Rebound

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1. If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.

2. I don't know any of the celebrities in this story, and this story in no way is meant to imply anything about their sexualities, personalities, or anything else. This is a work of pure fiction.

Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them.

That said, we now continue.

I didn't want to rush JC, as much as I wanted to hear the rest of the story. Instead I just kept swinging my feet back and forth in the pool, listening to the water ripple, feeling the sun bake down on us both. My skin was still mostly white, but in another hour or two I might be a sort of light pink, which would darken to a kind of light sepia after a few days. That was as close as I could get to a tan, but I'd be happy enough not being lobster red and picking up more freckles. Matt might have called them an enhancement, and JC might claim they added character, but I was self conscious enough about them not to want any more. I wasn't as bad as some of the other redheads I'd seen, but there was no reason to push my luck.

JC, for his part, seemed to be searching for the right words, sitting next to me with his head down. He was staring into the pool, too, but he seemed calmer, not like he would burst into tears again. At least that was an improvement. He finally looked at me again, and I looked back with my face passive. On an impulse I reached out and took his hand, squeezing it gently, and he smiled as I let go.

"How much do you know about Kevin and I?" he asked finally. "You know, as a couple. How much did Justin tell you?"

"Not a lot, actually," I said, shrugging a little. "He didn't even tell me Kevin's name."

"He wouldn't," JC said, shaking his head. "Especially not after what I did. You know what Justin's like. He'll face things if he has to, but otherwise he runs away, and pretends things that hurt him don't exist, like everything is ok. I think he actually believes it, like if he pretends hard enough that everything's fine, then everything will be."

"I've noticed," I agreed. "We were just talking about it the other day, the way he thought that we could just move back in here and everything would be fine. He won't even talk about what you did."

"Cheating on him with Kevin," JC said bluntly. "Betraying him."

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "He won't even say it, and now he's got me not saying it, too. When he did talk about it, he just told me that it was your ex boyfriend, and that you slept with him, and that's why he broke up with you."

"Did he tell you anything else?" JC asked, his mouth pressed into that thin line again. It had to hurt him to think about this.

"Just that Kevin was closeted," I said. "He said that Kevin didn't handle it well, and that it bled off onto you, but I can see that just from what Kevin did today."

"He didn't actually want to sleep with you, you know," JC said, and I remembered Kevin's offhand remark that had sparked my tirade. "He probably only said it to hurt me, or to catch you off guard or something."

"I wasn't planning to touch him, anyway," I said, shrugging again.

"You're right, though, and so is Justin," JC sighed, looking at the water again. "What he says, the way he feels, it does spill onto me. It was worse when I was closer to him, but now he just, he makes up for it by being more vicious. Would it help any if I said he wasn't always that way?"

"Kevin?" I asked, just to be sure we were still on the same page.

"Yeah," JC answered. "Because he wasn't. I know you might not believe that, especially not now, but he wasn't always that vicious, or that cruel. When I met him, he was completely different. I even loved him. I know I told him today that I wasn't sure I ever did, but that's a lie. Kevin was the first guy that I really did love, and that's why all the rest of this happened."

He reached out for my hand again, needing support, and I let him take it.

"I told the guys that I was gay when we first got together, back when they had time to put someone else in my spot," he said, and I nodded. Justin had told me this, too. "I don't know if you've ever seen any of our early stuff, but I was kind of unofficially supposed to be the lead singer. I split the leads with Justin, now, and he has even more of them on this last album, but then I had most of them. If you look at our early pictures, the photo shoots and stuff, I'm in the middle a lot. I recognized that when we first started, when Lou was kind of grooming me to be the lead, and I didn't want to put the guys in the position of being dependent on me if I was just going to end up dragging the whole group down, so I told them. They took it about the way I thought they would, and it was a lot better than I was afraid they would have. They could have kicked me out right then, but they didn't, and because of that and the way that they accepted me, they sort of became my family, more than my real one."

"You said your family is a little distant," I said, remembering.

"Yeah, they are, but not as bad as they were then," he said. "I mean now, at least I can go home if I want to, and they welcome me. Back then I'd just come out to them, too, and they were having a lot of problems with it, so I felt kind of alone. I was cut off from my family, and Lou was starting to put pressure on me, building our image and stuff, and we were over in Europe away from everything I knew. The only thing I had to reach out to was the rest of the guys, and it wasn't enough."

