2. You’re A Piece Of Shit
When I look back on love
And all the things that we were guilty of
All the words I should’ve said
And how you always walk ahead of me
How could I have been so naive?
The tragedy of September 11th took a huge toll on me. I mean, I guess it’s needless to say that it fucked with everyone for quite a while, but the notion of such an inhumane act put a lot of my shit into perspective. It scared me, it humbled me, and made an honest man out of me. Sort of.
My Saturday, September 15th afternoon had been spent doubling adlibs for the ‘What’s Going On’ collaborative effort. I was still in that weird, depressive headspace, but I was prepared to do whatever I could for the song.
With Vh1 cameras all over the studio, I was careful to avoid all contact with Beyonce. After the attack, I told her that our extracurricular activities couldn’t continue. If I was gonna cherish my life, I had to live it honestly at the very least. She was disappointed, but she didn’t go psycho or anything; she understood. Besides, our little affair had only been five days strong. I was glad that we hadn’t gotten in too deep. Sort of.
But anyway, as I was saying, everyone’s Saturday had been consumed with the song, but Britney and I had plans to escape to Hawaii once we finished our small, significant parts. She thought we needed a vacation; I thought we needed a little truth in our relationship. Stupid as it may have been, I didn’t want to keep living a lie.
It was all going relatively well. I hadn’t quite concocted the right words to say, but the more time I spent with Brit, the more convinced I was that something had to be said. I wasn’t looking for a venue to hurt her, necessarily “ I was past my angry phase. I was just ready to clear the air and give the two of us a new beginning. Maybe that wasn’t exactly the right way to go about doing it, but I went with what I knew.
Lounging around our Hawaiian villa, watching Pretty in Pink for the millionth time, the urge suddenly struck me to open up a new can of worms. Pulling myself from the confinement of Britney lying on top of me, I quietly asked, “Brit, can I ask you a question?”
“Anything, baby.” She smiled and sat up on the tropical floral-print of the wicker sofa. “What’s up?”
“I was wondering “ and this is gonna seem really out of the blue,” I explained, “but if I were to ask you to be completely honest with me, would you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I asked you something, would you be totally honest in your answer? Even if it could possibly and would probably hurt me?”
She must’ve noticed my unease, because alarm came crashing over her gorgeous chocolate orbs. “Where’s this coming from, J?”
When I look into your eyes, you don’t see me
I can hear it in your voice, you don’t need me
“Can you answer the question?”
“Baby“.”
“Please.”
“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m on the witness stand?” she smiled nervously.
“I just want an answer.”
“Of course I would,” she nodded, covering my back with her small, comforting hands. “Of course.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have something to ask me?”
“No,” I lied, looking down at the soft white floor tiles. “No, it was just a question.”
“Are you sure?”
“Have you ever cheated on me?” I blurted, praying that it didn’t come out as crass as it sounded in my head.
“What?” She let out another jittery chuckle. “How could you think that?”
“I don’t think it. I’m asking you a question.”
“Why would you ask it, J? You must’ve thought it if you could come up with the question.”
“It’s a fucking question, Britney. Answer it.”
She apprehensively backed away from me, moving to the other side of the couch. “No, Justin. I’ve never cheated on you.”
Guess I was missing all the signs
Somehow, I didn’t realize that you were changing down inside
About to walk out of my life
“Honestly,” I asked.
“Honestly,” she confirmed softly.
“Well,” I began to admit, “I’ve been with someone else.”
“What?”
“I cheated on you.”
“Justin “.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Baby, you already apologized for the ‘Gone’ video when you didn’t have to. You were just doing your job. And it hurt, yeah, but that wasn’t cheating.”
I laughed in a way that gave off an air of malevolence “ well, to me it did, anyway. “No“.”
“Yes, sweetie. Stop blaming yourself for that.”
“No,” I jumped in. “I cheated. I fucked someone else, willingly, more than once. And I initiated it every single time.” I momentarily paused so that she could digest my words before adding, “So now, do you have something to confess?”
When I ask what’s on your mind, did you hear me?
She stared over at me with shocked eyes, confused eyes. “What are you trying to do here, Justin?”
“I’m trying to tell the truth!
“Why?”
“Do you even know what that is anymore?”
“How dare you say that to me.”
“All I want is the truth, Britney.”
“Justin... I “ I don’t know what to say.”
“Just admit it, Britney. Please.”
“Why?”
“I need to hear you say it.”
“Why!”
“Because I need to know that you can trust me with the truth,” I answered softly.
“You’re not trusting me,” she countered.
“You won’t let me! Tell me, Britney.”
