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  “You should come over for dinner. It will be a change of scenery for you. I never had to deal with this side of Gabe’s life, so I can’t imagine how frustrating it must feel to be a prisoner in his home thanks to his crazy fans,” Kendra was saying to Mel. My son noticed us coming up and smirked at me but didn’t let on that we were there.

  “I don’t know,” Mel hedged. “I don’t want to intrude on your family time.”

  “Nonsense,” Kendra waved away her objections. That was when I stepped into sight and shut my ex-girlfriend down.

  “We were just about to get things ready to cook out on the grill,” I told them. “You’re more than welcome to have the rest of the family come over and join us,” I told Kendra, making it clear that we would all be dining here. Then I turned to Mel, whose cheeks had reddened. She didn’t stick around to hear anymore though. Instead, she tucked her towel around her ample chest and glanced back toward my son.

  “I’ll be upstairs if you need me. I have some things to take care of and might take a nap. Just text or Facetime me, if you need me. Okay?”

  “What about dinner?” My son asked her.

  “Oh, I’m not really that hungry,” she told him and everyone present could see that was a lie. Once she was out of hearing range, Kendra turned narrowed eyes on me.

  “That was rude,” she murmured. “I was trying to get her out of the house for a little while. It’s been weeks since she’s been anywhere other than this house. That’s not okay, Gabe.”

  “We really did have plans to cookout, Kendra. What do you want from me? This isn’t really your business.”

  “She’s my friend, so yes, it is.”

  “Can I speak to you in private for a minute?”

  “Fine!” Kendra hissed at me. I reached out and grabbed ahold of her arm and took her into the guest bedroom that was downstairs. I used it sometimes, just to be closer to my son in case he needed anything. He never did, but it made me feel better. There were also the nights when it was too hard to be right across the hall from Mel. That wasn’t something I wanted to really think about though.

  I had just shut the door behind me when I heard Alex call out, “Did you need help with something, sweetheart?”

  “No, I’m just grabbing a water to take up with me,” I heard Mel’s response and I wondered if she saw me bring Kendra in here. I dismissed the thought because it’s not like she’d think something was going on with us. Mel had met Josh on numerous occasions.

  “What did you bring me in here for, Gabe?” Kendra asked, her hand on her hip as her blond head tilted to the side a bit, taking me in. I hissed out a breath of frustration as she continued watching me for a moment. “You like her,” she finally surmised.

  “It doesn’t matter, because she’s hands off. Mel’s here for Chevy.”

  “That won’t always be the case. Jesus, Gabe, are you going to keep sabotaging everything good that comes your way, or will you learn from earlier lessons that you deserve to be happy too?”

  “Do I? Didn’t I get everything I ever wanted when my band hit it big?”

  Kendra rolled her eyes. “That success doesn’t negate any further happiness!” She leaned in and pushed a finger into my chest. “You have to ease up on her a bit though. I see that you feel protective of her, but the woman needs to be able to get out of this house occasionally too. It will be good for her. You know she’ll be safe at my house.”

  It was my turn to roll my eyes at Kendra. “Until that other son of yours tries to get in her pants,” I teased. Kendra laughed.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that boy. Heaven help the women when he’s able to start living his musician dream with his brother.”

  “What if they cut an album this year, will you let them all go on tour?”

  “I won’t stand in the way of their dreams, but they all need to graduate from high school. That’s my one requirement.”

  “Sounds like a good one. They can do that while on the road.” I smiled at her. “How weird is it that all of your boys turned into musicians?”

  Kendra shrugged. “Not weird at all. They had an amazing big brother who was born to walk in your shoes, and they all look up to him.” Once again, Kendra poked my chest and then laughed when I still didn’t get why. “You should probably change. I don’t know what you guys were up to in that basement, but probably doesn’t look great when you come up from a sausage fest with white stains on your shirt?”

  I glanced down then and noticed that she was right. I blamed Alex for that, the bastard had thrown his food at me, and apparently, I missed some of the ranch sauce that had dripped off of it. “Fucking Alex,” I called out as I snatched up one of my other shirts that was lying there on the bed. As I ripped the shirt over my head, Kendra left the room and I hurried to go out after her while pulling the other one on. Oddly enough, everyone was still standing around out there and Chevy was having a conversation with Mel. The moment she saw me, her cheeks flamed again, but she turned immediately and took off for the stairs leading to the second floor where her bedroom was.

  Chevy shook his head at me as he narrowed his eyes glancing back and forth between his mom and me. Kendra caught on to what Chevy thought and immediately shook her head and threw her hands up. “I just pointed out that the moron came up from the basement with a room full of men and a white stain on his shirt.” She walked off as my band mates dissolved into laughter. Chevy still trained disappointed eyes my way. I didn’t know what to say in my own defense. I wasn’t going after his mom. I’d already gotten the message that she was happy with her new man and besides, my interests definitely were drawn to his nurse who had gone upstairs, while I silently wished I could go with her.

