Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(27)

When they finished eating, Mevi headed downstairs with his laptop, guitar, iPad, notebooks, and pen. He wished he had music and guitar stands and made a note to ask Doyle to order them.

Doyle followed him down and sat on the bottom step, the door to the stairs open. “Mind if I listen for a while?”

“No, doesn’t bother me.”

“Can I leave the door open when I go back up?”

“Sure, but why?” He smiled. “To keep an ear on me?”

Doyle shrugged. “I’m interested in this. I love music. This is fascinating, to get a look behind the scenes at the creative process. I usually work with actors. I don’t get to work with many musicians. And the few I have worked with were singers, not composers.”

Mevi hoped his face didn’t heat too much, secretly pleased that Doyle was interested in this. “Sometimes this part’s boring.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Mevi started by tuning his guitar. He’d tried playing it in rehab and hadn’t been able to. Mentally, his head wasn’t there.

Then he ran through a few scales to loosen his fingers and get used to the strings again. Even the calluses on the pads of his fingers had started to soften. He knew he’d need to play every day from this point forward to build them up again, or the tour would be misery. He could get by without playing every song on stage, but the audience expected at least one or two acoustic numbers from him toward the end of the night.

Then he started playing “Sunset Sights,” one of the first songs he’d written for the band, which had appeared on their first album and had spent weeks as a number one single.

One of the first songs Tom had recorded for them. That old version was still for sale in digital format and still held Mevi’s heart.





Doyle immediately recognized the intro riff to “Sunset Sights,” one of his favorites. A melancholy song about a man on a beach and watching the sun disappear, but having also seen life slip through his hands and facing a choice to try a different path or give up and “slip into the night” with the sun.

Mevi didn’t sing with the music, but the emotion in the chords, in every strum, spoke to Doyle.

This was obviously a personal song for Mevi.

Let. Me. In.

It was tempting to try to press, to manipulate Mevi into opening up to him, but that was selfish on his part and he knew it.

The guy’s straight, for starters. And let’s not forget, oh, a client.

When Mevi finished playing, he stared at the guitar for a long moment without speaking, and Doyle didn’t break the silence.

“I sometimes wonder,” Mevi finally said, “what the other choice would have yielded.”

“How so?”

“If I’d walked into the sea that night.”

A chill washed through Doyle. “Do you think about killing yourself a lot?”

Nothing about suicidal ideations predating the discovery of the theft and the snowballing of Mevi’s drinking had been mentioned anywhere in his files. If that was the case, it would drastically change how Doyle approached this.

And he would be chewing out the rehab center for not stating it clearly in the file notes. It was something that should have been heavily flagged.

Plus, it would mean finding a local psychiatrist or GP who’d be willing to write scripts for Mevi to help control those feelings.

“No.” He met Doyle’s gaze. “Not really. Not seriously. I guess I was that night at Bonnie’s.” He dragged in a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t want to die. I just need to figure out how to start living.”





Chapter Ten


Doyle eventually headed back upstairs. Mevi stayed down in the office, playing for nearly two hours. Some old stuff, some new stuff, some experimentation, to see how things he’d noted in his iPad sounded when played with a real guitar.

Finally calling it a day in the wee hours of the morning, he headed upstairs. All the lights, except for one over the stove, were turned off. He walked down the hall to his bedroom, passing Doyle’s door as he did.

He didn’t pause to look inside, the dark room beyond not allowing him a glimpse of the man.

Going to his own room, he left the door cracked open and, despite feeling exhausted, he still couldn’t sleep. After retrieving a few things, he sat in bed, earbuds in and listening to a nature sounds zen tape. No vocals, just soft instrumentals.

Notebook on his lap, pen in hand and working on lyrics and chords for an idea.

He hadn’t felt like this in years. Since the good days.

The best days.

The days after ending up in LA, despite all the hard work involved, and then hooking up with a band that sent him straight to the top.

The days before he realized he’d totally bricked himself into a corner, but good, and his only recourse was to keep putting up a denser wall to protect his truths from prying eyes.

That’s not the man he wanted to be.

And the man he wanted to be with lay on the other side of that wall behind him. Except…he couldn’t. Even if he could finally admit how he was feeling, Doyle would shoot him down because, duh, counselor.

Still…

Baby steps, right? Just like facing down his addiction was a series of baby steps?

Admitting to someone else he was gay was that first baby step.