Forty-eight

~ Oakland, CA, Day 1… Concert #25 ~

I was standing in a buffet breakfast line in the venue loading fruit onto my plate while balancing it on top of my coffee cup in one hand. We’d had to be at the venue early that day for a press conference and fan conference, so feeding us for getting us up so damn early was part of the deal. Nick walked up to me and giggled, "I see you’ve got your appetite back finally…"

I smiled and nodded while focusing on balancing a strawberry on my plate without disturbing the balance of the plate, "Yuh huh…"

"That’s cool..." Nick smiled and stole my strawberry popping it into his mouth.

"Damn it, Nick!" I groaned. "Fine, you hold the plate then…" I shoved the plate into his hands, "You’re such a shit…"

"I know…" he grinned.  "But we didn’t get to have breakfast this week… so I haven’t shared your food with you in a while."

"Nick, you always share my food…" I smiled putting more food on the plate.

"Oh yeah…" he laughed.

I shook my head and held up a small box of corn pops, "Yes?"

"Yup…"

"Okay. Here, take my coffee and the plate…" I said handing him my cup. "And I’ll bring the cereal and get you your juice."

"Cool… where’re you sitting?"

"Over by the window…"

Nick looked around the room, "Who’s that chick?"

I poured the milk into one bowl and then emptied another box of cereal into the second bowl, "The blonde by my stuff?"

"Yeah…"

"That’s Faith. She got here during the press conference."

Nick groaned, "Another spend a day with a fan thing? God… I thought we were done with those…"

I smiled, "No, honey… Faith. The girl who sent me her pictures…"

I glanced up at Nick and could see his wheels turning, "Oh! The New York girl? The wedding…"

"Yup."

"Oh cool…" he said looking in her direction. "How long is she here for?"

"Til I get sick of her and send her away…" I laughed.

"No really…"

"Really. She’s in between freelance projects so unless she turns out to drive me nuts or something I’m keeping her for a while."

Nick laughed, "You act like she’s a puppy…"

