Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (2 page)

“I’m gay.”

“So you said,” she said, and he opened his eyes to see the gentle smile on her face. “I probably sort of knew, Mackey.”

“Yeah?”

“That night after prom, I gave you crap about the hickeys on your neck. You didn’t say anything, and I kept expecting a girlfriend—but nothing. No girl. Ever. You’d have hickeys or love bites, but you never went on a date. You never talked about a girl. I’m sure the boys had girls throwing themselves up on the stage once you all started performing—but not once were you late because you got lucky.”

Mackey grimaced in spite of himself. His mom wasn’t stupid.

“Or not with a girl,” she said softly. Then, painfully, like she knew the answer already. “Grant Adams, right?”

“Yeah,” Mackey whispered, and he realized he’d been hoping for this as much as dreading it. Mom knew who Grant was to him. Mom knew that his brothers were all he had and that losing Grant….

“Is that when you started using? When he got married?”

Mackey smiled bitterly. “That and the money,” he confessed. “We ain’t never had money before, Mom. And suddenly I was in charge of keeping it.”

She stroked his cheek. “Honey—you couldn’t have told me?”

“Told you what?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it. But now—have you told me all of
it?”

God. But he had to. Two weeks—he’d been here for two weeks, and every time he’d spoken the truth, he’d gotten a little lighter, a little better. So he closed his eyes and let her touch his cheek and told her about the men. And then, before he could stop himself, he told her about the treating Blake like hell, and finally, Charleston Klum and the rape.

She
was crying by the time he was done, but Mackey? He just kept his eyes closed and pretended he was fourteen. He’d fall asleep and his mom would stroke his hair, and just knowing someone out there loved him would make it better.

“Baby,” she whispered, and he opened his eyes because he had to look at what he’d done. If nothing else, Blake had taught him that.

“Mom—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said on a shaking breath. “Not about the gay, not about the rape. That shit’s hard. Growing up in our town?” She laughed bitterly. “Honey, I am the
last
person to complain about a person’s sexual history. But about the… the attack….” She just cried harder.

“Mom…,” he said helplessly.

“The papers said ‘assault,’” she hiccupped, and he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

“I haven’t… I don’t remember it,” he said honestly, stroking his mother’s hand. “I… so much other shit. Doc thinks it’ll pop up one day—suddenly I’ll be talking about ice cream and what’s gonna come out is ‘I was raped.’ So, you know. Be careful when we’re talking about ice cream, okay?”

She sputtered laugh-tears into her shoulder. “Will do,” she choked. “So you’re going to keep it a secret?”

Mackey sighed. He’d been coming to grips with grown-up things for a while now; this one was no exception. “Mom, I’m barely hanging on about this other shit, okay? Don’t let the drug-addicted man-whore in rehab fool you—I’m
really
a disaster.” She laughed some more, and he clung to that, because he still loved making his mother happy. “I can’t do it in public. In private it’ll be hard enough.”

She nodded, trying so hard to keep it together. “And the gay? You said you were coming out on TV.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

Her response was gratifyingly quick. “Oh, honey, I’ve given up giving a fuck what people say. Cheever might not like it—especially when it hits the press—but you let me deal with him, okay? I still love you. I wish to hell I’d been here for you, but I don’t see why that would change when you’re all grown up.” She completely broke then, no words, her head sinking into her arms, and Mackey had nothing to do but get up and hug her while she cried. While he was there, he realized that she was really, really tiny, because Mackey had been nothing but short his entire life, and she tucked into his hug like a little kid.

Trav and the others must have seen them, he thought later, because by the time his mom wiped her eyes on the aloe Kleenex that haunted every damned corner of this nice hotel for the chemically dependent, he had two giant paper bowls of ice cream—and it wasn’t melted at all. Since they’d been talking for over an hour, Mackey could only eat his ice cream gratefully and say thank you.

Finally, finally, Trav rounded everybody up. Hugs all around, of course, and his mom’s promise to text him often. Trav stopped and squeezed his shoulder, and Mackey said, “Screw that bullshit!” and launched himself into Trav’s arms, seeking a real fucking hug.

Yeah, Trav faked not knowing how to give one at first, but after a moment, Mackey felt it. He wrapped his arms around Mackey’s shoulder, and Mackey buried his face in Trav’s navy polo shirt, smelling aftershave and sweat and even strawberry ice cream, because he’d dripped on the front pocket. Mackey didn’t care. He stayed there, letting that warmth and that smell seep into him.

