Kevin pulled up in front of Johnny's house and shut off the car, looked over at Howie and smiled. He'd been biting his tongue, actively not bringing up the events of the past evening. Howie wasn't one to pry, but Kevin knew he wanted some sort of story after opening his bedroom door that morning to find Kevin just arriving home. The others were already inside, probably fighting about who got to sing what, Nick's voice squeaking out of control when he got himself worked up. Kevin worried that at this rate he'd be eighty before they actually had an album. They were supposed to have planning meetings in the morning, then Johnny promised he would take them out to lunch, and then it was vocal rehearsals with Carl all afternoon. "Come on in guys," Johnny called from the kitchen when Howie opened the front door, knocking as he did so. Nick was reading over some lyrics at the dining room table, while Brian and AJ argued over the game of pool they were engaged in. Nick's face was all screwed up in a scowl, and Jane was talking to Johnny in the corner of the kitchen. From the looks of things it was going to be awhile before the actual meeting began, so Howie and Kevin retreated to a couch in the living room. "So what do you know about Chris?" Kevin asked. Howie was leaning over to pick up the television remote, but paused and said, "Chris who? Chris the waiter Chris?" "Yeah." They didn't know many other Chris's. Howie shrugged and picked up a magazine instead. "I told you. He's just a guy I didn't really know from Valencia. He talks a lot. Why?" "I'm just wondering," Kevin said, and he had to smile a little. Chris did talk a lot. Howie wasn't wrong about that. "Is this about last night?" Howie asked, and that was it, the game was up and it was time for Kevin to share. He wasn't going to actively withhold information, he just liked to wait it out until Howie asked. Howie never asked unless provoked and sometimes the game went on for days. "Actually, yeah." Kevin said, smiling. The phone rang and Johnny shushed Brian and AJ for the fourth time, shooing Nick out of the dining room as he went to answer it. Nick made a beeline for the kitchen, and Kevin settled back into the couch ready to spill everything to Howie. And Howie, patient as ever, was more than ready to listen. "So what now?" Howie asked when Kevin had finished his tale of bad beer, bad television, and good sex. Kevin shrugged and was about to speak when Johnny shouted and Brian and AJ started shrieking in the other room. They heard the clatter of pool cues falling and then Nick was racing toward them from the kitchen, with Brian, AJ, Johnny, and Jane in tow. "What happened?" Howie asked, jumping up from the couch. "They're releasing You've Got It Goin'!" AJ shouted, grabbing Howie's arms. "What?" Kevin asked. "When?" "That was Lou on the phone," Johnny explained. "David called and Jive wants you to make a video. They're going to release the song as your first single in a few months. Early fall. This is the big time guys." Kevin closed his eyes, grinned, and hugged Johnny. The hug led to group hugs, and then singing, and eventually they all piled out of Johnny's house to celebrate. "So are you going to call him?" Brian asked Kevin, dropping two slices of toast on a plate and handing it to Kevin. "Call who?" Kevin asked, rubbing his eyes. He yawned and took a large bite of the toast, frowning at the dryness of the bread. Brian slid the jar of raspberry jam across the table. "AJ," Brian said and rolled his eyes. "Who do you think? Chris." Kevin blinked at Brian, suddenly feeling much more awake than he had only moments before. It wasn't that he actively kept things from Brian. It was just that there were some things that one didn't tell their much younger, very conservative, very much a Littrell cousin. Kevin and Brian weren't close growing up. Kevin, though he would never admit it, had often thought of Brian as sick and frail, and he remembered all too clearly the fear that everyone felt those first few years of Brian's life. Since then Kevin hadn't been able to help it, he'd looked at Brian a little differently, as though he was made of glass that might crack in an instant. There had never been any doubt, however, that Brian could sing. Could sing like an angel in the form of a grinning boy with scabs on his knees. That was what Kevin remembered when he called Brian, and since then, he'd become more than Kevin's cousin who was once sick and could sing his heart out. He'd become a friend, and one of the strongest people Kevin had ever met. But he was still Brian, and Brian had never been Kevin's confidant. That's what Kevin had Howie for. In Kentucky it had been his best friend Keith, and then for a time he could talk to