The next time we saw each other was at a Teen People party for a cosmetics convention in Boca Raton. This was not what I’d pictured from reading Romeo and Juliet, but it would have to do. He brought his mom, and part of the fairy tale was that he said to her, “Mom, your mission for tonight is to get me in good with this girl.”
He was wearing red overalls with the left strap off, and a cream turtleneck. He kept trying to catch my eye all night, and eventually just came over to me. We talked schedules—“It’s been crazy” was always the answer—and I wasn’t really listening because not only did I think he was so attractive, I loved his voice and the way he said “Jessica.” He got my number, and I swear I said to my mom, who was also at the party, “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” I immediately felt safe.
When he called soon after, Nick told me he had broken up with the makeup artist he had been seeing. We arranged to meet when he was in L.A. for the American Music Awards. It was weird to just meet in a hotel room, so Nick suggested we go up on the roof, where we talked for several hours. Nick was much more than what I’d found researching him. He’d started singing in barbershop quartets, making money in high school doing cheesy a capella songs at a theme park in Ohio. He was incredibly passionate about his work. Whereas I counted on God and destiny to make my dreams come true, he was methodical, making it clear he had a five-year plan for success. We talked about our families and how his parents divorced when he was young but his dad never lived more than two miles away from wherever he lived with his mom. It made him grow up fast, becoming the kind of kid who did his own laundry at eight years old. I may have been the breadwinner of our family, but I couldn’t work a washing machine to save my life.
As we talked, he reached over to put his hand on mine. It was like an electric shock, so I pulled back.
“There’s something I need you to know right away,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m a virgin.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t want to have sex until it’s with the man I’ve married.”
He paused, taking it in. I thought, Well, Jessica, this dreamboat has sailed. See ya.
“I respect that,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”
I didn’t tell him what I already knew in my heart. He was the man I was meant to marry.
Nick went back to touring, and we had three-hour phone calls from his bus or his hotel room after the show. That was it for me, we were totally dating, at least over the phone. I wrote about him in my journal, calling him Nicholas because it made me feel older and closer to his age.
I traveled to see him on tour, so all our first dates were at hotels. I would go to his room to hang out, and he remained respectful of the boundaries I placed on us. We had a first kiss in a car, but that was it—he wasn’t getting anywhere near my body. Still, I was this good girl with a potty mouth, and I would “accidentally” make double entendres but dismiss it as Southern charm or ditziness, which he seemed to love. Just being around him tested my own commitment to virginity for sure. I had always been a sensual person, but I’d never had someone draw it out of me like Nick. One time, he hugged me, and I thought I was just going to burst into flames. I had to push him away, not because I didn’t trust him, but because I was teetering on the edge of just giving in. Suddenly, I completely understood why my mom got married at eighteen. Her mother had at least made it to twenty.
Our seven-year age difference worried my dad. I also thought my father might just be jealous because he heard a lot of “Well, I asked Nick and he said . . .” More and more, I went to Nick with career questions. My mom can be guarded and tough on people, but she liked Nick because Nick seemed like a more sarcastic version of the good old boys she grew up around.
When I was asked to open for 98 Degrees on their North American tour starting in March, I immediately said yes. We asked my dance teacher Beth if she wanted to come be the choreographer for the show, and she agreed. My parents were not going to send me out on the road alone, but what would that mean for Ashlee? She was fourteen and had been studying at the School of American Ballet. Mom asked if she wanted to come be a backup dancer for me.
“It’s not ballet,” my mom said. “It’s more hip-hop.”
“I can dance hip-hop,” she said.
It’s okay to chuckle. We were going for this urban cowgirl direction, which in hindsight is ludicrous, but we just wanted to get onstage. I say “we” because Ashlee is a born performer. As much as she and I are opposites—Ash is more edgy than me and pushes limits while I think out every possible risk and outcome before I do something—each of us thinks of the stage as home, a comfortable place. Back then, I was so focused on doing whatever I was told I was supposed to be doing that I didn’t think about how those actions might affect her. I know now that for every time I say, “I’m glad I got to have a somewhat normal high school life,” she didn’t. I have felt guilty about that for a long time. And as she danced behind me then, I didn’t get to see how well she interacted with audiences. It wouldn’t take long, though, for her to take the microphone herself.
So, at the time, to me it just felt like fun to do this as a family. I had been locked in recording studios so long working on my album that I just wanted to see people react to me singing, period. I didn’t care if the dancing didn’t really jibe with the tone of the songs.
Nick and I decided to do a duet for my album, “Where You Are.” It was about loss and feeling someone is always with you even after death. Of course, in my mind, it was all about Sarah. The week before Nick and I recorded the song in New York on March 15, I did my first-ever press interview and talked about losing someone. “I wanted the people close to me who have experienced death to feel encouraged,” I said. “I wanted the song to minister to a lot of people’s hearts.”
This was with a teen magazine, so the guy’s response was, “Oh, cool.” Even so, I knew my words mattered.
When Nick and I sang together, it just fit. I liked how he took the lead in the studio, and how if he decided he needed a break, he just took a break. If I wasn’t already in love with him, I would have decided then. Two days later, I started the tour with 98 in Ottawa.
The girls all booed.
Okay, not all of them, but enough up front that I could see them. They came to see 98 Degrees, each with a sign saying “Marry Me, Nick” or “I love you, Drew!” Every girl in that arena thought they had a chance with their favorite, and who was this girl they’d never heard of? At first, I thought it was my singing, but I had a better sense of what was going on when Nick and I would go on “dates” to the local mall. We’d be at Abercrombie & Fitch and he’d get mobbed, and the girls would roll their eyes at me. Teen assassins in Wet Seal.
While I got used to the girls giving me the dirty looks, Nick had to get used to all of us Baptists being on tour with him. The Texas crew never drank, and the 98 guys were used to having beers at the end of the night. Beth, my old dance teacher, confronted Nick about it. “Oh my gosh, why are you drinking a beer?” she said it just like that: “A beer,” because surely this was an isolated sin, and who would dare have more than one? She let him have it, going on about how I was around, and didn’t he know he was supposed to be a role model for young people?