Picture Perfect

appreciate everything, but being chased by photographers who want to know what you’re doing at all times sucks. Having no privacy sucks. When it comes right down to it, we’re just four guys who want to live normal lives. We lived the rock n’ roll dream. Now it’s time to move into real life. That’s our new dream.”
    Damn him. The more he talked, the more I liked him. He was smart and thoughtful, and his head wasn’t up his ass. I wondered what “real life” meant to him. The fairytale princess dream in my head whispered that maybe he wanted to settle down and have children, but the rational part of my brain reminded me that a decade long buffet of anything goes sex would be impossible to walk away from. They might want to be normal, but I doubted the four of them would ever really let go of the excess entirely. They were staying in the music business after all, and it was a well-known fact that it was an anything goes deal in LA.

Chapter Twelve

    It was a relief that the press conference was over and the news was officially out. I knew that the next few days would suck. We’d be a story until the next big thing broke, and I knew that there would be cameras galore between now and then trying to document what we considered “normal.”
    As expected, I found my father and my grandparents sitting with Cole’s parents, so Cole and I made our way over to their area. We hugged and talked while the photographers and journalists in the room broke down. This core group of people was my family, the people that mean the most to me. I loved Gavin and Tyson as well, but more as best friends than as family. After my mother died, it was Cole’s mother and my grandmother who stepped in and became the dominant female forces in my life. I adored them both and I’ve always known that my mother would have approved of their influences on me.
    Looking around, I found Tess standing with Devon and Ian as she finished packing up her equipment. She had such a presence about her, a beauty that was far more than skin deep. With a wave of my hand I got her attention before calling out for the three of them to come over and meet the family.
    Aside from my high school girlfriend, I’d never intentionally introduced a woman to my family. I’d never even been tempted to do so. Sure, they’d met some of them, but it had always been something that happened if my family turned up at my house while one of the girls was there.
    When Tessa got close enough to me I reached out to take her hand. She pulled back nervously and shook her head at me. I tried not to be hurt, we’d only known each other less than twenty-four hours after all, but I felt the rejection like a kick to the nuts.
    Putting my feelings aside, I introduced her to my family. Her smile lit up the room as she laughed and conversed with the people I loved best. I puffed up with pride when I saw how taken my father and grandparents were with her.
    My grandmother asked her a million questions about what her dreams were for her photography, and Tessa answered them all with a smile. The two of them were going to be thick as thieves, I could tell that already.
    It was a relief that they were so taken with her. My family is very protective of me, and I have to admit that I’ve always been spoiled by their love and attention. My grandmother almost died giving birth to my father, so he’s an only child. I’m an only child because my mother passed away before she and my father could have any more children. They’d actually been trying for at least a year or so before my mother was diagnosed with cancer, but it never worked out. That meant that my grandparents and my father doted on me and were very protective. They had never made any secret of the fact that the rock star life was not what they ultimately wanted for me, and I could see that introducing them to Tessa had made them very happy.
    Clearly my grandparents were in the know about her, which meant that my dad had already started spreading the news. It occurred to me that with anyone else I’d be panicking, but because it was Tessa, I liked it. That was an interesting turn of events in and of itself. I was even happy that my family had immediately dispensed with the formalities and had insisted that Tess, Ian and Devon call my father Todd, my grandfather Mason and my grandmother Sylvia. The Hayes’ had also instructed that they wanted to be called by their first names, Janice & Steve. It was all very comfortable, and