“I don’t wanna lie,” she divulged, a huge lonely tear rushing down her cheek, “but I can’t tell the truth.”
“Please,” I begged. I got down on bended knee in front of her and grabbed her hand. “Please.”
She snatched her hand away and wiped her face harshly. “Okay!” she relented. She avoided my eyes as she said, “Me and Wade have been together only... God knows how many times.” She sighed, still wiping her face. “Are you happy?”
Tell me, what happened to the time
When you had to be near me
“No...” I trailed off. “But thank you for telling me.”
“Why? Why did you want that?”
“Because I already knew,” I affirmed. “I just had to hear it from you.”
“Why?”
“I needed to hear it so that I could forgive you.”
“You’re out of your mind,” she stated, rising from her seat.
“Do you love him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not yet,” she reconsidered.
“He said that he loves you,” I told her, holding back tears.
“He told you?” she shouted. “What the hell.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”
“Why would he tell you?”
“Because he’s a slightly better man than you are a woman.”
“Ju“.”
“I’m sorry,” I quickly shot back. “I’m sorry.”
She very slowly made circles around the large, clean room, her tears dropping to the floor as she paced and pondered. “Who was she?”
“Does it matter?” I sighed.
“You wanted the truth, I gave it to you. Give it back to me.”
“I gave you the truth, too.”
“All of it, Justin!”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing would come out. Just a word of advice, y’all: Be careful what you wish for. “Beyonce,” I finally said quietly.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Irrelevant.”
“But I am.”
“Why did you do it?” she demanded.
“Because I was too weak to confront you. I wanted to hurt you the way I’d been hurt.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since the VMAs.”
“You’re a piece of shit,” she spewed, matter-of-factly.
“So are you,” I quipped. “You started this.”
“Well, why didn’t you just break up with me? Two wrongs don’t make a right, Justin.”
“I know that.”
“You’re a fuckin’ punk, dude.”
“I know that, too. I’m not trying to pretend here.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” she scoffed. “You’re trying to pretend that all this confessing is going to fix things; that we’ll be able to start over after this.”
“If I’m willing to forgive you, then you have to be willing to give us another try.”
Once we were two halves of one whole
You know you lived inside my soul
“I don’t have to do anything. You’re just as much to blame here as I am.”
“I didn’t fall in love with someone else,” I said harshly, instantly wishing I could take back my tone.
“Yeah, you just gave your body to someone else.”
“But not because you weren’t enough for me, Britney. It was because I found out I wasn’t enough for you.” And that’s when my own tears made their presence known. “You gave him everything that I’ve worked so hard to uncover in you.”
One day you took yourself away
Left me wondering what to say
“That is...”
“That’s what? That’s true, right?” I chided, wiping my face. “Why wasn’t I enough?”
“You were, Justin. You are enough.” She leaned into the balcony door and softly collapsed to the floor. “Sometimes, you’re just too much.”
There it is, folks. That classic problem that I’d had with every woman in my life. I loved them too damn much. Well, I certainly wasn’t having that shit anymore. That moment was a definitive turning point in my life. I’m too much. Yeah, well, that taught me to never expect anything from anyone in this lifetime. People give and people take. They don’t necessarily say ‘Please’ and ‘Thanks’, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I forgive you’. You get used to it and you do it, too. Maybe then, you find yourself some balance and will never be accused of being too much or too little of anything.
“Okay,” I solemnly replied, finally.
When will I be able to admit that it’s over?
I don’t want to believe love can be done and over
That strange, truth-filled Hawaiian night in September wasn’t the end of us, though. For months, we tried to pretend that we were still all right. That night, we made promises to one another that we were committed to being honest. No more lies, no more cheating, no more wondering. I just wasn’t ready to see us fail “ not after I’d trumped her up as the best girlfriend in the world all year.
And with her, I think that with her album coming out, her tour, and her movie coming out at the beginning of the year, she didn’t need the stress of a breakup on her shoulders “ especially not a public one. She even offered to fire Wade and get herself a new tour director. I wouldn’t hear of it “ more out of a desire to have something to hold over her head than anything else, but also because if she fired him, then I’d seem like a selfish, insecure prick. And I wasn’t up for that kind of honesty yet.
But above all, I think that we decided to try and work it out because after 9/11, the last thing anyone wanted to do was turn their back on love. Everyone was just too scared to be alone at that point. And could you blame us? Isolation and desolation is a painful burden to bear in times of fear. But then, so is deception. And I was still knee-deep in it. I just couldn’t stop.
