He arched an eyebrow at her. “She is?”
“Yeah, your arachnophobia’s out, dude.” Tilly stuck her tongue out at him.
He slowly shook his head, relieved and feeling a little silly. Of course Tilly wouldn’t reveal anything deep about him.
And it was snakes that terrified him, not spiders. Tilly damn well knew that.
They sat and chatted for over an hour, Tilly excusing herself to the bathroom right before they were to head downstairs to eat.
Pippa leaned in, a nervous smile in place. “Did I do all right? I hope you’re not cross with me.”
He reached out and patted her hand, one of the few physical gestures he allowed.
“Tilly and I are good friends who go back years. Yes, I appreciate this. I didn’t realize she’d been trying to get in contact with me. It’s fine. We need to talk privately about a mutual client at some point, which is why she was trying to find me. But we’re good friends first and foremost.”
Pippa puffed up a little, her smile broadening, obviously pleased with herself. “If you wanted to go out and spend time, eh, catching up, I’ll be all right. Or if you’d like, I can ring Tate and ask if I can spend the evening with him and his wife.”
Bless her little British heart, she was a sweetie. “I can trust you alone for an evening. The question is, can you trust yourself for an evening?”
She nodded. “I think so. It scares me in a good way. I want to be strong. I know I need to do this sooner rather than later if I want to stay sober. Especially if you’ll work on my back first. That always helps me feel better.”
Of course it did, because it basically put her into subspace. “Of course I’ll do that for you. So, let’s try it. I’ll keep my phone on me in case you need me, and if you do need me, I’ll return immediately.”
Her smile faltered. “But I wouldn’t want to ruin your evening.”
“If you need me, that’s my job. I want you to succeed. That’s why I do this. It’d ruin my evening if you needed me and didn’t call me.”
He had more faith in her than she did in herself, and he got it. If his parents had been like hers, he would have been terrified of slipping, too.
Hence why she’d reached out for help in the first place.
* * * *
Downstairs in the restaurant, they were given a cozy corner booth, which afforded them plenty of privacy.
“So, Tilly,” Pippa said. “I know you can’t betray confidentiality, and I’d never ask you to do that. But do you do the same things Doyle does?”
Tilly glanced at him, but before he could step in, she smiled. “Well, I help run a production company, so I do a lot of things in addition to things like Doyle does. Plus, I’m a nurse, so my role differs slightly from his in certain cases. But we take a very similar approach with…that.”
With that last comment, her gaze met his and she winked.
He’d been taking a sip of water and nearly choked on it as he started laughing.
“Do you use the cups, too, then?”
Tilly’s smile barely faltered, and Doyle suspected Pippa didn’t even notice. “Eh, cups?”
“Cupping,” she clarified.
“Oh, sure. I’ve found fire cupping very effective.”
Pippa’s eyebrows arched, nearly making Doyle laugh again. “Fire cupping?”
He smiled. “I used a suction set on her,” Doyle clarified. “I didn’t want the safety issue of fire cupping.”
Tilly nodded. “Gotcha.”
Pippa turned to Doyle. “I don’t mind if you share things with her about me, as long as you trust her not to tell.”
“Oh, I trust her implicitly,” he said. “But since you’re here, why don’t you tell her?”
He sat back as Pippa revealed her health issues and addiction problems to Tilly. It fascinated him to watch his friend downshift into nurse mode as she listened to Pippa detail her struggles as much as it fascinated him seeing how much confidence Pippa had regained since he’d been working with her.
“Okay, stupid question,” Tilly said when Pippa finished, “but have you looked into an inversion table for her? You can get portable ones pretty cheap. It might help decompress pressure on the nerves in her back.”
He froze. “Um…no. I didn’t.”
Tilly already had her phone out and was looking something up on it. “The TENS unit you got for her. Is it a multi-mode kind that also does other modes, like EMS, microcurrent, and IF?”
“Um…no. I ordered a basic unit we could get batteries for while on location.”
She tsked but didn’t look up from her phone. “Sometimes, the multi-units are better. I’ll get these shipped to my office at the studio here and you can reimburse me. Okay? And we should look into seeing if there are any acupuncturists locally who do fire cupping. I mean, pressure cupping is great, but in a pinch you can talk someone through doing it to you. Fire cupping adds an extra dimension.”
“Thank you so much!” Pippa said, dabbing at her eyes. “You’re incredible.”
Doyle couldn’t help smirking. “She sure is.”
* * * *
By the time Tilly left later that evening, Doyle felt doubt painfully gnawing at his gut. He had Clark’s number and was still trying to decide if he should call or not.
What if he’d been wrong?
What did that say about him that he hadn’t trusted Mevi enough to stay and wait to talk to him?
That maybe he’d bolted, out of fear and shame and a lot of his own festering abandonment issues that weren’t a fraction as well healed as he’d thought them to be?
Then there was the problem that if he did resume a relationship with Mevi—if things were even reparable between them—what kind of relationship would that be with Mevi wanting to stay in the closet and himself needing his anonymity for his job?
