4. You Want A Hug?
Well, Britney’s out, so that basically means one fuckin’ awesome thing: I’m free. And ain’t nothin’ better than freedom in the summertime “ kinda goes hand in hand, don’t you think? And even more appropriate, my summer began a little early that year. The *NSYNC tour ended on April 28th and my ass was in Virginia Beach on May 8th. You best believe I wasn’t wastin’ any time moving on.
You see, the summer of 2002 was all about independence for me: I left Britney, I left *NSYNC; hell, I even left home, my comfort zone in Orlando, and moved to Los Angeles on a more permanent basis. With this newfound liberty, this album to focus my attention on, I had the opportunity to become a new man. So, that’s what I was tryin’ to do.
It was just my third day in the studio with Pharrell, so I was still a little nervous with the whole recording situation. Things were going well, but I still had butterflies and the nine whenever the car pulled up to the studio. I know that sounds a little lame, but it’s the truth, man. I was entering something completely new here. Sure, I’ve worked with Pharrell and Chad before, but in the past, there was always someone else. It was Chris and Lance, JC and Joey, or even Nelly “ someone I could always play off of creatively. This shit was all me. And yeah, I was nervous.
“You all right?” Trace asked me, watching me stare at the car floor where my shoes were doing an involuntary shuffle. “Don’t tell me you’re still scared.”
“I’m not scared.” I silently directed my feet to stop moving and looked out of the window. “I’m nervous. A little.”
“You always say that when we get here in the morning. Then, by the time we’re in there for ten minutes, you’re fine.”
“What are you nervous about?” Silas, my A&R guy, injected. “This is you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, man. I’m just tryin’ to get comfortable with everything,” I said for the millionth time in the past three days. “And that camera ain’t helpin’, man.”
“Well, you’re the one that agreed to the show,” Trace shot back.
“Whatever.”
But, lucky for me, here enters Devin Delfino. She’s just one on a list of many that y’all don’t know about yet, and she’ll eventually play the presumably most important role in the drama that is my love life, but for the moment, Dev is just a homegirl. I’ve known her since I was... thirteen? Yeah, I was thirteen and she was twelve.
Back in the day, when I was just a Millington brat, being dorky and annoying in every sense of the word, I used to attend this basketball summer camp at the University of Memphis, formerly known as Memphis State. Anyway, Devin went to dance camp on the same campus, so in an odd twist of fate, she was part of the carpool that got us to camp everyday that summer.
“I heard you got a surprise here waitin’ for you,” Trace commented, getting out of the car ahead of me.
“Like what?”
“Like someone you like a lot.”
“Janet Jackson is here?” I questioned hopefully.
“Not exactly,” he chuckled. “You’ll see, though.”
I’m sure you’d have thought me and Devin would’ve lost touch after just one summer of riding in a car together, but additionally, we were part of a group of youth members of the same church; plus, our parents were friendly acquaintances “ it just all fell into place the way these things tend to do, I guess. The two of us weren’t like ace-koom-boom tight, but she was definitely a familiar face, I guess. On the rare occasion that I did come home after leaving for *NSYNC, and on the even rarer occasion that Devin and I got to actually hang out, we always managed to have a good ass time.
By 2002, Devin was an up and coming hip-hop dancer that you were bound to see every time you turned on a music video. But to me, she was just like another one of the guys. I mean, don’t get me wrong “ the girl is fine. She was this beautiful mixture of Black and Italian with this endless curly black hair that she’d been keeping straight lately, legs like a damn racehorse “ strong, thick dancer’s legs, and she epitomized the onion booty: so round and juicy that you’d wanna cry, man. The girl was blessed. But I’d known her since she was just a kid, and as a guy, it inevitably took me a while to realize just how much she’d grown up.
She’s bad, bad, badass
She’s bad, bad, badass
Anyway, that’s another chapter. On that Friday, I was just relieved to walk into The Neptunes’s studio and see her chillin’ on the couch like she belonged there. Seeing her bright smile and baby blue eyes lessened my fears significantly. I could relax with that extra bit of comfort. With Trace following me everywhere with a camera glued to his hand, it was hard for me to really be me. So Devin was a welcome reminder of home. As I later found out, home is what catches you when you fall “ and we all fall.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked with a huge smile contradicting my sarcastic tone.
Grinning, she quickly stood from the couch where she’d been conversing with Pharrell before I walked in, interrupting. “What up, bitch!” We embraced with a hand/slap combination that turned to a hug, not unlike the way two dudes would usually greet, before she sat down on the couch’s armrest. “You look good,” she commented. “Hey, Trace.”
“What’s up,” he replied, appearing behind me with the camera.
