Picture Perfect (16 page)

Well, fuck me running
, sideways.  I could have sisters?  I couldn’t tell if my dad was happy about that or not, but what I did know was that I wasn’t mad at him in the slightest.  He was staring at me now, so I knew that he wanted to know my reaction.

“Dad, I’m not mad at you, that’s ridiculous.  Right now I’m trying to figure out how John got involved, and how you’re feeling about all this?  If they’re yours, do you want to meet them?”

He looked so upset, and I wondered what was bothering him about that.  My dad loved being a father, and I couldn’t believe that having two more children would be any kind of a burden to him. 

Taking a deep breath he asked, “
Would it be okay with you if I wanted to meet them?”

Christ on a crutch, he thought I would be pissed if he wanted to meet them
!  He couldn’t be more wrong.  “Jesus! Dad,
of course
it would be okay.  You’re acting like you just told me you were in jail for murder.  You’re my father and I love you.  I know better than most about using sex and alcohol as numbing agents.  Personally, if they
are
yours, I’d like to meet them.  The call is ultimately yours, but that’s how I feel.”

Before I even had that sentence finished, my dad had his arms around me tight.  “I love you so much, son.  I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re okay with all of this. 
I was scared that I was going to lose you, too.”

He meant lose me like he had lost my mother, only emot
ionally instead of physically, and the knowledge that he had been scared of that gutted me.  Hugging him hard, I told him how I felt.  “Dad, you’re tops in my book, no matter what.  You’re the best dad in the world and you’re never going to lose me, ever.  I love you dad.”

The two of us spent the next few minutes hugging it out and getting our shit together.  I’m not ashamed to say that a few tears were shed, but being the men that we are, we kept it to a dull roar.

When we finished our male bonding, dad explained the rest of the story to me.  The aunt of the girls that were likely my father’s daughters was the VP of Hart International, the firm that had built my manager’s house, hence John bringing Sandra to my dad’s house.  Apparently, the whole sordid tale about my dad and the woman- who had turned out to be married- had come out just a few days ago because someone was threatening to blackmail the Hart family with the information.  My dad was most upset that the blackmailers were threatening to release a video of him having sex with the twin’s mother.  He feared that it would hurt me, because that’s what the blackmailers were relying on.  The truth was that I didn’t care about the tape as it related to my career; I only cared about my dad.

“I’m going to give my DNA tomorrow for the paternity test.  Will you come with me?”

“Dad, of course I’ll come with you.  In fact, let’s hang out tonight.  I’ll spend the night and we can leave from here in the morning.”

The look of relief on his face told me that he needed that, and that made me feel better.

My flight home sucked.  I felt like I was leaving a part of me behind in LA, and I wanted to kick my own ass for thinking that way.  I didn’t like being melancholy and I never wanted to be that annoying girl who listened to sappy love songs and bemoaned being separated from her man.  Besides, I wasn’t even sure Flynn was
my
man.  We’d only know each other for a matter of days.  From that standpoint, I knew that being apart was the right thing to do.  We needed to be apart to figure out if how we felt when we were together was real.

By the time I’d gathered my luggage from the carousel, I had myself pretty well under control.
I tried to call Flynn but got no answer, so I decided to try him later. Jess was at the curb waiting for me, and I hopped in with a smile.  It was good to be back with my bestie, and I couldn’t wait to share everything that had happened to me over the last few days with her.

After picking up hoagies from our local Wawa, we headed back to our apartment. 
Jess went to the bathroom and I quickly texted Flynn.

Me: I’m home, safe and sound.

Flynn: Good. I miss you so much baby.  Call you soon.

I felt like a total idiot for being sad that he wasn’
t going to call me immediately.

Me: Okay, talk to you then. 

He didn’t respond to that text, and I was left feeling uncertain.  In the few days that I’d spent with him, Flynn had been downright chatty.  Suddenly he was going radio silent on me, and I couldn’t help but think that it was a classic case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.  Apparently I’d been fascinating to him while I was nearby, but the three thousand mile distance had clearly dampened his enthusiasm.

Jess came bounding back into the room with a huge smile, throwing herself down on the sofa with a giggle.  “Alright, tell me everything!  What was it like hanging out with rock n’ rolls gods?  Did you love it there?  What was Flynn like in person?  Did you want to do him?”

I’d come home so excited to tell her about everything, but now I felt like a groupie loser.  Instead of telling her the truth, I downplayed the whole thing.  “Flynn was nice.  The entire band was nice.  Very down to earth.  I learned all about my tour responsibilities and I’m so excited about the whole thing.  Of course I loved it in LA, can’t wait to get you out there Jess.  You’re going to love it.”

After swallowing her mouthful of food, Jess frowned at me.  “That’s it?  He was
nice
?  Six years ago, he eye fucked you for almost three straight hours and now he was
just
nice?  What a letdown!”

I smiled to cover the pain in my heart, looking down at my hoagie in the hopes that she wouldn’t see any traces of how I really felt in my eyes.

“It wasn’t a letdown Jess.  They were all great and I’m very excited about this tour.  The highlight was all the great people that I met who will be working on the tour too.  Some of them were crazy hot.  You would have been in heaven!”

One of Jess’s favorite past-times was talking about hot guys, and my diversion tactic worked.  She spent twenty minutes grilling me about all the guys that I’d met, and she didn’t ask about Flynn again for the rest of the night.

After we ate, I headed to my room to unpack and go to bed.  I also decided to torture myself and transfer all of the photos I had taken during my trip onto my computer.  There were hundreds of photos to go through, but the ones that I pulled out and made a special file for were from my time with Flynn.  The picture that I’d taken of us kissing on that bluff in Malibu was so beautiful that it made my heart hurt.