I nodded, but JC shook his head.

"I don't mean that the way it came out," he said.

"JC, tell it however you need to," I said encouragingly. "Or don't tell me at all. You don't have to."

"I want to," he said, squeezing my hand. "You tried to help me, and I want you to understand, if I can. I feel like I owe you something, and maybe if you knew more, you'd be more comfortable here."

"Who says I'm uncomfortable?" I asked innocently. Damn it, had Justin shared too much of that talk we had before we moved here. "Did Justin say something?"

"He didn't have to," JC answered, shaking his head. "I can tell. You're not as good at hiding your feelings as you think you are, and I've seen you, sometimes, looking at me and then looking at yourself. I told you before that I want to be your friend. I'm not going to fight you for Justin, even if I do still love him, but maybe if you understand, it would help you guys, both of you."

"Both of us?" I asked. What was Justin afraid of? JC seemed to read the question in my face.

"Yeah," he said. "He knows you still love Matt, and that Matt was your first love, and even if you say he's not, Justin's always going to feel like he's competing with that. I know, because he was always comparing himself to Kevin, and it makes him act a certain way. All of his mood swings, the way he brushes you off sometimes, it's because he's scared. Justin's falling for you, Chris, really hard, and he's scared of that, because you love someone else, too. That's why he's skittish and unsure sometimes, even though it just upsets you more. Maybe if you knew how he got like that, and what happened with us, it would help you guys."

"Maybe it would," I agreed, nodding.

JC was still holding my hand, not really squeezing it, and I waited for him to continue. We definitely made for an odd couple, sitting on the edge of the pool with our legs in the water holding hands between crying jags, but the day had taken on such an unreal tone that somehow it all seemed ok. Actually, it wasn't just the day. Somewhere along the way my entire life had taken some sort of surreal twist, so that instead of waking up in my loft in Boston and going to work, I was waking up in bed with Justin Timberlake in Florida and sitting by the pool while JC Chasez told me a tale of doomed love with Kevin Richardson while somewhere nearby Chris Kirkpatrick was doubtlessly plotting imminent bodily harm to inflict upon me, and somehow this was normal. I shook myself out of this sudden reality check when JC began to speak again.

"So, I guess what I was trying to say is that I needed an out," he said, picking the story up right where he'd left off. "The guys and I were together all the time, and they were like brothers. We were losing luggage and hustling for gigs and we were just running nonstop all over all the time. We'd get up in the morning, and if we weren't rehearsing we were performing or doing an interview or even both at once sometimes. There was all this pressure, and I was trying so hard, but it just wasn't working. I needed an out. I needed somewhere to go where I wasn't part of Nsync, and the brotherhood, and the band, and all the rest. I knew I was gay, but I'd never really even had a chance to experience that, not completely."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I hadn't really been with anyone, not seriously, when we went to Europe," JC said, shrugging. "I have this friend, my best friend other than Justin, Tony. You haven't met him, because he's out in L.A. right now, but he and I, when we were on the Club together, we had kind of fooled around for a while. It was kind of innocent, you know, handjobs and stuff, and I think I blew him once or twice, but that was it. When we ended up parting ways, we stayed friends, but that was it. We weren't boyfriends, since he's mostly straight. Like I said, we were just kids fooling around, but while he was deciding he was straight, I was deciding that I was gay."

"He's not like Kevin?" I asked.

"Tony? No," JC answered, shaking his head. "He's great. Just chalked it up to friends exploring and fooling around, or something, and that was it. But, you know, I had this life changing experience, and was figuring out who I was, and then bam! I was in Nsync, and I was like the group dad. Chris and Lou put us together, but Lou was putting so much pressure on me, and I was putting it on the guys. I was always pointing out our schedules, and pushing the guys to rehearse more, and being this tightass perfectionist, and it was just getting to be too much. I spent every minute of every day with guys who were great, and who were cute, and who accepted me, but who were also straight. Well, Justin thought he was, anyway. On top of that, there was also all this stress and tension because I was always pushing them, and pushing myself, too. What I'm trying to say is that I needed the right person to come along, and I needed it bad, and then I met Kevin."

