Imperfect Harmony (19 page)

“But when she meets you, she’ll see how great you are, and then she’ll be even less worried about it.” Rhys took his hand, there in the street, and it made John feel equal parts delighted and self-conscious that Rhys was happy to broadcast their relationship to the world. “Seriously. We’re good together, aren’t we? Please tell me it’s not just me who feels this way.”

“It’s not just you.” John squeezed his hand. He knew he was falling for Rhys. Hell, he’d probably already fallen past the point of no return. But he still had reservations about their relationship and was worried it couldn’t last in the long term. “Can you thank her, but I actually can’t tonight. I, um… I have a job application to fill in.” He was relieved to have a genuine excuse.

“Oh yes? What for?”

John explained about the permanent job that had come up in the music department at the Grove School.

Rhys’s eyes lit up. “That’s awesome! I think it’s great you’ll be teaching music again.”

“Well, don’t count your chickens. I haven’t got the job yet.”

“But they invited you to apply, so they must want you,” Rhys said. John envied him his certainty. “Okay I need to reply to Mum. I know she’ll just ask if you can come next week instead. She’s persistent like that. So, would you?”

He looked so hopeful, John couldn’t say no to him. And he had a week to psych himself up for it.

“Yeah, okay.”

He must have looked as anxious as he felt because Rhys chuckled. “She’s really not that scary.”

“If you say so.”

That night, John lay awake for a long time. His bed felt empty, and without the distraction of Rhys beside him, it was hard to keep troublesome thoughts at bay. When he and Rhys were together, just the two of them, it was easy. But when they were out in public, around the choir, meeting Rhys’s family… that made it all a little too real. It wasn’t that John didn’t want to be with Rhys, but everything was moving faster than he could cope with. Rhys was an unstoppable force; he made things happen. John had seen it in the way he led the choir. He was all determination and passion, guiding people, making them do things they didn’t think they were capable of, and then celebrating their success when they managed it.

If only John could trust that this path Rhys was taking him on was the right one for both of them.

The following week, Maggie was unwell with a sore throat and a cough, so John arrived at choir alone—the first to get there apart from Rhys.

“No Maggie tonight?” Rhys looked over John’s shoulder as though expecting to see her following on behind.

“She sends her apologies. She’s got a bad cold.”

“That’s a shame. But it does mean I can do this.” Rhys moved closer and kissed John on the lips, his hands resting lightly on John’s waist.

John kissed him back. He knew he should pull away. This wasn’t the time or the place… but he hadn’t seen Rhys since Sunday, and he missed him fiercely. He indulged himself, kissing Rhys back then putting his arms around Rhys and hugging him.

Rhys gave a happy sigh. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too.”

The door swung open and they didn’t jump apart quite quickly enough.

“Oh, um… sorry.” Ken stood in the doorway looking at them curiously.

John wanted the ground to open up and swallow him, but Rhys took it in his stride.

“It’s me who should apologise, Ken. I’m being unprofessional, fraternising with my choristers.” He grinned. “I’m probably breaking some rule of the Community Choir Association or something.”

Ken chuckled but didn’t seem to know what else to say. The awkward moment stretched out unbearably.

“Well… let me get the register out. Can you two put those tables away, please? We need a bit more space.” Rhys gestured to a couple of folding tables in the middle of the room.

Grateful for something to do, John went with Ken, and together they folded the tables and stacked them in the corner. Meanwhile a few other people arrived and chatted to Rhys as they signed in.

Ken cleared his throat. “So… are you and Rhys…?”

John stared at him, wondering what the end of the sentence was supposed to be.

Gay? Boyfriends? Dating? Fucking?

The answers to all those questions would be yes, so that seemed like the best response. “Yes.” John shrugged. “We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of weeks.”

Ken stared at him for a moment. “I wouldn’t have known you were gay.”

John got that a lot. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Well, I am. Is that a problem?”

