Annoying Pest...

by K. S. Adkins

  When the masses caught on, she wasn’t ready for it. If anything, I was even less prepared because when it hit, I wasn’t ready to share her with the world. Our relationship was broadcast on radio shows, social media, and even news stations. Gossip whores dug up my past, making me sound like an abusive, controlling asshole. Making matters worse, the paparazzi followed us everywhere, and more times than not, I reacted with force. Shit, I made Alec Baldwin look like a choirboy.

  At the peak of the whirlwind, the height of her anxiety and the constant media scrutiny, I up and left her. I was able to acknowledge I failed her, if only to myself.

  Heading over to the table, she doesn’t look up, but I see her body tense. I don’t sit next to her like I once did. It wasn’t second nature for us anymore. That familiarity belonged to Guy now. He was gentle with her, I wasn’t, never would be.

  When I left, I thought he’d pick up her up and do what I couldn’t. He was supposed to offer her his heart; she was supposed to accept it. He was supposed to be the man I wasn’t. If that happened I didn’t know one way or the other, but I wouldn't let it stand in my way either. Which brought us to now.

  “How’s it feel being back?” I ask, careful to keep my distance. Because when she wanted to, Tempest could throw a haymaker.

  “Different.”

  “Different good or different bad?”

  “Different is my answer, Chevy.”

  “Guy showed me your schedule,” I offered up. “You’ll be busy.”

  “No shit.”

  “You cool with all the exposure?” And when she flinched I knew she wasn’t.

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Pest.”

  So this might have been the wrong thing to say. Standing up to her full height of five feet two, which was always ridiculously cute and made me feel like a fucking king because I dwarfed her, she stared me down. “Do not,” she grated out, “call me that.”

  “What should I call you then?” Because I’ve always called her Pest, always.

  “Your majesty, queen bee, boss lady, or I know.... EX-girlfriend,” she corrected. “But never that. I’m not paying you to play the nickname game.”

  “You aren’t paying me at all.”

  “What’s this now?”

  “You,” I said slowly to piss her off. “Aren’t paying me, Guy is.” Which was a lie. I had my own money. Hell, if anything positive came from the madness it was the money. Shaking her head, she then clinched her fists, which was her tell. She was getting worked up. She liked control of being in the know and in this Guy made sure she didn’t know shit.

  She was a lot tougher than he gave her credit for, but he always opted for babying her. As for me, I brought out the worst in her, and when this was over she wouldn’t know which way was up. But believe it or not, she needed to be scrambled, shook up. Tempest needed to get back to being Tempest. Hiding behind her issues wasn’t the answer, tough love was… I was.

  So I would do what I did best. Annoy the ever loving fuck out of her.

  “How’s the fist, slugger?” I smiled, pushing her further.

  “It’s fine,” she sniffed, pretending it doesn’t hurt. “Plus, I have another. Luckily, I just need one to masturbate.”

  “Maybe you should implement this false bravado into the real world instead of the one you’re hiding in,” I added. “It’d make Guy’s life a fuck of a lot easier.”

  “I’m going to bed,” she said, moving away from me, hoping to avoid an argument. “I’ve exceeded my quota for jacking bitches today.”

  “Don’t forget, your pills are on the counter by the sink,” I pointed out driving the knife deeper. Tempest started out fucking hating the pills. Personally, I didn’t think she needed them in the first place, but Guy trusted the doctors. And she believed them when they told her medicine was the only option available to her. I thought they were all quacks. After the attempted grab, she started popping that shit like candy.

  Tempest was a live wire by nature, she never needed a lot of sleep. That brain of hers was always running wild. She did her best work in the middle of the night. Naked except for her headphones and whichever instrument she chose. The best hours of my life were those nights with her.

  I missed those nights; I wanted them back. Those fucking pills took that away. Those fucking pills took her away, and she allowed it. She acted like she needed pills more than she needed me. Honestly, I was afraid to ask how long it took her to figure out I had left for fear of her answer. Scared that maybe it was Guy who had to tell her I took off because she was too stoned to figure it out herself.

