After our aquatic escapade we decided to take a quick shower together and after an encore in the bedroom we fell asleep in each other’s arms. Both exhausted but extremely happy. This had been the most time we’d spent together in weeks. 

JC’s rumbling tummy woke me up. He was still fast asleep, spread out on the bed. His chest rising and falling with every breath. I sat up on the bed and admired him for a minute. I jumped up from the bed, put on my sweats and then hurried downstairs to start cooking dinner.

JC came downstairs after a while, wearing sweatpants and nothing else. I smiled at him as he wrapped one arm around my waist and pecked my cheek quickly and then went to the fridge to retrieve two beers. He tilted his head towards me and offered me one. 

I shook my head, “I’m having wine,” I told him and looked over to my already half empty wine glass beside the stove. I effortlessly minced some cilantro and dropped it into the pot whose contents were already slowly boiling. 

JC smiled biting his lip. “I love to watch you cook.” he said as he sat down at the kitchen island. 

“Sit tight babe, it’ll be ready in 5 minutes.” 

He opened a couple drawers taking out place mats, bowls and cutlery and placed them neatly on the island, in front of the stools, taking a seat on one of them. 

I stirred the pot and took a deep breath. 

“So, Jayce,” I said nervously, “I kinda wanted to talk to you about something.” 

He looked up from the newspaper he’d found on the table and smiled. 

“I am applying to the USMLE step 2 exam… because I am considering doing my residency here in the states.” JC looked at me with a blank expression. 

“O-k,” he said. “I kinda already had assumed you’d do your residency here. Isn’t it what this whole rotation in the hospital is about?” 

I could feel the frustration starting to bubble up inside me. But I smiled sweetly and took a deep breath. 

“Um, yes and no, baby. I kinda need to get licensed to practice medicine here. Hence the USMLE.” 

“What is that?”

“The United States Medical Licensing Exam.” I said. He laughed, “Oh, right. Ok. So how does it work, I don’t understand.” 

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” I sang under my breath to the beat of Tearin’ up my heart. 

He puffed. “Kiki.” 

“What?”

“Why are you nervous?” 

I put the ladle down and sighed loudly. “Because this is a big deal for me, it’s a big decision.” I grabbed the pot from the stove and placed it in front of the plates. grabbed the ladle and scooped some of the brothy rice into the bowl that sat in front of JC. 

“Wow, that smells amazing.” He said, licking his lips and grabbing a spoon. “Ooop, hot.” I sat next to him and fixed myself a plate. 

“So, I already took the step 1 exam and now I need to take Step 2. This one is a two step test. The first one I’ll take back home and the second I’ll have to travel back here to examine actors and this will determine whether or not I have what it takes to practice medicine here in the States. Depending on the score I get and the hospitals I choose I will get matched, and that will determine where I do residency.” 

JC chewed a little and swallowed. 

“Ok,” he said. “Wow, this is amazing by the way.” 

“Joshua…”

“Erickaaaaa....” he giggled. “Ok, so you pick Orlando and we cross our fingers?”

“Or... I get matched somewhere with a better program…” I looked at him anxiously, “and go there.” 

He looked at his food and finished chewing the bite he had just taken. He swallowed slowly. “But if you had the chance to go here… would you?” 

“I think if you asked me to… I would.”

We both sat looking at each other, not knowing what else to say. 

--------------- 

My heart pounded as the town car came to a stop. I looked down at the beautiful little black gucci dress JC had gifted me to wear to my first red carpet. I played with the soft fabric as he squeezed my hand. 

“Don’t be nervous, it’s gonna be fun.” he told me, obviously nervous himself. 

The Atlanta premiere of Drumline, as featured artist on the soundtrack, JC was expected to attend and perform at the premiere party. 

They opened the door and a million flashes started going off. “Here we go,” JC mouthed to me as he stepped outside, waving and smiling as he helped me out of the vehicle. He held tight to my hand as we started walking. The noise from the cameras and the yelling of the photographers was unbelievable. JC breezed through the crowd like a pro, helping me along the way. I stood to the side as he posed for pictures and then went to a couple of the people calling his name to answer a few questions. He was gracious and funny and kind. He politely waved at them and then reclaimed his spot next to me, placing his hand on the small of my back as he guided me along the rest of the red carpet and into the theater. 

