Beneath the Stain - Part 5 (11 page)

Kell laughed. “Yeah. Boring life. Picking up dog doo, hoping it’s hard. I remember. Is that my fate, Trav? Wife, kids, dog shit?”

“Happiness,” Trav said softly, thinking about his parents and his brother and meaning it. “It’s going to be easier for you, Kell. Mackey’ll keep you fed, keep you in a job, and you will help him make music history. But when it’s time to find that wife to follow you around and have babies, it’s gonna be easy.” He sighed and shut his eyes. “That fight that Mackey and I had? There’s gonna be none of that shit for you. No breaking your fist on walls, no sixty-eleven trips to rehab. Just falling in love and having babies and doing your job with all your heart. It’s gonna be a good life.”

Kell nodded with big eyes, like he was clinging to Trav’s words with all the strength in his big, rough hands. “Yeah?”

Trav nodded and smiled. “Yeah, man. You’re gonna have a good life.”

“Not spectacular,” Kell said, and then looked Trav in the eyes with startling sobriety. “Is it worth it?” he asked. “The trade-off? The spectacular for the ordinary? Is it worth it?”

Trav sighed and closed his eyes. “Ask me when we bury your friend, Kellogg. I might know then.”

The tabletop they were sitting at was overvarnished, tacky with too much spilled booze, riddled with stickers and stamps, which was apparently this place’s idea of kitsch. Kell worried one of the stamps with his thumbnail and looked around the little dive with the surprisingly tasty barbecue.

“This is a good place,” he said after a minute. “Someday I want to come back to this place and remember the shit you said to me. It’s important shit.”

Trav ran his finger idly around the rim of his empty beer mug. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, laughing a little. “I promised your brother I’d be here, whether or not we were a thing. You can ask me any day, and I’ll tell you this important shit.”

Kell nodded and drained the last two inches of his glass. The bartender came over and took Trav’s card, and they met eyes, both of them aware that the sobering time had come.

“What I’m going through with Grant, it’s gonna hurt,” he said. “The guy was our brother for most of our lives.”

Trav grimaced. “Understood.”

“But what you and Mackey are gonna go through?” Kellogg sighed and stood up. “I get why my brother became an addict,” he said after a minute. “I mean I do
now
. But I’m telling you, there’s not enough beer in the world, Trav. And I don’t got no other remedies, yanno?”

Trav took his card back and signed for the tip, nodding at the bartender with finality. He and Kell were still in their shirtsleeves, and it was still pissing rain, and Blake hadn’t texted them yet, which meant Mackey and Briony were still out in it.

“You don’t have to,” Trav said after a minute. “If me and Mackey can’t work it out on our own, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Now that’s just bullshit,” Kell muttered. “There’s meant to be and not meant to be and there’s just being put under the pressure cooker until you explode.”

Trav smiled at him. “Kell?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let anyone tell you you’re stupid. Ever. And if they insist on it, let them talk to me and I’ll take them out.”

Kell’s answering smile was a little sad, but sound. They turned and walked out of the bar more than friends—brothers.

Trav thought about Heywood and wondered bitterly if he’d ever really known what that meant. His brother was working in the ER right now while his wife minded the kids. He knew this because Heywood texted him when he was bored. When they’d been in Europe, Trav had texted him random pictures:
Mackey in Rome—the cats loved him. The guys on the Eiffel Tower—they didn’t see it last time.

Suddenly Trav had a terrible, terrible yearning that Heywood meet Mackey and the guys. His brother had been a little shit when they were kids, but it didn’t seem fair, somehow, that they should grow up and be such separate people. The Sanders boys—plus Stevie and, from the sound of it, Grant—might have been dysfunctional and claustrophobic, but at least they had had each other.

Halfway back in the rain, Trav’s pocket buzzed. It was Blake—Mackey and Briony had come back. They were having a Doritos party in Trav’s room.

OMW

Trav raised his face to the rain and closed his eyes, letting the relief wash over him.