“I want more of these,” he insisted, his voice muffled against Trav’s pectoral.

“Yeah, fine,” Trav said breathlessly. He pulled back and grimaced at Mackey. “You need to finish the program first,” he cautioned.

Mackey managed to pull a blazing smile from his toes. “Man, fucking try and stop me. I’m not doing this again. It’s gonna be a slide down a snow hill on a sled after this, you feel me?”

To his delight, Trav tightened his arms. “Like I’ve got a fucking choice,” Trav muttered, and finally let him go.

The band walked down the nice concrete walkway to the limo, and Mackey’s pocket buzzed. It was his mother.

Trav seems nice. You two an item?

We’re a hope.

I’ll hope for you too.

Mackey smiled and pocketed the phone, then looked up to where Blake was standing.

“Your mom’s real nice,” Blake said wistfully.

Mackey managed a smile with only a little twist at the ends. “Yeah, well, she liked you. Welcome to the family.”

“You mean she doesn’t wish I was the almighty Grant Adams?” Blake asked, but without too much bitterness.

Mackey had gotten good at telling the truth in the last two weeks. “Nope,” he said as they turned back to the facility. “In fact, she never did take a shine to Grant.”

“No?”

Mackey shook his head, remembering his mom’s veiled warnings, her inarticulate fears. “She was never sure how, but she always sort of knew he was gonna break our hearts.”

“Hot damn!” Blake said, a smile lighting up his thin, scruffy face. “For once I am not second-best!”

Mackey sighed inwardly. Well, he was never going to be Mackey’s best friend. But he
was
Kell’s, now that Grant had bowed out of the band. “Man, if you practice the bridge of that new song a little more, you might even tie with Kell. That asshole never practices when I don’t ride him. Let’s go fix that up.”

Blake’s smile turned gentle, like he knew Mackey was talking bullshit just to make him feel better, and Mackey shook his head and stomped off. But he knew his friend would follow him, and he knew they’d play music, and for now, that was plenty.

T
RAV
WATCHED
the interview with the guys when it aired on
E!
, and wondered if he’d ever been prouder of another person.

Mackey had asked that Trav not see him awful—and he’d apparently hired a stylist to come in and cut and dye his hair to make sure. He’d put some makeup on and hidden the shadows of his eyes, and he didn’t look quite so thin, quite so pale, and he was wearing his concert clothes—a red-and-yellow-striped jacket and a salmon-colored shirt with a lot of froth at the collar over jeans that almost showed his scrotum.

God, he was sexy, cocking his hips in the sunshine, front of the center, waiting for Blake to finish talking.

“Yeah, well, you go from the streets when you’re lucky to eat to being surrounded by
everything
, you’re going to lose your head, you know?” Blake smiled, and he managed to look both shy and sure with the same smirk. Trav had to hand it to him: he’d grown up too in the last month. He was even wearing a sports coat over his jeans. Kell had brought him one—Blake’s request, but probably Mackey’s suggestion, just like the clothes Trav had fished from Mackey’s closet.

“How about you, Mackey?”

Travis had handpicked the reporters, and he’d gone with a bevy of women and men in their thirties—older, wiser, not pushy. The woman asking this question was in her forties but dapper and fit. Mackey smiled at her with the same kindness he’d used on his mother.

“How ’bout me what?” he asked, smirking.

After a spattering of laughter, the reporter nodded. “What do you think brought you here?”

Mackey smiled grimly directly at the cameras. “Well, a bunch of stuff, really, and some of it’s private. But part of it was I’d had a breakup before we came down to LA, and it was something I didn’t really get over.”

Good, Mackey. Make ’em come to you.

“Is that why we never see you with any women, Mackey?”

Yup—sweet middle-aged woman asking that question, she made it sound like a joke, nothing invasive, nothing earth-shattering.

“Well, the reason you don’t see me with any women is that I’m gay,” Mackey said casually, and then he winked at the camera, like he and the audience could ignore the fact that all of the reporters had just lost their fucking minds.

“Mackey!” cried one woman, a little taller, a little louder than the others. “Do you think your sexual orientation had anything to do with your drug addiction?”