“Wow,” I said as the usher guided us to our seats. 

“This was the easy part, we still have the party… and the song.” he told me, as he laid his hand on my thigh. 

I bounced my head as the drums started. An actual marching band on stage getting the crowd ready. now the familiar beat of “Blowing me up” started. I felt my heart start racing, nervous and excited for JC as he took the stage and everyone went wild for him. His moves were crisp and effortless, his vocals flawless, he looked amazing and it was obvious he was having a blast up there. 

When he finished the crowd went nuts, JC took a bow smiling that million dollar smile of his and stepped off stage. 

I threw my arms around him and smooched him. I was feeling so proud. 

Everyone at the party was all smiles and praises for him, he was gracious and thankful but I could see he felt a little awkward at times by the way he would scratch the back of his neck and mumble when he talked. 

I, too, was feeling very out of place. I had never felt comfortable at the big Hollywood parties and kept tugging on my dress wishing It was a little longer. JC never left my side, though, and I was thankful for it. 

He sank into the backseat of the town car and ran his hands through his hair and exhaled loudly. “Well that was fun, kinda,” he said looking over at me. 

I smiled and laid my head on his shoulder, putting my hand in his. 

“You were amazing up there. I feel like I didn’t get the chance to tell you,” I snuggled close to him. 

“Thanks pretty girl,” he kissed the top of my head. “It was so much fun being on stage again, I missed it.” He glanced out of the window and sighed. “Dallas thinks I should do a solo album.” 

“I agree with Dallas.” JC turned to look at me. 

“You do?”

“Absolutely,” I said now facing him too. “You are such an amazing performer and songwriter. You certainly have a lot to say. It could be fun.” 

He gave me a half smile and sighed again. “I guess it could be fun…. I hate all the other stuff though. The reporters, the interviews, the pictures. It’s so much fun when the guys are there but every time I have to do it alone I feel so… alone… and out of place.”

“Well yeah but there is always a part of the job that you’re not gonna like. Like for me, I hated all of my surgical rotations, but I had to do them so I could do the clinical ones, you know?” 

“Yeah, ok nerd!” 

“Shut up, you love me.” 

“You have no idea. Now let’s go, there’s a hot tub in that hotel suite just screaming your name… and in a couple minutes you’ll be screaming mine.” I giggled loudly as he pulled me out of the car and into the hotel lobby. 

------------------

I laid awake. Turning on one side, then to the other. JC snored softly beside me. 

I had been having trouble sleeping for a few nights. My rotation was over and I was due to go home in a couple weeks. I wasn’t ready to go home, I wasn’t ready to make decisions. I wasn’t ready to leave JC. 

I had decided to stay two weeks after the rotation was over just to spend time with JC. And we enjoyed every second of our time together. After almost 4 months of living together it was going to be hell saying goodbye. 

My usual ghosts haunted me. And the thing that scared me the most was that every day a little voice in my head told me exactly what I knew I had to do... but didn’t want to. 

After much dreading the day came. The bags were packed, the plane ticket and passport were safely placed on the coffee table in the living room, the car had been arranged. And now it was time to have the conversation neither one of us wanted to have. 

I sat nervously beside my bag, waiting for JC to be done with a phone call. The rest of my luggage is already on the porch. I could hear him speaking in the next room. I let out a trembly sigh as I heard him hang up and start walking towards where I was sitting. My heart pounded in my ears, my hands were sweaty. We had started this conversation plenty of times in the last week but we never ended it… maybe because we both knew how it needed to end. 

“Sorry,” he said as he took the seat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders pulling me close to him. I buried my face in his chest and tried to speak but couldn’t. His chest rose and sank as he took a deep breath. 

“I think I know what you’re gonna say Kiki,” he said in almost a whisper. 

I looked up at him and pushed myself off of him to look at him better. 

“I think you do.” we were silent for a while just looking at each other. 

“I can’t ask you to choose me over your career,” he finally said and looked down. 

“I want you to,” I said, the tears threatening my eyes. “And at the same time I don’t want you to, because I could never say no if you did... “ I sighed loudly again and stood up. “I can’t ask you to keep waiting for me.... you need to explore what this new solo endeavour will bring and you need to put everything you have in it. We cannot keep living for one or two weeks a year with each other. It’s not fair… not to you… not to me. We barely saw each other while I was working and we were living under the same roof, and this wasn’t even close to the hours I’ll have to put in during residency” 

“I don’t wanna do this Kiki.” 

