MY FLIGHT HOME had sucked. I’d felt like I was leaving a part of me behind in LA, and I felt stupid for feeling that way. I didn’t like being melancholy and I never wanted to be the 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 known each other for a matter of days. Thus, I knew being apart was the right thing to do. In my opinion, we needed to be apart to figure out if how we felt when we were together was real.
By the time I 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. I’m in the middle of something but I will call you as soon as I can. Glad you got home okay. I miss you.
I felt like a total idiot for being sad he wasn’t going to call me immediately.
Me: Miss you too—I’ll talk to you later. Hope everything is okay.
Flynn: Thank you, sweetness.
Me: Talk to you soon.
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 didn’t seem as eager to talk to me, and I couldn’t help but think 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 quickly put a damper on his enthusiasm. Put bluntly: I didn’t have any faith in men at all and Flynn suddenly being busy was kind of what I had feared would happen. It fed into all of my negative fears.
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’ roll 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 right then I was unsure about what was going on. 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 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 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 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 I pulled out and made a special file for were from my time with Flynn. The picture I’d taken of us kissing on the bluff in Malibu was so beautiful it made my heart hurt.
I spent an hour cropping and touching up the photos I’d taken of Flynn and his family the night of our dinner. The photos his Gram had taken of the two of us together were painful to look at. It felt like it had happened eons before 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 I would see her the night of the first show on the tour next month.
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 I had when I was with him. Eventually I fell asleep, but it wasn’t restful.
I hoped he would call me the following day, but he didn’t. Instead he sent me another text.
Flynn: So sorry I haven’t been able to call yet. There’s a lot going on here—I’ll explain it all soon. I miss you, sweetness.
Me: Okay—I hope that everything is okay.
Flynn: Thanks babe. It means more than you know. I can’t wait to hear your voice again. I miss you.
The days after 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 my career didn’t suffer. There was no other alternative. The one thing I knew for damn sure was if he tried to pick up right where we left off the second I was within touching distance again, I was going to tell him to go fuck himself. I swore to myself I would never be somebody’s booty call—not even Flynn Rand.
Once again, I’d learned the hard way my taste in men was abysmal. I’d started to let down my walls with Flynn, had secretly begun to believe in the fairytale. The way I was feeling once I got back to Philadelphia and stopped hearing from him was a solid reminder shit like that didn’t exist. I told myself at least I had learned I could enjoy being sexual, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Flynn had talked a good game, but his actions spoke louder than his words. He’d clearly moved on to the next girl, and I was betting the new one put out without any weird sexual issues getting in the way.
On the fifth 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 was overdone and pissed off. I’d been so upset by his lack of contact by then, 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 need you.
I didn’t know what he expected me to say or how he thought I was going to proceed, but I was insulted that he thought so little of me. He’d completely ignored me for days, and I wasn’t up for pretending that wasn’t completely screwed up. 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. 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 gestured 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 on the screen. In the photo, Flynn was standing at an outdoor café with his father, his grandparents, some tall blond 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 girl’s face, and it was clear that he was thrilled. The headline above the photo read: RENEGADE DAD!
I.
Wanted.
To.
Vomit.
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. Where are you?
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 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 it would shut him down.
Me: I’m sorry, so busy trying to get ready for the tour. I heard your news, no need to let me down easy. It’s no big deal at all. Congrats on your baby! See you when the tour starts.
When I was finished, I turned off my phone. When I powered it back on two hours later, I had fifteen voice messages from Flynn and ten text messages. I wasn’t interested in whatever bullshit line he was trying to feed me, so 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 I wasn’t devastated to have fallen for Flynn’s bullshit.
The next morning I was still a mess. Jess and I were in the kitchen drinking coffee when there was a pounding at the door. Jess, much perkier than I was 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.”
All I could think was—fuck me, and fuck my life. He had flown all the way out to talk to me. What kind of asshole rubbed it in the way he was?
Jess let him in, her eyes wide as she stared at him. My eyes met his and, to my annoyance, 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 she knew something was going on. There was no way for her not to know, not now being in the same room with us. Her eyes told me she had questions and I would be answering them. With a frustrated shake of her head, she left the room.
Turning back to Flynn, I gasped when he came and pulled me into his arms. It killed me being up against his body like that, touching him and drinking in 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. The girl in the pictures on TMZ is my sister.”
Did he think I was such an airhead that I’d forgotten the basic facts about his life? I’d just spent the better part of a week with him, and we spent a lot of the time talking about our lives. I knew for a fact he didn’t have a sister. Him claiming he did was, hands down, the most pathetic excuse for douchebag behavior that I’d ever heard.
Shaking my head in disgust, I pushed against his chest.
“Jesus, Flynn, on top of everything else, you’re a liar. Let me go!”
Holding me tighter, he looked me dead in the eye. “I swear on my father’s life, Tess, that girl is my sister. We just found out this week my dad fathered twins almost twenty-three years ago. I’ve got twin sisters. I’m sorry I didn’t text baby, so sorry. My dad has been a fucking wreck and I’ve been staying at his house. There were DNA tests, we needed to meet the girls, my grandparents had to be told, and then they had to meet them. The anxiety of waiting for answers fucked with him big time. It brought up all the memories and pain of losing my mom for him. Needless to say, it’s been a dramatic few days.”
I wanted to believe him, wanted it to be true, but I was terrified. I froze in his arms like a statue.
“Sweetness, I fucked up. I. Fucked. Up. I should have called and explained this before. Shit’s been out of control and I’m guilty of putting everyone else but you and me first. I needed my dad to be okay, needed to deal with what was going on. I never stopped thinking about you, not for one minute. I missed you like crazy, babe. Wanted you with me in the worst way. When you texted me back last night and then changed your fucking number, I hauled ass to get to you. Don’t throw us away, Tess, I’m begging you.”
I believed him— I did, but all I was able to think about was how scared I was. The previous five days had cut me to the quick emotionally, and it hurt like hell. That was how I felt after being wrapped in him for less than a week. How much worse would it be to open myself up completely for however long this lasted? To me, it felt as though it would be emotional Russian roulette.