And that was without the travel issues both of them faced. Doyle couldn’t give up his job, and Mevi definitely couldn’t give up his. Eventually, someone would start asking questions about who Doyle was. Once his identity was out there, they’d realize he was a counselor, and the rumor mill would kick into turbo.
After giving Pippa another round of treatment with the cupping set, Doyle returned to his room for the evening.
At least she was looking more and more like a success story. Now that she realized there were alternatives to managing her pain—without heavy narcotics—her fear had decreased. Which also helped lower her pain levels.
A good cycle for her to be trapped in, for a change. The more she relaxed, the more it helped her manage her pain, which helped her relax.
And so on.
With a long, hot shower to try to relax him, he lay in bed without bothering to turn his TV on.
Part of him wanted to try to call Clark right then.
Part of him knew trying to sort this out and deal with Pippa could lead to multiple disasters, and that wasn’t fair to her. He still had at least a month’s worth of work with her. Tate had already begged for an open-ended contract extension with a very attractive paycheck attached. Doyle could conceivably make more from working with Pippa than he could for the next five years at The Compound.
She was that hot of a commodity right now, with her reputation still untainted by scandal. An enterprising journo had tracked down her parents and gotten a piss-poor imitation of a human interest story about them, how they were “estranged” from their now-famous daughter. Someone had cleaned them up and stuck them in decent clothes and portrayed them as the wronged and abandoned ones.
Until Tate’s team dug in and dug up multiple mugshots of both parents and spread them far and wide, along with their arrest records for a plethora of drug, theft, and fraud issues.
Tate was every bit as good at his job as Clark was.
I can’t abandon her now.
Not only was it unethical, but personally it ran afoul of his moral code. And had he stuck to that same moral code when dealing with Mevi, he wouldn’t be where he was now.
Heartbroken.
Closing his eyes, he tried to meditate his way to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mevi sat in his room and slowly picked chord progressions on his acoustic guitar. He wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow night. He didn’t mind the big concerts, large shows where he wasn’t so much an individual as he was part of Portnoy’s Oyster, seen mostly from a distance. They had VIP gatherings at every concert, but even those were tolerable.
But tomorrow night’s small, private gathering, despite the fact that it was for a charity and helping a worthy cause, filled him with dread.
And he couldn’t have a drink to calm his nerves. He didn’t dare.
He wouldn’t.
The soft knock on his hotel room door startled him, and it took him a moment to set the guitar aside before he got up and pulled the tissue from the viewfinder to look.
Bonnie stood outside.
Oh, great.
Yeah, that was another thing. She had travelled separately from the rest of the band for this part of the tour, agreeing to meet up with them in the UK at the hotel.
Claimed she needed the break to clear her head.
Mevi hadn’t even realized she was at the hotel yet. He’d thought she was arriving later in the day.
He took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hey.”
She stood, shoulders slumped, hands clasped in front of her.
“Hey,” she quietly said. “Can I come in?”
He stepped aside, closing it after her. She walked in and glanced around before finally turning. “I wanted to talk before tomorrow.”
Mevi shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his gaze firmly fixed on the floor. “Okay.”
“We’ve known each other a lot of years, right?”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
“We’ve done a lot together. I’m talking the band. We’ve been friends. You and I have been more. I’ll be the first to defend you artistically. I’m not stupid. Portnoy’s Oyster is here because of you. And…and I’m proud of you for getting and staying sober. You worked hard, and I’m sorry I yelled at you when you came to my house.”
He finally met her gaze. Her blue eyes, a different and more greenish color than his own, looked rimmed with red, as if she’d been crying. And now he noticed her nose was a little pink and puffy.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I did a lot of thinking during the break. I love what we do. I love this ‘family’ we have. We’ve had ups and downs and are fucked up in our own special ways, but we always come together because we love what we do and we love each other. And I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could come out to me, of all people.”
Now he watched her more carefully, caught off-guard by this conversational turn.
“I was pissed off and mad in Chicago. I felt like you’d used me all these years. I’m sorry what I told Doyle gave him the wrong impression. I didn’t run him off because I was jealous of him. I honestly didn’t freaking know you two were together. Congrats, you hid it super well. Why didn’t you tell me early on you were gay? Why did you sleep with me all those years? Was I just a cover for you all these years? Are we not friends?”
As much as he hated twelve-step programs, he knew he had to follow one of their guidelines—make amends to those he’d hurt. His visit to her in LA had been a first attempt, even though she’d rejected it.
As was her right.
He stepped closer and took a deep breath before answering.
“I’ve always loved you as a friend. I wasn’t meaning to use you. I was scared. I was scared you guys might not accept me. Then when I realized you all were okay with gay people, you and I had already been sleeping together off and on. I didn’t want to hurt you and I didn’t know how to explain it. I’m not asking you to excuse or absolve me for what I did. I’m truly sorry I hurt you. I never meant to do that.”
“Why were you so scared of staying in the closet? In LA of all places?”
