The Encounter
Her chin-length bob kept JC from seeing her face as he stood above her, holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee out to her. The color... a rich, darkest brown, a familiar color he had once referred to as espresso to describe the shade of a girl’s hair years ago. Damn, the thought of her could still make him ache with loss...
She didn’t appear to notice him or the coffee.
“Excuse me...”
Lost in the past, thinking of her brief time with Sammy’s father, Spring hadn’t noticed the man standing beside her until he spoke. That voice... It sounded like... Surely her mind was playing tricks on her... Slowly she turned and lifted her gaze upward.
“JC...”
The sight of Spring’s face hit him like a blow to the chest. JC leaned a shoulder against the wall to keep him from reeling and falling to the floor. For a brief moment, he closed his eyes, superimposing the picture of Spring as she was all those years ago. Her espresso colored hair nearly to her waist. Those big hazel eyes sparkling with what he thought was love. Her sweet mouth rose from his kisses. Whisker burn and blush coloring her soft ivory skin. She’d been so young. He’d been her first...
Easing up his eyelids, she studied the shocked woman. Her hair was short and sleek. Her bright eyes were tired. Her mouth was currently bracketed with fatigue and worry lines.
He shook his head. And here he thought he’d be chivalrous and help this weary damsel – the same girl who’d walked away from him more than seven years ago and broke his heart.
“This is certainly a surprise.” His voice sounded strained even to his own ears.
“Hello, JC.”
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“I live three hours west of here by car – 45 minutes by jet.”
“Which is grounded at the moment.” He had never known where she was from. She hadn’t told him. “My parents are in Chicago.”
She nodded. “I remember hearing that.”
Okay, so they could converse civilly. JC slid down the wall to sit beside her. Once more he held out the coffee. “I saw you over there and thought you could use coffee and company.”
“You saw me?”
“You, but I didn’t know it was you.” He indicated the cardboard tray in his other hand. “I brought you a turkey sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie, too.” Then he remembered she didn’t drink coffee. Putting the proffered cup back in the tray, he fished a bottle of water from his jacket pocket. “Here.”
Tentatively Spring took the bottle. “So you are planning to sit here and keep me company?” Why? Why did he have to be here? Why had she gone to Orlando instead of staying home?
“Unless you have some strenuous objection.”
Her eyes slid to the sleeping boy. If he stayed, he’d know Sammy...
“How old?” JC nodded towards the cart.
What would he say if she could narrow her child’s conception to two days in July 2000? “He’s six.” Still.
Well, she certainly hadn’t wasted much time finding someone else after she left him, JC decided grimly. All her words of love hadn’t meant one damn thing. “Is there a mister in the picture?” She wore no rings save a diamond-type ring on her right hand.
“No. You?”
“A mister, no.” His grin at his own joke came out as more of a grimace. “No, Missus or significant other.”
“I’m sorry.” She truly was. At the time she knew him, he had been manipulated into the façade of a relationship. But JC was a mated kind of guy. She’d read about his relationships and none of them tended to last.
He merely shrugged and handed her a sandwich.
“Where were you headed?” Spring asked as she unwrapped the sandwich.
“Any place warm.”
“We went to Orlando for Christmas.”
That had been his plan, too, but his parents ended up staying in Chicago and he’d joined them.
Silence reigned as they ate their sandwiches. For Spring, there was so much to say yet she didn’t dare give voice to the words. She didn’t know JC Chasez anymore, if she ever had. And JC was so conflicted; he didn’t know what he was feeling. He’d loved her so much and so fast at the time, back then she’d just up and left. Clearly she’d built a life for herself that had never included him.
“So what do you do?” JC finally asked.
“I still work for the same law firm. I went from receptionist to office manager.”
“So you do okay.”
“I’ve never needed much.”
When she was with him, he’d wanted to lavish things on her, prove he could provide for her. She’d resisted, saying all she wanted was him. She’d been incredibly attentive and sweet, a balm to a young man tasting incredible and overwhelming fame for the first time. He’d felt Spring wanted him, not to bask in reflected limelight or for what he could give her. Young JC Chasez had wanted to hold on tight to her goodness and warmth. Quite frankly the explosion of *NSYNC had scared the hell out of him.
“Cookie?” JC held out the monster-sized cookie to Spring.
“Can I have one?”
The boy who had been sleeping on the luggage cart sat up, rubbing his eyes with his fists, the offered JC a smile.
Blue eyes met blue eyes – and JC knew.
