*_Finding Hope_*

The trip took a lot longer then usual, but when I pulled into the drive of the small log cabin, I started to feel better already. There are two large willow trees in the front yard that I remember planting with my mom when I first bought the place. I remember her telling me that willows were God’s gift to us, they were made to help us relax, with their long, weeping branches and tiny leaves. I got out of the car, and went to sit down under one of the willows. My mind drifted away, to a place where there wasn’t any screaming girls, no large speakers blaring out heavy beats, and where nothing existed, just a simple life, with simple happiness. I liked coming to this place, because I can leave everything stressful behind me, all the pain and guilt couldn’t touch me when I was in this simple, happy place.

I woke up to raindrops hitting my face, I must have fell asleep, because I was still sitting under the large willow. I stood up, went to my car and grabbed my bag and keys to open the door to the cabin. The lock turned easy and I soon was standing in the entryway of the small cabin. Everything is shinny and clean, even though I barely come out here, I still pay a maid to keep the dust from collecting. I put my bag in the large bedroom and sit by the picture window, watching the rain come from the dark sky, falling towards the large lake that seems to swallow it up.

“I better call mom so she knows I made it here safely,” I say quietly to myself. I stand up and find the phone hanging in the small wooden kitchen. This place looks like it could come out of a storybook, the cabinets are a simple light brown wood with leaves carved into them, the table and chairs match perfectly. The telephone rings twice before she answers it in her cheerful way.

“Hey mom, I just wanted to call you and tell you I made it out here ok.” I say to her, trying to keep the weariness from my voice.

“That’s good to hear, the boys all say ‘Hi’. I am making them dinner because they have all been begging for meatloaf and potatoes. Sometimes I feel like I have five sons!” she jokes. I can’t help but smile at the thought of all the guys asking her to make them dinner, she pretends to hate it, but I know she loves the attention.

“That’s nice. Well I don’t want to make you out to be a bad hostess, so I will let you get back to them. Tell them I will be back probably sometime next week.” I look out the window; the rain is starting to let up so I decide that I might go take a walk around the lake. “Good-bye Mom”

“Good-bye Alex, thank you for calling.” She says to me, and then before she hangs up, she adds “And stay out of trouble!”

“I will!” I smile at her as she laughs and says good-bye one more time before hanging up the phone. By this time the rain has stopped completely, so I go out the door and turn left to follow a small walking path that is beside the shore of the large lake. I can hear some young kids playing somewhere around the area, they are laughing and yelling. I know there is a playground around here, so I figure that they were probably playing over wherever that is located. I turn right when I come to a “T” in the path, so the voices are behind me and continue to enjoy the sights and smells of the lake.

Suddenly I come across a woman sitting in the middle of the path, she looks like she is crying. I stand there for a minute, wondering if I should check to see if she is all right or if I should just mind my own business. She must have heard me behind her, because she looks up at me from where she is sitting. Her green eyes are red from crying, and her dark brown hair is tied back in a ponytail. “Yeah, I am fine.” She stands up to face me, she is almost three inches shorter then I am, but for what she lacks in height, she makes up for in other areas. “Are you new around here?”

“Nah, I just don’t come out here a lot. My name is AJ, what’s your name?” I try to keep my eye contact with her, but there is so much more to look at. She is wearing a black tank top that shows a lot of skin and short shorts that show off her tan legs.

She smiles slightly. “My name is Sarah. You say you don’t come out here a lot, does that mean that you own a cabin?” She looks at me as if she doesn’t care that I am not looking at her eyes.

“Yeah, its right over there.” I point in the direction of my cabin. “You sound surprised, it’s not everyday that you come across a person who owns a cabin out here?”

She laughs, “Well, no actually it’s not very likely. Most of these cabins are just rentals.” She makes a gesture towards the other cabins, “See that one over there with the dark green trim? Well, my boyfriend and I rented it for the week, but he decided to leave me for some blonde bimbo that he met at the lobby. Well, he and her are probably in there right now, and well, I don’t have the guts to go in there and yell at him. So I’m kinda stuck here, without a place to stay.”

“Oh, that’s gotta suck. What do you plan to do?” I say to her, a little concerned and yet wondering why she is standing here, telling me her life story.

“That’s my problem, I don’t know what to do. I mean, I wanted to go home, but there isn’t a bus or anything that comes out here that I could take back to town, and well…. I don’t want to face going home by myself, because…. well, you see, I shared a home with him too.” She looked out across the lake; I could see she was upset. I stood there for a moment, thinking about what to say to her, “Well….ummm….why don’t you come back to my place, where you can get dried off and maybe think of someone you can call.”