"Not exactly Mr. Right," I blurted thoughtlessly. I was suddenly mortified, but JC smiled.

"Not exactly," he said, squeezing my hand again to let me know it was ok. "But at the time, he sure looked like it. We met the Backstreet Boys all at the same time, because we were playing this stupid exhibition basketball game. I can't remember whose idea it was, and it was really kind of weird that we hadn't run into them before that, since we had the same manager and we were touring in the same places and everything else, but anyway, there we were. We didn't win, by the way, but that really doesn't matter. Not unless you ask Justin or Joey, who, I swear, actually trained for this thing like we were in the Final Four or something. When the game was over, we all went out to this club, and somehow Kevin and I ended up at this table talking. Justin and Nick and AJ were dancing, and Justin's mom was watching them all like a hawk, babysitting Nick, too, since they were both kids then. We all were, I guess, but really, they were kids, and they probably shouldn't even have been at a bar. Howie and Chris were having this long discussion in Spanish with these girls that they said were models but were probably hookers, and Brian and Lance, I swear to God, were actually talking about the Bible."

He chuckled at the memory, but then his face turned down again, and I waited.

"And then there was me and Kevin," he said softly, blinking. "We were like the same guy in different bands. He was their dad, and I was ours, and the two of us just clicked. All the pressure I was under, he was, too. There was a difference, though. They were already on their way. They were already established, and were making it, and he was in charge of that, and he was talking to me. Not just talking to me, but listening. The whole night he didn't look at a single other person, and I was just, it was beyond flattering. I mean, they had it all, and you saw him. He's gorgeous, and that body. He had everything, and for someone like that to listen to me, to treat me like I was important, I didn't know what to do. He was like everything I wanted to be. He was almost like my idol or something, and I was just falling all over him."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, after all the times I'd compared myself to JC and thought about how perfect he was, but unbelievably it sounded like JC was telling me that he fell for Kevin, in part, because he had low self esteem. Was that even possible?

"He had it all," JC said, shaking his head, not looking over to see my disbelief. "Everything I was dealing with, he was, too, and on top of that he was making it work. He had it all together, and he was beautiful, too. I was just this skinny kid with crooked teeth and a big nose, trying so hard to be something I wasn't, and there he was. We talked all night, about everything, and then when the bar was closing he asked me to come back to his room to keep talking, and even that got me. He had his own room! They were that big! I hadn't slept in a room by myself in months, and they all treated it like it was par for the course. We were in the same hotel, but they were higher up, away from the street. Everything about them was better, and he just kind of scooped me up and pulled me in. We got to the room, and he had this bottle of wine that the hotel gave him. The hotels never gave us free wine, but, you know, he had it, and we started drinking it, and we were still talking, and I was just so relaxed, and then he got up, and took his shirt off, and I just couldn't talk. He was standing there, and I was kind of tipsy, and his chest just looked so big, and I couldn't help it. I was staring, even after all the time I'd spent training myself not to, and then his eyes hit mine, and I was just frozen. I was busted, totally busted, and he walked over and pulled me up by my jaw, and he kissed me."

His voice got quieter and quieter as he continued.

"And then he pushed me onto my knees, and he, he reached down, and he."

"Hey," I said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. I was afraid he would start crying again. "Hey, it's ok. I'm a big kid; I can connect the dots from there."

"I'm sorry," he said, wiping at his eyes quickly. "It's not the way it sounds, not exactly. It wasn't dirty, and he didn't, like, he didn't force me. It was something I wanted to do."

"Except that you were drunk," I said, shaking my head. "And overwhelmed. And he was like ten years older than you and you were just this confused."

"No," he said, cutting me off. "You can't, the way he is now, it's not the way he was then. He was different. He was so caring, and so nice, and gentle, too. We spent the night together, and the next day, and then I just kind of started seeing him. Like I said, we were overlapping so much it was weird that we hadn't met before, but once we decided to get together, he started juggling their schedule, and we'd be in the same city. He never said that we were boyfriends, and when I told him I loved him, he always told me that he cared about me, and I thought that was enough. And for a while, it was. We didn't tell the other guys about it, either of our guys, because he didn't want to, and I agreed. We would hook up, and I just, I started pulling away from my guys a little. Justin started taking more of the spotlight, and it was ok with me, because I had Kevin to fulfill me. And Kevin, for his part, he, well, he didn't exactly make me choose, but he just, it was expected. If we were in the same town, I was going to be with him, not with them, and that was that. I was still just eating it up, still couldn't believe that someone like him wanted someone like me, so I never questioned it. I never stopped and said he was asking too much, or making too many demands. And then things, they just started to go bad."