  8 – Mixed Messages

  After having a wonderful day, getting to see Chevy’s progress he made in the pool, and taking a dip myself, it was shocking to both be invited to Kendra’s home for dinner, and then to be immediately disinvited by Gabe. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want me to go there until I saw him coming back out of the downstairs bedroom after Kendra. I probably would have thought nothing of it except that he was in the middle of putting on a different shirt than he’d been wearing when he made a big deal about me not going to dinner at her house because we were supposedly cooking out at his house tonight.

  I wondered briefly what Josh would think of his woman being in a room with her ex-boyfriend and son’s father. It wasn’t my business to tell him though, and I couldn’t afford the fallout if I did anyway. I had never felt icky about my living and working situation until that moment.

  “Hey, Mel!” A man called out. I turned just before I reached my bedroom door, hand still out, ready to turn the handle. I turned around to see Alex there. The band’s bassist had been very obviously flirting with me since Chevy had been admitted into the hospital in New York. I was used to it by then but had politely made attempts to ignore or dissuade it from the beginning. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I just thought that might have all been a little awkward for you downstairs.” He was trying for genuine concern but fell short.

  “What is it that you want?” I asked him, losing my patience with everyone for the first time that day.

  “Sorry,” he got out while throwing his hands up in the air. “I really did just want to check on you. Listen, Kendra made a great point,” he started, and I couldn’t hide the wince when her name was mentioned. “You’ve been stuck in the house and basically in hiding for months now. What if we skip cooking out with everyone else and I can take you to a restaurant somewhere? I’ll call around and make sure we can get in and out with as much privacy as possible.” Alex was a handsome man, his blond hair was still somewhat long, considering he was in his late 30s or early 40s. It hung shaggy, below his ears, but above his shoulders. It curled a bit at the ends and was colored to appear sun-bleached the way that Chevy’s hair looked naturally.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,
” I told him.

  “Why not?” He glanced down at his feet, shifting a bit, and fidgeting with his fingers. It was the first time I’d ever really noticed that Alex was a bit nervous about asking me out.

  “Alex, the last thing I need here is another complication. I’m already mostly jobless and worried about what happens when Chevy is fully recovered. Then there’s my current living situation, which is also temporary. And…”

  “And?”

  “I don’t want to rock any boats. There seems to be enough weirdness down there already. Going out on a dinner date with one of Gabe’s bandmates doesn’t seem like the right call to make.”

  “Let me ask you this, if your situation was different – more secure – would I even stand a chance, or would you still be hung up on Gabe?”

  I sighed. “I’m not hung up on anyone. If you want the truth though, I just moved to Georgia. I’m already once divorced. The last thing I need in my life is another fair-weather man who is here today and gone tomorrow when the next shiny thing comes along to take his attention. You live a life that has a lot of shiny in it, and Alex, you don’t live here. So, no, there would be no chance that I would go there.”

  “You were married before?” He asked, genuinely interested now as we stood there in the hallway outside of my bedroom door. I saw Gabe standing at the top of the stairs in my peripheral and knew that I needed to cut this short.

  “Yes, I was married before. I followed him from our home in West Virginia to his new career in New York. He decided he hated his job and the big city. We stayed anyway because I loved the job I had at the time and I was still finishing up more school so I could be recognized as a Nurse Practitioner. Darren ended up resenting me for the time we had to spend there. He was taking longer and longer trips back home.” I sighed, because the rest of my story was so painful.

  “He was seeing someone back home?” Alex surmised.

  I nodded. “He was seeing my little sister,” I admitted. “He got her pregnant the same year I graduated from the Master’s Program and earned my ANCC certification. I came home from work, ready to celebrate finally achieving that goal, and all of his stuff was gone. My mom called me that night to tell me the news.”

  “They knew? Your family? They all knew that your husband and sister were having an affair behind your back and they didn’t tell you until the day he left? How long had it been going on?”

  “They had been seeing each other for three years. My family knew for at least a year of that, if not longer.”

  “Holy fuck. That’s why you had no problem dropping everything and moving here on a moment’s notice?”

  “It is. My life in New York was a series of wins and losses. I got a clean slate by moving here, sort of.” I thought about the lawsuit that was still pending against me from the hospital. It was literally keeping me from getting another job lined up. Gabe just stood there, not heading to his room or coming up the last step at all. It was as if he was just waiting to see what would happen between Alex and myself. “Look, Alex, I honestly just want to go lie down and take a nap because I’m exhausted. If you could just pass along my apologies for not joining you guys, that would be great.”

  “Things will get better for you, Mel. I believe that.”

  “Thanks, Alex.” I didn’t want to keep drawing out the conversation, so I turned to go into my room then, and shut the door behind me without saying anything. Once the door was closed, I heard Alex speak again.

  “You can come the rest of the way up now,” he called out. Apparently, he had known that Gabe was there the whole time. “She shot me down, so you don’t have anything to be concerned over,” Alex laughed as he spoke. “Honestly, I just wanted to see if I could pull her since you kept fucking up, but she doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in anyone’s game. If you don’t get your shit together and figure out what you want, I will get serious about that one though. She’s the forever type of girl we’ve all dreamed of all these years. You used to always talk about how you thought Kendra was, but that she broke you, and you didn’t think they existed. Now that you learned the truth about what went down between you and Kendra, how do you feel?”

  “Alex, you need to stay away from Mel.”

