Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (6 page)

“Stupid, right?” he said, and the face he turned to Mackey wasn’t the hardass or even the sincere friend.

He looked vulnerable and honest, and Mackey realized with a sort of twist in his stomach that this was real for Trav too.

“No,” Mackey said, petting his hand as it sat on the table. There were lots of people in the restaurant, most of them het, but some of them two boys or two girls. For a moment he reveled in the power of not being a dirty secret, but he had other things to do. “No, man. It’s not stupid. We write songs so ten or a hundred or a thousand people can say, ‘Yeah! I know exactly how that feels.’ The person who can do that for you… that’s some serious magic. I mean, to me, it’s just….” He closed his eyes and found his words. “This
thing
inside me, and I need to let it out or it will just keep screaming. It’s all in my head, and it doesn’t feel public until I stand up on the stage and give it to people. But to the people, it feels like I said those things
just for them
.
And maybe it’s not that you’re sentimental. Maybe it’s just that you don’t have the words or the music or the pictures that you can share with people—but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to connect. It just means you need an artist who can make it happen.”

He opened his eyes to check Trav’s expression and make sure what he said made sense. Trav’s eyes were wide and shiny and luminous, and his smile was half-formed and wistful. “You know people pretty well, McKay, you know that?”

Mackey grimaced.

“What?”

“People do that,” he said, shrugging. “It’s like my real name is a secret spell to the real me. Weird.”

Trav laughed, and Mackey didn’t blame him for sounding bitter. “Yeah, well, if I’d known it was a magic spell, I would have used it a lot earlier.”

“Travis,” Mackey said. “Travis Ford. Like the truck but not.”

He watched in satisfaction as Trav closed his eyes and let his full name wash over him like a touch.

“See?” Mackey challenged. “It’s not so much fun when someone can do it to you.”

“Have you ever thought that it’s not the name but who’s saying it?”

Mackey twisted his mouth and looked at his empty plate. “Dessert?”

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

Dessert it was, and then the promised walk on the beach. Mackey was about talked out by then, so he held Trav’s hand and just walked, smelling salt and sun, even though the sun was long gone.

And then they made the two-hour drive back to North Hollywood, Mackey dozing a little in Trav’s arms.

“No sex?” Mackey confirmed as they pulled into the driveway.

“Not this time,” Trav rumbled in his ear.

“’S’okay. It was a real good date. What’re we gonna do for the next one?”

“You tell me,” Trav laughed. “It’s a two-way street.”

“You got more practice,” Mackey said earnestly. “You pick the next one, I’ll figure out something good for the third.”

“Yeah, baby. It’s a deal.”

It sounded like a good idea. Mackey should have known by now that ideas didn’t always come out like you hoped.

N
OT
ALL
days off could be dates. Mackey and Trav both had administrative work the next day, but Mackey finished his shit early—most of it was sign this and agree to that, and since Trav told him to do it, Mackey trusted it. Trav had told Mackey about his breakup, and even when Trav was breaking up with someone like an asshole, he was still straight.

Hell, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been crooked. Mackey had signed everything Gerry had given him too. He was just lucky that even when poor Gerry was as fucked-up as Mackey, he’d had the band’s best interest at heart.

So Mackey was done. He’d gone running in the morning with the herd, and he’d snacked on salty shit and played video games and he’d even settled down with a book. Everyone else was out and about—Blake and Kell were checking out a new arcade, and normally Mackey would have eaten that shit up, but not today.

Of all things, he wanted to
talk
today, to someone
not
Trav, so he could talk
about
Trav. And he couldn’t talk to his brothers, because his brothers might have been totally behind him, and not spazzing out with the press, and a big happy family unit, but Mackey wasn’t going to test that by talking about his big gay crush. That would just be pushing his luck, right?

He needed a friend.

Hell, Mackey’s entire life, friends had been thin on the ground.

The only friend he could ever remember having was Tony, and Tony had declined to come with them and roadie when they first moved to LA. His mom was half-sick and half-crazy, and Tony had passed up on college to stay home and take care of her. His mother’s health had been one of the things that made him stick with Outbreak Monkey after graduation—they had been his one escape.

Of course, shortly after the move, Mackey had disappeared down the rabbit hole, and Mackey had sort of lost touch—not that he’d confided a lot in Tony anyway. It had just been nice at the time to know someone who didn’t hate him for being gay, that was all.

But that didn’t mean….

Mackey pulled out his phone as he sprawled on the couch and listened to the silence of Trav doing paperwork upstairs. Hey there—Tony was still in his phone! Well, it had been less than two years—why not?

His first try got a discontinued signal, but Mackey had Tony’s home phone, and he tried that one.

A young woman answered—probably Tony’s sister, who was a few years older and had left town.

“Yeah, is, uhm, Tony there?” God. Social awkwardness. Could you beat it after a yearlong absence from someone’s life?

“Tony?”

“Yeah, is this his sister? This is, uhm, Mackey Sanders—it’s been a while, but—”

“Tony, uhm, passed away.”

The words sounded hesitant and a little hostile.

“Passed away? He was like twenty. I mean, I know I been gone a while, but Jesus, I got
busy—
what do you mean passed away?”

“My mother got worse, and… he was here alone with her, I guess. He… well, he killed himself—”

“
How
?” Mackey’s heart thundered in his ears, and he realized he was unconsciously digging in his pocket for the little prescription bottle that he hadn’t lived without for over a year.

“Does it matter how?” she asked bitterly. “You got to go away and be a big rock star—yeah, don’t think I don’t recognize the name, Mackey fucking Sanders! You
left
—
did you think he’d just be
waiting
for you,
pining
for you when you got back?”