“What you recording for?” she questioned, with an abnormally Northern tone taking over her usual Southern drawl.
“It’s for this show called Launch that’s gonna be on MTV when the album comes out,” I explained before asking again, “What are you doing here?”
“Me and my girl, Lainie, were up in New York for auditions when Pharrell told her you were in town, so we decided to drive down.”
“Yeah,” Pharrell jumped in, removing his black and white hat from his fresh haircut. “I’mma have Lainie sing background for this shit we got goin’ right now.”
“For ‘Senorita’?” I queried, hearing the bass of the song we’d worked on the entire previous day.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a hot ass song,” Devin commented, falling into the sofa seat.
I watched her white tank top lift at the small of her back to reveal a large black tattoo against her vanilla skin. “Whoa, where’d that come from?” I demanded, staring more at her ass than the tattoo.
“Where’d what come from?” she asked.
“That tat.”
“On my back?”
“Yeah.”
“Psh, I’ve had that since I was eighteen,” she scoffed, moving over so that I could sit down. “Where you been?”
“Don’t lie.”
“I ain’t lyin’.”
I sat down to examine her ink, even lowering her yellow nylon pants to see it all. “That has not been there for two years, Devin.”
“It’s been two years exactly, man. I got it the night I graduated.” She took off my white Sean John hat, placing it on her head and snapped the elastic on my green basketball shorts with a laugh. “Seriously.”
I looked at her flirtatiously and hopped up from the couch. “I’m gonna ask your mama.”
“Go ahead. Matter fact, you can call her now.”
“I will.”
“You know you’ve seen it before,” she teased, smiling. “You just wanted a reason to feel on my ass.”
Baby! Don’t fool wit’ me
If you don’t wanna give it up, don’t worry ‘bout it
Well, she was right about that. But I know I don’t remember seeing anything on her back before. “Whatever,” I grinned. “What does it mean, anyway?”
“3D? That’s my nickname out in LA.”
“Dancin’ Devin Delfino!” Pharrell proclaimed. He got up to stretch his arms and crack his back as the two of us tend to do when we’re about to get to work. “You ready, baby boy?”
“I am ready,” I assured him, taking my hat back from Devin. “You gon’ stick around for a minute?” I asked her.
“Until you kick me out.”
“I just might.”
“Hey, when you get in your zone, I’m gone, baby.”
Without anymore words, I disappeared further into the studio to do my thing. And while that may have seemed rude to some, I knew she wouldn’t care. She got it ‘cause she was the same. We knew how to fuck around and have fun, but we weren’t dedicated to anything more than we were our jobs. So yeah, I was definitely glad she was there. She was the type to always pop up when least expected, but amazingly, when she was most needed. It was cool.
I’ve been all around the Earth
Seen those girls that kiss me first
But you just stand there with this smirk
But don’t you worry ‘bout it
A few hours later, at a point somewhere close to a lunch hour, the fifteen some odd people that were scattered around the studio agreed that they were hungry, apropos my comment from the recording booth that I was “fucking starving.”
“What you want to eat?” Pharrell requested, pulling his cell phone from his jeans’ pocket.
“What’s around here?” I took off my headphones, replaced my hat, and headed into the room where Pharrell and the studio engineer, Drew, sat playing with the computer while Trace, Devin, and the newly acquainted Lainie were collected on the couch, messing with Trace’s camera. “Y’all want anything in particular?” I asked them.
Trace looked around the room before rising from the black leather sofa, rubbing his round stomach. “I want some ribs, man.”
“Yeah, looks like yours got lost in that gut,” Devin laughed loudly, patting his beer belly as well.
“Sorry we can’t all be perfect like you, Miss Delfino.”
“Aww, Trace," she giggled, "you are perfect.”
“So,” I jumped in, “I got a vote for ribs. Devin, what you want?”
“Barbeque is fine with me.”
“Yo, I’m tellin’ y’all right now,” Pharrell began, speaking loudly, “Virginia barbeque ain’t Memphis barbeque, so don’t be expectin’ no elaborate shit here.”
“Man, I’m too hungry to be picky,” I chuckled. “Is there somewhere around here?”
“It’s about twenty minutes up Childress, like kinda near the house,” he explained, referring to his beach house.
“I know where it is,” Lainie piped up. “If y’all give me your orders, I’ll go pick ‘em up.”
“And I’ll go with her,” Devin decided.
As usual, I was quick to take Devin’s lead. I don’t know what it was. She was just... a leader. “Well, I don’t know what they have, so I guess I gotta go, too.”
“Of course you do,” Trace interjected with a sardonic laugh. “Lainie, you could just tell them how to get there and Justin and Devin could go alone.”
