Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (10 page)

“What?”

“Would you really rather die young, leave a good memory, all of that rock star glory bullshit you were just saying?”

“It was… I don’t know. It was a joke!”

“It was a shitty one. Now promise me you’re not thinking that way, or I’ll never get to sleep.”

Mackey sighed and closed his eyes. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll live forever. I’ll be Bruce Springsteen or Mick Jagger or something.”

Trav made a considering kind of sound. “You promise?”

“I can’t promise that bullshit—hell, have you never seen
The Buddy Holly Story
?”

“We can’t control helicopters and ice, Mackey, but we
can
control your damned suicidal impulses. Promise, or I’m driving down there and sleeping on
your
floor for a change.”

Mackey shifted uncomfortably. He gave up showering three days ago and he’d spent the past four days in his pajama bottoms with his hair in a pile on top of his head. It was nice—no dressing up for stage, for press conferences, for shuttling from one place to the next—but he knew he stretched the boundaries of casual, and he liked it that way. It sort of helped him relax if he thought of this whole thing as one big vegetation day on the couch. He really hadn’t gotten any of those when they’d been on tour.

“I, uh, I don’t know, Trav. I sort of don’t want you to see me this way.” Oh God. How did that sound? Did it sound as bad as he thought it sounded? “I mean, you know. I just… it’d be nice if you saw me… not awful, sometime. You know?”

“I don’t think you’re awful.” Trav’s voice in the dark suddenly doubled up on the shiver quotient. “I think you’re a great kid—”

“I’m not a kid.”
Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap.

“No.” Trav sighed heavily. “No, but you’re—”

“I can be a grown-up, Trav. I mean, I can do rehab and get clean, if that’s what it takes to be grown up—”

“Lots of people who don’t get clean are still grown-ups. I just think I’m a little old for what—”

“Not old. Not too old. I’m not a kid and you’re not too old, okay? Just, you know. I’m in rehab. See? We’re talking on the phone. It’s not a thousand miles away. Just don’t write me off as a kid, okay?”

God. Because he sounded like such a man here, didn’t he? Oh hell. Texting had been
such
a better option.

“Lights out, Mackey!”

Mackey looked up at the orderly—a sweet-faced little guy who liked to bottom, if the adventures in the broom closet were anything to judge by—and nodded, smiling. “I gotta go, Trav. I’ll text you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, text you tomorrow.”

“When I’ll be older.”

Trav’s laugh was nice. Low, growly, grumbly. Mackey was suddenly a fan for life.

“So will I,” he said.

Mackey stuck his tongue out at the phone and then hung up.

Trav’s text buzzed not ten seconds later.

I saw that.

That was a very adult reaction to an irritating person
, Mackey texted primly.

Goodnight, Mackey.

Night, Trav.

Mackey wanted to say something else. Something deep and profound and at least more attached than “Night, Trav.”

But he couldn’t think of a thing that didn’t scare him silly. And would probably make Trav quit.

He fell asleep thinking about it, and hadn’t reached a solution in the morning.

T
HE
NEXT
day, during his individual session with Doc Cambridge, he thought Trav really might have to come out and camp on his floor to get him to stay.

“You want me to….” He squinted, and Doc Cambridge helped him finish his sentence.

“Write letters, yes.”

“I’ve got a phone! Can’t I just call them up and—”

“No.” Just one syllable and a whole lot of attitude for a guy who was so goddamned flamingly nice to every other person in the fucking facility.

“Why in the fuck not?” Mackey snapped. “Are all shrinks men?”

“No—there’s a whole lot of female doctors in this facility. Why do you ask?”

Mackey shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just thinking you looked an awful lot like my mother right then, that’s all.”

“Well, since your mother might be the one person in your life who hasn’t let you down, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now about writing the letters—”

“Yeah. Why can’t I just call people? I mean, you know, technology and everything? Easy.” Mackey pulled his phone out of the pocket of his hoodie and mimed punching in numbers. “Just, you know… beep boop bop….”

Cambridge glared at him through the gap between his finger and thumb. Every so often, he pressed them together like he was popping a zit.

“You’re squishing my head, aren’t you?” Mackey asked, grinning.

“Yup.”

“Well, answer my question if you want me to shut up. Why letters?”