I squeezed his hand again.

"It wasn't like something I could point to, like all of a sudden we had this fight or something," JC said, shrugging. His voice sounded hollow, worn, and I was worried about him again. I always thought that letting things out was better for you than holding it in, but telling me all of this seemed so painful for him. "The guys knew by then that I was seeing someone, since I had to explain why I was never in my room, and I thought that, you know, that he and I had something, but that wasn't what he thought. It started with sex, with the stuff we did. In the beginning, he did it, too. It wasn't like we traded off, or like I kept track, but he always made sure I was satisfied, too, and then he just kind of stopped. I still blew him, and I let him fuck me, but he never really did anything for me anymore, and there wasn't really any romance, either. It was like a habit, almost. He would call, I'd come over and blow him, and he'd watch TV when it was done. And if I said anything, he threw it back on me."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Everything was always my fault," JC answered. "I can say that now, looking back and knowing that's just something else he did to tear me down, but I didn't realize it then. When it was happening, I thought he was right. I thought that maybe I was too clingy, or too whiney, or any of the other stuff he said. He would tell me that I was asking too much, that I was making too many demands, and I would just agree, and apologize, and try to do better. I was always trying to do better, always trying to make him happy, because I thought that it was my fault. That's what he told me, and I believed him, because he was perfect, and I wasn't. All I wanted was to please him, to be good enough, and I kept telling myself that if I tried just a little harder, if I could stop being so damned selfish and just do a little bit more, go that extra mile, that I'd be good enough for him, and the whole time I never realized that I couldn't ever be. I wasn't ever going to be what he wanted, and I couldn't see that. I never realized it."

I was wondering if I should give him another comforting squeeze when he shocked the hell out of me by turning and wrapping himself around me. It was just for a second, but he squeezed me tightly against him, burying his face in my shoulder the way Justin did. He pulled back after a second, wiping at his eyes again, and gave me a small little smile.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "You probably think I'm the world's biggest crybaby."

"No, it's ok," I said, still holding his hand. "If it makes you feel any better, I think you're really brave. Seriously. I respect the hell out of you."

He giggled at that, and I smiled, too.

"This is just dragging, though," he said. "I know you haven't heard it before, but I've told it to Tony so many times that I think he'll shoot me if I ever talk about it again. I don't talk to Justin about it, but he knows that it was bad. He was there for me when it was all over, and it's kind of how he and I got together."

"He told me that," I said, nodding. "He said that you were really depressed, and that it was really bad for you."

"I was," JC agreed, nodding. "I was destroyed, and I don't know how I would have gotten through it if Justin hadn't been there."

"How did it end?" I asked, still trying to get all the pieces to come together. "I mean, how did you get from there, from being in this bad relationship, to here, to this morning?"

JC sighed.

"It's hard to say," he answered. "Like I said, he and I, it was going sour, and I wouldn't see it, and he wouldn't stop it. I was so into him by then, I couldn't think about anything else, and I was holding onto something that wasn't there. He started to see girls, and he didn't even cover it. He didn't bother trying to hide it from me, and I just kept trying harder. I thought that I must be doing something wrong, like I wasn't good enough somehow, or I'd be enough for him. I kept beating myself up, and he didn't do anything to stop me. He'd get in a fight with some girl, or he'd be between girls, and he'd call me. And I'd be so excited that he called that I would drop everything and go, run right over and do whatever he wanted. And he would laugh at me."

I shook my head, not wanting to believe that someone could be that deliberately cruel.

"He just got uglier and uglier," JC said. "And I didn't do anything to stop it. He kept insisting that he wasn't gay, that he couldn't be a crybaby little faggot like me, and I still kept going back. And then one day he just cut me off. He met this girl that was his soul mate or something, and he decided that we were done. He stopped taking my calls, and he just became unreachable. And I, well, for a little while I kind of lost it. I didn't care about anything, and things were going badly with us, Nsync, too. We were just starting to realize what Lou had done, and it was all coming down at once, and if I hadn't had Justin right there, I would have, well."