I smiled, "Nah… just another kid to take under my Mama Kel wing…"

~~~~~

"You must never get bored with those guys around…" Faith smiled as we sat in a dressing room recovering from a surprise silly string attack courtesy of Brian, Nick and AJ.

I laughed pulling pieces of string out of my hair, "Well it’s rare… but every now and then boredom strikes. There’s only so much you can do in certain hotels and on the busses, so we get creative. It helps that we all know each other so well…"

"Yeah I’m sure it does… they really seem like great guys."

I smiled a proud smile, "Yeah they’re my boys… gotta love them."

"Is it hard though? All the fans wanting to be where you are and being jealous of you?"

I sat down on the couch next to Faith and pulled my picture envelopes back into my lap, "Well sometimes. I’ve been lucky actually; I haven’t encountered that much negative response yet. I mean, it’s always there… but I think it helps that I’m nice to the fans and I truly do understand why they’re jealous. I mean, if I were a fan and saw what a great group of guys they are, I’d want to be friends with them too. It’s only natural to want that. So I don’t ever look down on the fans, and the good fans see that and respect that."

Faith nodded, "That’s cool…"

"Yeah. Plus I’ve been around longer than some of the guys have… so that helps. I have a whole lot of history with them…"

"Do you ever get sick of each other on tour? Being stuck together so much?"

"Are you kidding me?" I laughed. "Of course we do… Just last night I was so sick of Brian being obnoxious that I threw a book at him. And it wasn’t a soft cover book. I literally hurled a hard cover novel at him, nearly knocked him in the head." I laughed, "Then he apologized to me for being such an ass and I gave him a hug and told him that I loved him. We do that though… we have our moments, we fight, and then we make up and go play video games or something…"

Faith smiled, "Sounds like me and my older brothers…"

"Exactly. Until AJ and I hooked up this year, he was my little brother, and I still protect him like he is… I do that with all of the guys. Even Kevin and Howie although they’re technically my big brothers. We love each other too much to really hurt one another."

Faith thumbed through a stack of pictures that had been shipped to me after developing and sighed, "You’re so good…"

"Oh hush…" I laughed. "Thank you…"

"You’re welcome… Although I’m beginning to think that I suck…"

I chuckled, "Don’t say that… you had some great stuff that you sent to me."

"Thanks, but it’s nothing compared to…"

"Don’t compare… that’s the worst thing you can do to yourself, especially as an artist. Each of us has our strong points and you have to focus on those. There are certain types of pictures that I still struggle to get right, but what matters is that for one, I still try… and two, I focus on the kinds that I know I take well. You can do the same…"

Faith smiled shyly and looked back down to the pictures she was holding, "Okay…"

I smiled as I looked back to my own stack of photos. Faith was a cute kid. Of course, she wasn’t exactly much of a "kid" but I still called her that. She was actually the same age as Nick, as we’d figured earlier, and was turning out to be great company. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed girl conversations. I loved my boys, and always loved hanging out with guys even before I met My Boys, but there’s something comforting about hanging out with a woman sometimes. It’s not like I could talk about PMS and tampons to Kevin… although if I really wanted to I know he’d listen.

The part that worried me about Faith though was that she was cute. The boys all flirted with me and knew that even before I was with AJ, I was pretty much off limits. But Faith was cute, and single which was a dangerous combination when left with single attractive superstars.

"Finally!" I laughed as I opened a package of pictures.

Faith smiled, "What?"

"Oh… I had this idea a few weeks ago to give the Boys homework to keep them busy. Every so often I give them disposables and they run around taking pictures on their own. I’ve been waiting for them to finally develop their first attempts so that I could see them."

I opened the first set and began looking through them, "But how do you know which one belongs to who?"

"The last picture of the roll has to be a self portrait so that I know who it is…" I giggled. The first stack of pictures was humorous to say the least. I was pretty sure I knew who had taken the pictures by the amount of thumbs in the pictures. I laughed and held up a picture, "Now see, this one would have been good if he hadn’t cut it off with his thumb. He’s trying…" When we got to the self portrait I laughed so hard that tears fell out of my eyes. "Oh god…"

"Who is that?"

I laughed, "Howie… I can tell by the forehead… and I was pretty sure those were his thumbs…" The next stack of pictures was better, but not much. "Geesh… haven’t they listened to anything I’ve taught them about photography?"

"Apparently not…" Faith giggled as we looked through a stack of blurry pictures caused by too much moving around while taking the picture.

"I bet you five bucks these are Brian’s… he had coffee that morning…"

"I trust you…" she laughed.

I flipped the last picture up and sure enough it was a self-portrait of Brian. Except it was aimed at his chest instead of his head and was a perfect picture of his UK tee shirt. "Now this is actually a good one…" I smiled. "Very nice Brian…" I knew right away that the next pile belonged to AJ. He’d been around me enough to pick up and retain a few key photo-taking techniques.

"Who took those?"

"AJ… totally…" I smiled looking at assorted pictures of neon signs in the venue in Chicago. He’d used different angles and heights while taking each picture. The pictures that he’d taken of Nick when I’d called him that afternoon to talk to the fan outside was Nick climbing around on the stage hanging off, and sometimes falling off of surfaces. He’d actually gotten some good action shots of Nick in mid air jumping off of things. Then his self-portrait was of his hand, palm up with the words "I love you" written on it.

"Aww…" Faith smiled.

I grinned and blushed before opening the next pack of pictures. I cracked up looking at them, "Kevin…" I said to Faith. The pictures were all of various feet. AJ’s feet, my feet in my cow slippers, feet in the elevator, feet that I didn’t recognize, and then the self portrait of course was a picture of his feet looking down his body as he lay on the bed in the hotel. "Which leaves Nickers…" I smiled opening Nick’s pictures.

Faith took the words right out of my mouth as I flipped through the photos, "Wow…"

I nodded silently and looked closely at the pictures. They were great. Not a single picture of Nick’s had turned out bad. The first few pictures were of AJ taking his own pictures. He’d managed to get a look of deep thought caught on AJ’s face while he looked up at a sign. Then he took some great head shots of AJ making goofy faces, then just smiling. Nick captured Howie asleep in the dressing room with his head resting on his hand, he got Kevin rehearsing a dance step with a dancer, and Brian hugging a little boy who was a fan. The picture that caught my heart in my throat though was a picture that he’d taken of me sleeping cuddled up in the bus with AJ. Then finally Nick’s self portrait was taken by aiming his camera up at the mirrored ceiling of his tour bus. The statement on his face was one I’d seen on him too many times... sadness. I stared at the picture silently for a while until Faith spoke up again.

"He must take pictures a lot huh?"

I shrugged, "I don’t know if he still does. When he was younger I used to give him pointers. He was always really good at it though…"

"Natural talent…" Faith said quietly looking through the rest of Nick’s pictures again.

I nodded looking at Nick’s self portrait again, something about it was drawing me in. "Yeah… he’s a talented guy…"

"Seems nice too… he was funny at breakfast."

I smiled and put the picture away, "Nicky’s a good one. He’s cool…"

"Cute too," Faith grinned.

I chuckled and nodded, "Definitely…"

"You two seem close…"

I looked at Faith not quite knowing what her statement was implying, if anything. "We are. Very…"

Faith smiled and nodded, "That’s cool…"

I smiled back at her and started packing up the pictures we’d been looking through, "So how about we go snap some pictures before the guys start getting ready for the concert?"

"Sounds good…" Faith said as she stood up and grabbed her camera as I grabbed mine. "I do have one question though…"

"Go for it…" I smiled as we walked out of the dressing room.

"So Nick… he’s single right?"