“Ok. Thank you so much for helping me out. It’s such a shame that there aren’t more guys like you who would go out of their way to do something nice.” She smiles at me, then follows me back to my cabin, asking questions about me and why I am out here by myself. I answer the questions to the best of my knowledge without making it a dead giveaway to whom I really am or what is going on, causing me to take this time off from my life.

“So what do you do for a job? I mean, you gotta do something big to have the money to afford such a nice car and a cabin out here.” She is sitting on the leather couch, sipping on a glass of apple cider.

“Well..ahh….actually I…ahh….I sing.” What great way to sound stupid huh? This woman is obviously interested in me, and here I am mumbling sentences that barely make sense.

“Really?” She looks at me for a moment, as if trying to figure me out, “I thought you looked familiar. Are you a big star?” She smiles as if she said something funny.

“Well, actually…have you ever heard of the pop group ‘Backstreet Boys’?” She suddenly looked as though she won the lottery. “Well, yeah…. I’m AJ McLean from the ‘Backstreet Boys’. But please, lets not make a big deal out of who I am. The phone is over there if you want to use it to call someone about getting a ride out of here.” I point to where the phone is, but it seems though she lost all interest in leaving this place, more or less, leaving my cabin, period.

“Oh my, you really are AJ McLean. I have seen you perform at the Target Center when you guys were on your last tour. My little cousin would freak if she knew that I was sitting in your cabin, talking to you face to face. Oh wow, who would have guessed that I would be sitting in a Multimillionaire’s cabin today?” she set down the glass of apple cider and looked around the room, as if she was studying everything about it. Her eyes suddenly focus on a picture of all us guys when we were younger, traveling through Europe.

“Yeah, well…I wasn’t planning on inviting anyone into my cabin this week, but you seemed to have caught my attention.” I smile at her as she looks back at me, “So were you planning to make that call, or am I not going to be spending this week by myself?”

The next few days were full of activities, as I got to know Sarah better. There was something about her that kept me wanting to know more. I learned that she and her now ex-boyfriend lived in Santa Maria, and they were going out for half a year. She doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, but she has a cousin who loves her to death and claims that she is her ‘real’ older sister. She likes to talk a lot, and is a wonderful singer, however she would never want to pursue it as a job, life in the spotlight is not for her. She said she would rather stay at home with a nice family, keeping the house clean and the kids fed.

The week seemed to pass by fast, and before I knew it Friday night was already upon us. We were sitting on the couch watching ‘A Night At The Roxbury’ on the large, flat screen TV, when she suddenly leaned over to me and looked me in the eyes.

She says with a tone of sadness in her voice, “Are we going to stay in touch after this week is over with? I don’t want to forget about how wonderful this time has been with you.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way, babes. I would never want to go on without you; there is something about you that makes me happy, that makes me feel like the man I should be. I have been thinking a lot about what we were going to do when this week was up, and I thought that since you don’t really have a loving home to go to, why don’t you come with me? I could find you a place to stay in L.A. and we could see each other everyday.” I don’t know what’s coming over me, because I never once thought about bringing her back with me until the moment I said those words, but it doesn’t seem like a bad idea when I think about it. She doesn’t reply to me, but I know what she is thinking, because the next moment, she is kissing me.

“I can’t believe you are asking me to come with you! You have made this week so wonderful for me, and now it feels like this happiness is never going to end! Of course I will come back with you…. However, I have never been to L.A. before, is it really different from Santa Maria?” She looks at me; her green eyes are shinning bright; showing me just how happy she is.

“Well, it’s a lot bigger city, but you get use to it pretty easily. The only thing I would be worried about is finding a decent job, not that I would know what the job market is like there, but that is the only real concern you should have.”

“I never thought about that….” She sits in silence for a minute, “I guess I will just have to make a real good resume and a good first impression, huh?”

I smile at her, thinking about the first day I met her, “Well the first impression won’t be that hard. You are sweet as sugar and very beautiful.” I nibble on her ear, and she giggles with excitement. “But I guess we will have to go to Santa Maria and collect your stuff, so why don’t we pack up our things and head there before we head back to L.A.?”

“Mm, yeah. I guess we will have to do that.” Her hands move up my shirt as I continue kissing down her neck. “How about we go in the morning?” She giggles as I reach to take off her tank top, and then continue to kiss around the edge of her satin bra.