Mackey grimaced like this was the world’s dumbest question. “Sweetheart, it’s not the gay that made me want to use drugs, it was the fear of how you people react. You all promise to behave, I promise to lay off the hard stuff.”

And like that, the atmosphere went from charged like a feeding frenzy to gentle laughter. Yup, he’d made them promise to behave—they had to play nice or they’d look bad.

“What was it that prompted you to come out?” called another reporter, and Mackey and Blake made eye contact while Blake nodded enthusiastically.

“Well,” Mackey drawled, “I could have said I was only bi when I was high, but if I was gonna stay sober after rehab, that would mean I never got laid again.”

This time the laughter was louder, and Mackey nodded, touching Blake’s shoulder. Off-screen, Trav had been giving everyone the wrap-it-up signal, and they’d moved back into the center and out of the limelight.

“Did we dance well enough, Mr. Music Box Man?” Mackey asked dryly as they cleared the foyer.

Trav had no choice but to nod. “You did great, guys. Do you want a banana, or would you settle for a ride home in three days?”

“
God
, I want to go home,” Blake burst out, and Mackey seconded it.

“You weren’t shitting about the gym, right?” Mackey’d asked, and Trav had to smile, thinking back on it. Apparently working out was part of their daily regimen. When Trav had put Kell in charge of setting up a gym in the second garage, Mackey and Blake had about wagged their tails and lolled their tongues in gratitude. Well, good. In Trav’s experience, hard-worked bodies were bodies that kept out of trouble.

He’d said good-bye and come home, to where Kell was recording the press conference on
E!
.  After watching it with the gang, he felt a little thrill of warmth in the pit of his stomach.

“They look good,” Kell said avidly, and Jefferson and Stevie concurred.

“I hope we’ve practiced enough,” Stevie said, sounding worried. “Man, he kept sending us songs and shit—if we don’t hit the studio sounding prime, he’s gonna lose his fucking nut.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sort of missing the studio,” Jefferson admitted, throwing himself back on the couch. “I miss
the band
. This is the longest we ain’t played since Mackey gathered us in a circle in our living room, you know?”

Trav couldn’t keep his curiosity contained. “Mackey formed the band? How old were you?”

Kell closed his eyes like he was setting the date up in his head. “Yeah, it was a couple of months after Cheever’s dad left. Mom went on a religion kick for a year—she was cleaning the organ player’s house anyway. So she had us go learn guitar and piano while she was working.”

Trav nodded, seeing the scene clearly behind his eyes as Kell talked. Mackey in the middle, ordering all the older kids around, the older kids desperate for a diversion, and the song about fighting just spilling out of Mackey’s agile brain.

“God,” Trav said when Kell was done, “he’s really something, your brother. You know that?”

Kell squinted at him. “Yeah, but straight guys don’t usually say that about other guys.”

“I’m sayin’,” Jefferson agreed.

Shelia stated the obvious. “Well, it’s a good thing Mackey’s not straight,” she said. “Next time Trav can say it to
him
!”

Trav’s face went hot. “I’m gonna go start dinner,” he muttered.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Ford,” Shelia chimed in. “Astrid put stuff in a Crock-Pot for us tonight. I’ll put the buns in the oven in an hour. We’re good.”

Trav sighed. “Then I’ve got work to do in my room.”

Anything, anything, but think of three days and Mackey walking through the door, and what the hell they were going to do with themselves then.

T
RAV
’
S
BROTHER
, Heywood, had two kids. Trav remembered asking once, “What’s it like? You go to the hospital with your wife and come home with a whole other person?”

Heywood, who grew his carrot-red hair to his shoulders and did the same wispy beard thing Blake did, smiled shyly. “It’s the weirdest thing—it’s like you spend
months
getting the place ready for the baby, right? Stacking the clothes, buying the dump truck of shit that goes with this little person, studying baby, taking baby classes, just preparing to change your life for the frickin’ baby. So we get the baby home, Nina goes into the bedroom to sleep, and it’s just him and me, right? He’s asleep. He’s gonna sleep for the next three hours. So there I am, a clean house, nothing to do but take care of the baby. Would you believe I watched football? Hadn’t caught a game in weeks, but I saw the whole damned thing before Ian woke up and needed to be fed. It’s not always like that—most of it’s not like that—but changing your life is really weird. Nothing’s the same with kids except us. We’re still the same people. It’s all you got.”