving the room a gray-ish hinge.

I started to laugh like crazy as I watched his clothing land on various furniture pieces.

Nick put his finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet, as he stood at the foot of the bed completely topless. He smiled at me with a grin that I couldn't tell what it meant before he crawled onto the bed, coming closer and closer towards me.

My giggles faded as Nick came closer, and I leaned back further. "Um…"

He grinned as he just fell upon me, wrapping me up in his arms and squeezing me tight.

"Eek!" I cried as I struggled to get free. "Eek! Eww, get off me!"

Nick didn't let go. He just held on tight, and struggled with me as I struggled to get free.

Laughing, I finally managed to break lose and I rolled over to the other side. However, Nick was on the side that he wanted at the very beginning, and he was also the one with all the blankets.

"I suppose that was all part of your plan, wasn't it?" I sighed, brushing my hair out of my face.

He winked at me. "Damn straight."

"Don't… wink at me," I laughed. "It's disturbing."

Ignoring me, Nick fluffed his pillow and got himself comfortable, snatching the blankets as I tried to reach for one. "G'night," he said softly, before reaching up and switching out the light.

"Nick…." I whined.

"Chris…." He mimicked.

"Can I please have the blanket?" I asked nicely.

"I think you're going to have to come here and get it," he replied.

"But," I protested. "Fine, I won't have a blanket."

"Okay, fine," he laughed. "Night."

I didn't answer him, and turned over on my side instead. I could feel the bed vibrate slightly and I knew he was laughing softly to himself, just like he could probably feel the same. I didn't wait long before I finally gave in and rolled my way across the giant sized bed until I bumped into Nick.

"Changing your mind?" he quietly asked as he held up a blanket so I could roll underneath it.

"Mmmhmm," I mumbled sleepily as I snuggled up to Nick.

He gently and ever so lightly brushed the hair off my cheek and back away from my face before letting the blankets drop around us.

The night time silence fell over us for a while before I finally spoke up.

"Nick?"

"Yeah?" he replied sleepily.

"Can you please put on a shirt?"

He laughed. "Why? Do I stink?"

"No," I answered. "It's just… really distracting."

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