  “I know where they are asshole,” she snapped in a tone I remembered all too well.

  “I bet you do, Anna Nicole.”

  “Why do you push me?” she asked, ringing her hands. “Is this a joke to you? Am I a joke to you?”

  “You don’t need that shit,” I repeated. “It slows you down, keeps you foggy. Didn’t need ‘em then, don’t need ‘em now. Unless you want to be a Hollywood statistic?”

  “Did you fast track your online degree?”

  “Docs make money every time you put one of those in your mouth,” I tell her. “They mask the symptom; they don’t cure it. You don’t need those fucking pills, Pest.”

  “I can’t fucking function without them, Chevy!”

  “Wanna bet?”

  Backing away, she knew what was coming. Challenging me never worked out for her. Bolting for the door, I beat her to it and was inside the kitchen when she launched herself on my back. Too bad I’d already begun dumping them all down the sink and had turned the water on. Watching the last one disappear, I even added some bleach so she wouldn't attempt diving in after them. Satisfied I’d made my point, I announced, “That's done. Who wants tacos?”

  God, I had wanted to do that for years.

  Sliding from my back, she stumbled away. I didn’t like the look on her face. Something was really fucking wrong. This wasn’t Tempest. I didn’t know who the fuck this was.

  

  Staring at the sink, I was half tempted to dive in after them when Chevy opened a bottle of bleach to chase it down. Asshole always knew what I was thinking. Sliding off his back, I look at him as if he were a stranger, the enemy. My Chevy wouldn’t hurt me unnecessarily, but this one has, three times. The day he left, the day he came back, and the moment he dumped my pills down the drain with a smile on his face.

  Numb, I sat on the couch, wondering what happened next.

  This was it, right? A full psychotic break. And with an audience too—lovely.

  Would I start running in circles like a dog chasing its tail? Would I start twitching from the withdrawals? Or better yet, would I start to cry? When my nose started to burn, I knew the tears won out. They always did.

  Chevy never agreed with medicating me. He was big into tough love, talking to me, calming me naturally. He’d force me to sing, wrestle, scream, or fuck. Most of the time, it was a combination of them and the order didn’t matter. Those methods worked for a while, but as he grew more frustrated with me, distanced himself from me, the more I depended on the pills. Then he left and it was a thousand times worse without him to take the edge off.

  So I took the pills. Every single one.

  Now that safety net was gone too.

  “Pest,” he said, kneeling in front of me. “You don’t need ‘em.”

  “Leave.”

  “Can’t.”

  “You didn’t seem to struggle with it before,” I cried out. “So do it again!”

  “Can’t,” he repeated, and I hated that I loved his blue eyes. “I need to keep you safe.”

  “You agreed because you owe Guy. You don’t owe me anything, so just go! Please, Chevy! I am begging you, just fucking leave! I don’t want you to see!”

  Here it comes, I was about to go off the reservation…

  “I owe you, too,” he said gruffly. Then pushing forward—which wasn’t hard to do in an RV—he got in my space. “I did you wro
ng, Pest. I know I did. Let me do this, keep you safe like I used to. Let me show you why you don’t need the pills. When it’s over, you want me gone, I’ll go. You want me around, I’ll stay.”

  My lip started to quiver and I couldn’t stop it. When it came to emotions, I was all girl. I felt things deep, crying was all I could do to purge the emotions. And I mean any emotion. I didn’t discriminate. I cried over everything. My tendency for tears also drove the man staring at me batshit crazy. It made him uncomfortable and edgy.

  It’s funny how I had loved every fucking thing that made Chevy-Chevy, but he had a list of complaints about me. This included my penchant for tears.

  I loved his temper. His gait when he walked. His snore, and how he inhaled food. I loved his stark blue eyes, dark lashes, sandy brown hair, and olive skin. I especially loved the scar that ran through his left eyebrow. A scar he earned protecting me.