"No," I said, shaking my head. It wasn't possible. JC? Mr. Perfect? "No, you wouldn't have."

"Maybe," he said, shaking his head. "But Justin, and the guys, they pulled me through. We were back in the states, and my family, the time that I'd been apart from them in Europe kind of healed our rift a little, and we started talking again. I didn't talk to Kevin, not for a while. I wanted to, but eventually it started to go away. I started to settle in with Justin. We got together, and the group started getting bigger, and I just started to move on. Justin and I, it was rocky sometimes, but we kept working at it. Life kept going, and then Kevin called me. I didn't even know he had my number here, and I really didn't think he ever still thought about me. I mean, he's married now, and everyone said they're really happy, but he called, and he said he wanted to talk. And I went."

JC let go of my hand, standing, and walked away from the pool, shaking his head.

"I didn't tell Justin, because I didn't want to upset him," he said, looking back at me. "I knew that he would freak out, that he would worry about me, and worry about us, and I guess it turns out that he was right to be worried. Justin and I have had rough patches. We've had fights, and arguments, and we've decided we were breaking up a couple of times, but I never thought about cheating on him. He thought that I did, but I never had, and I wasn't thinking about it then, either. When Kevin called, I just, everything inside me got all jumbled up. I'd never had a chance to say goodbye to him, or even to understand why we'd broken up, and like I said, I didn't think he still even thought about me. I almost hung up when he called, but he said that he wanted to talk, that he just wanted to get together and chat, and that he missed me. That floored me, Chris. He said that he missed me, and it was like I was back there again. For just a second, I wanted to make him happy. I remembered that he'd hurt me, that he used me for a doormat and did his best to destroy me, but I still felt it, just for a second."

"So you went," I continued for him, but he shook his head.

"Not because of that," he said, walking back over. He sat beside me again, sliding his legs back into the pool. "The guys, they think part of it was Justin's fault, because he's been pretty moody lately. He's been kind of chafing a little, for lack of a better term. I'm sure you've noticed, too. The guys think that's part of it, but they're wrong. I went to see Kevin because I was curious more than anything else. I'm not still that kid who was with him before, and I wanted to see what would happen now that we're bigger than they are. I wanted to see what would happen now that I don't really need him, and I wanted to know what he would say."

"And?" I asked.

"And it wasn't like that," JC said sadly, looking down. "It started out like that, but then he started talking about us. He started talking about how he hadn't ever been with another guy, and how he wished he'd handled things with us better. I tried to explain to him that he hurt me, and he told me he was sorry I felt that way. I should have been listening better, should have realized that he was throwing it back on me again, like it was my own fault I felt hurt, but at the time it sounded like he was apologizing, and I just kind of ate it up, because I think part of me wanted to hear it. Part of me wanted him to say that he was sorry and hadn't meant to hurt me. We were talking, and he kept talking about us, and then he just leaned over and kissed me. I started to push him away, but then he whispered, he said that he wanted me, that he wanted me so bad, and I just, I did it. And as soon as it was over, I regretted it. I said something to him, because I felt so bad. I mean, I'd just cheated on Justin. I'd just broken every promise I made, and I didn't even have a good reason for it. I said something to Kevin and he told me not to start in with the faggy bullshit again. He told me that he'd just really needed to get off, and that he knew I'd go for it, and I knew nothing had changed."

"So you told Justin," I said.

"Yeah," JC answered, nodding. "I came home and broke Justin's heart. All along Justin had worried that I was always comparing him to Kevin, and then, at the first chance I got to see Kevin again, I'd slept with him, and for Justin, it meant that he was right all along. It meant that he was second best, and even if it wasn't true, it was too late. I made a mistake, a horrible mistake, and it broke Justin's heart."

"Did you explain it to him?" I asked. "Did you tell him all of this?"

"I tried to, but it didn't matter," JC said, shaking his head. I started to protest again, but he shook his head. "No, it doesn't. I know you're about to say that I was confused and vulnerable or something, but the truth is that I made a conscious choice to sleep with Kevin, even though I was with Justin. He didn't force me. No matter what else was going on, or what I was feeling, I slept with Kevin of my own free will, and that's what I have to live with. Justin broke up with me, and he went to you, and I have no one to blame but myself. I've been letting Kevin call me since then because I don't have anyone else, and I, well, maybe that's what I deserve. I threw away someone who loved me for someone who treats me like shit, and what does that say about me? That's what I have to live with now."

