Salina had tried everything possible to get out of going to the bbq that Saturday but nothing worked. She didn’t even understand why someone would be having a bbq in December but JC said that it would still be warm enough and that it was a yearly tradition. So here she was at 1 o’clock on Saturday afternoon running around like crazy trying to get herself together enough to go to a bbq.
A few minutes later the doorbell rang and Vanessa toddled as fast as she could to the door. “Hi!” she said through the door.
“Nessa?” JC asked. “Where’s your mommy?”
“Mama?” Vanessa asked and looked around.
“Yeah, go find your mama, Nessa.”
“Kay.” She turned around and toddled back to her mother’s room. “Mama?”
“Yeah, mi hija?” Salina asked as she finished putting on lipgloss.
“Bye bye!” She said using the name she’d given JC.
“He’s here?” Salina asked and picked up her daughter as she walked to the door. “You’re gonna have to learn his name. Say ‘J..C’.”
“C?”
“Close enough.” Salina said as she opened the door to reveal JC leaning rather sexily against her doorframe dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt left open to reveal a wifebeater. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He said as she stepped back and let him enter.
JC immediately took Vanessa from Salina’s arms and Salina went into Vanessa’s room to retrieve the ever present diaper bag. “Hey Nessie-girl.” JC cooed.
“C?”
“Hey, she just said my name!” JC exclaimed to Salina who smiled as she walked in. “Well, half of it anyway.” He shrugged. He looked over at Salina who was still silent and looking down to her feet. “Are you still nervous about meeting everyone?”
“Can you blame me?” She asked quietly.
“No, I guess I can’t.” He said walking over to her and pulling her into a small hug.
Neither one of them missed the perfect way that they fit against each other or how well Vanessa fit in right next to them. Everything about that split moment just seemed perfect. Salina pulled away, however, and moved to take Vanessa. “You ready?”
“Yep. Do you have a carseat for her?”
“It’s by the door.”
JC moved to lift the carseat and held the door open for Salina as she walked out with the little girl and their bag.
The bbq was in full swing by the time the trio arrived and that made Salina even more nervous. She’d have to meet everyone at once instead of in stages like she had prepared herself for.
“It looks like we’re a little late.” JC said as they walked up the steps to Chris front door. He didn’t ring the doorbell or knock like Salina had expected, he took out a key ring, unlocked the door and just walked right in. Salina stood in awe of him.
“You have a key to his house?”
”Yeah, we all traded keys early on.”
“Why?” She said entering the house.
“Well, when we first started getting money Joey and Chris were the only two with houses so they gave us keys so that we could crash there if we wanted to and it just became a thing that whenever we bought a house we gave at least one of other guys in the group a key.” He said leading her to the back of the house.
“Uncle C! Uncle C!” A little girl about 5 came running towards JC’s legs and latched on.
“Hey, there Bri-Bri. How are you doing? You’ve gotten so big!”
“I’m good. Daddy said if its okay with you I can come over to your house and record my Christmas song for mommy.”
“That sounds great. Just have your daddy call me, okay?” He looked back at Salina with a smile before leaning down to the little girl again. “Hey Bri, this is Salina. Salina this is Brianna.”
Salina smiled at the little girl before turning back to JC. “You’re niece?”
”Kind of. She’s Joey’s daughter. But all the kids call us ‘Uncle’.”
“All?” She said but was cut off by Brianna.
“You’re pretty.”
“Thank you, Brianna. So are you.”
“Uncle C says it’s a good thing I look like my mommy and not my daddy because mommy’s a…”
”Brianna!” A woman who looked about Salina’s age stood in the doorway of the living room with her hands on her hips. “Do not finish that sentence.”
“But Uncle C”“
“I’ll deal with Uncle C later go see if you can help Carrie with the boys okay?” She said before turning to JC. “What are you teaching my child?”
”Nothing. I think it was Chris who said that stuff.” He said with his hands up.