“Babe,” I said, tears streaming down my face now. “I don’t know who I am without you.” I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. “And I really should...I have been so happy these past six years, but these past few months I realized that every decision I’ve made has revolved around the possibility of seeing you...And I feel like I need to make this decision for me, not us, you know?” 

He took a step forward and grabbed my hands. “I understand…. you are right. I don’t want you to ever resent me.” he brushed my lips with his. “But I love you, and I’ve never been this happy with anyone else so a part of me is screaming at me to be selfish.” 

I pulled him closer and pressed my forehead to his. 

“I love you so much,” I said, stood up on my tiptoes and forcefully kissed his lips. His arms went around my waist and mine around his neck. We shared one last longing kiss as the bell rang. I grabbed his face and looked into his eyes. “You’ll always be my one true love.” I turned away from him and forced myself not to look back. 

----------

I walked into my parents’ house after a whole day of studying at the library. My bag felt heavy on my shoulder, my mind and my body tired. I had two months to go before the clinical part of the Step 2 test. It had been 6 months since I had been back from LA, I was done with rotations and was now waiting for graduation. I had taken the written part one month ago, my heart set on San Francisco, but just a tiny part of me considering Orlando. It was exciting and nerve racking. 

I walked into the kitchen after grabbing the mail from the table in the foyer, when I froze and dropped all the letters on the floor. JC looked up at me, sitting at the kitchen island as my mother dried a glass that she held in her hand. My eyes opened wide, my mouth went dry, my heart pounding in my chest. Six months had passed since I had last seen him, heard from him, touched him and there he was, casually sitting with my mother. 

“Honey, hi, you have a visitor,” my mom told me, the look of surprise on her face much like mine. “And I just remembered I have some errands to run,” she put the glass down and walked towards me. “I’ll be out late, I’ll see you later.” She kissed the top of my head, squeezed me quickly and bent in to whisper in my ear, “Stay calm, hear him out, I love you.” and she hurriedly exited the kitchen, then I heard the front door open and close. 

My mouth was too dry to speak. JC slowly stood up from the stool he had been sitting on. 

“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” he said. “I just really needed to talk to you.” He started towards me but then stopped before he was too close. 

I could smell his cologne and my head started spinning, I grabbed onto the counter to balance myself and keep from falling face first on the floor. 

“Im, uh… it’s um… What are you doing here?” I said. 

“Can we sit down?” he asked. I looked at him from head to toes, still not truly believing he was there, at my parents house, in front of me. 

“Um, yeah yeah, come on,” I led him to the living room. We both sat down without saying anything for a few minutes. 

“I’m sorry to just show up… I know we said we wouldn’t contact each other anymore but I needed to see you. Just to… talk to you, I guess. There were some things that I didn’t get to say to you.” 

“Wait, JC, just wait can I just…?” I started to say and before I knew it I had my arms wrapped around him and had my face buried in the crook of his neck. His smell bringing back all kinds of memories. I fought back tears, “I’ve missed you,” I whispered with a cracked voice. 

His arms now around my waist, his nose in my hair. “I’ve missed you, too pretty girl. You have no idea how hard it was to finally decide to come and see you.”

“You say it like it was a walk around the corner, It’s a 4 hour plane ride JC, what were you thinking?” I asked and without thinking my lips were on his, my hands were in his hair and with a hungry kiss my mind went blank for the first time in months. 

“Wait, wait,” JC said pushing me away. My breathing ragged. “This is not what I came here for.” He said looking at me in the eye. “Ah fuck it,” he crashed his lips into mine again and kissed me so passionately it made my head spin. 

After a while of making out like hormonal teenagers on my parents’ couch I finally managed to make myself stop. JC giggled like a little child when we finally sat up and composed ourselves. 

“That was fun,” he said, his face red, his hair a mess. I ran my hand through it trying to flatten it a little. 

“Great way to break the ice,” I giggled along with him. 

“It’s so good to see you,” he said, his hand to my cheek, “and touch you.” I closed my eyes and smooched his hand. 

“I haven’t changed my mind JC,” I finally said a little above a whisper. 

