Beneath the Stain - Part 5 (10 page)

“Because he’s
dying
, Mackey. I need you to say that word for me. Can you say the word?”

“I don’t need to say the word—”

“Oh yes you do, you need to say the fucking word. You need to say the fucking sentence. That guy may have fucked with your heart when you were a kid, but he was your whole world and he’s dying.”

“We don’t need to dwell on that shit, goddammit—”

“That shit is the whole point,” Trav insisted. “The point is this guy meant something to you—and not just
something
, he was your fucking
everything.
I know it was a thousand years ago, but even
I
remember my first crush, and it broke my fucking heart. You only get that kind of pain once, and you… it was your whole world. I
watched
the aftermath, remember? If you think it was bad holding this inside because he broke up with you—”

“We weren’t even going out!” Mackey retorted, wounded, backing up against the hotel wall like he could escape. “It was just a fuck in a car or a grope in a backroom or—”

“
Bullshit
!” Trav yelled, seeing red. “You were a goddamned child bride, McKay! You were
claimed
at fourteen—if he hadn’t called it off, you would have toured together joined at the cock and the ass. You think I don’t know that?”

“But it’s not the same,” Mackey yelled back almost tearfully. “What he and me did, what you and I have, it’s not the same. I don’t want to give up you and me for me and him—how can you ask me—”

Trav’s lower lip wobbled. “I’m not asking you to go back to him, baby. I’m asking you to say good-bye to him. Yeah, if life was fair, you could’ve waited another five years, and you would have been fine with that. But life’s not fair, and he’s
dying—
and I’ve yet to hear you say that, by the way. You have to say good-bye to him. If you don’t, you’ll never be square inside.”

“You think seeing him again is gonna make me square inside?” Mackey snarled, so vicious that Trav actually flinched. “You think we’re ever gonna have a chance to talk? You watch—it’ll be the same old bullshit. I’ll be there, watching him die, and my insides will be screaming
Grant Adams Fucked Mackey Sanders More Than He Ever Fucked His Wife
and he’ll just nod and smile and shine the whole world on.”

“Well then you can say good-bye to that too,” Trav snapped. “You can go see him, and be with me, and he can die knowing what he missed out on. Does that make you any happier?”

“That’s fuckin’
mean
,” Mackey said, horrified, and Trav knew it was and didn’t give a ripe shit.

“Yeah, but you think I don’t need to see it happen too?” Trav shot back, feeling like a heel for the first time since Terry. “You were
killing
yourself over the guy—and I picked up the pieces. If you can’t go back to say good-bye for
you
or for
him,
do it for me!”

“Why?” Mackey demanded. “Why? What’ve I ever done to make you think I need that? Have I ever cheated, Trav? Have I ever even
looked
at another guy?”

“I’m not talking about cheating, Mackey. Goddammit, have you never heard of closure?”

“Maybe I’m not strong enough for closure!” Mackey shouted.

Trav sucked in a gasp of air and froze, his mouth open. Oh. That was the problem. Mackey had just seemed so damned
capable
this past year—Trav had forgotten that he’d never known his own strength.

“Maybe I’m not strong enough, you ever thought of that? Because I love you, and I wouldn’t have him if he was served ass-up on a silver platter, but maybe I go in there and see him all sick and shit, and my insides, they’ll just open up and I’ll die too! I spent a long time being a big oozy fuckin’ hole, Trav—maybe I don’t want to do that again! Maybe I only get once to heal from something like that, you think?”

Trav thought he’d learned a lot about compassion in the past year, but apparently he hadn’t learned enough, because this was the time to show mercy, and instead he found himself twisting the knife.

“Well, you better toughen up, Mackey. I need to know you’re strong enough to face this, because I’m older than you and I’m not getting any fucking younger. And if I don’t drop dead because you give me a heart attack, I could die in a car wreck or a plane wreck or we could break up because you want kids and I don’t or
something
bad could happen, and I am not going to be all right until I know you can fucking
deal
!”

Mackey blanched, practically green, and Trav realized he’d gone too far. “You take that back,” he hissed. “You take that
back
, or I will go out right now and open a vein and dump in a bag of fucking meth—”

“
Shut up
!” Trav’s eyes would be red with broken blood vessels the next morning from the force of that scream. In two steps he had Mackey pinned up against the back wall. “Drugs aren’t the answer and screaming at me isn’t the answer—you’ve got one thing you can do here, dammit, and you need to fucking own up!”

