Chapter Four

He’s serious.

He says he’s not leaving Nashville until we’re back together and we’re engaged. I really don’t know what to say to that. I’m speechless a little. I’m hardly ever speechless, but I’m just in shock. I mean why is he wanting to marry me so badly? We’re twenty-three years old. I remember when we were together he talked about not getting married until he was almost thirty like Kevin.

But now he just asked me to marry him.

It hurts me a little. Because for a split second there, I used to think that he was ‘the one’. Sometimes I still do, but I know it’s not realistic. I guess I should feel flattered that Nick Carter of all people just asked me to marry him, but for some reason I hurt. Maybe it’s because I don’t really want to marry him or maybe it’s because I don’t want to hurt him.

He’s been hurt so many times from these girls that just use him for what they want, then dump him. They use him for record deals because they actually think that yes, they can sing and yes, they WILL be the next Britney Spears. Or they use him to show off on their arm that ‘Hey, I’m dating a celebrity’. I never wanted to hurt him like that. I never wanted to hurt him period.

I still love him. He’s the only guy that I can really say that I ever loved that I dated or went out with. I just don’t know if I’m ready for anything like that. I mean being engaged and being married is a huge deal. Especially for us. I’m based out of Nashville here, and he’s usually based out of a hotel room.

I can’t marry him.

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Elisabeth stood there with her arms crossed, looking around and taking a few deep breaths. She’d look over at Nick and then move her eyes away from him before he noticed her looking at him. What’s sad is that he was doing the very same thing to her.

“You’re not mad at me are you?” Nick asked as Elisabeth looked back at him, “I mean, I know how you are about relationships and you want everything to be perfect. I guess I just jumped the gun and wanted you to know that I really want us back together.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Elisabeth said as she moved her hand up, wiping under her eyes, “I’m just, I don’t know what I am right now. I’m confused. How long do you plan on staying here?”

“I have vacation time. I can stay as long as I want,” Nick said as Elisabeth started to laugh and looked away, “I want you back. I’m tired of being just your best friend, I want to be your boyfriend again. I wanna be the person you tell ‘I love you’ too every night.”

“I tell you that anyway.”

“But not in the way that I want you to mean it.”

“Yeah,” Elisabeth said as she looked down and walked up to him, coming face to face with him. She stood there looking in his eyes for a minute. They didn’t say anything. They just looked into each other’s eyes again, as if they were searching for something but couldn’t find it.

“I do love you,” Elisabeth whispered as Nick smiled a little. She smiled back at him and looked down, before looking back up at him, “And it means a lot to me that you asked me that tonight because you are the one person that I’ve ever met in my life that I thought about spending the rest of my life with. But we haven’t been like that in over a year and a half Nick, almost two years, and I like to take things slowly, so if this is what you really want, then you’re going to have to wait for me.”

“I’ll wait,” Nick said as he smiled, “I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

“So are you going to stay at a hotel this whole time?” Elisabeth asked as Nick smirked at her a little. Elisabeth closed her eyes and looked away, smiling because the way Nick did that, was enough to make her jump him and she knew she couldn’t.

She did have some self control.

“Is that an invitation?”

“Well if you’re going to stay here a while, there’s no use in staying at a hotel. I have another bedroom,” Elisabeth said as Nick laughed a little, “Go get your stuff and come back.”

“Okay,” Nick whispered as he leaned over, about to kiss her lightly on the lips and moved to his right a little, kissing her on the cheek, “Be back soon.”

“Okay,” Elisabeth said as she smiled, watching Nick as he grabbed his jacket, putting it on. He smiled at her and walked over to her door, opening it up and walked out of it.

Time the door shut, Elisabeth fell back on the sofa, clutching her chest wondering what in the hell just happened. How did it happen? And what in the hell was going to happen next?

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What am I doing? I’m falling right into his little game. He wants me to take him back and what do I do? I invite him to stay here in my apartment while he’s staying in Nashville, trying to win me back? I have issues, major issues. Maybe it’s because I can’t tell him no.

I take that back, I can tell him no. Granted I never actually told him, “No, I won’t marry you”, but I’ve said no to him before.

This one time, I went to visit him out on tour while we had a few days off of school and I had a few days off from work at MTV. I was going to go spend it with my family in Georgia but I decided to fly to, I think it was Washington State, to see him. He knew I was coming and he had a night off from the tour and planned this little romantic dinner.