Thank you, God. Thank you for letting him be okay. Thank you for bringing him back to me. Please, let him stay.

They walked back into the room to find Blake, Jefferson, and Stevie playing each other on their DS3s while Shelia, Mackey, and Briony cheered them on. Mackey’s hair still dripped down his back and into his eyes, but he was wearing dry sweats, and when Trav walked in, Mackey grabbed two pairs of sweats and T-shirts for Trav and Kell.

Trav took them gratefully and passed Kell his. Both of them looked uneasily at the girls, who rolled their eyes and waved their hands and turned back to the games. It felt cowardly to go to the bathroom after that, Trav reflected, smiling grimly to himself. Propriety was a weird thing.

They changed and hung their clothes up in the tiny mildewed bathroom and towel-dried their hair. When they were done, Trav sat on the bed and Mackey sat in his lap, just like when they were at home and the guys were playing something on the big screen. They started rooting for their favorite characters and listening to Briony’s acid commentary, passing the tiny bags of Doritos Blake had apparently gotten from the vending machine when Mackey had shown up hungry even though they’d already eaten. Nobody mentioned the tour, nobody mentioned Grant, nobody mentioned the terrible, rip-roaring fight that had torn through the little hotel like a touched-down tornado.

And nobody went back to their beds either. Mackey slept between Briony and Trav in one queen-size bed; Jefferson, Stevie and Shelia took the other. Kell and Blake took the floor, using the fluffy blankets Trav had bought them in Albuquerque because the nights dropped surprisingly cold and the bus just didn’t seem warm enough.

The room was close and humid between the rain and the too-many bodies, but nobody wanted to split up just yet.

The last person who had left was dying.

When gentle breathing and soft snores echoed in the tiny room with the peeling paint and the bald carpet coming up from the moldings, Mackey rolled over in Trav’s arms and nuzzled his chest.

“You awake?” he whispered.

Trav opened one eye. “We’re not doing that right now,” he said, sure that they were clear on this one thing.

“Yeah, I gotcha. I just wanted to say….” Mackey sighed so deeply Trav’s arms rose and fell with his chest. “I wanted to say I don’t know if I’m sorry—I can’t think of anything I said that was meant to be mean or shitty, so I’m not sure I can be sorry for it.”

Trav felt a smile tilting at the corners of his mouth. If Mackey Sanders loved you, it meant he didn’t hold back a goddamned thing. Trav could deal with that.

“Understood,” Trav murmured.

“I didn’t finish. I just want to say that I don’t want you hurt. Shit’s gonna happen, and you’re going to get hurt, but I never meant to do it.” Again, that big sigh. “I don’t know if that’s worth anything, but it’s all I got.”

Trav dropped a kiss in his knotted, water-ratted hair. “Intentions should count,” he said after a minute. Mackey’s hair smelled animal and real, and he wished for a moment that they were alone. But they’d get lots of time to be alone and not a whole lot of time to be the lot of them, the band, where anyone else could understand. “I promise to try to remember that.”

“We got weak sauce for promises,” Mackey muttered in disgust, and it was Trav’s turn to sigh. Somewhere in the hotel, someone was having one hell of a bachelor/fishing party, and Trav could only hope they woke up feeling like dogs shit in their mouths. God, they were making a vicious racket—it echoed in the brightness beyond the tattered blackout curtains. Trav was one version of “Freebird” away from going outside and kicking righteous fucking ass.

“Then maybe we should be making different promises,” Trav said after a moment.

“You write the music, I’ll do the lyrics,” Mackey mumbled. Then, slightly more awake: “If one of those bozos wakes up dead tomorrow, will we be asked to testify, or can we still get the hell out of Dodge?”

Trav grunted. “I am a better manager than that. If one of those bozos wakes up dead, we were never here.”

Mackey laughed softly. “You were a scary motherfucker in the Army, weren’t you?”

Trav closed his eyes, remembered sweat, grit, terrified men, and that certain amount of fear and loathing that prisoners emanated when they were around an apex predator. “Nothing but the scariest motherfucker for you, Mackey. Swear.”