Kristin, but that hadn't lasted as long as he'd hoped it would. And now there was Howie. Kevin wouldn't say that they were all that close. Friends, sure, but Howie was really much closer to AJ and Kevin used to spend a lot of time with Kristin. He wasn't any closer to Howie than he was to Brian or AJ, but Howie he could talk to. Howie had a gift, he could listen with the most open and accepting manner that Kevin had ever seen. He gave advice effortlessly, and more often than not it was good sound advice. And the best part was that Howie was completely unaware of this gift. "I'm not good at this," he would say, forever modest, but he was good at it. And without asking for the position, Howie had naturally become the confidante of all of the boys. Kevin didn't envy him that. Even Nick ran to Howie with problems or questions before he would even think to approach Kevin. "Oh, come on," Brian said, pulling Kevin from his thoughts and grabbing the jam back for his own toast. "We all know. And like it wasn't obvious when you made us all go to Pizza Hut last Friday. I mean, Pizza Hut? Even Nicky guessed what was up after that." "Great," Kevin said dryly. "So you're going to call him, right?" Brian pressed. "We think you should call him." "Oh, we do, do we? I don't know." His relationship with Kristin had just ended weeks before after all, and Kevin was still trying to wrap his brain around the fact that his little cousin was trying to play matchmaker. "You'd be stupid not to," Brian said, his mouth full of bread and jam. "Chris seems like a cool guy. I like him." "Maybe," Kevin conceded, and with that the two finished their breakfast in silence. Kevin didn't call. He didn't think to during his morning workout, nor did he think about it over lunch with Howie and AJ. As far as Johnny and Lou were concerned, the time for celebration was over. The time for buckling down and increasing rehearsal time had come. Time to start planning a video. Since the news, still less than two weeks old, Lou was becoming even stricter with image. For Kevin, afternoon rehearsal was spent contemplating the song he was trying to write, wondering if it had a chance of making the album, working on the note Carl said he kept missing, and the strict image Lou demanded he uphold. This time Lou had banned any and all facial hair, tattoos, piercings, and unsavory apparel. "Unsavory apparel?" AJ asked. "What does that mean?" "I'm thinking about getting my belly button pierced," Kevin said, coming up beside Howie during their second fifteen-minute break. One more to go and they were free for the evening. "Why?" Howie asked, scrunching up his nose and squinting at Kevin. Then he seemed to think about it a little and his cheeks began to turn pink. Kevin smirked. Howie blushed more than a fourteen-year-old girl. "Mostly I wanted to see your reaction," Kevin said. "You never disappoint." Howie snorted. "Your belly button? Do guys even pierce their belly buttons?" "Why not?" Kevin asked. "I bet it would piss Lou off royally, anyway." "Oh," Howie said, "good idea. Piss off the one man that is willing to help us make it big. Are you going out tonight?" Howie was twenty-one and the thrill of legally going out and having a few too many drinks was still high on his list of worthwhile pastimes. "Sounds good," Kevin nodded. Kevin didn't think about his morning conversation at all until his fourth beer when he was just starting to feel really good and everyone around him was becoming more lovely and desirable. Howie slipped onto the stool beside Kevin at the bar, his cheeks a permanent shade of pink now that he had some alcohol in his system. He smiled at Kevin and Kevin grinned back, flashing a few too many teeth. "You're drunk," Howie observed. "Getting there," Kevin agreed. "Getting there." "Good." "Why? Planning to seduce me?" "Hah. Yeah, not so much," Howie laughed, looking away from Kevin to scan the far reaches of the tiny hole in the wall that somehow passed for a bar. Kevin frowned. "Brian has me thinking that Chris is some sort of girl that will be all pissy and vengeance seeking about the fact that I didn't call him post-fuck." "Chris the waiter?" "We don't know any other Chris's." "Well, you could have been talking about Kristin." "Kristin is a girl. I expect her to act like one." "So Chris the waiter then," Howie confirmed. "Do you think he'll start sending me dead things in the mail?" Howie laughed. "Please don't tell me that has happened to you before." "No, not me. My brother." "Well," Howie said, and he seemed to actually be contemplating the possibility that Kevin would begin receiving dead things in the mail. "It seems unlikely," he concluded. Howie finished his beer, and then grabbed Kevin's and finished