The woman shook her head and then turned to Salina and smiled. “Hi, you must be Salina. I’m Kelly, Joey’s fiancée and Brianna’s mother.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m so glad this one talked you into coming.”
“It was more like conned into coming but whatever.” She laughed.
“And who is this beautiful creature?”
“This is my daughter, Vanessa.” She said looking down at the child who was remaining quiet and taking in the scene.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hi.” Vanessa said quietly.
Kelly smiled and turned her attention back to Salina. “Come on, Salina, I’ll show you where you can put the diaper bag and everything.” She said taking Salina’s hand and leading her away from JC. “JC, everyone is out back so you should go say hi.”
“Yeah.” JC said and made his way to the backyard.
After about ten minutes of chatting with Kelly a little, Salina decided to head out back and meet everyone. She excused herself from Kelly and began walking in the direction of what she thought was the backyard, however, she only ended up in the kitchen. “Okay, mi hija, how do we get back there…I hear the voices but I don’t know how to get there.”
“Hi.” A male voice came from behind her. “Salina?”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“I’m Justin. We spoke on the phone.”
“Yeah. Hi nice to see you.”
“You lost?”
Salina blushed. “A little.”
Justin chuckled then grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator before offering her one which she declined. “This house is so twisted around, I think Chris even gets lost sometimes. Follow me.”
Justin lead the way to the glass door that lead to the backyard and held the door open for her. “Hey Jace, I think you lost something.” He yelled to JC who was sitting at the large table where everyone seemed to have gathered around. Upon seeing Salina he immediately hopped up and was to her side.
“Everyone…this is Salina, our new Publicist. Salina this is going from the back to the front…over there burning the food are Chris and Lance; there’s Carrie, the two boys are their sons, Justin and Joshua, then there’s Lynn, Justin’s mom; Paul, Justin’s dad; Justin you met, Cameron, Joey, Bev, Chris’ mom; Emily, Chris’ sister; Taylor, Chris’ other sister; Tyler, my brother; and, Steve, Joey’s brother.” He said. “Oh yeah and everyone this little girl is Salina’s daughter, Vanessa.” He said taking Vanessa out of Salina’s arms.
“Um…hi everyone.” Salina smiled nervously.
They all greeted her and invited her to sit down. Salina sat down next to JC and went to take Vanessa from him, but she refused her and kept entertaining herself with JC’s necklace.
“So, Salina, how are you adapting to life in Orlando?” Lynn asked.
“Good, thank you. It’s a lot calmer than Los Angeles, so I like it.” They all nodded and then broke off into their own smaller conversations.
Salina spent the rest of the evening chatting with the girls and watching the guys play basketball with the kids. At one point Salina even allowed JC to take Vanessa out and put her on his shoulders as he played with the guys. When JC began to smell something funky he took her over to Salina.
“Mommy, I think your baby went doo-doo.” He said with a turned up nose.
Salina smiled up at him feeling a bit more relaxed from wine coolers she’d had. “Well, Carrie here tells me you’re a pretty good diaper changer.”
Carrie nodded. “Out of all five of them I think he’s the best and two of them have kids of their own.”
JC whined. “That doesn’t mean I like to do it.”
“Hey, the rule is whoever is holding her when she goes has to change her.” Salina replied.
“So what happens if no one’s holding her?” He challenged.
“Whoever held her last.”
“Please help me.” He complained.
Salina sighed and stood up and followed him into the house. “What are you going to do when you have your own kids and they need their diapers changed?”
He smiled innocently over his shoulder at her. “Send them to you?”
She chuckled. “Don’t count on it.”
“Ok.” JC said as he laid Vanessa on the blanket spread out on the floor in one of the guest bedrooms that had been allocated the kiddie room. He reached for the diaper bag as Salina stood at the door and watched. “We can do this can’t we kiddo?”
He carefully took out a fresh diaper and was unsnapped her outfit. He was becoming quite confident when he unfastened her dirty diaper and Vanessa started to squirm and cry. “Hey, what’s up, kid? I just wanna get ya clean.”
