Picture Perfect (28 page)

Brooke and Damien glided onto the dance floor as Flynn began strumming the opening notes to Jason
Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up,” as the happy couple beamed at each other.  After spending the last week deprived of everything that was Flynn, I almost lost it at the sound of his voice. 

When Brooke and Damien’s dance ended, Delilah and Spencer walked to the floor.  I melted when
he started to sing The Beatles “In My Life”.  My emotions were all over the place, and I wanted to run from the beach and scream.  I’d never have what Delilah and Spencer did, and it hurt.

Instead of running, I stayed in place and applauded with everyone else when the dance ended.  Spencer shared a look with Flynn and nodded his head, and the next thing I knew Flynn had broken into, “Having My Baby.”  We were all a mixture of laughter and tears after that.  The song was cheesy, but Flynn’s voice made it beautiful.

He’d finished singing and was moving to get off the stool when Sylvia called out and told him to play a love song that made him think of me so that everyone could dance.  Any piece of my heart that was left intact cracked into a million pieces as I waited for him to tell her that no love song reminded him of me because we were over.

Instead,
he nodded his head and began to strum out a song that I immediately recognized.  It wasn’t a mainstream song, but it was one of my all-time favorites, and I couldn’t believe that of all the songs in the world, he’d chosen that one.  The song he sang was Damien Rice’s “Cannonball,” and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard in my whole life.  As word after word came from him mouth, his eyes never left mine.  Tears ran down my face unchecked as he sang, but I was helpless to stop it.

By the time he was finished singing and had put the guitar down, I was as close to unglued as I’d ever been.  It physically hurt at the deepest level that what had started out so beautiful had turned so ugly.

Once the guitar was down, he was across the dance floor in a flash, grabbing my hand as he guided me toward the house.

“Get your purse, we’re leaving in five minutes.  I’m exhausted from pretending around them that everything is fine with you and I just want to go home.  I’ll tell my family that we’re leaving.  Meet me at the car.”

For more than ten days, I’d been living in fucking hell.  Tessa was everywhere in my life and it was destroying me. 

I’d been paying for a suite at the Mondrian for her for the last nine
of those days.  Every night before I fell asleep I promised myself that the following day I would move her out of my house and into the hotel, and every day I didn’t follow through.  I’m not even sure why.  We were barely speaking and I avoided her like the plague, so it wasn’t because things were going well. 

I was fucking miserable without her and every part of me
fought against pushing her away but it was the only responsible thing to do.  I’d taken to driving around after rehearsal for hours and hours in order to avoid going home.  I’d drive through the canyon to the beach listening to real pick-me-up songs like Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’, Pearl Jam’s ‘Black’, U2’s ‘With or Without You’, and Matchbox 20’s ‘Back to Good’.  I was about two seconds from going Goth, painting my nails black and singing songs about agony.  At this point, I wanted to kick my own morose ass because it was so damn depressing. 

My sisters wedding to Spencer had been ridiculously difficult for me emotionally.  It should have been a happy day, and certainly it was one that just two months ago hadn’t been an option since I’d been an only child.  I was happy for Delilah, overjoyed to have discovered two sisters that had already set up residence in my heart, but I could barely access that joy anymore because all of my happiness was buried deep under layers of misery over what had happened with Tessa.

There wasn’t a minute that had passed since the night that I’d realized I was just a song on Tessa’s life CD that I hadn’t desperately missed her.  Every moment of our time together was locked in my head and it played out on a damn loop in my mind.  I remembered everything, right down to the exquisite taste of her.

After I’d done the wedding songs for the happy couples and
my Gram asked me to sing a love song that reminded me of Tessa, I’d played the song that I’d been listening to over and over for the last ten days in between each of the rest of the other depressing songs I’d been listening to.  Damien Rice’s ‘Cannonball’ expressed almost everything that I was feeling, and I’d sung it from the heart. 

Watching Tessa cry while I was singing made me want to break things.  If the venue hadn’t been a wedding, I’d have smashed the fuck out of my guitar and then peeled out to go get piss drunk.  Instead, I’d seen the song through to the bitter end, but now I was past done. I was taking Tess back to my house and telling her to pack her shit, no matter what.  Enough was enough.  I shouldn’t have even bothered to bring her to the wedding, and her crocodile tears pissed me off.  She looked like I was stabbing her in the heart, but
she
was the one that didn’t want our relationship to be anything, not me, so fuck her.

If I had half a fucking brain, I’d have listened to Tyson the second he’d picked up on the fact that something was wrong
and had confronted me about it.

“No bitch is worth feeling like shit Flynn. If she’s making you feel like shit, she’s
gotta go.  Open the door and throw her stupid ass out.  It’s not like there’s a shortage of available chicks around that you can fuck at the drop of a hat.  Pull that fucking monster out of your pants and get back to drilling and killing.  Stop pining over a selfish bitch that doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground.  Love is for pussies that don’t see reality.  You got sucked in by a stupid bi…”

I’d picked him up and slammed him against a wall so fast that even I was surprised.  “Stop calling her a bitch Tyson or, so help me, I’m going to beat you to death.”

Tyson wasn’t a scrawny guy, and if he’d wanted to, he could have given me just as good as I would have given him.  Instead, he’d raised his hands in surrender.

“Okay dude, if that’s what you want, I won’t talk about her.  Straight up- it’s a temporary reprieve.  If you aren’t back to normal by the time the tour starts, all bets are off.  I’m not signing off on the girl that’s making you a miserable prick
touring with us.  That bullshit is not going to fly.”

Instead of threatening to kick his ass, I should have taken his words to heart and put her out.  Now I was stuck with her in my house for another night of torture.

I made excuses to my family about why we had to leave, pretending that Tessa was suffering from a debilitating migraine.  Gram wasn’t fooled and I don’t believe my father was either, but they didn’t stop me.