  I remember kneeling between his legs while he sat on the toilet letting me tend to him. I’d put ice in a towel and held it in place to ease the swelling. Chevy was sixteen to my fourteen and that day would be our first kiss.

  Fight the world for you, Pest. And God, for so long he had.

  To make a gorgeous man even more stunning, he also had a strong jaw, full lips, and perfectly straight teeth. His face always had stubble, always. His hair was still pushed up into his signature killer faux hawk which I adored. And I noticed his nose was still pierced too, which made me incredibly sad.

  Years ago, we were drunk when he dared me to shove the needle through it. Forever the badass, he hadn’t made a sound as I fought to shove it in. I accepted the dare in return and screamed my head off for twenty minutes after he plunged the needle through on the first go.

  I remember Guy running in, thinking we were killing each other only to find me holding my swollen nose. I took my hand away to show him what we’d done, and Guy had smiled before putting me in front of a mirror. Turning my head from right to left, and then Chevy coming up behind me to look at his, I’d never felt more loved in my life.

  We had both kept the original studs in our noses and as much as I wanted it to be symbolic, I knew it wasn’t. I mean it was for me, but for him I’m certain he’d probably forgotten about it or just didn’t feel like wasting the effort to take it out.

  The public’s perception of me was very skewed. Since my success, I’ve been labeled a rock goddess and was expected to uphold the image. I packed venues and people paid good money to see me. I made sure they never left disappointed. What they didn’t know was, once on stage, I was invincible. But off stage, I was weak, paranoid, and relied on prescription meds. I was afraid of uncontrolled chaos. I feared being lost in the world with no Chevy there to save me.

  Not only was I lost, I was hiding, too.

  Staring into his eyes, I realized there was something I feared more than my battle with anxiety. I feared what would come of me when he left me again. Because I was certain if he stayed I’d always wonder when it was coming. Especially when he sees how pathetic I’ve become in his absence.

  I’ve always needed him more than he needed me. Now I had no doubt, he knew it, too. So staring into his eyes scared the ever loving shit out of me. Because inside them I still saw his love for me, or rather, who I used to be. Someone he wanted me to be again. Someone I no longer was. How did I handle this? By getting up and walking to my bedroom so that I could hide in it.

  

  I had to do it.

  Let her see me, all of me. That I still loved her, never stopped loving her, and lived with regret for what I had done. Tempest fell for the bad boy, the rough neck, the fuck up. She never once bitched about it or tried to change me. She’d bail me out of jail, pick me up from outside a bar fight, or cheered me on when I fought for her. Tempest loved everything about me. I loved almost everything about her.

  That fucking anxiety made loving her rough, I’m not gonna lie. I had reached a point where I felt like I was loving one version of her and resenting the other. Fuck, I just wanted my girl. Not all the other shit.

  So when her manager issued his threat, I used that opportunity to leave. Fact was, she’d choose me. No matter the cost to her, she’d do it.

  Reasons for leaving? I had many. Guy crawling up my ass about cleaning up my act. Constantly bitching at me to ease up on her made leaving sound like a good idea. It was him pushing she needed those meds that opened the door. It was her defending Guy, defending her goddamn doctors, and reminding me drugs were more important than I was that had me step through the door.

  But it was her choosing me despite it all that had me slamming it behind me. It was obvious I’d been pulling away, that we weren’t the same. And even then, at the risk of her career, Pest chose me.

  My girl was born to perform, but not to be famous. However, none of us knew that going in. We thought we could handle it, control it, and guide her. Turns out we were wrong.

  Guy and me, we wanted her to have it all. You see Tempest and notice a tiny little thing with a big head of wildly colored hair, dark makeup, and bright green eyes.

  You see her prop her violin, sit at a piano, or strap on a guitar, and when she plays you find yourself lost to it. Then she opens her mouth and your world ceases to exist because she’s taken control of it, of you.

  Tempest live was a life changing experience. One I hadn’t been a true part for exactly one year. Whether my time with her was temporary or not, I had to make amends. Not just for us, but for Guy, too. I’d forced him to fill my shoes and essentially threw him to the wolves.