“Good,” Mackey said seriously. When Trav opened his eyes, he saw Mackey regarding him soberly. “’Cause the whole fucking world knows I’m dating my manager, and all of Tyson is going to be running around trying to prove they’re bigger and scarier than you so they can feel good about themselves for not being gay.”

“Charming,” Trav grunted. “Can’t wait.”

“And Briony and Shelia shouldn’t go anywhere alone either—”

“Briony isn’t going anywhere,” Briony mumbled. “Briony is sick, and the two assholes talking next to her are driving her to homicide.”

Mackey rolled in Trav’s arms and felt her forehead. “Aw, man—Trav, she’s burning up—”

“I can take a cold tab,” Briony grunted. “Just shut up, for sweet fuck’s sake.”

Mackey sighed and Trav nuzzled his neck. And put buying cold and flu medication on his mental list of things to do in six hours, when the whole puppy-pile mess of them got up, finished the tour, and went to meet their past.

Bonus Scene

G
RANT
WONDERED
what the weather was like in LA at Christmas. He’d heard it was nice—low seventies, high sixties, skating that line between T-shirt and sweatshirt temperatures. He’d always wanted to go to Disneyland during Christmas.

Maybe one day he’d take the baby, but for now? The closest thing he could get was to talk to Kell and the guys when they came home. God, even if Mackey couldn’t stand to talk to him, just
seeing
him live, in person, probably glaring at him from the car—that would be enough. Grant just wanted to know he was okay.

Even if Grant didn’t deserve to know
shit
about Mackey Sanders.

But the guys were coming. That was his refrain as he sat in his office at the dealership, doing paperwork.
The guys are coming.
Mackey was coming. That was what he told himself as he smiled and lied to the nice family coming to buy a minivan the week before Christmas, because their thrasher Honda just quit and they figured they’d splurge on something Grant assumed would be repossessed within the year.

Mackey’s coming.

All day long the thought of seeing his brothers, of seeing Mackey, thrummed through his body. It overruled the vague headache, the exhaustion, that had been riding him since Mackey’s text about rehab, and it gave him an appetite during lunch, which was nice, because it kept his old man off his back.

“Thank God, you’re actually eating like a man and not a teenage girl,” Grant’s father snarked. Grant glared at him sourly. He was trying to be too happy riding the buzz to actually lecture his father on women’s rights. It didn’t matter—Sam was perfectly happy to stay at home and watch Katy and never ever think that perhaps she could do something else with her life besides being the wife of Grant Adams. She was like the antithesis of the women’s movement, and Grant feared for his daughter, growing up and thinking that was the only option she’d ever have.

Oh hell.

That quickly, the nausea was back again.

“I’ve got paperwork to do,” he mumbled, then stood up and threw the rest of his lunch away.

His father said something about being a pussy and needing to lift some weights, but Grant tuned him out. He was not great at it, but the last year and a half without the band had made him a little better.

By the end of the day, he was excited again.
Kell’s coming. The twins are coming. Mackey’s coming.
He left work early, stopped at the store to buy milk, and drove quickly to his house in the one modern suburb in Tyson. The house had a narrow living room with a vaulted ceiling, a kitchen that never saw sunlight, a big porch and a tiny backyard, and two bedrooms on the top floor. Modern architecture, right there, putting the biggest amount of floor space on the smallest lot possible, and Grant felt like it squeezed the life right out of him. He couldn’t decide which was worse—that house or his parents’ house, which was easily four times as big, with acres and acres of property, and the stench of tobacco smoke and bitterness saturating the walls.

He put the milk in the refrigerator and looked out to see Sam playing with Katy on the plastic play structure that dominated the small lawn. He smiled and some of the pressure around his head and his lungs eased.

Katy was better.

Katy loved her daddy just for being her daddy. She liked it when he sang, she loved his laughter, and she clung to him whenever he came home. Mackey had gone because Grant had driven him away, but his baby girl—
she
would stay until it was time for her to fly.