Tessa was in the foyer waiting for me, and I grunted somethin
g that passed for, “Out of here” as I stomped past her.  She struggled to keep up as I hauled ass to the car, but I didn’t offer to help her.  I didn’t open the passenger door for her, either.  A lifetime of ingrained manners sailed out of the window in a matter of seconds as I decided that I just wanted to get as far away from her as humanly possible.

She barely, and I do mean barely, had herself in the car before I was peeling out of the driveway.  Just knowing that she was next to me, close enough to touch, close enough to smell, close enough to hear her breathing, infuriated me.  I turned up the radio to ear splitting levels and drove like a demon to get back to my house as quickly as possible.  I was done, and I needed her out of my life.

We got back to my house quickly, and after turning the car off and slamming my door as I exited, I tore into the house as I tried to get myself under control. I had my back to the kitchen door that led to the garage, taking deep breaths and getting my “It’s been nice, but you’ve got a suite at the Mondrian to move into so let’s make that happen ASAP” speech in order.  I’d just about gotten it as good as it was going to get when I heard a crash behind me.  Turning, I found Tessa on her hands and knees in between the door from the garage to the kitchen, the contents of her purse rolling around on the floor.

Instinct had me across the room to her in seconds, bending down to help her off the floor.  It was clear that she’d tripped coming through the door, and she needed some first aid for her scraped palms and a gash on her knee.  She’d gone down hard on the hideous poured concrete floors
, and I knew it had to have hurt like a bitch. 

It made me feel like shit that I hadn’t been enough of a gentleman to see her back into the house, because the sky-high heels she was wearing had to be difficult to navigate in.  I opened my mouth to tell her that I
would help her up the stairs to where the first aid kit was, but the words died in my throat when I saw that she was sobbing.  She hadn’t fallen because of the fucking shoes; she’d fallen because she couldn’t see through her tears.

My heart hurt
beneath the ice that I’d encased it in, and I pushed down those feelings with every bit of self-preservation that I had left.  I realized that it would be quicker to carry her up the stairs, so I lifted her up and did just that.  After I settled her on the bed I went into the bathroom and got some antiseptic wipes and a Band-Aid for her knee.  My hands shook the entire time I treated her wounds, but since she had her eyes closed she didn’t notice.

“It’s all done, you should be fine,” I said.  It came out gruff and unfriendly, but I didn’t really focus too much on it because I knew that I needed to get the fuck away from her before my control snapped.

I decided that I needed to get out of the bedroom, and I hauled ass to the door.  I was too fucking weak to throw her out and I hoped that maybe I’d ball up in the morning to lay down the law.  As my hand grasped the doorknob, Tessa spoke.

“Wait.  I have to ask you a question.”

Grinding my teeth, I pivoted quickly and stood staring at her.

“What?”

She stared at me for a moment without a word before blurting out, “This is it, isn’t it?  We’re done.  I can tell that you want me to leave.”

Well fuck me.  She’d backed me into a corner, and now it was time to shit or get off the pot.  Pure anger took over, and words flew out of my mouth.

“Yeah, we’re done.  I’ve rented you a suite at the Mondrian to stay in until the tour starts.  I’ll have a car pick you up in the morning around ten.  You can be ready by then, yes?”

Absolute calm had descended over her while I spoke, and she didn’t so much as flinch.  Any hope that I’d had that she’d tell me that she didn’t want us to be over faded away.

Looking away from me, she nodded her head.  “I can be ready by then.”

Glaring at the back of her head I snapped, “Good.  The sooner
this is over, the better.  Your timing is perfect because now I’ll be single for the tour.  Unfortunately for you, there aren’t as many opportunities for women to pick up guys on the road so it will be harder for you, but if you need to let off steam, some of our roadies are available.  They’ve always done well with the groupies we turn down.”

I exited the room after
I said that, slamming the door behind me.

What Flynn had said to me hurt so bad that I wished he’d slapped me
physically instead of his words.  Physical pain had
nothing
on the pain in my heart and mind, and I’d take that over the torment of having his parting shot repeating on a loop in my head any day.

I couldn’t allow myself to breakdown, not yet.  Gathering strength that I didn’t even know I possessed, I began packing.
  Since that didn’t take long, I wound up laying on the bed and texting Jess.

Me:
You there?

Jess: Yep! I stayed in tonight because I’m running a mini-marathon in the morning. What’s up?

Me: Flynn and I broke up.

Less than a minute later, my phone was ringing.  Sliding my finger across the answer button, I sniffled as I tried to hold back my tears.

“Honey, what happened?”

Furiously wiping at my eyes to hold the tears at bay I s
aid, “He got mad at me because he wants to build a house for us and I said no.  That was ten days ago and he hasn’t touched me since then.  But seriously… a fucking house?  What was I supposed to say? Should I have told him that I dream of being with him forever? I can’t let my head float up in the clouds Jess, and I couldn’t expose myself in that way.  He’s going to have girls
all over him
the entire time we’re on the tour!  I survived Lee because he was Lee and he
sucked
. The sex was awful, I wasn’t in love with him and we weren’t going to be together long term. But the truth is, if I saw Flynn doing something like that, I wouldn’t be able to function. He means so much more to me than anyone in the world but I just can’t pretend that we’re going to work out once the tour starts.  We haven’t been talking and everything has been awful.  I had to photograph each of the band members separately this week and all three of them said something to me about how unhappy he is and now they don’t think what I’m doing to him is right. And then, tonight was his sisters wedding.  His Gram asked him to sing a song to me and he did and I lost it.  He grabbed me and stormed me out of there soon after, and when we got home… I mean, to his house… he told me to pack my shit because he was moving me into the Mondrian tomorrow morning since we’re over.”