“No, no!” Ken raised his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Of course not. I mean… I assumed Rhys was. It’s pretty obvious with the T-shirts he wears sometimes. If I had an issue with it, I wouldn’t have stuck around, would I? I’m just surprised about the two of you…. I mean… he’s a lot younger than you.”

John gritted his teeth.
Thanks for stating the bleeding obvious
. “Yes, well. Age is just a number.”

Maybe if he kept saying it, he’d believe it too.

“Absolutely. It’s really not my business, anyway,” Ken said.

It was funny how people always said that after sticking their noses in. “No, it isn’t.”

John turned away then and went to talk to a couple of the women instead. He glanced over at Rhys, who caught his eye and gave him a questioning look.

John deliberately hung around at the end of the session. Ken hadn’t said anything else about Rhys and him. He’d been perfectly polite and friendly for the rest of practice, but John felt exposed and vulnerable. It wasn’t a good feeling. He hated people knowing his business.

“Are you okay? Did Ken give you a hard time?” Rhys asked him when the last person apart from Rhys and John had gone.

“Yes, I’m fine.” John sighed, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. “And no. Ken’s all right. He just wanted to know what was going on.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him we were seeing each other.”

Rhys snorted. “I love that euphemism. But I suppose you have seen rather a lot of me.”

John couldn’t help grinning, despite his residual irritation. “Yeah. I have, haven’t I?” He had a mental image of Rhys lying naked on his bed, legs spread and knees pulled back to his chest.

“I could come back to yours tonight if you want to see even more of me.” It was as though Rhys knew what John was thinking.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I borrowed Mum’s car, though, because I was running late, so I’ll need to drop that back. How about you follow me home? Then I can get a ride with you to your place after.”

“Sure.”

“Great.”

They drove in convoy to a semi-detached house on one of the newer estates near the edge of town. Rhys pulled up on the driveway and John parked on the road. He turned off the engine and waited in the car.

Rhys came and tapped on the window, so John rolled it down. “Want to come in a minute? I’ll pack a bag for the morning, and then I can go straight to work from yours.”

“Okay.” John got out of the car and followed Rhys up the driveway. Rhys opened a gate between the main house and the annexe and led John into a narrow passageway.

“Sorry about my bike, but there’s nowhere else to keep it because we don’t have a garage anymore.” He unlocked a door on the left side of the passage, while John looked nervously at the door opposite that led into the main house. He was half-expecting Rhys’s mum to pop out, demanding to be introduced. He’d be meeting her on Sunday anyway, but it would be extra awkward to meet her tonight, just before whisking her son away to sleep at his house.

“So, this is my place. It’s not much, but it beats being across the landing from my brother. It’s nice to have a bit more privacy.”

John looked around. It had presumably once been a double garage and had been split in half. He was standing in an open-plan living area, with a kitchen at one end and a couple of sofas at the other. A table and chairs stood in the kitchen half of the room; the table was littered with music books and manuscript paper.

“It’s great.”

“Most of the furniture is Gran’s. She lived here for a few years before her arthritis got too bad for her to cope.”

John hadn’t really noticed the old-fashioned style of the sofas or the floral patterned rug on the floor. But then, he was used to that from his mum’s—
his
, he mentally corrected himself—house.

“My bedroom’s through here.” Rhys led him to a door that opened into a room with a double bed, a chest of drawers, and a wardrobe. “And there’s an en-suite at the back. Anyway, I won’t be long. Make yourself at home while I grab a few things to bring over to yours.”

John wandered back out to the living area, leaving Rhys in the bedroom. He went over to the table, wondering what Rhys was working on.

The top piece of paper had a sequence of guitar chords written at the top. Underneath, there was what looked like a brainstorm: single words, fragments of sentences, more of them had been scribbled out than not, and some had question marks beside them. Some of the phrases jumped out at John. His heart pounded as he read them.

My second-chance man…

Will you take a chance on me?