that too before hailing the bartender and ordering another round. "I thought you had fun," Howie said. "I did." "But you aren't up for more fun." "I didn't say that." "But you aren't going to call him." "I haven't decided. He was good. I mean - you know - " "You had fun." "Yes." "And you might want to have more. Fun. That's just fun and nothing else." "Yes." Kevin frowned, wondering if he had actually followed any of that. He stood from his stool and looked down at Howie. "Let's go have some fun. Let's go get me pierced." Howie protested, but ultimately lost, and by the time the two returned to their apartment Brian had long been asleep, Kevin's stomach was a tad sore, and Chris's phone number was nowhere to be found. "I know it's here somewhere," Kevin grumbled to himself, throwing clothes around his bedroom. Howie had disappeared into his own room, looking about ready to keel over and Kevin guessed that he was already sound asleep, and most likely snoring. "Fuck," he said. He was no longer at all intoxicated, but still he couldn't recall what he was even wearing the night he went home with Chris. Then Kevin spotted the laundry basket in the corner. All clean clothes that he'd neglected to fold after he'd pulled them from the dryer. All undoubtedly wrinkled, as usual. He could almost see his mother frowning and shaking her head all the way from Kentucky. And sure enough, digging through the basket, he found the bits of napkin mixed in with the clothes, the napkin that had once held the very phone number he was searching for. "Fuck," Kevin said, and collapsed back on the bed. "Well, it's not like you don't know where to find him," Kevin mocked, his voice a high falsetto. He parked his car and slammed the door, before straightening his clothes and heading toward the door to the restaurant. This is the stupidest idea ever, Kevin thought and not for the first time wondered why he was even doing it. 'Because you had fun,' Kevin thought. 'You had fun, and you're on the rebound and Chris seemed interested. And interesting. And different.' Didn't make it a less stupid plan. "One?" the hostess asked, plucking a menu from the rack by the front podium. "Yeah," Kevin said. "Just one. And hey," he leaned on the podium and glanced at the hostess's seating chart, "could you sit me in Chris's section?" "Kirkpatrick?" she squinted, wiped off an X she had made over one box on the chart, and Xed out another instead. "Sure," she said. "Follow me." Kevin rarely went to restaurants on his own, and he couldn't help feeling self-conscious sitting there at the table. He thought about calling the hostess back and telling her that it would actually be two, that he was waiting for a friend, so at least he'd have the other menu there sitting across from him. But that was just silly. Much like the whole idea was silly in the first place. Kevin was about to stand up and leave, forget about the whole thing, but when he looked up Chris was leaning on his table, smiling at him. "What's up?" "Not much," Kevin said. He pointed to his menu. "I'm hungry." "So you came to my restaurant all by yourself? There's a deli right down the street." "I'll have a beer," Kevin said. "Bud light." "Can I see some ID," Chris asked. "I washed your number," Kevin said, instead, reaching into his back pocket to humor Chris. "Booty call?" "What? No. Just - you want to get together tonight? Go to a bar or something?" "Okay," Chris nodded. "Sure." He grabbed his pen and jotted his number down on a coaster, and Kevin slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. "Don't wash it. You still want that beer?" "Nah," Kevin said, dropping a few dollars on the table anyway. "I think I'm just gonna go. I'll call you later." And this time Kevin saved the coaster, and this time Kevin actually did call. They met up at a bar, shared a few beers, and played darts. Chris warned Kevin that he was a horrible shot and Kevin discovered that he was by no means being modest. Chris claimed that despite his shoddy darts skills, he kicked ass at basketball. "I wipe the pavement with the faces of my opponents." "I'll bet," Kevin said, not doubting it for a moment. "So you're not giving it another go with the girl Chris then? Is that what this is about?" Chris asked as they left the bar. Kevin frowned. "Huh," he said. "You know, I hadn't even really thought about it. I guess not." He'd thought about her, but it hadn't once crossed his mind to call, go to her apartment, try to make it up to her. It was the first time - after their third breakup - that Kevin thought that maybe they actually were over. "You were just so entranced by my sharp wit and intellect that you completely forgot about her." Chris nodded knowingly and Kevin laughed. Next