  Tempest’s safety was a full-time job on and off the stage. Prior to my stunt, Guy focused on the legal side of things. Ensuring we were paid properly, contracts were signed and upheld, locations were prime, and guiding her schedule. He was more advisor than muscle. Guy was the reasonable one.

  To survive in this business, it took the effort of all three with Tempest carrying the bulk of the weight as the face people paid to see. Her protection, especially given her anxiety, was a serious role that I mismanaged.

  She had a small break with no engagements for two days. Knowing Guy, he set it up this way so we could settle back into our routine without additional stress. Add to that ditching her pills, she’d need that time to adjust, and I fucking prayed she didn’t suffer withdrawals. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought that far ahead when I dumped them down the drain.

  When it came to her, I was led by emotion and rarely the good kind. She was tough though, even if she didn’t think she was, I knew she could function without medication. Tempest needed a kick in the ass, clarity to focus on something other than drugs.

  Case in point, it was three am, and she had her headphones on., notebook open, pen loose in hand, eyes closed while music blasted in her ears. This Tempest was calm, centered, and in control. When her voice kicks in, I close my eyes absorbing the sound.

  I fucking missed this, yearned for it. Not a night passed since leaving that I hadn’t wondered if she thought of me when she lost herself. Wondering if she hated me, if she cried herself to sleep.

  My girl was a crier. Happy, sad, or pissed off, she bawled. Tempest carried a storm inside of her. It beat at her until she freed it. She felt everything, and next to me, crying eased her.

  It took this moment to remind me that I used to give her shit for being so girly. It took losing her to realize how beautiful her tears really were. Tears she openly shared with me. Another gift I squandered.

  Even as a kid, she shared everything with me. Every thought, scheme, or song she’d written. We had no secrets; there was no shyness. Not when she wanted to learn how to do makeup, buy her first bra, or shave her legs. Hell, the morning she started her period she made Guy and I throw her a party to celebrate. Tempest may have been the youngest, but we were all just kids back then. Kids who only had each other. And against all odds, we fucking made it. Nothing was ever going to come between the three of us.

  Snagging the bass from the wall, I fall into the seat across from he
r and begin to play. Her eyes were still closed, but I watched her body slowly relax with my presence.

  For two years, she patiently taught me how to play, though I never made it easy on her. Because the more shit I gave her, the more sex I got. Then one night, I surprised her in Denver by coming on stage to play the final song with her. Together we played hard, the crowd hushed into beautiful silence while Tempest sang to me. Not to them, but to me. The public loved us. They rooted for us. The bad boy and the rock goddess—an unlikely match.

  But off stage we always had this.

  She performed a few covers during her shows, but the rest was her own music—every fucking word. Her lyrics were intense, harsh, and unforgiving. But in life she was the opposite of that, she was a gentle soul who battled a cruel world, often times getting lost within it.

  I vowed she’d never lose her way; I vowed to be her anchor.

  I was a fucking asshole.

  Her song to me, the same song she still closes with to this day, is called Crowbar. The song that took her fame to a new level, one she loved then and likely hated now. A song about the one person who could pry anything and everything from you because you were helpless against their strength.

  Tempest always said I was forged like a crowbar, made for destruction yet unbreakable. She’d be wrong about that but I’ve never corrected her. Because I may be destructive, but she was the strong one. She was my anchor and without her I’d been adrift. Tempest wouldn’t believe me then, and she wouldn’t now. She doesn’t see herself as unbreakable. For Guy and me, she was our Crowbar and had no idea.

  Opening her eyes, removing her head phones, she tilted her head to the side, and whispered, “Did I wake you?”

  “Yeah,” I told her, strumming. “But I’d stay awake forever for this, Pest.”

  “I have another stalker,” she said biting her lip. Like always, we fought and moved on. It was always Pest who forgave first. She never held on to anger. “Guy must think it’s pretty serious to con you into coming back.”