Pizza and Champagne.

It’s not exactly fine cuisine but I loved it. He had the lights down low and soft romantic music playing. We got a little carried away with the kissing and caught up in the moment that we almost made love, but I stopped him. I realized that I didn’t know if it was exactly the right time or with the right person. But I told him no.

I can say no to him.

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Elisabeth sat there on the sofa, looking over some papers that she was going to have to submit at the meeting the next day for the Tim McGraw special that was coming up in a few days. She loved Tim McGraw. He was the very first celebrity that she ever met when she was in the sixth grade and he was just starting out with his very first single, “Memory Lane”, which got hardly any radio play. She had planned on showing the picture on the special, and tell him about her experience while asking some questions about when he first started out and how he felt when his first album never took off.

She sat there, looking at the paper with some questions on it as she bit down on the top of her pen when her phone rung. She figured it was probably Nick and reached over, picking it up off of the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Is this Elisabeth?”

“Um yes,” Elisabeth said, not recognizing the guys voice on the phone. It definitely wasn’t Nick. “Who is this?”

“This is Joe Don, um from Rascal Flatts,” he said as Elisabeth froze and looked around, “I got this number from the producer of the show. I just wanted to call and apologize for what happened tonight.”

“Oh,” Elisabeth said as she moved the papers from her lap and stood up, walking around her living room slowly, “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not like you killed anything. It was just a kiss and it was in a joking manner right? Because of the question?”

“Well, no not really. You asked who was the best kisser, so I was showing you how I kissed,” Joe Don said as Elisabeth reached up, taking a strand of her hair and twirling it around her finger, “So was it okay?”

“Yeah it was fine,” Elisabeth said as she looked up at a picture of her and Nick that someone, she couldn’t remember who exactly, took before the MTV VMA Awards back in 2001.

“Well, I want to apologize for it, so I thought maybe I could take you out to dinner?” Joe Don asked as Elisabeth looked in shock and turned around, looking around her apartment.

“Aren’t you dating Kassidy from SheDaisy?”

“Not anymore.”

“Oh,” Elisabeth said as she looked around, and turned back around, looking at the picture of her and Nick. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to be a bitch to Joe Don because he’s in one of the biggest groups in country music right now and she worked for CMT. On the other hand, she didn’t want to hurt Nick.

“So what do you say?” Joe Don asked as Elisabeth put her left hand over her eyes, rubbing them and moved it up to her forehead rubbing it. Then she realized she was doing the same thing that Nick usually did.

“Okay,” Elisabeth said, “Just dinner. That’s all.”

“Okay great. So tomorrow after the show?” Joe Don asked as Elisabeth closed her eyes, sighing.

“Sure, that sounds good.”

“Okay, I’ll see ya then.”

“Okay, bye,” Elisabeth said as she hung her phone up and looked around. She couldn’t believe what just happened. More or less what she just did.

Then someone knocked on the door.

Elisabeth sighed, walking over to the door and looked out to see Nick looking in the peephole. She just smiled in return and unlocked the door to see him standing there with his bags in his hands.

“Sorry it took so long. Seems like some fans heard I was in town and they were at the hotel,” Nick said as Elisabeth took a bag from him and shut the door back.

“It’s okay. I was looking over some stuff for work,” Elisabeth said as she smiled, “You can take your things in the other room.”

“Okay,” Nick said as he picked up his bags, dragging them across the room, going into the other bedroom.

It’s still pink.

“Obviously,” Elisabeth said as she laughed and walked into the room, “Here I’ll go get you some clean sheets. My mom was up here two weeks ago and I never changed them.”

“Okay.” Nick said as Elisabeth ran upstairs to her bedroom, getting some clean sheets when the phone rung.

Nick, answer it for me!

“Okay,” Nick said as he walked into the living room, picking the phone up, “Hello?”

“Did I call the right number?”

“Are you looking for Elisabeth?”

“Yeah I am, who’s this?”

“Nick. Who’s this?”

“Joe Don. I’m taking Elisabeth out tomorrow night,” Joe Don said as Elisabeth ran back downstairs from the second floor of her apartment where her bedroom was to see Nick standing there looking at her with the phone up to his ear.

“You’re going out with someone tomorrow night?” Nick asked as Elisabeth closed her eyes, grunting in response to that question.