Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (7 page)

As far as Mackey could see, the only thing holding Grant back was his mom and dad. It didn’t feel like a reason to Mackey. He wished he could see why it was one.

“How do you mean?” his mom asked now, and Mackey shrugged.

“I never woulda thought of that outfit,” he improvised. “But now, I can’t think of wearing anything else on stage.”

She laughed a little and ruffled his recently smoothed hair. The show came back on, so the conversation died then, but she pressed him for little details at the other breaks. What the girls were wearing, who Kell and Jeff danced with, if he’d gotten a chance to get kissed.

“Girls are a bother,” he grunted, perfectly truthful yet again. “Would rather hang with the guys any day.”

“Mm,” she responded.

His gaze darted up to her face and he saw nothing. She was still a pretty woman, with petite, elfin bone structure and gray eyes like Mackey’s, and those eyes were far away. Then she glanced at him and smiled reassuringly, and his attention wandered back to the television. He was pretty sure they were both falling asleep.

“Mackey,” she murmured, turning out the light.

“Mom?”

“Next time you feed me bullshit about girls and kissing, you need to cover your hickeys better.”

She was joking as she said it—he could hear it in her voice—but he lay, wide-eyed in the dark, watching
Law & Order
long after his mother had drifted off. He heard Kell and Jeff come in, and he closed his eyes then, figuring rightly that they’d shut off the television and not ask him any questions.

When their night noises stopped, he started to fall asleep, breathing deeply from the window open at his back.

He wondered when the air would stop smelling like Grant’s come.

S
UMMER
.

As the second-youngest brother, Mackey got to watch Cheever when his mom and the older boys worked. Grant’s dad had given the older boys jobs on his car lot. Kell worked on the cars, Jeff and Stevie did general work and moved them around and stuff, and Grant helped his dad in the office. On the one hand, Mackey felt left out that they all got to work together and he was stuck taking Cheever to the park with the fountain so the two of them could keep cool, but on the other hand, Mackey still worked at the music store on the weekends. He’d turned fifteen in June, so he actually got paid in money too, and not just in equipment, although the equipment was always nice.

And in the evenings, well, they still had to watch Cheever if Mom had a night shift at the restaurant, but since Stevie’s dad was on business trips all summer, they got to watch him at Stevie’s house, while they were rehearsing. The wind would pick up over the Sierras, and what might have been a melty, dry sort of day would suddenly smell like juniper, Joshua, and pine. Some of the red dust would settle, and Mackey could live the songs they were playing, pure as a pitch, and life held such promise. Hope was in every breath.

He and Grant were how they’d always been, most times. Grant took Mackey’s direction when they were playing and made good suggestions when they weren’t. Grant started looking for more gigs. They played about every two weeks, gigs ranging from steak houses to business picnics to, at one point, Grant’s dad’s friend’s wedding. The two original songs Mackey played at the prom were big hits, and he added more to their repertoire. By the end of July, they could play an hour set, and that made them professional and everything.

But school was coming in August, and Mackey could feel it pressing against his chest like a wet blanket on the tarmac in the sun.

Mackey had no idea how Grant got time off for lunch that summer, but the first time he knocked on the door, the second week of vacation, right after Cheever had gone down for a nap, he showed up with McDonald’s and a smile. “Thought you’d like some lunch you didn’t have to make—”

Mackey hadn’t even let him put the lunch offering on the table before pressing him against the wall and hauling his mouth down in a crushing kiss. Until that moment right there, Mackey had doubted everything, every moment they’d had in private, every touch, the feeling of Grant’s mouth on his own.

Mackey needed him so much. They spent most of that afternoon with their hands down each other’s jeans, and Cheever almost caught them when he wandered out into the living room after Mackey came, biting Grant’s shoulder to control the moan.

They learned quiet after.

Cheever still went down for naps every day from twelve to two. Mackey lived for that time. He read every book he could find, and he and Cheever became regulars at the library, because they could walk to it and it was free. But there was always the chance, about once a week, that Grant would stop by after Cheever went down. Those days they would make out in Mackey’s mom’s room, with a McDonald’s lunch cooling on the end table and her little television on to cover the sounds they made.

