TITLE: Sometimes

AUTHOR: Alicia Edwards

FEEDBACK: [email protected]

SUMMARY: Sometimes, Lance spends an evening lost in thought.

 

Notes: This was written while I was in class.  My pen just started writing, and my attention was still kind of half on the professor, half not.  Which sometimes makes for an interesting result.  This is a totally different kind of story than I've ever written before. Let me know what you think. =)

 

SOMETIMES

 

Sometimes, when he was a little bit embarrassed about what he was doing, and he heard someone coming, he’d clean.  He’d gotten really good at it.  His ears were trained to search out the faintest step on the stairs, the smallest creak in the floorboards, and he could whisk himself soundlessly from his desk chair to just about anyplace in the room and look natural, as if he’d been there all along.  It was a talent, he thought.  An art.  And he’d perfected it.  So instead of catching him sitting guiltily at the computer, whomever it was who happened to pass by his room would find him squatting on the floor, organizing papers.  Or contemplating his wardrobe.  Or, perhaps, dusting the picture frames on the dresser.  He’d worked on that one a long time.  In the beginning, he’d kept knocking the frames over, giving himself away completely.  Now, though, he could get there in under 1.4 seconds, or something close, all dresser furnishings in tact. 

 

He talked online too much.  Maybe he was addicted to it.  Maybe he didn’t really talk online too much, but he just thought he did.  Maybe no one else would agree, and he was being completely neurotic by trying to hide the fact he was almost always online.  Whenever he had free time, which, admittedly, was not that often.  But he’d even found himself switching between doing work on the computer and chatting, all at the same time. 

 

Sometimes, when he chatted, he told the truth, sometimes he didn’t.  Mostly, people didn’t believe him when he told the truth, anyway, so what was the point?

 

Tonight he was telling the truth, and he was pretty sure the girl he was talking to believed him only so far as she couldn’t take the chance that he wasn’t lying.  He was pretty sure that in her mind, if there was even the slightest possibility that she was really talking to who she thought she was talking to, which she was, she couldn’t let herself mess it up by not believing him.  That’s what he figured, anyway.  He came across that every now and then.  He could usually tell when that’s what they were thinking.  They talked to him like they weren’t completely sure he wasn’t a total nut, or a poser, kind of holding back a little, and yet not saying anything to contradict their believing he was being honest with them.

 

He talked to them because he was lonely.  He had people around him all day long, every day… thousands of people who would give their right arm to be near him, sometimes, but yes, he was lonely.  It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really, just the situation.  The guys, they were great.  His best friends in the world, and he’d always have that, always have them.  And he knew that, but what he didn’t have was anonymity. 

 

He could have that here, online.  Even if he told whomever he was talking to who he was, he still had anonymity.  It was almost better if he did tell them, at least some of it.  Then he could vent his frustrations and most people would talk like they believed them, even though he was pretty sure they didn’t.  Like the girl he was talking to now.  They’d answer him seriously, yet not take him seriously.  If that made sense.  It did to him, but he was seriously doubting his sanity these days.

 

What he missed most in this life he could now call his own was making new friends, meeting new people.  Sure, he met people all the time, but he didn’t get to know them.  Not really.  Every so often, he’d sign an autograph and he would look into the face of that girl, or sometimes guy, but not too many of them really wanted autographs, so usually girl, and think that maybe she was a pretty cool person.  Maybe she was the kind of girl he would have been friends with in high school.  Or maybe not.  But he’d never know.  And mostly, he’d never know because, even if he did get to know her, he would never know if she wanted to know him for him, or because of who he was.  He hated that part of things.

 

But on the internet, he could talk to people.  People other than the guys.  He had to spread out his philosophizing, his rambling.  He knew they were always happy to hear it, and they always would be, but he felt bad about constantly talking their ears off.  He’d kept a journal for a while, dumped everything out onto a piece of paper, but that was unsatisfying and, honestly, hard to keep up.  He’d put it off because, usually, he ended up getting a cramp in his hand, and he hated that.

