You're not bitter.

There are bills to pay, of course, because you failed at first, and because your friends always want the best - deserve the best - and your family. Your brothers, all six of them. Your mom, and stepdad, and dad and stepmom. Your first niece, and all the nieces and nephews that followed. Your ex-wife, and kids that you don't get to see nearly enough but who love you anyway, because you're perfect. You're you.

And of course, the fans.

They love you - they always love you. But they don't know. Anything. You sing for them, and you dance for them, and you write for them, when they let you, and if you took a break, they'd forget who you are. They forgot after MMC, they forgot after *nsync. You're not dumb enough to do that three times, because who would you be if you couldn't sing?

You tour continually, singing your songs, playing guitar, dancing, fucking your way around the world. Everyone wants a piece of you, a song or a show or a check or a kiss in a dark corner, or something more. You let 'em, let 'em have whatever they want, and pay them on their way, because it keeps them happy and it keeps you singing.

And maybe you don't remember the girls - or the boys - but after awhile they're all the same, and that's okay too. Your family - your real family - those are the ones that stick with you. You might not see them much, with the bills and all, and the touring, but they're the ones you do it for.

And yourself, of course.

Back when you were in *nsync, back when you and Jayce used to write together, you and Wade, when you and Chris could go riding all the time, and Joey had just become a father and Lance was teaching you business, you started writing a song. About them, and you, and all of it.

You didn't finish it, though. Not for years. Not 'till *nsync was long over, and you had made a second comeback, this time as Justin Timberlake, solo artist. Singer, and dancer, and musician. Justin Timberlake, Entertainer.

You couldn't finish it before then, because you didn't understand. You needed the ironic distance, as Chris would say. It was a good song - the best you'd ever written - and it summed up everything *nsync had been to you, and it ran over. It was a good five minutes, at least, and they made you cut a radio version, 3:05, and it was huge. It wasn't the song you'd written, but it made you money and kept you on the charts, so what the hell.

You have them all in the palm of your hands, and you aim to keep them there. And if that means fucking, or money, or cutting your songs to fit what people who've never sung a day in their lives want, well.

It's only music.