“I asked him to come with me,” Mackey snapped, because he remembered it, remembered Tony’s first look of excitement when Mackey brought it up. Mackey had almost read his mind then: the thrill of leaving home, of not being the only out gay guy in Tyson, the sheer stinking joy of going somewhere else
besides
the place they grew up.

Then Tony’s pretty, latte-complected face went slack with self-imposed misery.
I can’t, man. My mother. She needs me.

“The hell you did!” the sister shrieked. Mackey didn’t even know her name. “Why wouldn’t he—”

“I
asked
him!” Mackey shouted, because he had, and because Mackey may have dropped a lot of fucking balls, but dammit, he hadn’t dropped Tony. Not on purpose. “I asked him—and he didn’t, because
you
were out of town and
he
was all she had. Man, I’m a lot of fucking bad things, but I tried to get him out, do you understand me?”

“He was playing your fucking CD when he hung himself, do you know that?” she asked.

“I didn’t even know he was gone!” Mackey said. “If you thought it was my goddamned fault, couldn’t you have called me and told me he was gone? It would have been a fucking plus to come to his fucking funeral, you bloodless whore—you ever think of
that
?”

She started to cry. He heard her big rollicking sobs, and he screamed and chucked his phone across the room. It hit a glass on the kitchen counter, which fell to the ground with a crash and a tinkle, and Mackey stalked across the room to clean it up. He was throwing glass in the trash, blood dripping from three separate cuts on his hands, when he heard Trav on the stairs.

“Mackey—are you okay?”

Mackey looked at his shaking hands, the blood, felt the knot of pain rediscovered at the pit below his heart, and realized that no, he was not okay.

“I need some fucking Xanax,” he snapped, throwing the last piece of glass in. Oh God. He did. But he wasn’t getting any. He wasn’t getting any Xanax, because he didn’t have that crutch, did he?

“You need some—Jesus, Mackey, your hands!”

Mackey reached blindly for the paper towels and roughly scraped off the blood.

“I need some coke,” he muttered, although the Xanax would have been better. He turned blindly and ran past Trav, because he
knew
what to do to make this go away, and it wasn’t Xanax and it wasn’t coke, and it wasn’t vodka, although none of that shit was in the house anymore, was it?

He blew up the stairs and into his room. His running clothes were still on the hamper because he hadn’t straightened up, and he stripped in record time, ignoring Trav, who was standing in the doorway, helpless, staring, and unsure.

Physical activity creates natural endorphins—and it provides structure as well as tiring you out, all of which help you with rehabilitation.

So Doc, you’re saying I’ll be too tired to get high? That was part of the reason I got high in the first place.

Well, if you get some real goddamned sleep, Mackey, the PT won’t send you screaming for coke.

Okay, fine. Fucking PT. That was their fucking cure-all, wasn’t it? Go running, beat up the fucking bag downstairs, maybe lift some fucking weights—
go running.

Mackey laced up his running shoes, ignoring the open cuts on his fingers. Trav had bought him some nice running clothes, but his red microfiber shirt and white shorts were crusted with salt from that morning. He threw them on and wiped his bleeding fingers on them anyway before he blew past Trav again.

“You’re
running
for Xanax?” Trav asked, sounding a little panicked. He was pounding down the stairs behind Mackey, but Mackey couldn’t focus on him right now. Not getting high—
that
was a priority, right?
That
was what Mackey was supposed to focus on.

“That would be a dumb fucking way to buy drugs,” Mackey muttered, jamming a Mickey Mouse baseball hat over his bright hair. “Running for drugs—new fucking sport.”

And with that he sprinted for the back door like Satan was on his heels with a mirror full of coke and a Xanax-vodka chaser.

T
HIS
,
T
RAV
thought, watching Mackey bounce off the hallway walls on his way down the stairs,
this is why addicts are hard to live with.
You never knew what was going to set an addict off—hadn’t Cambridge warned him of that? That veiled, subtle disapproval literally dripping off his tongue? You
never
knew what was going to set an addict off. You never knew whether being a lover instead of a friend made it better or worse. So many things could go wrong if you were too close to someone.

He’s going out the door without you!

That thought galvanized Trav—he stopped debating whether Mackey’s shrink was right and hauled ass up the stairs for his own running clothes. And the other things Mackey had forgotten—a cell phone and a wallet—because God knew where they were going to end up.

The group of big, high-priced homes in this neighborhood shared a trail that ran between fences for a good two blocks before finding its way to the parkland on the edge of the canyon. From there it rambled, sometimes intersecting city streets in good neighborhoods, sometimes in crappy ones, mostly just sticking to the edge of the canyon, sometimes venturing down a little in twisty paths, but not often.

As he ran out the door, it occurred to Trav that the canyon was a little bit dangerous to a guy who was wiping blood on his pants.

The thought spurred him on, and he caught up with Mackey in the first mile.

“How’d you—” Pant. “—elude the press?” Trav asked, cursing because dammit, he’d been all cooled down and relaxed right up until he’d heard the glass crash off the counter.

“I look homeless,” Mackey muttered. “Nobody knew it was me.”

Trav grunted and tried to catch his breath, because it was probably true. The crowd had thinned in the past week, and although the band usually needed a limo and a security guard to block the path for their group run, this had taken everybody by surprise—including Trav and probably Mackey.

Who wasn’t even running like he usually did. God, Mackey was usually a pain in the ass on a run—he slowed, stopped, talked until he got a stitch in the side, rambled all over the path—but not today. Today he narrowed his eyes, hitched his shoulders, and settled into a ground-eating gait that could probably win marathons if he ever settled down to do this shit for real.