Beneath the Stain - Part 5 (7 page)

Mackey started moving his hands purposefully in his sweaty hair. “Pleased with yourself?” he rasped.

When Trav looked up, his face glazed and dripping, his shoulders still heaving with hard work, he smiled. “I fucking missed you so bad,” he said, raw and stripped and wishing he could feel ashamed.

Mackey moved his hand quietly on his cheek. “Backatcha,” he said. “C’mere, kiss me, share some of that.”

Trav did, falling into Mackey’s warm open mouth and pulling his lithe, small body into his arms.

The kiss ended, and Mackey laid his sweaty head on Trav’s shoulder. “I really like the taste of come,” he confessed. “I missed that.”

Trav smiled a little. Mackey would say that, would admit to it. Trav had to say he missed Mackey, but Mackey would notice the taste of come.

“McKay,” Trav murmured, just to say his name. “McKay, you’ve killed me.”

“Fine. Take me with you,” Mackey said, and that was how they fell asleep, heads down on the end of the bed, Trav’s feet dangling off toward the head.

T
HE
NEXT
morning was a sprint to the airport, but since they’d been awakened by a knock on the door and Trav’s baggage, at least Trav had fresh clothes.

Mackey put on sweats and a hooded sweatshirt, and with his face clean of makeup and his earbuds traveling from the pocket of the hoodie, he looked like any other kid getting on a plane.

Trav was functioning on one cylinder out of six—he was the first to admit it. At one in the morning, he’d awakened and pulled Mackey around so they could sleep with their heads on the pillows. Mackey had backed right up to him, naked, slick and sloppy, and Trav had taken him again, quietly, as they lay on their sides. Their climaxes were small, pained, and their sleep afterward was coma deep.

So on the way to the airport, he sat and nursed his coffee, blinking hard and trying to wake up. He didn’t even catch the conversation until it yanked him into it.

“What do you mean he didn’t notice our tats?” Kell asked indignantly, and Mackey’s response was typically dry—and self-involved.

“He was sorta focused on mine, Kell. You can show off your body after I’ve had him.”

Kell grunted and then said what apparently everybody in the band was thinking. “Jesus, Mackey, speaking of—the whole damned floor heard you getting laid last night. Do you have to be so fucking loud?”

Trav’s eyes almost popped out of his head, but Mackey didn’t even blush. Instead he rolled his eyes and said, “Remember Houston last year, Kell? I do not remember much about Texas, or even last year, but I remember Houston.” His voice rose two octaves, and he did a passable imitation of a girl in the throes of passion. “Do me, big daddy, and then lick my ass!”

The rest of the car broke into raucous laughter, Shelia included, and Mackey shook his head. “Sweartagod, Kell, you left the door open and everything.” He shuddered. “That there is the closest to seeing a girl’s cooter I ever hope to come. So you don’t get to give me no shit about how much noise I make. Unless you can tell me what I was doing when, you
still
know less about my sex life than I know about yours.”

Jefferson laughed. “That’s not entirely true, Mackey. At least
we
know the name of the person in there with you!”

More laughter, and Trav pursed his lips and gave a reluctant smile. Yeah, well, if he couldn’t take ribbing about sex, he wasn’t much of a group member, was he?

Still, two hours later, when he and Mackey were seated together and the plane had just taken off, Mackey leaned over and said, very quietly, “Does it bother you? That they know—and know everything?”

Trav looked at him, big gray eyes, swollen lips, and remembered for the thousandth time how much Trav knew and Mackey didn’t. “Are you kidding?” he asked, taking a page from Mackey’s book. “My brother and I used to keep track of how often we jerked off. It was like a contest. I mean, I didn’t tell him
who
I was jerking off to until we were out of high school, but no. I grew up in a family just like yours. Sometimes they’re too close and sometimes they’re not close enough. That’s family of all sorts, you think?”

Mackey smiled a little and rested his head on Trav’s shoulder. “I think my family ain’t making up for you not being there during Christmas,” he said honestly, and Trav grimaced and dropped a kiss in his hair.