 

So finding faceless human beings to talk to online was good.  Addicting.  Some people he’d talked to more than once.  Some, he talked to quite often, actually.  Mostly those were the ones he hadn’t lied to, but hadn’t actually told the whole truth to, either.  He was a bad liar, so it always came back to bite him in the ass when he made up an identity for himself, but he really knew the ones he didn’t tell his real name to liked talking to him because they really did like talking to him.  It was kind of a problem, to balance it.  How much to say?  How much to hold back?  He thought he’d gotten pretty good at figuring that part of it out, though.

 

He shook his head.  He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with his thumb and index finger, pinching the bridge of his nose, too.  He wasn’t sure what was bringing on all of this self-reflection tonight.  Maybe it was a serious case of cabin fever.  They’d been living in this vacation house in Pennsylvania for the past month, now, while they prepared for their next album – Chris’s idea, to get the creative juices flowing.  But here he was, upstairs in his room, talking on the computer to GillyBean9, while everyone else was downstairs, bonding.  He could hear their laughter drifting up the stairs every so often.  Or a stray thump as Justin tried out a new dance move or Chris tried to imitate him.  They were having fun, and he longed to join them, but somehow he needed to talk to someone who wasn’t them.  Not because he was talking about them, exactly, or that they couldn’t hear what he had to say, but because he needed a different perspective on life.  Or something.

 

It was a way to find the friends he couldn’t get in real life.  That made him sad, knowing that he had lost the ability to make new friends in person.  Maybe he’d get that back someday, but that would mean everything he had now, everything with the guys, would be over.  And that thought crushed him, even though they all knew it wouldn’t last forever.  It was a bittersweet knowledge, but more bitter than sweet, because, in spite of the personal crises he’d been having lately, he really did love everything they had going for them. 

 

His ears perked up as he heard someone’s footsteps on the floor downstairs, near the staircase.  The month they’d been here was long enough for him to know the sounds of the house – and when someone was coming.

 

His hands froze, hovering over the keyboard.  The speakers were off so that the ring of the instant messages didn’t betray him.  He quickly typed that he had to go, and closed the window.  He was on the floor, kneeling in front of his file bin, which was on the floor because there wasn’t quite enough furniture here.  He was organizing, alphabetizing, when Joey came in, knocking on the doorjamb.  He looked up at Joey slowly, as if he’d been in the middle of something important.  He never closed the door, because that made him look guilty.  And this way, he really did accomplish things that needed to get done.  Like alphabetizing his Rolodex.  He’d been meaning to do it for a while.

 

Joey asked him what he was up to, his eyes surveying the immaculate room.  The computer was on in the corner, innocently displaying an Excel spreadsheet.  Yup, Lance had gotten really good at the whole deception thing.  Not that he wanted to deceive the guys, but somehow it gave him peace of mind knowing they didn’t know his secret addiction.  They wouldn’t look at him the way—

 

—Joey was doing right now.  Lance had just told him he was alphabetizing, which he was, and Joey’s left eyebrow shot into his hairline, the other one lowering over his right eye.  Joey shook his head and his eyebrows evened out.  He told Lance that they were going to get some grub.  Everyone but Justin, because Justin was on the phone long-distance.  Again.  He was always on the phone with her.

 

Lance couldn’t help the little pang of envy at that – Justin had someone, a friend outside of the guys.  Sure, they all had friends, but she was Justin’s soul mate.  Lance wondered if he’d be able to find his soul mate, now.  Now that he never did know peoples’ motivations.

 

He wondered if Joey thought about that ever.  Wondered if Joey really cared.  It didn’t seem to bother Joey what peoples’ motivations were, especially if he was getting some.

 

Joey asked if Lance wanted to come with and Lance nodded and stood slowly, stretching his creaky knees.  All that dancing took its toll.

 

Joey nodded once, decisively, and smacked the doorjamb softly as punctuation before turning and jogging down the stairs, two at a time, to let everyone know Lance was coming.