“I know babe, I just needed to talk to you. I didn’t want to do it over the phone. Email sucks, and a letter just, wouldn’t do it.” 

I looked up at him and smiled. “Ok,” I mouthed. 

“After you left I felt so empty. And it wasn’t that you weren’t there, you were never there for most of our relationship but I missed talking to you and telling you stuff and asking for your opinion and advice and it slowly made me realize that you were absolutely right. I had been relying on you to make decisions for me, like I let you do all the planning around our meetings and stuff so I could dive right into my ‘art’ and then just show up, and that was not fair, for both of us.” 

I smiled at him and then looked down at my hands. 

“Do you know where you’re going to be doing residency?” 

“I still have one more test, I need to submit my list next week, though.” 

“And number one is still…?”

“San Francisco.” He nodded in understanding. 

“I brought you something. I decided to go through with the solo album.” My eyes opened wide and I smiled big. Feeling very proud. “I’ve been writing like crazy and this one…” he went into his duffel bag and took out a little box. “Just poured out of me and I want you to hear it… it’s probably going on the album.” 

We talked for a while longer. He told me all about recording his songs, having fun with it. Talking to the guys about when they were going to go back to recording for Nsync, writing for Nsync, too. It was all looking very exciting for him. I told him about studying for the exams, finishing medical school. I showed him my gown for the graduation ceremony that was happening in two weeks. It was nice talking to him, being close, together. 

"You know what I wanted to tell you?" JC said. "Remember I made fun of your stupid no coming to each other's homes rule, back then?" I nodded. "Well, it turns out you were right, honey. It became unbearable to be in that house without you... so -i decided to sell it." 

"You what?"

"Well yeah, the solo thing keeps me in LA most of the time anyway, so that's where I'm headed." 

And finally the time came again. He had to go, get on a plane. I made fun of him again for being crazy enough to come see me and secretly thanked God for it. 

He wrapped his arms around my waist as we stood on the doorway. His lips close to my ear, I could feel his breath on my skin. 

“I love you, Kiki,” he whispered. “And you’ll kick ass and become the best doctor in the world and cure all the diseases.”

“Jace,” I whispered back. 

“Shhh, you’ll see.” He kissed me softly on the lips. Then gave me a little smile and walked away. 

I walked back into the living room and opened the box he gave me which contained a cd case and a little bag. I was so excited to hear the song my hands were shaking. 

I placed the cd quickly into the stereo system and pressed play. A beautiful melody started coming through the speakers, violins accompanied and when JC’s vocals came on I got goosebumps. 

“Staring out, depressed about

What words I have to plead

So torn apart” 

I sat down with my hands over my mouth. The song was beautiful, the lyrics were heartbreaking. 

“But the days go by and

Things get better” 

Tears filled my eyes. 

“Past the point of reasons

I just want you to believe

That it’s not your fault.” 

Tears streaming down my face now. 

“We’re not the type to just give up

But I know that it’s what’s best for us

The days go by and

Things get better

We’ll pass some crossing roads

Surviving on our own

But the days go by and…”

I sighed loudly and turned to look at the case, on it scribbled in JC’s messy handwriting was “Kiki’s song” I laughed. “God I hope he finds a better title than that.” 

Then I remembered the little bag that came with the CD, I rushed to open it and from it fell the little lion stone attached to the leather string I had bought for him in Germany along with a note. “Find your way back to me, pretty girl. I'll be ready when you are” 

--------------------

I sat nervously in the small waiting room waiting to be called into the room with the examiners. My exam had been scheduled in New York, so that’s where I was, as the TV in the waiting room playing the E! channel cut to footage of Joan Rivers doing interviews on the red carpet of the Grammys. And that’s when I saw his face. JC, on TV, being interviewed. I laughed to myself. 

“So JC, what have you been up to?” 

“Well, you know just having fun, recording on my own, discovering my own voice and things like that.” I watched the interview, my nerves calming a little just by the sound of his voice. 

“One last question darling, the fans want to know. Whatever happened to that necklace you used to wear?” Joan asked him. He gave her a cheeky smile. 

“Well, you know, sometimes you just need to move on but you know, it was always very special to me so it’s being kept safe and I’m sure it’ll find its way back to me someday.” and with that he turned to the camera and gave it a little wink, just as I was being called into the examination room.