It took several moments for the second shock of the afternoon to subside before the man could find his voice. “Sure, dude.”
“You can share mine, Sammy,” Spring stated.
“It’s okay. He can have one. Want something to drink?” JC was on his feet eager to escape the moment.
“Milk,” Sammy told him, then added, “Thank you, Mister.”
JC rushed away, leaving his bag next to Spring. Hell, he should have just run instead of going to get the kid milk.
A kid.
Spring had his kid. And there was little denying it was his – right down to the slightly big teeth and sort of goofy smile. Sammy, she’d called him Sammy. Jesus, the kid could be him in a grade school class picture.
His son... How’d that happen? They’d always used condoms.
Condoms have been known to fail, you moron, JC chastised himself.
He and Spring had been together less than forty-eight hours. That certainly narrowed the time of conception. If she’d known she was pregnant, would she have stayed? What a mess that would have been. It would have totally blown his public image. He couldn’t have kept a pregnant girlfriend in the background. They would have been married...
Oh, God, it would have been career suicide!
Spring, the girl he had thought of as betrayal itself, had actually saved JC from his own folly. Here he’d come to think of her in the harshest terms and she had quietly raised his son without asking for a thing, publicly or privately.
The question was: Why?
After more than twenty minutes passed, Spring decided JC had bolted. Sure, he’d left his bag, but he could afford to replace everything and not feel the loss probably.
“The lines must be long, huh?” Sammy asked innocently. Now sitting in his mother’s lap, he looked out over the sea of people in the terminal and didn’t see the stranger.
Did she lie or tell the truth: they would very probably never see JC Chasez again. “Sammy—”
“Look! There he is!” Sammy hopped up and waved his arms, flagging down JC. “Over here, Mister!”
Spring was frankly surprised, but there JC was heading towards them with much more than a carton of milk. In fact, he had several shopping bags. What in the world?...
Before his mother could protest, Sammy darted over to JC. “Need help?”
JC laughed. “I’m afraid if I let go, it’ll all fall.”
“Okay. Whatcha got?”
“Things to make the wait go faster.”
“Cool!”
By the time they had reached their spot, Spring had gotten to her feet. “Get lost?”
JC smiled sheepishly. “Not lost. I figured we could use some stuff to make things more pleasant.” He held out one arm. “I figured we ate, by Sammy hadn’t.”
The bag held sandwiches, chips, bottles water, cartons milk, cookies, and juice boxes.
“And because the floor is hard...” He dropped a bag that had three Chicago Bears Stadium cushions. “And because the floor is cold...” He produced three stadium blankets. "And because we...” JC winked at Sammy, “get bored – games.”
“All right!” Sammy bounced and clapped. “We’re campin’ out!”
“Start a bonfire and you’re in big trouble, Chasez,” Spring murmured as she assisted JC with setting up their ‘camp’. Once they were settled and JC’s bag tossed with theirs on the cart. She decided to introduce father and son. “JC Chasez, I’d like to introduce Samuel Joshua Tanner. We call him Sammy because it’s shorter. Sammy, Mister Chasez.”
The two males shook hands.
“Thanks for all the stuff, Mister Chasez.”
“You’re welcome, Sammy.”
The boy dug into his sandwich and chips with enthusiasm, giving JC a chance to study him. Damn, he could be a clone, except at his age; JC was still tentative, being newly adopted. Sammy was open and sweet – like his mother had been.
Joshua... She’d given their son his name. Did that mean she cared about JC?
“Mister Chasez,” Sammy said as he munched the last of his chips, “I don’t know some of these games. Can you teach me?”
“Sure, dude.” JC smiled. He loved electronic games. He had tried to get ones a first-grader could understand. Age-appropriate was something he’d never had to worry about before.
“Well, before you two get into that, Sammy and I need to use the restroom and check our flight.”
JC rose to assist them both to their feet. “And while you’re gone, I’ll clean up the camp and breakout the instructions.”
“You read instructions?” Most men Spring knew would rather perish than use a manual.
“When all else fails,” he replied.
Their eyes met and for an instant they were transported back to July 2000. JC couldn’t resist the urge to taste her lips as he had back then. It was a mere brush of a kiss that jolted both of them to their toes.
Wide-eyed and breathless, Spring backed away and took Sammy’s hand.
JC grinned as he heard Sammy’s question of his mother.
“You know Mister Chasez? From before?”
“Before you were born,” was Spring’s reply.