“I could still take you—”

“And I’d still be a rock star junkie,” Mackey said decisively. “A year, Trav. If I can manage to not break your heart in a year, I’ll be good enough to take home to Mom.”

Well, it was a timeline. Trav had a year to see that Mackey paid up in full so Trav didn’t have him on loan anymore. God—he’d come so far already. Trav could only hope.

S
HOPPING
FOR
Mom, shopping for Cheever, shopping for the guys, shopping—ugh!—for Trav. Mackey was about done with shopping by the time December 19 rolled around.

God. Too many people to buy shit for—and not
just
the shit, the
perfect
shit. Something for Blake, something for Shelia. And to make matters worse, Trav had commissioned all new equipment from the big guy in the suit, so Mackey couldn’t even go back to his standby and get music equipment. It had to be
original
shit.

He
asked
Stevie and Jefferson about Shelia, and she got a ticket to a spa day. He sort of liked the idea of that—sitting around and getting your toes rubbed and your hair primped and your eyebrows waxed and shit. He would have gotten one for Jefferson and Stevie, but they both said they were straight and didn’t do shit like that. Mackey privately thought that straight men would probably
love
shit like that if they didn’t think it would make them look gay, and that only made them dumber than gay men on a whole
bunch
of different levels, but in the interest of keeping family peace, he kept that opinion to himself.

Finally he decided on fancy suits for all the guys, so they could go out to cool places in Europe and not look like rock star trash, and a collection of high-end psychedelic ties for Trav, because right now he wore burgundy and blue and that was about fuckin’ it. Even the fancy suits had some edge—Mackey had been looking at a lot of fashion web sites, and he was getting good at spotting edge. Trav had to update or lose the tie entirely, and Mackey was betting that last one wouldn’t happen until the moon turned to blood and Trav ate cooter.

For his mom, he and the guys went in and got a computer, and a tech guy to come and install it, and a tablet so she could carry that shit around with her. For Cheever, they got video games, and he hoped that was about all the little shit wanted from them, because they were
not
happy about the paparazzi who had barely stopped dogging their steps, and they blamed the little fucker. If he thought he got a free pass because faggots were not fashionable up in his neck of the woods, he was sorely mistaken—he was attending that damned school on their dime. Even Stevie had voiced his supreme displeasure.

Mackey got Briony furniture for their spare room, which was no longer spare, and a quickie apprenticeship with a light and sound guy who would be touring with them. Mackey wanted her with them on the tour, so he also got her some outfits she could wear when hanging out with the band, which he put in the closet and she would see after Christmas, when she’d fly out to stay.

He didn’t exactly wrap these gifts—more bought them and set them up and told her not to worry about a goddamned thing over text. And by the way, he appreciated the hell out of texting with her. She was funny and she got him, much like Trav, but unlike with Trav, there were no heavy emotional undertones and definitely no sex. He didn’t particularly care that he’d sort of taken over the poor girl’s life and made her his techie and shanghaied her away from family and her original plans of being an animation artist. He should have grabbed Tony by the back of the neck and
hauled
him with Outbreak Monkey when they’d come to LA, but he hadn’t, and look where respecting someone’s space got him. She didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t have a job or a career yet, and he was going to make her have one so she could hang out with him. One person in a thousand got Mackey, and he knew it, and she was fucking stuck with the consequences.

So there. That took about two weeks. Mackey was exhausted. But the worst part about having that done was thinking about where all that shit was going after they shipped it upstate.

Mackey realized now that he was clean and sober and sort of owned, body and soul, by someone who didn’t mind holding hands with him in public or telling his folks, that he didn’t particularly want to go home.

He hadn’t wanted to go home the year before, but that had been in sort of a hazy way, cushioned by chemicals. After all, who wanted to go home when they didn’t know what and who they did the night before, and were pretty sure they weren’t going to get through the next night without doing the same thing with a different name?

But now that he could think—and had been forced to think honestly—he didn’t want to be anywhere near Tyson, California, not even the little town of Hepzibah next door, because he didn’t want to run into Grant.