Salina took that opportunity to walk over to him and calm her daughter down a little. “She’s getting tired. It’s past her naptime. I should lay her down.”
JC finished securing the new diaper and lifted her up. “Can I put her down?”
“Uh…sure. I’ll be downstairs.”
“Ok.”
Salina walked towards the door and had just exited the room when she heard JC start singing to her.
When the visions around you
Bring Tears to your eyes
And all that’s around you
Are secrets and lies
I’ll be your strength
I’ll be your warmth
Keeping your faith when it’s gone
The one you should call
Is standing here all alone
And I will take
You in my arms
And hold you right where you belong
Till the day my life is through
This I promise you…This I promise you
I’ve loved you forever
In lifetimes before
And I promise you never
Will you hurt anymore
I give you my word
I give you my heart
This is a battle we’ve won
And with this vow
Forever has now begun
And I will take
You in my arms
And hold you right where you belong
Till the day my life is through
This I promise you
Salina hadn’t even realized that JC had stopped singing as she stood in the hallway and silent tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t realize until he stepped out of the room and almost slammed into her.
“Whoa.” He chuckled. “Sorry.” He looked at her closely. “Salina, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”
She sniffled. “You sang to my baby.”
He laughed. “Yeah. It’s the best way to get kids to go to sleep, I’ve found. What about that makes you cry?”
“Because every time I think that I might find a fault in you, you do something like this with me or Vanessa and it only reinforces my belief that you are perfect.”
“Aww.” He said and pulled her into a hug. “Trust me, I have many, many faults.”
”Like what?” She asked her voice slightly muffled by his shirt.
“Well….I’m really bad at dancing.” He joked.
She giggled. “Shut up.”
“No, really. Ask any of the guys I am far from perfect. A perfect guy would have given you the list of rejected appearances the next day and not two weeks later.”
”Well, that makes me feel better.”
“I’m glad.” He smiled before pulling back and wiping the tears off of her cheeks. “Let’s go downstairs.”
She agreed and they headed back downstairs where everyone was now congregated in the large living room, the family members had left and all that was left were the guys, Cameron, Carrie, Kelly, Brianna and the twins.
“Where’ve you guys been?” Chris asked.
“We put Vanessa to sleep.” Salina answered sitting down next to Lance with JC on the other side of her.
“I put Vanessa to sleep. You watched.” JC corrected.
“Details, details.” She waved him off.
“So, Jace, we were saying that everyone is gonna go to Justin’s for Christmas eve, you in?” Joey informed.
“Yep.” He nodded.
“What about you, Salina? See you at Justin’s?” Kelly asked.
“Oh”uh”I guess.” Salina offered a small smile.
The rest of the evening was spent talking and laughing about the occurrences in each guy’s lives. Salina had been informed that the guys hadn’t been in one place like this since Chris’ birthday in October and even then none of them could stay long.
Halfway through their conversation, JC got up to get something to drink and Joey followed him in.
“So?” Joey asked as JC opened his soda and took another swig.
JC looked at him innocently. “What?”
“What’s up with you and the gorgeous publicist?”
“Better not let Kelly hear you saying that.”
Joey waved him off. “Seriously, man, you’ve been to WEG more times these last few weeks than I think you ever have, you pick her up and bring her here and now you’re putting her kid to sleep? Sounds like one big happy family to me.’
“You’re way off here, dude.”
“You’re not attracted to her?”
“Of course I am, Joe. Who wouldn't be? But I haven’t had a real relationship since Bobbie.”
“So, it’s about time you start one.’’
“Not with the new publicist.” JC said shaking his head.
“Why?”
“Because, Joe. She’s new here and at WEG plus she has a kid.” JC whispered loudly.
“So, are you being a pussy cause she’s new here or cause she has a kid?”
JC shook his head and pointed at Joey. “Joey, just leave it alone ok?”
Joey just held up his hands and nodded before following JC out the door back to where everyone was.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Story Tags: boyfriendjc jc justin hospital tabloids joey chris lance solojc
