Page 58 of Revived

“I don’t know.”

“Figure it out, Mel. Life is short, and if that bullet had been a couple inches in the other direction, you might have lost your chance at happiness with a man who is head over heels in love with you, whether he’s manned up and expressed that yet or not. It’s obvious.”

Was it obvious? Did it matter? I didn’t honestly know, but there was a weight removed from my shoulders after talking to Kendra that made me wonder if it would help to actually hear Gabe out before making a final decision.

19 – Hurts Like Hell

“Getting shot hurts but having the woman you’ve fallen for walk out on you when you’re laid up in the hospital hurts like hell,” I told Chevy the next time I woke up. It didn’t take long after Mel left, and Kendra followed her, that the pain meds finally took me down. “How long was I out?” Neither woman was back yet, so I was hoping that I’d only had a quick cat nap and that Kendra would bring Mel back any moment.

My son sighed heavily. “It’s been about three hours.”

“She’s not coming back,” I whispered.

“Who?” My son asked. I gave him a ‘who do you think?’ look that made him chuckle. “Right. Well, Mom went to a hotel to get some sleep. She didn’t think it would send the right message if she was sitting vigil by your bedside throughout the night.” I nodded in confirmation. After what Mel heard me say to my son, that was a smart move.

“Mom also told me about your groupie fuck up. Seems like you deserve a bit of hell for that, especially after having Mel overhear what she did.” How could you ever think that Mel would do something like that?” Chevy scrunched up his nose. “And with Lonny of all people.”

Mel’s voice rang out from the door. “That’s a question that I’d like an answer to.”

“Tell you what, I’m going to go get some sleep too, and let the adults talk.” My son stood and turned to Mel, “I’d really love it if you were still here when I come back in a couple of hours. I don’t want to leave my dad alone.”

Mel nodded, so that was something. I’d have to thank Chevy later for running interference. She took the seat my son vacated but kept her body and hands away from the bed so that she wasn’t easily reachable.

“Mel, I’m so sorry for how I reacted. So damn sorry. I told you that this life was not always a pretty place to exist. The people in it, no matter their damn ages, play these games because they can, because nothing feels permanent, and because they’re idiots. It’s something I’ve gotten used to over the years.”

“So, whenever you have caught a hookup with someone else in the past, it’s been your routine to go and do the same to them?”

“No. Not at all. There has never been a woman who triggered my jealousy before. There have been many who thought to gain more attention from me by acting out though. It never worked in their favor, not with me anyway, and still they did it because somewhere along the line, that type of manipulation became habit for them. Just as seeing it became habit for me. I can’t honestly tell you what I was thinking in that moment, because the truest answer is that I wasn’t thinking things through. I remember feeling, “Not her too”. Then there was the self-loathing because I had pushed you to that action because of what you heard me tell Chevy.

“Mel, you have to know that I lied to Chevy. I thought I was doing the right thing by pushing him to do better by his girl than I did all those years ago.” I shook my head. “It was foolish, but also, I thought it was the only thing that could be said to keep him from resenting me too. If he thought that I’d learned my lesson and regretted not fighting harder, then he wouldn’t hate me.”

“He wouldn’t hate you either way, Gabe. That kid knows the truth of what went down between you and his mom, how old you were, and how everything factored into what happened. You had nothing to prove to him in that regard.”

“Yeah, well, it took talking that through with John to really understand, and unfortunately, that talk happened a too late to help our situation.”

Mel sat there a moment, seemingly lost in thought. I wanted to give her forever just to process everything, so long as it meant that she didn’t leave my side. When she started growing fidgety, I began to worry. “Mel, I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to lose you. Please, tell me what I have to do. What can I do? I swear to you, nothing like that will ever happen again. I knew better, about you. I just didn’t have the faith in me.”

“And you do now?”

“I understand that you aren’t like all the other people in this world, and that I need time to think before reacting. I have a scheduled meeting with a psychiatrist before I leave the hospital,” I pointed down to my leg. “They wanted to make sure I was in a good headspace before I left.” I stared down at the bandages that wrapped around my thigh. “I’m going to see if I can find someone when we get back to Georgia, and work through the issues that nearly two decades in this business have left me with.”

“That’s probably a wise decision,” Mel told me as she stared at her hands that were clasped and resting in her lap. It almost seemed as though she did that because she was fighting putting her hands somewhere else. It was probably wishful thinking to hope that she wanted to touch me and had to fight herself not to. “I understand what you’ve explained to me, Gabe.” Her eyes came up to meet mine, and it was the first time I noticed that they were brimming with unshed tears.

“Maybe the therapy will help with the way you respond to things in the future. Maybe it would help me with the same, because I’m definitely not blameless in this mess. I could have pulled up my big girl pants and stuck around to talk things out with you at the hotel, but the sentiment you left your son with was one scenario that I had already lived through, and that man had excuses a plenty for too many years.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Shit. Imagining how she must have felt when she overheard me talking to Chevy was even worse when she put it into perspective with her own words, her past. “I’m so sorry, Mel.”

“I know, and I accept your apology, Gabe. For everything.” I didn’t dare get my hopes up because her body language didn’t match the words. Not in the way I wanted it to. “I could have gotten over what you said to Chevy. In fact, I’d taken the day to think everything through and was going to speak to you about it, then when I got back to the venue, Lonny’s emergency happened, and well, you know how that played out.”

Yeah, I wanted to shoot myself in the other leg, knowing she was coming back to talk to me, and I fucked it all up by jumping to conclusions. Unlike Mel, I hadn’t taken the time to just think it all through.

“Your world, the reactions all of you have to life, it’s unreal. Just look at where you are right now. You were shot. I never want to be in Calista’s shoes, where she falls in love with a man only to have someone else tug his strings. No matter if it’s your son, his mom, the band, your manager, some woman you were with once upon a time ago, or a recent groupie trying to get her 15 minutes with someone famous. There’s always going to be something, and while it wasn’t a concern for me before, it is now because you reacted to me based on what everyone else in this life would have done.

“I don’t know if I can trust you, this life, or what that will mean for a future with you. The worry will always be lying there, dormant and ready to wake. What if you leave for a tour that I can’t go on, and we argue? In the back of my mind, what I’m going to see there, is you with that groupie pinned to the wall, ready to fuck away your frustrations.”

“I wasn’t going to go through with it. I swear to you, Mel. The most that happened was we kissed. I shoved my hand up her skirt just as the room to that door opened, and only because I thought… I thought you should see what you just put me through.” I hung my head. The shame so thick inside me, I nearly choked on it. “I understand it will take you time to get over seeing that, and the fact that I did it.”

“No, I don’t think you do. Gabe, we can’t…” I started to tell him when the door to his room opened.

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