February 3, 2002. That was a kind of groundbreaking day for us. It was probably when Brit came to the realization that she was actually in our relationship alone. And it was when I realized that I was addicted to cheating on her.
Once again, we were in New York at yet another party. It was a Superbowl soiree at Planet Hollywood that we were making a forced appearance at for charity, or somethin’. I was newly twenty-one and had just partied my ass off a few days prior, so I wasn’t really in a socializing mood. But we did our press rounds, put on our fake smiles and mingled the best way we knew how... Well, I did, anyway.
I was on the return from one of many bathroom trips, fixing my red shirt over my jeans, making sure my dark blue beanie was on straight when my girlfriend rushed to my side with suspicion in her eyes. “Where have you been?” she requested simply.
I gave her a look that relayed just how insignificant her concerns were to me and said quietly, “In the bathroom.”
“For twenty minutes, Justin?”
“I had to take a shit. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, well, you’re still full of it.” As I tried to play off our escalating argument by placing an arm around her shoulder, she irritably threw me off of her and motioned to join her family in the upstairs portion of the restaurant before I stopped her.
“Where are you going?”
“I dunno, I just feel like being with people that love me.”
“Hey.” I grabbed her by her football jersey so that she couldn’t scurry away. “What are you saying?”
“The rest of the world might think I’m a big dumbass, but I expected a lot more from you, Justin.”
“What?”
“You disappear in thirty-minute intervals and I’m not supposed to get it? How stupid do you think I am?”
“I think you’re overreacting,” I said, chuckling nonchalantly. All I wanted was to keep up the facade for the rest of the evening for the public. If need be, we could argue when we got back to our hotel. “Can we just get through today?”
“You’re pitiful.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“Admitting your faults and your truths doesn’t make them any less ugly,” she proclaimed, grasping my hand so that we could continue through the party. “I’m trying to get through this because I love you, but what are you gonna do when you not loving me back becomes too much for me to handle.”
You see, it’s shit like that that turns me off from relationships. When I did love her more than life itself, it was too much. Now, when I’m trying not to smother her, it’s still too much. Granted, my ‘not smothering her’ had turned to full-blown betrayal, but I kinda sorta had good intentions. Nothing was working, though. What was I supposed to do with that?
“What are you tryin’ to say, Brit?”
She pulled me into a hug, giving off a contented vibe to anyone that was watching. Whispering in my ear, she simply told me, “Stop.”
I pulled out of our hug and looked at her cautiously. “What“.”
“Just stop.”
Now and then, thoughts have crossed my mind
Love was missing
Maybe I knew somewhere inside
But I didn’t wanna listen
By the middle of *NSYNC’s Celebrity Tour, me not loving her back did become too much to handle. It obviously took more of a toll on her than it did me, but by the time we made it to Phoenix, Brit’s frustration had come to fruition. Not ten minutes after I’d made it onto the tour bus for the night as we headed for Vegas, I got the call.
I was packed away tightly in my bunk when the vibration of my cell stirred the quiet bus, forcing me to answer it in spite of my avoiding her. “Hello?” I whispered as if I didn’t already know who was calling.
“Justin“.”
“Hey, baby,” I interrupted, doing my best to front for the inevitable eavesdropping that my bandmates were doing. “How are you?”
“What are you doing?” she sniffled.
At that moment, I envisioned her sitting at her house “ the one y’all knew as ‘ours’ “ at some random window, with puffy eyes and a red nose, just completely discombobulated. And I felt terrible. “I’m laying in my bed,” I answered honestly.
“Alone?”
“Of course.”
“It’s never a guarantee with you,” she chuckled under another sniffle.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Us.”
“What? What happened?”
“You stopped loving me,” she cried. “Why’d you stop?”
So why’d you go and put me through
All the silly shit men do “ it’s a mystery to me
“Where’s this coming from?” I asked softly. “Don’t do this now, baby.”
“I don’t see a need to keep pretending, Justin.”
“We’ve been doing so well all month, though.”
“Yeah, you cheat and I keep my mouth shut. That’s not how this is supposed to go, man.”
But at least now I know the truth
“I love you,” I reassured her. “I do.”
“Well, it’s not enough anymore,” she decided. “I don’t know how to do this but to come right out and say it“.”
“No,” I protested. “Not yet. Not like this.”
“I have to.”
“You can’t.”
“It’s over.”
We may try to deny all signs and hide
But baby, it’s time that we admit it... that it’s over
Lyrics:
“Admit It” - Lalah Hathaway (Outrun the Sky)
Story Tags: daddyj friendsturnedlovers interracial boyfriendj love angryj tourj