Cambridge sighed and cast Mackey a weary smile. These one-on-one sessions hadn’t been easy for either of them. Cambridge asked questions, Mackey dodged—like a game, except Mackey was using the diversion to not think about all the things he’d like to take to not think about
anything
.

“For one thing, you can’t dodge the subject when you’re writing a letter.”

“And for another?”

“Jesus, kid, would you just let me finish? For another, you can’t piss them off accidentally.” Cambridge’s voice softened. “Look, I know you were just trying to help Kimber the other day, okay? You wanted her to know that it was okay if she wanted her father’s approval, but she had to learn to live without it. I get that. But you’re so used to telling people to go to hell while you’re smiling in their faces, that’s what’s coming across.”

Mackey sighed and let his face sag into the lines of unhappiness that he’d been fighting all day. He picked restlessly at a cuticle for a minute, thinking his guitar calluses were going to go away if he didn’t practice more.

“I didn’t mean to make her cry,” he said at last. They’d talked about this subject the entire morning. All of Mackey’s fucking problems, all of the things he should really be working on, and somehow it all came down to making one stressed-out socialite cry. He hadn’t meant to do it. He’d been trying to be a nice guy and he’d failed. Why should he even try?

“I know you didn’t,” Cambridge said, his voice gentle.

Mackey didn’t want to look up. He didn’t think he could do this if Cambridge was still trying to squish his head.

“What would I say in these letters you want me to write?” Because letters? Wasn’t that archaic? “I pretty much say whatever the hell I’m thinking anyway.”

“Really?”

The skepticism made Mackey look up. Cambridge wasn’t trying to squish his head, but he wasn’t agreeing with Mackey either.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mackey shifted uneasily, wanting his guitar. His stomach hummed softly, somewhere between his spine and his groin, a restless itch he hated noticing because he could never get rid of it without music or drugs.

“Fine, then. Let’s start with a few questions that
I
am curious about. If you can answer those without wanting a shot of whiskey—”

“Vodka,” Mackey said seriously. “Or gin. They don’t taste as bad.”

“Okay, if you can answer those without wanting a shot of anything, I shall take it all back.”

“Woot! And that’ll be winning the lottery right there,” Mackey snapped, dripping acid.

“Oh yeah. I’ll throw in a gold watch for free.” Cambridge was a sarcastic shit too—Mackey grinned at him raggedly, approving.

“Then shoot.” Mackey pulled out his best fuck-off-and-love-me grin so the doc knew that nobody was getting under his skin.

“How old were you when you knew for sure you were gay?”

Grant softly breathing smoke into his mouth, and all of those things he’d been silently yearning for singing through his skin….

“Fourteen.”

“How did you know?”

The almost soothing pungency of marijuana, the lower tones of cut grass and rain, Grant’s aftershave and his body surrounding Mackey….

“I was kissed.”

“By whom?” Doc’s eye was twitching again. Good. Mackey’s whole gut was clenched into cannon shot.

“My brother’s friend.”

“Did your brother know?”

Grant dropping to his knees in Mackey’s bedroom, shaving his crotch so he could wear those damned pants, taking Mackey’s cock in his mouth while Mackey’s brothers ran around in circles in the living room….

“No,” Mackey said softly. In spite of himself, his breathing started to quicken like it did before a fight or after a fix or in the middle of fucking.

“Did he ever kiss you again?”

Grant showing up with the McDonald’s bag and need in his touch, face alight as he took Mackey’s ass in the back of his mom’s minivan after Mackey had cut school; the feel of his shivering body after that first time in San Francisco; stolen kisses; hands in the dark; the sound of the river; the full lips, golden eyes, straight-bridged nose, self-loathing smile….

“Mackey?”

Mackey ran a shaking hand over his mouth and yearned—
yearned—
for a Xanax, or the bitterness of coke on his tongue, or the burn of liquor, or his guitar in his hand.

“Mackey?” Cambridge was no longer sarcastic or irritated or kind. He was firm and relentless and—

“Can I get my guitar?” Mackey begged, a cold sweat popping out over his chest and his back.

“No,” Cambridge said, and he meant it.

“I’ve got to pee—can I go pee?”

“No.” His voice got a little softer, but not less adamant.