 

Lance was glad Joey had asked.  He thought he probably liked Joey the best out of all of them, because Joey was considerate like that.  Not that the others weren’t… JC just seemed sweetly oblivious to most things, lost in his own little world.  Justin was still kind of enthralled with everything that was going on around him, and didn’t seem to have much energy left to devote to tiny little gestures.  And Chris was just Chris.  If he took the time to bring his activity level down a few notches, Lance was pretty sure he’d take the time to be super-considerate, too, but Chris was always three steps ahead of what was actually going on.  So that left Joey as the one responsible for dragging Lance away from his “work” when everyone decided to switch gears and do something like get a bite to eat.

 

But also, Joey was a lot like him.  You probably wouldn’t guess it from looking at them – an Italian from Brooklyn and a pale, blond Mississippian – but they were.  They’d talked a lot about things on the bus, in the countless hours they’d spent on that damn bus.  They had a lot of the same ideas about things, similar ways of approaching things, he guessed.  He forced some bounce into his step as he made his way down the stairs. 

 

The old house sure did have character, along with creaky floorboards.  And those, he liked.  Because they warned him.  The living room, where everyone but him had spent his evening, was high-ceilinged and elegant, while at the same time being simple and homey.  Lance wasn’t sure he’d have believed that combination could exist until he’d stepped foot into this house.  But here it was.  Justin was draped over the chair in the corner, his cell phone attached to the side of his head like an extension of his ear.  He was really into the conversation.  Lance could tell by the way his eyebrows were working.  Flashing this way and that as he excitedly relayed to her something that had happened earlier in the day.

 

JC was leaning up against the wall, all slinky, with his coat draped carelessly across his arm.  His half-smile wasn’t meant for anyone in particular, which was one thing Lance liked about him.  JC went through life day in and day out, sort of amused by it all.  Like he knew this was all just a gig, and he was going to enjoy every moment, but he wasn’t going to take it all that seriously.  He’d put all his energy into whatever he was doing, but he’d have fun with it. 

 

JC was pretty much in contrast to Justin, who took everything really seriously.  Which was weird, because JC was inherently more the “serious type,” and yet it was Justin who was really, really into this thing the five of them had built.  Justin would strut around on stage like he was meant to be there, like this was what he was made for.  And he was.  What they did on stage, at least the dancing part, was something Joey and Chris and, especially, Lance had to work at.  Justin was just made to do it.  And he was intense about just about everything.

 

“We going, or what?” Joey asked, noticing for the first time that Lance had finally made it downstairs.  JC shoved himself off the wall with his shoulder and shrugged his coat on.  Most people vacationed in Pennsylvania in the summer or fall, when the weather was nice and the scenery was colorful.  Not them – they were there in the middle of February.  It wasn’t quite spring, but winter had just about exhausted itself.  Just about.  It was still really cold.

 

 As they were walking out the door, Chris started telling a joke.  JC snorted about halfway through, when he realized where Chris was going with it.  It wasn’t too like JC to be ahead of the game like that, but the fact that he was made Lance smile a little.  These guys were always surprising him.  Just as Joey was sticking the key in the lock, just so no one tried to assault Justin in their absence, the door was tugged open again, kind of leaving Joey standing there, his hand and the key frozen in midair, his mouth open a bit in surprise.

 

“Oh, good.  You didn’t leave yet.”  Justin’s eyes were bright, like they always were when he hung up the phone after talking to her.  He slipped into a fleece jacket, four sets of eyes on him.  Justin took the key from Joey’s hand, which Joey had forgotten to move from its position there in the middle of the air, and locked the door.  Everyone was actually pretty glad Justin had decided to join them.  Lance was beginning to feel a little more at ease about things.  Somehow, the mood tonight wasn’t about the album or rehearsing, it was about enjoying each other’s company.  And Lance remembered why these four men – yeah, they were all pretty much men now – were his best friends.  He didn’t think he’d be going online again tonight.  For now, he was happy to just be. 

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