Mackey learned to kiss long and lazy, and to slow down a little, ’cause for one thing, he had to listen for Cheever, and he didn’t want to be sucking Grant’s dick if his little brother woke up. In fact, most of the time it was just them kissing in the whir of the floor fan, their hands roaming on each other’s bodies until unfamiliarity gave way to sure possession. Coming was not the object of the lesson.

Yearning was.

At the end of July, Mackey had about enough of yearning.

Apparently so had Grant.

On the bed, Grant was moving his lips over Mackey’s neck, along his collarbone, and down the narrow divide of his ribs. Grant liked this part of Mackey’s body—once, after Cheever had run around in circles all morning and fallen asleep in the middle of his sandwich at lunch, Grant had gotten really brave and spent fifteen minutes just sucking on Mackey’s little nipples until Mackey left a hickey on the back of his hand in the effort not to scream. It took only Grant’s hand down the front of his pants and he’d needed to go change his shorts.

On this day in late July, Mackey and Cheever had gone to the library and not the park, so Cheever wasn’t as tired. There probably would be no shattering, no screaming into the hand, but Mackey thrust his narrow chest out, wanting… wanting… wanting….

Grant latched his mouth over the nipple again, and Mackey whined into his palm—

Right when they heard the telltale creak of the boys’ bedroom door.

That quickly they were sitting propped up on pillows, side by side, watching whatever the hell on television. Grant reached forward casual-like and grabbed his soda, wiping his mouth as he did so. Mackey pulled up his jeans and toweled off his neck with his bundled T-shirt, hoping he didn’t have any marks on his skin.

“Put it on,” Grant whispered, and Mackey did, seeing the purple mark around his nipple.

The bedroom door opened, and two sleepy brown eyes peered at both of them incuriously.

“How you doin’, little man?” Mackey asked Cheever.

The youngest Sanders brother had curly red hair and freckles. He looked like one of those cute kids from television, especially the really old shows his mom said
she
remembered from when she was a kid, but the kid was no angel. Mackey’s mom said it was because he followed the big boys and tried to be just like them. Mackey was pretty sure it was because the big boys had done so much bad stuff when they were little that God sent them Cheever to punish them early before they could have any kids of their own.

But as awful as he could be—and they didn’t have a wall in the apartment they hadn’t had to paint over because he’d found something to write with, and the poison control people knew the Sanders kids by their phone number—he was also Mackey’s brother.

He clambered up on the bed and leaned against Mackey, pliant with sleep, and Mackey draped a hand over his shoulder in spite of the sticky heat.

“So, Mackey,” Grant said, his voice so overcasual Mackey had to check to make sure there wasn’t anyone else there, “how would you like to take a trip with me?”

Mackey stared at him for a minute and ran a hand over his own hair so Grant would smooth his. Grant nodded and smoothed his hair back. It was thick and would probably curl if he let it grow, so a little rumpling went a long way.

“Where’d we go?” he asked now that Grant was squared away.

Grant looked at him and then darted a glance to Cheever, who was sucked right into
SpongeBob
.

“My dad needs me to switch cars with his brother in the Bay Area,” he said. With a quiet gesture, one Cheever couldn’t see, he smoothed Mackey’s longish hair back from his face and tucked a strand of it behind his ear. “It’s a five-hour drive. Dad figured I could stay in a hotel since Uncle Davis has a little teeny house on the peninsula, and I asked if I could bring a friend.”

For a moment Mackey’s heart stopped, stuttered, and leapt into the sky. Then it plummeted right back down to earth. “Wouldn’t Kell want to go on that?” he asked, because it was only logical, right? Kell was Grant’s friend.

“Yeah,” Grant said, staring straight ahead. “But it’s a real shame—he’s got to work that weekend and Dad can’t spare him. Jefferson neither. I, uh.” He looked at Mackey sideways. “I asked Stevie if he could watch Cheever while Jeff was at work. I hope that’s okay. You’d have to get off work—can you?”