He had to stop and think about this.

Did he not want to run into Grant because it would hurt? Because he was still in love with him? Because he thought seeing Grant would fuck things up with Trav?

He conceded one and three, but he was pretty sure two was off the table.

What he felt for Trav was so much… bigger. More important.
Saner
than what he’d felt for Grant. Trav didn’t want a quick fuck in a greenroom. Trav wanted a
long
fuck in the hotel room and the cuddle after in the plane, and a nice night watching television and waking up next to Mackey and kissing him on the cheek before breakfast.

For Trav, these sort of seemed to be standard things for two men who loved… liked… lived with each other.

For Mackey, those things held magic, each and every day.

Mackey wouldn’t go back to being Grant’s backdoor man for all the music in the world. Just the thought of it made his hands shake and made him remember the taste of vodka.

But the thought of seeing him and dealing with all of that—the letting go, the saying good-bye, the end of Grant in his heart as something big—that hurt. That made his hands shake too.

No, Mackey was ready to move on with Trav, and in a year or so, he might be ready to deal with Grant the way Trav had dealt with his ex—coldly and cleanly and with the clinical precision of the doctor who’d removed Trav’s splint the week after Mackey got home from rehab—but not now.

And the thing was, going with Kell and the guys, there was no way they wouldn’t see Grant. Kell had been talking the past couple of weeks about getting everyone back together and Grant meeting Blake, and maybe they could all jam together, and….

The thought of playing with Grant onstage again made Mackey feel like throwing up. He was
just
getting used to the idea that wouldn’t ever happen again. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it and he didn’t want to.

But he’d told Trav he wouldn’t go back east either.

So he pondered.

He pondered when he was shopping, with or without his brothers. He pondered when he was on conference calls with Artie B., the master technician Heath had hired personally to help them get their light show together, and Briony, who was dry and sarcastic even when she was a little overwhelmed.

He pondered it late at night as Trav lay at his back, broad shoulders reassuring and protective.

He’d told Trav he would get there eventually. He’d
promised
Trav that he’d be whole and well and able to give all of himself to the two of them, and Trav had taken him on faith.

He didn’t want to let Trav down.

But he wasn’t ready to see Grant either.

So he did what he’d done on the road the last year: He allowed inertia to take over, made the plans, packed the bags, sent the gifts. He allowed inertia to close his eyes the night before they were supposed to leave and to make him touch Trav in the dark with shaking hands, torn between wanting to unburden his heart and begging Trav to stay and being the grown-up and going back to Tyson and facing all that Grant bullshit without him.

He allowed inertia to silence him in the end, to accept Trav’s good-bye kiss at the airport as they split for their different gates. He allowed it to turn his eyes away, to gather in himself, a child in the shadowed closeness of the corner of the bunk bed, torn between wishing he could disappear and screaming so the world could see him.

But as he and his brothers were standing in line for the plane, he had his first panic attack since Gerry had first given him Xanax. His stomach clenched, his hands shook, and he could barely breathe.

Oh God.

There
was
no Xanax. There
was
no vodka.
These things no longer existed in his world.

He closed his eyes. Thought:
I’m gonna throw up.
Opened his eyes and turned to Jefferson, who was looking at him with concern.

“I’ll be back in time to board,” he murmured, then picked up his guitar and his carry-on and ran for the bathroom.

When
that
was over with, he walked out of the bathroom, looked to the right, where his brothers were getting their tickets scanned, and then took an abrupt left.

Just like that, the shaking eased up and his vision stopped dancing. That persistent trickle of sweat that had started down his asscrack pretty much from the time Trav had kissed his forehead and wished him safe travels suddenly dried up, and he trotted back through the airport to the exit, where he walked out to ground transport and flagged a cab.

It wasn’t until he was safely in the back of the cab, heading for home, that he dared to text,
Don’t worry about me, Jeffie
—
I just couldn’t do it this time. Call me when you land—no chemicals in sight, I swear.