I looked nervously at Devin, who was thankfully oblivious, and then frowned at Trace in a manner that let him know I thought he was being a dickhead. It’s not that I was opposed to spending time with Devin “ I just didn’t want her to know that. “That’s not necessary,” I said politely to Lainie. “I’ll just tag along if you don’t mind.”
“Actually, if the two of y’all went,” Pharrell inserted, “Lainie could stay and we could work on these backgrounds so we can finish this shit after lunch.”
“Well, all right then,” Devin announced. “We’ll put the address in the GPS and get movin’. Justin, you get the orders and I’m gonna head to the restroom.”
As she disappeared from the dim room, I lightly shoved Trace into the adjacent wall, wishing I’d hit him hard enough for him and his stupid camera to go crashing through it. “You’re a dickhead,” I finally acknowledged.
“What?” he laughed. “What’d I do?”
“‘Of course you do,’” I mocked him. “What the fuck was that about?”
“You know you wanna be alone with her, man. I was just doin’ you a favor.”
“You’re not helpin’ anything.”
“You know you like her, so you can stop with the act.”
“I don’t like her.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Man, whatever.” Yeah, I was diggin’ on her. I suppose. But I wouldn’t say that I liked her. Not that way anyway.
The (stupid) thing about me was that I’d become a master at concealing my feelings, convincing myself that I didn’t have certain feelings, or just completely detaching any feelings that I may have possibly had for anyone that I thought was out of my reach. With that said, by this point in the game, I was pretty sure that I’d detached any potential non-platonic sentiment I might have had for Devin because I was absolutely sure that nothing I would do or say could ever send a chick like that my way. So, I didn’t worry about it.
See, I know about those other girls
But I wanna learn from you
After orders were taken and directions were given, Devin and I hopped into she and Lainie’s rented Jeep Cherokee as if we were being followed by photographers, me on the passenger’s side while she took the driver’s seat. As she put on her seatbelt, she sighed and then smiled at me in a way that shouted relief. “Dude.”
“What?” I asked, smiling back.
“I’m tryin’ to be cool here, but do you know how long it’s been?”
“What’s been?”
“You and me. We haven’t been in a room alone together in years.”
“It hasn’t been years,” I countered. “Has it?”
“Hell yeah, man. You haven’t been available to chill since before you and Britney got together.”
“Yeah, well...”
“And what’s up with that anyway, ‘cause I got people left, right, up and down tryin’ to prod me for some info. And I feel lame as hell ‘cause I got nothin’.”
“It’s a long story,” I said sadly. “A long, boring story.”
Placing a dark pair of shades over her almond-shaped eyes, she pressed our start and stop points into the navigation system and turned back to me, “Well, we’ve got nothin’ but time.”
“Fuck that. I ain’t tellin’ you my biznass,” I joked, imitating Ludacris’s overpopular song. “It’s really not that interesting.”
“Okay,” she shrugged, backing out of the small, makeshift parking lot. “So, did you hear that Tony was moving out to Arizona?”
“Tony as in your Tony?” He was this dude that was also a part of that carpool I was talkin’ about. Devin went out with him three of her four high school years and suddenly, they broke up on somewhat bad terms that I’ve yet to get the details on. “What the fuck is in Arizona?”
“The fuckin’ desert, far as I know,” she laughed, turning to the GPS’s instructions. “Supposedly, some job with an art gallery or some shit.”
“How gay is that?”
“I know right. But for whatever reason, the bastard invited everyone in our damn high school class to his going away party. Everyone but me.”
“Damn.”
“I know!”
“So are you gonna get your brother to kick his ass? Get your dad to ‘call someone’?”
She just grinned and shook her head, focusing on where she was going. “You’re one of those bitches that think all Italians are part of the Mafia, huh? I told you that’s a Sicilian thing. My dad is from Northern Italy.”
“Nah, I just know how y’all get.”
“Man, Tony ain’t even worth it. Just another fuckin’ ex.”
“Just another fuckin’ ex,” I absently repeated.
“Yup.”
There’s a war goin’ on outside no man is safe from
And I’m not tryin’ to lose
Staring out of the window as the streets of Virginia Beach passed us by, I must say, I had to agree. Exes are just that. They’re the past, they’re old shit, yesterdays news. Why was I holding onto secrets and protecting Britney from her mistakes? I didn’t owe that to her. I owed it to myself to move the hell on and stop acting like she was some kind of saint. In the grand scheme of things, she was, in fact, just another fuckin’ ex. “I heard that.”
They say, ‘You have a cold heart, will you move?’
“You sound like you heard it a little too well, my man. You sure you don’t have somethin’ on your chest that you wanna get off?”