"Yeah, but you don't have to live with us," I said, asking the question I still didn't have a clear answer to. "Why are we here, when nobody thinks it's a good idea?"

"Because Justin does," JC answered without hesitating. "I hurt Justin, and I'll do whatever I can to make that up to him. If he wants to be here, then I'll let him in. There isn't anything else I can do. I just want Justin to be happy."

I wanted to tell him that he was doing the same thing again, that he was throwing his own needs away for someone he loved, but he seemed to anticipate me.

"I know what you're thinking," he said, and I raised my eyebrows. "But I'm not doing it just because I love him. It's also because I had the perfect relationship, and the perfect life, and I threw it away for nothing. I have to live with that, and if I have to punish myself, if I have to feel a little pain for Justin to be happy, then it's what I deserve for not respecting him and not respecting myself."

He said it with such firmness and finality that I didn't think I'd be able to sway him. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to. What was I going to do, coach him to fight me for Justin? I wanted to help him, but the only way to do it would be to shoot myself and my relationship in the foot.

"JC, I don't know what to say," I said finally.

"I know," he said, nodding. "You don't have to say anything. I didn't tell you this to make you feel sorry for me. I just, I wanted you to understand. You asked, and I didn't want to lie to you. You know how you said a couple minutes ago that you respect the hell out of me? I respect you, too."

"Me?" I asked, smirking.

"Yeah, you," he answered, rubbing my hair like I was a little kid. I giggled, squirming away from him. "I mean it. You've tried to be nice to me, and I've tried to be nice to you, when really, we should be at each other's throats. What you did for me this morning, I don't think I could do that. I've never been able to stand up to Kevin, not really. Today, if you hadn't come in, I probably would have done what he wanted anyway."

"Well, on the plus side, I guess he probably won't be calling anymore," I said, trying not to smile. I was blushing, and would have done anything to keep him from looking at me like that. All I'd done was tell someone off. Anyone could have done it.

"Probably not," JC agreed. We were both quiet for a second, and then he stood again. "I haven't eaten today. Do you maybe want to go inside and make some lunch or something? We could watch a movie, hang out, wait for Justin to get back?"

"Sure," I answered, standing. "Justin and I thought we would eat in tonight. You want to have dinner with us?"

"Sure," JC answered, patting my shoulder as we walked into the house.

It took Justin a few more hours to make it home. In the meantime, JC and I lounged around the music room watching television, commenting on the shows and flipping channels, doing our best to pretend like the rest of the day hadn't happened. I felt kind of overwhelmed, like he'd driven over me with a truck, and I couldn't imagine how he felt. I did feel like he and I were a lot closer, though, like somehow we'd actually become a weird sort of friends. I sill had questions, but I wanted to keep thinking about things, and just letting them simmer before I said anything.

Justin burst through the door with balloons, flowers, candy, and a tiny stuffed bear, charging across the music room and jumping into my lap so hard that it knocked the wind out of me. He dropped all of the presents on me, kissing me on the lips and the cheeks as JC snickered from the other couch.

"Justin?" I squeaked, trying to fight my way through the balloons to actually get a clear look at him. "What the hell?"

"I bought it all this morning," he said. "I wanted to get you presents, because you were sick, and."

"Justin, for God's sake," I said, rolling my eyes. "I had a headache. It was probably a tragic side effect of the two bottles of wine we drank last night! I'm not sick, I'm not dying, and I don't need to go to the hospital, ok?"

He blinked at me, frowning, and I immediately kissed him on the nose.

"But it was sweet of you to worry," I said quickly. Justin smiled at me, and then glanced over at JC on the other couch. He was trying to focus on the television, but didn't look upset.

"So, what did you guys do all day?" Justin asked, climbing off of me.

"Hung out," I answered, shrugging.

"Talked," JC added.

"Watched TV," I concluded.

"Cool," Justin said, climbing off of me and heading for the kitchen. "What's for dinner?"

JC and I looked at each other, something passing between us, but again his face was again unreadable to me.

To be continued.