  “Why, Gabe? She’s single, unclaimed, and she has forever written all over her.”

  “You know,” Gabe replied. He said something else as well, but I couldn’t make it out through the door because he lowered his voice as he spoke. Alex laughed and then I heard footsteps walking off. It made me curious about what else Gabe had said. Still, I didn’t have the heart to hold out hope that the man I’d started crushing on was interested in me too. There was no way that I could allow myself to continue building feelings. He clearly had unfinished business with his ex and there was no way I’d knowingly put myself in the middle of that.

  9 – Tour Woes

  “The album is cut. You have a number one single on the charts right now and another single popping right behind it,” the label rep was saying into the phone. “I know your kid got hurt, but let’s be honest, he’s an adult and he has other family to handle his issues if he’s not better yet. You know how this works, Gabe. Strike while the iron is hot and all that shit.”

  As angry as I wanted to be, I already knew it was coming and had been expecting the call. The fact that they held off as long as they did was incredible. “Set it up,” I told him. “Check in and see if we can have our own medical staff for the tour too.”

  “Medical staff?”

  “Check with Deacon about getting my son’s nurse signed on for the tour.”

  “Why? If your son isn’t well enough, he’ll be a liability to have along anyway.”

  “He’ll be just fine. I want her along because we trust her with anything that might come up. Just get contracts from Deacon and get back to me as soon as we have dates and details set.”

  “You bet.”

  I turned to watch out the window as Mel did short sprints right alongside Chevy. He was walking now – with barely a noticeable limp. When they hit whatever mark they were aiming for, Mel started jumping up and down, hands in the air, clearly celebrating the small victory. As much as I enjoyed seeing the moment happen, it also meant that in all honesty, Chevy didn’t need a full-time nurse around anymore. He hadn’t for quite some time, and I think we all knew it even if I did try to remain in denial. Mel had squirmed her way into our hearts, and I don’t think either my son or myself wanted to see her go.

  I couldn’t bring myself to end her employment for that reason, and more. She had become a part of our family, even if she had been avoiding me a lot more since that day, I caught her telling Alex about her horrible past and shitty family. I wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed that I knew or if she had heard me tell Alex that he needed to cut his shit and stay away from her.

  ~*~

  Three days, and several arguments later, I finally had the contracts for Mel to be able to join the tour in a working capacity. When I found her, she was on the phone in what appeared to be a phone-in job interview.

  “I got word that the hospital would be officially dropping the lawsuit against me because…” She paused in her explanation, clearly listening to whatever was being said on the other end of the line. A few moments of silence on her end was followed by a quiet sigh and then, “I understand. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.” She was even polite when being rejected.

  “Mel?” I asked while moving further into the den where she had been sitting.

  “Oh, am I in your way here? I’m sorry, just give me a second,” she babbled as she stood up and started gathering her things.

  “Mel, stop.” She turned back to me, no longer frantically attempting to pick up her things. “I want to talk to you about something. Her shoulders visibly slumped, as if I’d just added more weight to them.

  “I already know,” she told me. “I’ve been looking for another job. My stuff can be moved out by this weekend, if you’d like. Chevy’s doing so well
now. I’m so proud of him.” She was rambling, but her words rang with truth and pride for all that my son had accomplished. Whether she wanted to admit it out loud or not, she cared a great deal for my son.

  “I’m certainly not kicking you out or firing you,” I explained quickly, so that I might alleviate some of the strain she was feeling.

  “But Chevy’s better now. There’s no need for me here.”

  “Mel,” I called her name out with authority that time because it felt as though she was about to spiral into a whole panic attack, which was very unlike the headstrong nurse we’d come to know and love.

  “Tell me what’s really going on here first, and then we’ll discuss what I have for you.”

  Mel slumped into the seat behind her. “Have you ever had one of those days? You know. The ones where everything seems to go completely wrong? That has been my day today. First, the hospital’s lawyer sent in an offer to dismiss the lawsuit against me, but I’d be held under a gag order, unable to talk about it.” She threw her hands up in a ‘what the fuck’ gesture.

  “How do I explain a very public lawsuit’s resolution with prospective employers if I’m not allowed to talk about it?”

  “I can see where that’s an issue. Have your lawyer kick that clause out.”

  She laughed, but it was a quick, ugly noise rather than the ones that made me smile right along with her. “What lawyer? I couldn’t afford to keep paying them, so I am currently without a lawyer as of today as well.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I just did.” She sniped the words out with far too much attitude for my liking, but her bad day – and my being the root cause of it – were in my mind as I remained quiet and allowed her to continue to vent. “But then, as if I hadn’t been kicked hard enough yet today, I got an email from my mother with a picture of my sister’s wedding to my ex-husband and she’s pregnant again. This will be their third child together. They seem blissfully happy.” Fat, juicy tears started to fall down Mel’s beautiful face. “I didn’t want to look at those pictures, but I couldn’t look away either. That was supposed to be our family. We always talked about having three kids. Now, here I am heading down the wrong side of my thirties and single still. I’ll be lucky if I’m able to have one child before my body gives out.” Her words blended right into a hiccup that made her pause momentarily.