“Well. Maybe...”
So when it comes to a girl like you that moves me
What am I supposed to do but admit it
Now, I know I’ve already done shit that I wasn’t supposed to do. But mark your calendars, y’all, ‘cause May 9, 2002 was the beginning of the end. In a fucked up plot to play the victim card and to get on Devin’s pitied side, I began my descent into deception. I mean, I suspect I’d gotten a little bit of vindication when I stopped fuckin’ around with Beyonce and whatever random hoes I got my hands on. I rectified a few mistakes when I called it quits with me and Brit. But all that went down the drain that day when I explained to Devin what “really” went down; when I made an attempt to justify all the wrong I’d done by transposing it to the person I knew would never tell the real story... as long as I came out with mine first.
“The thing about Britney,” I was explaining to Devin as we rode back to the studio, a truckload of barbeque meals accompanying us, “is that she really is a good soul. I think, in the end, she just lost her way. She forgot how to be honest.”
“Because of the Wade thing?” Dev asked, following along with my story as best she could.
“That, and just the fact that she refused to be truthful about it. For weeks and weeks, I begged her to tell me the truth,” I lied by exaggeration. “It’s so damn draining to be in a relationship like that where you’re just desperate for some honesty; some damn faithfulness.”
“I can imagine.”
“I would’ve done anything for that damn girl.”
“And y’all went out for what? Three or four years, right?”
“Three years,” I nodded. “I fought my own battles with fidelity, my eyes wandered and all “ you know how it goes...”
“Hell, after the first three months, that shit is only natural,” she agreed.
“I stayed faithful up until the very end, though. I don’t know why she couldn’t do it.”
“She couldn’t get past that moment.”
“I guess not,” I replied cheerlessly. “Wait, what moment?”
“You know. The moment. There’s always that moment of truth where you’re right there and you have to ask yourself whether you’re strong enough to resist temptation or if you’re weak enough to give in. Just before you cheat, there’s always that moment.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “We all have it. We all have that temptation. We’re all stupid enough to get to that point “ it all just depends on what you decide to do with it that will determine your character.”
“So, what did you do with it?”
“Hey, I’ve never cheated on anyone,” she grinned goofily. “But I’m young. There’s plenty of time for me to become a bad person.”
“You think anyone that cheats is a bad person?”
“No, not at all. I think everyone deserves a second chance. But I think anyone that does it repeatedly and then claims to still love that person is weak. And frankly, they aren’t worthy of someone that is strong enough to keep their pants up.”
“I agree,” I answered quickly, nervous that she was basically describing me to a tee. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I told myself about Britney.”
“I think you’re right that she just lost herself along the way. ‘Cause she seems like the type “ not that I know her “ but she seemed like she had a pretty good head on her shoulders. Honestly, I would’ve called you out as the cheater before I thought she was.”
“What!” I incredulously asked. “Why?”
“Just ‘cause you’re a man,” she responded honestly. “And ‘cause you’re the kinda celebrity that would think he’s cool enough to get away with it.”
“You think so?”
“You know you got that cocky swagger, man. It all falls into place.”
“Damn, I dunno whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.”
She laughed loudly, turning back into the Neptunes’s studio complex as I held on tightly to the plastic bag that contained my food. “Only you would consider a word like ‘cocky’ as a compliment.”
“Well, hey, I’m special.”
“You damn sure are.” Reclaiming the two parking spaces that the blue SUV had consumed before we left, she turned off the car and turned to me, lifting her sunglasses. “You want a hug, man?”
“What?”
“Your story got me thinkin’ that you could probably use a hug.” She reached across the console and let her muscular manila arms stretch to lock around my neck, squeezing it snugly. “I feel bad for you.”
“No, I’m okay. I’ve had time to get over it.”
“I don’t feel bad for you because Britney ‘cheated’,” she laughed, using air quotes. “I feel bad for you because you’re full of shit.” Playfully, she pushed my head into the window with her forefingers and grabbed a cigarette from her purse.
“What did I do?”
“You know what you did.” She smiled, coolly lighting her cancer stick. “It’s cool, though. You’re so damn cute that we all wanna believe you anyway.”
“What?”
“You should use that gimmick to sell your album, dude.”
You’re, you’re a badass
“Devin, what are you talkin’ about?”
She only shook her head and smiled, blowing puffs of smoke through her open window. “Justin, it’s okay. A good fight is never clean. You’d be completely justified.”
She’s bad, bad badass
I heard it here first.
But fuck it, don’t worry ‘bout it
Lyrics:
“Don’t Worry About It” - NERD (Fly or Die)
Story Tags: daddyj friendsturnedlovers interracial boyfriendj love angryj tourj
