So I doubled my efforts with radio, and when my tour with Ricky Martin was done, I went back on tour with Nick and 98 again. By then, the girls knew what was happening with me and Nick. A lot of them were just blatant with their hatred, literally throwing garbage at me and saving their bras for Nick and the guys.
I was working nonstop on the tour and promoting the album, but at a December tour stop in Madison, Wisconsin, my body again humbled me and told me I needed a break. I got a terrible kidney infection, and I spent nine days recovering on the fourth floor of St. Mary’s Hospital. Nick’s tour with 98 had to continue without me, and only my mom stayed behind to hold my hand. We watched the snow fall and complained about hospital food to fill the days.
I had to cancel so many showcases and fan events, and I’m sure I cried on the phone to Charlie Walk about how bad I felt about letting everybody down. I don’t know if it was him or Tommy, but someone arranged another call to make me feel better.
A few days into my stay, I was alone in my hospital room, watching Family Feud. This was comfort viewing from when I was a kid and loved game shows. The phone rang, and I picked it up, assuming it was Nick or my mother, who had gone out to run errands.
“Hi, Jessica,” said a chipper voice. I had learned that this kind of voice at the other end was usually an assistant, and no matter how cheery the girls sounded, it didn’t necessarily mean the actual news was going to be good. “There’s someone who would like to speak with you.”
I thought it was Tommy Mottola firing me. “Okay,” I said, turning off the TV as I tried to sit up. Then this bright, beautiful voice came on, one I recognized immediately.
“Jessica, it’s Céline Dion.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “I love you.”
“I hear you are not feeling well,” she said in her French-Canadian accent, rushing her words. “I just wanted you to know how much I love ‘I Wanna Love You Forever.’ ”
“That means so much to me—”
Céline started singing my song. “I wanna looooove you forrrreeevvvveeer.” She just nailed the line—full-throttle out of nowhere—and I was laughing because I was so happy.
“You just made my life,” I said, meaning it.
“Jessica, I am so excited for you,” she said. “You have so much ahead of you, and I want you to remember one thing I have learned: The best competition is always our own selves.”
“Thank you,” I said, crying.
We hung up, and soon after, a nurse came in to check my vitals and saw my tears.
“You okay, hon?” she asked.
By then I knew all the nurses on the floor. “Nanette, Céline Dion just called and sang to me.”
“Really,” Nanette said, casually checking my forehead for a fever that might be causing hallucinations.
The best competition is always our own selves, I thought. Who knows who Celine was told she had to be when she started out, and later, even with all her success, who she was told she had to be to stay at the top? I looked at the window at the snow falling. A red bird had perched itself on the ledge of my hospital window.
“You see that?” I said.
Nanette was on her way out and stopped to look. “Pretty guy,” she said.
“Don’t you know to fly south for winter?” I said to the bird. “What are you doing in all this cold?”
“Nah, that’s a cardinal,” she said, leaving. “They’re crazy enough to stick it out.”
Me too, I thought.
NICK AND I HAD A RULE ABOUT NEVER GOING MORE THAN TWO WEEKS without seeing each other, and generally the way we spent time together was through work. We helped host MTV’s New Year’s Eve party to welcome 2000 and even did the countdown in Times Square. The ball dropped to a blizzard of confetti and fireworks, and Nick kissed me at midnight. People ran a photo, which helped us break out of the teen market a bit. After that, when I went to events with 98 Degrees, photographers would ask the other guys to move to the side so they could just get a shot of Nick and me. We started getting hosting gigs, and Nick was a natural. He could talk to anybody, answering the same interview question for the fifteenth time that day and act like his answer was something that just occurred to him. I’ve always said that if he wasn’t a singer, he should have been a politician because he was so personable. I was always fumbling, saying something I didn’t realize was funny until everyone laughed. It was interesting to me that MTV kept inviting me back when they seemed so reluctant to play my actual music videos. I had to beg my fans to call in to Total Request Live to get my video played. God bless ’em, because they did.
The label thought that we could bump up my sales by releasing my duet with Nick, “Where You Are,” as my second single. I was happy because it meant that we would be together on the promotional tour and it wouldn’t be just me on the dog and pony show. Around the release of the single, I did an interview with Teen People where they asked me about being a virgin. I said I wanted to wait until I got married. “I don’t judge people who do have sex before marriage,” I said. “And I’m not trying to make anyone think that I’m such a good girl or such a holy person. I’m a regular girl.”
I didn’t realize this statement was going to get so much attention, but the magazine got the most letters it had ever received about a story. Young people, an awful lot of “regular girls,” talked about the pressure they were under to be sexual before they even really knew what sex was. I also didn’t realize I’d just handed every daytime show a news hook for having us on. They asked Nick and me about my virginity at every appearance, and my take was that it wasn’t so much about “saving myself” but building up anticipation. I was nineteen and still sheltered, so it was kind of bizarre to me that people felt free to ask, “How have you not had sex yet?” The interviewer would always start with me and then turn to Nick, who was twenty-six and a man. This situation did not compute for them.
“And you’re okay with this, Nick?” they’d ask. He always handled it well, since we both knew the question amounted to “You’re cool with dating a girl who doesn’t put out?”
“I really respect everything that she cares about and everything that’s important to her,” he said on The View. “And she talked about this from the very beginning, and so I knew going in that that was an issue with her and that was cool with me.”
It gave America a story line to follow. The sexy virgin and the long-suffering, but still understanding, hot prince. Barbie and Ken didn’t have sex either, right? Nick loved the fact that I was so strong in my faith and that I had this wide-eyed innocent approach to life. He didn’t share it, though. I would get so frustrated, asking God to take the blindfold from his eyes and help him find a spiritual center. And then I would hear Sarah telling me to relax and to just accept him for who he was.
Our duet, “Where You Are,” sold okay numbers and didn’t push the album higher on the charts, so Tommy Mottola was determined that I make good on showing my abs in the video for the next single. When discussing the concept for “I Think I’m in Love With You,” the label kept using the phrase “MTV friendly”—which meant big smiles and skin. We shot over three days at the Santa Monica Pier, and it was freezing, but you would never know it. I wore a white blouse tied under my bustline, but where the ties of the shirt didn’t cover, I made sure to keep “feeling the music” by placing my hands around my stomach. I was just so uncomfortable showing that much of my body and jumping around. Nothing to see here, folks, buy my album.