“I really gotta go,” Mackey complained. “I mean, I’ll wet my pants—”

“Good, then you might change your clothes and shower.”

Mackey cringed. “I was trying for casual,” he muttered.

“Well, the effect was ‘depressed and recovering from addiction.’ I’ve seen your concert footage—it’s not your best look.”

“You’ve seen my concerts?” Mackey smiled, feeling pathetic. Oh God. Suddenly it was really important to him that this guy who wanted to know all his secrets had seen him when he was all together and fucking dominating the stage.

“I own your CD too,” Cambridge said gently. “I owned it before you showed up on my door. Now answer the question.”

Mackey stood up and paced. “I….” He laughed, because it was true and he felt stupid. “I honestly can’t remember—”

“How long did you keep kissing this guy that your brothers didn’t know about?”

Oh.

“Five years,” Mackey said. He started bouncing, clenching and unclenching his ass muscles, making his stomach hard as a rock—anything to try to stave off the need.

“Wow!”

Mackey glanced at him quickly, looking for judgment, and saw nothing but honest surprise. “What?”

“That’s a long time to keep something secret when you’re—what? Fourteen through nineteen?”

“Yeah,” Mackey muttered. “Felt like my whole life.” And then it ended.

“How old are you now?”

Mackey glared at the guy. “Turned twenty-one in June. Why?”

“Because you were really young. How old was the boy?”

“Ahh….” Mackey’s hands were sweating, and he prowled over to the wall. “Kell’s age.” God, how old was Kell now? “He’d be twenty-five in September.”

“So not much older. Why’d it get broken off?”

Mackey closed his eyes and simply dropped to the floor, hugging his knees to his chest and shaking. “Do we have to?” he asked, talking into his knees. “Is this—I mean, it’s stupid. I—”

“C’mon, Mackey. See this through!”

“He knocked up his girlfriend and couldn’t follow the fucking band. Happy now? He knocked up his girlfriend, we had to get another second guitar, Blake took the job, and there you are. We’re all fucking caught up. Good? Do you need to know anything else after that? Who, how many, cock size?”

“No,” Cambridge said, crouching down by Mackey. “Because really, they’re all the same guy, aren’t they?”

Cocks shoving into his asshole with pain, the rubber not always lubricated, the strange mouths on his cock, the smug looks on their faces, all of them thrilled to take a piece of Mackey Sanders, the guy they’d just watched thousands of people eye-fuck on stage….

Grant. Grant, whose hands had trembled on his shoulders, who had buried his face against Mackey’s back and wept….

“Yeah,” Mackey admitted, because his voice would stop it—stop the weight of the memories pressing him to the floor, detonating in his stomach, making him shake and heave and yearn.

“What was his name?”

“Grant.” His voice was a whisper, a gravel slice of pain. “My brother’s friend Grant Adams.”

He’s beautiful. So beautiful. And hurt. And he needed me, I know it, and he let me go.

“Have you spoken to him since you came to LA?”

Mackey reached into his back pocket and fumbled for his phone. He looked up Grant’s text messages and then shoved the phone at Cambridge, hoping that would be enough. For just a minute, he didn’t have to answer any questions, ’cause all the answers were in the phone.

The doctor raised his eyebrow and then sighed. Creakily, he settled his middle-aged bottom in front of Mackey, crossing his legs.

“Succinct,” he muttered, looking at the text. “Is that a thing with you guys?”

Mackey glared at him. “It’s not Los Angeles, Doc. Do you know what people in my neck of the woods think about shrinks? Wanna take a guess?”

“No need,” Cambridge said dryly. “I’m grateful you graced us with your presence—”

“What the fuck ever,” Mackey snarled, in pain and needing. “I could have been fucking Grant on the sly for my whole life if we’d stayed at home. But no—he’s got to get us a fucking contract and run away like a pussy, because his girl’s knocked up and he can’t fucking tell them all to go to hell. Graced you with my presence—my whoring fucking ass.” God. He was crying. He hated crying. It left him raw and stripped, like a kitten without skin, and he knew, just knew, he’d never be warm again.

The sob that escaped him was as whipped as that kitten’s, and he couldn’t find a way to stop it.

“You know what?” he whimpered, trying to keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.