“Yeah,” Mackey said. They mostly gave him work out of pity these days anyway. Business would pick up again in September, when all the kids started school and the music program started up. Still, although he was willing himself to not get too excited because his mom still had to say okay, his recently dropped heart began to flutter. Two days and one night—that was what Grant was talking about. Two days and one night, and a chance to be together like it was okay. A chance to pretend.

Mackey’s mom let him go with a shrug and a smile and twenty dollars for food. “You work so hard,” she said over a pot of noodles she was cooking for dinner. “Between Cheever and your job and the band. I think it’s real nice of Grant to give you a chance to get out of town.”

“Grant brings me McDonald’s,” Cheever said. He was standing on a chair and helping Mom put the packets of seasoning into the pot.

Their mom looked down at him and grinned, ruffling his hair. “Well, then, that’s okay,” she said. “That must make him a nice guy.”

Cheever grinned back, and Mackey swallowed like his heart wasn’t in his throat. God. He remembered his rather bold thought that he would have danced with Tony if he’d liked Tony enough. Well, those were tough words from a kid who was afraid of what his mama would think.

But the morning Grant honked his horn outside the apartment, all that fear went away. Mackey poked his head into his mom’s room and said “Bye, Mama!” and before she could even mumble “Be good!” he was out on the landing, a little woven Walmart bag with his spare clothes dangling from his hand.

He pounded down the stairs, waving bye to Stevie, who was on his way into the apartment, and had thrown himself into the front of the Lexus Grant was driving almost before the apartment door closed behind him.

Grant sat with the air conditioning cranked, and laughed into the crook of his arm. “Jesus, Mackey, it’s like you’re escaping from prison!”

Mackey glared at him. “Fratricide, Grant. I been reading all summer—it’s a word!”

“Well, I’m sure my sister has heard of it,” Grant placated, backing the car out of the tiny parking lot and pulling onto the main street of Tyson. Grant’s sister Alicia was away at college, and Grant had been nothing but glad she was out of the house.

“Why didn’t you go?” Mackey asked. He cracked the window just to feel the breeze and checked Grant’s iPod. Okay, old music—Offspring, Green Day, Rise Against, and Rage Against the Machine. That was good. Traveling music.

“Why didn’t I go where?” Grant asked, and both of them squinted into the sun for a minute. Grant fumbled for sunglasses, but Mackey didn’t have any. He’d just have to squint.

“College, rich boy. You had grades. Why didn’t you go?”

Grant shrugged and grunted.

Mackey stared at him. “That’s not a fuckin’ answer!”

“My dad wanted me to stay and run the business,” he said. “Take care of the property. I probably could have gone if I’d put up a fight, but….”

Under the glasses, Mackey could see his gaze slide sideways and then slip back to the road. “I didn’t want to put up a fight,” he said after a minute.

Mackey suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Me?” he gasped, sort of stunned. “You had
college
and you picked
me
?”

“And the
band
!” Grant protested, and just like that, the laughter fell away. “And the business. And my folks.”

Mackey was still having trouble taking in oxygen. “But… but… if you stayed for
me
, what are you doing dating
Sam
!”

In spite of the music, the car was suddenly so quiet, Mackey could hear Grant swallow. They were coming to the last intersection before the highway, and Mackey realized that this was the last place he could get out. If what he and Grant were going to do—if this relationship—was too scary, he could turn around and walk back home, and they’d both pretend those frantic moments on his mom’s bed, needing each other like blood, with their hands all over each other, had never happened.

When Grant spoke, his voice was… young. He’d turned eighteen in July, and for the first time, it occurred to Mackey that being eighteen and out of high school was not all grown. “I’m… my
parents
, Mackey? My
dad
?”

Mackey turned to him and realized that just the thought turned his face pale and that he was sweating in spite of the chill in the car.

“Bad?” he asked. Grant seemed to be escaping his big dragon house all the time—he’d do anything to spend time with Kell’s family, and Mackey got the general impression that Grant’s parents were worse than prison. Which made Mackey wonder—what would his mom do? But at the same time, he had a safety in his heart. His mom tried so hard. Would she really kick him out or not love him because of something he’d done wrong? Most of him was pretty sure she wouldn’t, but that little lever in him that weighed risk and reward was still choosing silence for now.