Picture Perfect

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 something that passed for, “Out of here” as I stomped past her. She struggled to keep up as I hauled ass to the car, but