Letting go of the past

I could be your future if you let me

Not all stories end well, but please be part of mine…

“I’m good to go.” Rhys’s voice made John jump and he turned away, flushed with guilt at snooping. He hadn’t meant to look, but now those words were burned into his brain. He couldn’t unsee them.

Rhys was standing with a bag in his hand and a smile on his face, oblivious to John’s inner turmoil. John felt a rush of affection so strong it nearly floored him.

“Okay,” he managed.

If Rhys noticed John’s silence on the short drive to John’s house, he didn’t question it.

John didn’t know why he was so shocked. Rhys hadn’t made a secret of his attachment to him. He was an open book where emotions were concerned and had made it clear that he liked John, that this relationship meant something to him. But to see it written down, to know Rhys was writing a song about his feelings for him… that was sweet, and thrilling.

But also utterly terrifying.

John gripped the steering wheel tightly and tried to slow down his breathing the way his counsellor had taught him, willing himself to calm down. Driving at night still made him nervous. He needed to concentrate on the road.

Through sheer force of will, John managed rein his emotions back in enough to drive safely. And by the time he pulled up outside his house, he had a grip on himself again. He didn’t want Rhys to notice and ask him what the matter was because he had no idea how to explain his reaction to what he’d just seen. Any sane person would be happy to learn that their feelings were reciprocated—for now, at least. But John had so many doubts.

In bed that night, John felt distant and detached as they kissed and touched each other. His body responded to Rhys’s hands and mouth, but his thoughts were far away. Memories of David were strong, and the face of Lyle from the photograph he’d seen online kept pushing itself to the forefront. There were too many ghosts in the room for John to be fully in the present with Rhys.

He lay awake after, his thoughts whirling, as Rhys slept in his arms. His chest ached with tenderness. Rhys pulled him in like a magnet, and John didn’t have the energy to resist his growing affection. But he didn’t trust himself to be what Rhys needed. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to bear the responsibility of Rhys’s happiness. He was fearful for Rhys’s heart. Yet he was also fearful for his own, because yes, maybe Rhys had feelings for him now, in the first flush of infatuation, but who was to say those feelings would last?

If John let Rhys into his life… into his heart, how could he bear to lose him if Rhys changed his mind in the future?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

On Friday lunchtime, Rhys was busy running a karaoke club for a bunch of noisy, overexcited ten- and eleven-year-olds, so he didn’t hear his phone ring.

After sending the kids back to their class teacher for the afternoon, he was packing up his stuff when his phone buzzed with a voicemail notification. Rhys called to listen to the message, hoping it would be the person he was expecting.

It was.

“Hi, it’s me… John.” Rhys smiled. As if he wasn’t going to recognise John’s voice by now. “I was just checking you were still okay to go to the open mic night tonight. Shall we meet there at about eight thirty? Let me know.”

Rhys knew John would be teaching again by now, so he texted his reply.

Yes, sure. See you later
.

An hour or so later he got a message from John.

Are you sure you don’t want to take instruments?

Rhys’s pulse jumped. Part of him wanted to make that leap, but not today.

Maybe next time
.

Rhys was the first to arrive at Spencer’s. He looked around for John when he got there. It was dimly lit compared to during the day, and really busy. All the tables were occupied by people eating or had Reserved signs on them, so he squeezed his way through to the bar and ordered himself a beer.

Rhys rarely drank these days.

After Lyle died he’d tried to stay in London and get on with his life, but he’d been a mess, drinking every night and taking any drugs he could get his hands on, just to numb the pain and escape from reality for a while. When he failed to pay his rent and his landlord kicked him out, he finally admitted to himself that he couldn’t cope and returned home. At that point Rhys stopped everything—drink and drugs—apart from the antidepressants his mother had persuaded him to get a prescription for. But since he’d weaned himself off those over a year ago, he’d started to drink alcohol again occasionally.

There was a performance space set up at the back of the bar. Tables had been moved aside to make room for musicians and speakers, and two guys were playing something bluesy on acoustic and bass. They sounded pretty good.