I spent an hour cropping and touching up the photos that I’d taken of Flynn and his family the night of our dinner.  The photos that his Gram had taken of the two of us together were painful to look at.  It felt like that had happened eons ago instead of just days.  Once I was finished editing, I put them all in a zip file and sent them on to his Gram, along with a friendly email telling her that I would see her the night of the first show on the tour next month.

After that, I curled up in my bed and spent the next four hours struggling to get myself to sleep.  I missed being in Flynn’s arms, missed the feeling of security that I felt when I was with him.  Eventually I fell asleep, but it wasn’t restful.

The days after I got home blended together, one after another, without another word from Flynn.  I tried to look on the bright side as I steeled my resolve and did what I had to do to move on.  For those
few days in LA with him, I’d lived the dream.  That was something, right?

I channeled my sadness, and later my anger, into fortifying myself for the tour.  It would be uncomfortable to see him day in and day out for
four months, but I needed to stay level headed and professional so that my career didn’t suffer.  There was no other alternative.

Once again, I’d learned the hard way that my taste in men was ridiculously bad.  I’d started to let down my walls with Flynn, had secretly begun to believe in the fairytale.  The way I felt now was a solid reminder that shit like that didn’t exist. 

Flynn had talked a good game, but his actions spoke louder than his words.  He had the attention span of a toddler and once I was out of sight, I was also out of mind.  He’d clearly moved on to the next girl, and I bet this one put out without any weird sexual issues getting in the way.

On the sixth day
of my post fairytale existence, Flynn got around to texting me.

Flynn: Hi sweetness
.  I’m missing you terribly, wishing you were here or I was there.

I didn’t text him
back.  He sent three more texts over the next four hours.

Flynn: I
miss you.  Call me when you get this.

Flynn:
You really need to keep your phone on you babe.  Text me.

Flynn: Tess, where are you?  I miss you like crazy.

I didn’t know what he expected me to say or how he thought I was going to proceed.  He’d completely ignored me for days, and I wasn’t up for pretending that didn’t hurt.  I was trying to decide what to do when Jess burst through my door with her iPad in hand.

“Holy shit Tess, did you see TMZ today?”

I hadn’t but that wasn’t a surprise.  I was struggling to remember to check my email, much less having the wherewithal to surf the web for gossip.

Waving her iPad in front of me, she gestu
red to the screen.  The pain I felt when Flynn didn’t text was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to how I felt when I saw the picture that was on the screen.  In the photo, Flynn was standing at an outdoor café with his father, his grandparents, some tall blonde guy and a beautiful blonde haired girl.  Everyone was laughing and Flynn had his hand on the girl’s stomach.  He was beaming into the girls face, and it was clear that he was thrilled.  The headline above the photo read: RENEGADE DAD!

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Flynn was having a baby.

I’m not sure how I got Jess out of my room, but I managed to do it without raising her ‘something is wrong’ alarm.  That was surprising considering that something was really, really wrong. 

As I sat there trying to process everything, I heard my text alert. 

Flynn: I really need to talk to you Tess.  I have news I want to share.

I was furious and disgusted.  Why had he gotten involved with me at all if he already had a girlfriend?  What was his family playing at that night at dinner?  They’d acted like they were so happy to meet me, but the photo on TMZ very clearly showed that they genuinely loved the girl that Flynn had gotten pregnant.  Gram was getting her wish for a great-grandchild, and it tore my heart in two.

Grabbing the phone, I sent him a quick text back in the hopes that it would shut him down.

Me: I’m too busy to talk. I heard your news, no need to let me down easy.  It’s no big deal.  Congrats on your baby!  See you when the tour starts.

After that, I turned my phone off and then I called my cell phone carrier
and had my phone number changed entirely.  I didn’t want to hear from Flynn anymore, ever.  I’d work the tour and then I’d forget he existed.

I spent the rest of the night pretending to read a book, and as soon as it was an acceptable time to go to bed, I bid Jess goodnight and
went to sleep.  I was too depressed to stay awake and pretend that I wasn’t depressed that I’d fallen for Flynn’s bullshit.

By
the next morning, I was starting to feel like I could breathe without feeling like there was a razor blade in my throat.  Jess and I were in the kitchen drinking coffee when there was a pounding at the door.  Jess, much perkier than I in my current state, jumped up and ran to open the door.  Her gasp when she looked through the viewer and saw who was at the door was my first clue.  My next was the sound of his voice when she opened the door.

“Please tell me Tessa’s here.”

Fuck me, and fuck my life.  He flew all the way out here to talk to me.  The hits just kept coming.

Jess let him in, her eyes wide as she stared at him.  My eyes met his and as usual, the connection was right there.  Even knowing he was having a baby with another girl, I still felt for him what I’d never felt for anyone else.  We stood there staring at each other in silence for a minute and I couldn’t look away.

Finally, Jess’s strangled inhalation pulled my attention from Flynn.  Meeting her gaze, I realized that she knew something was going on.  There was no way for her not to know, not now that she was in the same room with us.  Her eyes told me she had questions and that I
would
be answering them.  With a sad shake of her head, she left the room.

Turning back to Fly
nn, I gasped when he came and pulled me into his arms.  It killed me being up against his body like that, touching him and inhaling his scent.  I started to pull back, but he didn’t let me go.  He held me tighter, forcing me to look up at him.  “Babe, it’s not what you think.  That girl in the pictures on TMZ is my sister.”

Did he think I was
new here?  I’d just spent the better part of a week with him, talking about our lives.  I knew for a fact that he didn’t have a sister.  This was, hands down, the most pathetic excuse for douchebag behavior that I’d ever heard.