“You know where I came from. Everyone hears about Matthew Shepard, but they don’t hear about all the microaggressions that happen all the time. Maybe people aren’t getting beaten and tied to fences every day, and no, of course most people aren’t like that. But there were enough. Some in my own family. My own father. I grew up hiding who I was. LA was my escape, but I couldn’t escape me or where I’d come from.”
She tentatively reached out and touched his arm. “So…should I be flattered or pissed off that you slept with me all these years?”
She looked up into his face, the corner of her mouth quirked up into her snarky smirk.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Bon. I didn’t want to. If it means anything, I’ve only actually slept with three people—you, Doyle, and a girl in high school.”
Her smirk turned to a scowl. “Huh? Okay, now that’s bullshit. I’ve talked with women who’ve been with you.”
His turn to smirk. “And if they’re saying we had intercourse, they’re either lying because they want to brag, or they’re lying because they think they’re protecting my image.” He told her the same thing he’d told Clark.
Her smirk returned. “I can fake an orgasm with the best of them, but how does fake vomiting sound, exactly?”
He grinned and stepped around her into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He made sure to open the toilet loud enough to be heard, then started.
She shoved the door open, looking a little green herself. “Okay, okay, I believe you!”
He turned. “Combine it with the sound of spitting and then flushing the toilet, then running water in the sink and spitting some more, and it completes the act.”
“Gawd.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and he belatedly realized she wasn’t even wearing makeup, which was totally unlike her. “I’ll pass on hearing the fake poop noises, thanks.”
“You sure? They’re really cool.”
She held up her hands. “I’m sure.” A sigh escaped her. “Okay, I believe you.” Sadness seemed to weigh her down. “Sorry. I guess I sort of viewed us as this crazy romantic story, and that one day we’d get our shit together and end up a couple for good.”
He pulled her in for a hug. “That’s why I picked fights with you. I was hoping you’d meet a great guy and settle down with him.”
“I had a great guy, you big dope. I had you.”
He rubbed his chin across the top of her head. “Doyle wasn’t just my boyfriend,” he said.
“That’s what you said in Chicago, but you didn’t really explain it better. He’s into kinky sex?”
“It’s not just that. It’s more about the dynamic we had. I could completely let go to him and get out of my own head. I felt like nothing I said or did would be judged or held against me. Not,” he quickly added, “that I felt you’d judge me like that. Geez, I’m fucking this up. Sorry.”
She looked up. “I don’t want to be mad at you anymore,” she said. “I want my Mevi back. My friend. If we can’t sleep together, okay, fine. But I miss our talks into the early morning hours. I miss eating breakfast with you and you playing me stuff you thought up overnight. I miss watching stupid movies with you. I miss all of that. I’ll still be your beard if I can at least have that Mevi back.”
“Okay.” He kissed the top of her head. “I missed all that, too. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” She sniffled and broke away from their hug to pull a tissue from a box of them on the bathroom counter. “So have you really stayed sober?”
“Yes. I swear I am.”
“Okay.” She blew her nose and then turned back to him. “We need to tell the others.”
Old fear throbbed through him. “Which others?”
“Pasch, Troy, and Garth. They won’t tell. They’ll just be happy I’m not being a bitch anymore.” She patted his chest. “Have you tried to call Doyle?”
“Clark’s been trying to find him for me. His voice mail’s turned off, and Clark left messages for him at the place he used to work.”
“What about the people he knows in Florida?”
“Maybe when the tour’s over and I can get away I’ll go look there. I…right now I can’t. I hurt too much, and I want to focus on the tour. I need to focus on me.”
“Don’t be mad at him when you finally do,” she said. “I was…I was sort of envious of how much time he got to spend with you. I definitely made it sound like you and I had slept together. I never thought you two were an item. He probably left hurt and heartbroken. And I’ll be happy to talk to him for you and tell him the truth, that we weren’t having sex that night.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t want to think about what Doyle might be doing, where he was right then.
It hurt too much to know that a man who’d literally put his professional reputation on the line in the name of love for him had been hurt by him.
The first person in his life who’d put him before everything else, because Doyle had loved him, and then he’d stupidly destroyed it.
He didn’t even know if Doyle would ever want to speak to him again. And that was pain he couldn’t endure and still put on a reasonably normal face. Meaning he’d have to wait to deal with it.
Meanwhile, he’d focus on staying sober.
* * * *
That night, they were scheduled to get together for a private dinner, the band and the core crew. No worries of press or reporters overhearing, this being their permanent group, the ones who were always with them, some who’d been with them the better part of twenty years.
No phones, no cameras, other than the one their official publicist carried, and nothing escaping that room that wasn’t meant for public consumption. Their chance to reset for the second half of the tour, settle in, and clear the air. A tradition they’d had from the beginning, at the beginning of every tour and following any long breaks. And it was also the first chance many of them had to lay eyes on everyone from the core group since arriving in the country.
Bonnie walked toward the elevator with Mevi, arm in arm. “You okay?”