“What am I supposed to do?” Mackey shouted. “What am I supposed to do? Go back to my hometown and fuck Grant Adams for old time’s sake, proving to you once and for all that all guys are gonna cheat on you and break your fucking heart?”

“
No
!” Trav choked, fighting against shaking Mackey against the wall. “You’re supposed to say good-bye so I don’t ever have to worry about this guy in your heart again!”

“Why, because he’ll be….” Mackey’s face twisted.

Trav wanted to laugh.
Near miss, little man. Near miss with the huge, furry, fanged word.

“No, not because he’ll be dead,” Trav said, softening his grip on Mackey’s shoulders. He would have bruises the next day, and Trav would have to forgive himself for those too. “Because you can admit that you loved him when he was alive.”

Mackey shook his head. “How can that still hurt?” he asked, impossibly young. “How can it still hurt? What do I have to do to make it not hurt?”

“Let it hurt,” Trav said, putting his wide-palmed hand on the side of Mackey’s head and pulling him into his chest. “Then let him go.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Mackey whispered. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I really don’t want to hurt you.”

“You will,” Trav said, knowing in his gut that it would happen. Yeah, it was one thing to tell Mackey to go open up a vein, but Trav was pretty sure there’d be plenty of blood on the ground to spare. “You’ll hurt us both, but, well, backatcha.”

Mackey looked away. “I….” He took a deep breath and broke away from Trav’s arms. “I need a fucking walk,” he said and bolted out of the hotel room, past Blake, Briony, and Kell, who were all standing near the semiopen window and had been, it looked like, long enough for Kell to have heard too much.

“Mackey!” Kell called, but Blake stopped him with a hand on the arm.

“He’s right,” Trav muttered. “Let him go.”

Briony nodded at Trav and took off after him, and Trav blessed the girl. Mackey had people—maybe even the right people for the right pain.

“But it’s raining, Trav,” Kell said helplessly. “It’s raining, and they’re just in T-shirts.”

Trav roared in frustration and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “You wanted something?” he asked, because he didn’t want to look at Mackey’s brother after the bomb exploded. He’d heard. Kell’s eyes were glassy and he kept licking his lips nervously—Trav did not doubt that he’d heard everything.

“How come nobody told me?” Kell asked simply, looking at Trav and then Blake. Blake looked away, and Kell whimpered. “Nobody? Blake, you knew?”

“He told me in rehab,” Blake admitted grudgingly. “It was… he said it so I’d know that all that time he was giving me shit, it wasn’t my fault.”

Kell’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. “Grant and my little brother?” he asked when he obviously knew. “Why… how long?”

Trav wished Mackey was there. He did. But Kell had maybe earned the right to know. “Mackey said he was fourteen.”

Kell let out a little moan. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. This makes
so
much sense. Jesus… fucking Jesus. That trip to San Francisco—Grant kept trying to tell me. God, he… I don’t know, kept hedging with Sam—for
years—
and God. He must have thought I was a fucking idiot!”

“He didn’t want to hurt you,” Trav said, sounding flat and wooden even to his own ears. He remembered dully when he thought Kell had it all coming. All the pain of self-realization, all of the horrible guilt of treating other people like shit—Trav would have wished it solidly on Kell’s shoulders.

But not now.

Kell and even Grant had fought for Mackey when nobody else in the world had, and no matter how bad they’d fucked up, Trav couldn’t hate Kell enough for the hurt that was probably welling up like blood in his stomach. In fact, he sort of loved the guy.

“Now you’re just being nice,” Kell said bitterly. “He didn’t want me to cut him off. I was his best friend, and he didn’t want me to stop being his best friend. And… and….”

All of the pain of the past year, and this was the first time any of them had ever seen Kell cry. He dashed his cheeks with his hand. “All that bullshit Mackey went through—nobody told me? I was to blame—”

“No,” Blake and Trav said in tandem, looking at each other through old, self-aware eyes.

“Mackey made his own disaster,” Blake said with passion.

