Page 52 of Sycopation
“And that has a lot to do with Zavier,” Mish said. Her eyes held a similar sadness. “Yeah, hon, I feel that way, too. And the guilt gets you, huh?”
“Yeah. Like—maybe if I’d caught things sooner or done something different, Kevin would be here with us to enjoy this.”
She shook her head. “Oh, honey, it wasn’t the touring. It wasn’t you. Kevin said—” She looked at her drink, grunted, then picked up her water. “When I talked to him last, Kevin said he’d been a functional alcoholic for years. He could hide it from us when we weren’t touring.” She took a sip. “None of that was your fault, and he doesn’t blame you at all. You gotta let that go.”
He didn’t know if he could. All the thoughts and emotions blended with what Mish was telling him. Words looped and repeated. Notes arrived like splotches of color. Light blue against black. Swaths of red, velvet like rose petals but dark as fine wine.
He stared at where the water lapped along the pool edge and listened to the laughter. “I think... I think...” He’d forgotten his notebook but had his phone, so he opened that to a notepad app and started typing.
He vaguely heard Mish chuckle, but was too busy trying to get what he saw and tasted and heard out. The music would have to wait, but that was easier to snatch back from his head. Words, though, those were like butterflies. A moment of brightness, then gone.
In the heat of a summer day
We were gods with a thousand dreams
But in the night of winter’s death
We were nothing but dust and ash
Where did the light we held go
Strands of gold and silver
When can we meet the sun again?
When nothing else came, he sat back, blinked, and looked up.
“Better?”
Much. So much so. The lyrics were rough and there was no music sketched down to go with them, but it was a start. “Yeah.” He’d see if he could borrow one of Dom’s acoustic guitars later on, and pick out the colors and shapes in his head. A title swamin his head, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to write that down yet. Make it real.
She nodded. “It’s good to see you smile, sweetheart.”
Was he smiling? Ray laughed. But yeah, his mood was lighter, the lump gone, and the fear that had gripped him held on less tightly. Kevin wasn’t here, but Zavier was. Ray could handle both things.
And if he could manage to remain calm, maybe Zavier could handle him—in whatever way that ended up being.
The caféin the museum district was far more hip than Zavier, and younger, too. However, Dom fit right in, as if he was an early twenty-something student studying art or history or—well, anything, really.
Zavier had dressed pretty casually for their museum-hopping trip: an older pair of jeans and a T-shirt he’d picked up in Budapest during one of the symphony’s European tours. Dom, though... Zavier eyed his bandmate for about the fortieth time. Dom looked completely different. He’d seen this side of Dom when they’d rehearsed in private all those weeks ago, but even then, some of his Domino persona bled through.
Not today. Dominic Bradley wore green-framed glasses that matched the forest green in the checkered vest he’d paired with a soft blue button-down. He looked like something out of a freaking twink catalog, despite the muscle Zavier knew lay under the dapper look.
Dominic had shed his rock-god persona entirely—and was positively vibrating with joy. Who knew Dom was such an art and science geek? At every stop, he had regaled Zavier with someinteresting tidbit of information about pretty much everything they looked at.
It was, in some ways, intimidating. That was a strange experience, not being the know-it-all for a change. At least Dom had rolled up the sleeves and worn a pair of jeans, or Zavier would have felt underdressed for their jaunt out to as many museums as they could stuff into a couple hours.
They’d managed to see art and dinosaurs and walk through part of the nearby park. There was still the zoo, about a dozen other smaller places, plus galleries, the park itself, and the university district.
The coffee in the café was good, as was the southern food. And, honestly, so was the company, even if Zavier’s brain was ever so slightly overloaded with information. They’d been at this since nine in the morning.
Dom tapped a map of the local area. “Did you know there’s an amphitheater nearby?”
“That’s one thing I do know,” Zavier said. “I performed there with the symphony. A year ago? Two years?” He shook his head. “It all blends together sometimes.”
Dom looked up. “Do you miss it? Playing with them?”
The question caught Zavier off guard, mostly because the answer came so quickly, he had to sit back and figure outwhy. “No.” He spoke slowly, more to taste the words than for any other reason. “No, I don’t.”