“Easy to say,” Kell snapped, wiping his cheeks again. “Just because I didn’t have a computer until I was twenty-five doesn’t mean I don’t use it now. You think I didn’t look that shit up when Mackey came out? You think I didn’t read all the articles and shit about how hard we make it on people, how they’d rather use drugs and hurt themselves than not be loved?”

Kell was shaking, and without warning, Blake launched himself at his friend with a full ten-points-for-the-fist-bump on the back style hug. Kell let him, trembling in Blake’s arms, and Blake sighed.

“Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“Would it be awful if I asked you to take him out and get him drunk? He’s not an addict—he stopped without even being asked. But he needs something… something….”

Trav sighed. “Something. Yeah. Blake, you wanna wait here for Mackey and Briony? Text me when they get back, okay? I think Kell needs a fucking drink.”

Blake nodded. “Can I watch your TV?”

Trav wanted to laugh. Kids. All of them. “Mackey’s tablet is in his carry-on—you guys play games on it, right?”

“Yeah—and I even know which icons to ignore.” Blake shuddered. “Gay porn is for gay men and straight women, I’m not telling you something you don’t know.”

Trav laughed. He had to. “Thanks, Blake. C’mon.” He slung his arm over Kell’s shoulders and steered him toward the bar. “Blake?” Trav said over his shoulder before they walked out from under the hotel overhang and into the pouring rain. “Text Jefferson—have them come down too. I don’t want any of you alone.”

The look on Blake’s face—God, it was grateful. Trav steered Kell to the bar they’d left not half an hour ago, thinking that addictions and comfort were a very, very tricky business.

“D
O
YOU
know how hard it is?” Kell asked soggily. “Being his brother? He’s like, all bright… like the song. Like everything is a song to him. There’s shooting stars, and there’s Mackey, and the stars are trying to catch him. And the rest of us… we’re… I mean, he’s so
smart
. He just got in the middle of the living room and said, ‘You, you’re gonna play lead,’ and I did. Man, I didn’t even know what lead guitar
did
, and he made me practice, and now I wouldn’t change it….”

Trav took a deep breath and patted Kell on the back. He thought about offering up another beer but then figured Kell would have enough to throw up as it was. No wonder the boy never got drunk—this was just embarrassing.

In a way.

In another way, Trav thought as he nursed his own beer bitterly, Kell sort of hit the nail on the head. Mackey was a shooting star. The kind of guy Trav had
always
gone for. Whether it had been his painful half-realized crush on the soccer forward who played the lead in the sixth-grade school play or the blistering first affair with the guy who played saxophone on the corner by the library and the drugstore the summer before he went into the service, Trav had loved the shooting stars, the talented, the magnetic. He’d never been able to
understand
what drove them, but he loved it just the same. It hadn’t been until Mackey that he’d seen his same obsessive need for order mirrored in Mackey’s creative drive, and still—Mackey was the shooting star. Trav just cleared the cosmic debris from his path.

“It’s hard,” he said, feeling melancholy with two beers. “It’s hard loving people that bright, that shiny, that they make everyone else in the world look dim.”

Kell nodded. “Grant was like that,” he said ruminatively. “Grant did what you did, real smart, but…. God. He was only happy when he was on the stage with me and Mackey, playing the guitar. He was good. So good.” Kell sighed into his beer. “So, so good….”

Trav pulled out his wallet and set his card on the table, nodding at the night-shift bartender. The place had cooled down after the band’s set, and no one seemed to recognize the lead guitarist of Outbreak Monkey working some shit out with his brother’s boyfriend.

“It’s not your fault you didn’t know,” Trav said, wondering if Kell would remember in the morning.

“It is,” Kell said, proving, once again, that people underestimated him a lot. “I told them they couldn’t be who they were. I told them they had to hide. So they did. Grant hid until he disappeared. Mackey tried, but—” Kell laughed fondly and drunkenly, rubbing his hand over his growing buzz cut in thought. “Mackey was always torn, you know? He thought he was no one, but he didn’t wanna be.” Kell rubbed his head again. “Why’s my little brother so much more interesting than I am?”

Trav wished for the zillionth time that he was a hugger. “You remember that Joe Walsh song?” he asked, smiling a little. “Ordinary Average Guy?”