Page 123 of Beneath the Stain
He had things to do first. He had to oversee the worst of the equipment (which he ordered donated to the local YMCA) and the official firing of the two guys Mackey wouldn’t let touch the shitty equipment. He also, apparently, had to adopt a techie Mackey had fallen platonically in love with. Mackey spent the entire trip back in the car talking about Briony this and Briony that, and how they had to get her to LA and let her stay in the guest room and set her up as a journeyman so she could be their tech master before they left for Europe.
Trav simply nodded, texting Heath and Debra as Mackey spoke, making sure they got it done, but after they got to the hotel and Mackey stumped off, an irritated tornado, he turned to the band.
“What in the holy blue fuck?” he asked, completely bemused.
Kell shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like… like she stood up, told him the truth, and he said, ‘You! You are the one! Come here and work with me!’ Fuckin’ weird.”
Shelia blew out a breath. “You guys are stupid,” she pronounced. “I’m going to go take a shower, and you all try and figure out what kindergarten meant to you.”
Trav watched her go, feeling thick. “I’m an idiot,” he muttered.
Jefferson and Stevie low-fived. “Mackey made a friend,” Jefferson said with satisfaction, and they followed Shelia with a solid dependability Trav admired. It occurred to him that with the exception of the fact that there were two guys and one girl in that relationship, it was the quietest, most solid dynamic he’d ever encountered. They were practically boring.
Kell and Blake nodded, and Blake looked sincerely happy. “Yeah,” Blake said seriously. “It’s like, all that shit he has to explain to us, she got right away.” He looked embarrassed. “I mean, we all know he’s really smart, and we’re….”
“Not,” Kell said grimly. “We’re not. It’s why he just gets in the middle and leads us. The only one who could ever match him was Grant.” Something melancholy crossed Kell’s stolid workingman’s face. “I think Mackey might have missed Grant as much as I did for that.”
Trav swallowed, and Blake looked away. “Grant was pretty smart?” he asked wistfully.
Kell sighed. “Yeah. Left me behind most of the time. I can’t believe he’s not climbing the walls in Tyson.” He grinned then, tiredly, because the adrenaline of the concert was probably wearing off, and since the two of them weren’t going to party or find girls, they were probably looking at a quiet night with the television and some video games to come down. Kell shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s his fault he’s not out here in the world, yanno?” His smile at Blake, the friend he’d been shoring up since rehab, whom he’d given up his own partying for in order to provide moral support, was blinding. “I mean, me and Blake do okay, right?”
Blake’s smile was shy, like a schoolboy’s when asked to play with the cool kids. “Yeah. And we’re gonna do better than okay when I’m grinding you into the ground inTitanfall, right?”
“You wish.” Kell nodded at Trav then, and the two of them wandered away, leaving Trav to follow a few paces behind.
They didn’t get a suite this go round—it was only one night in Oakland before they took an early flight back to the house, so everybody doubled up except Debra, who, Trav assumed, was still explaining to this Briony girl how she’d become Mackey’s pet techie, probably for life.
Trav was too tired to care at this point. When he let himself into the hotel room, Mackey was wrapped in a robe, towel-drying his hair and talking on the phone to the front desk. Trav’s stomach growled and he caught Mackey’s eye and held up two fingers. “Double,” he mouthed, and Mackey winked and nodded.
Trav’s soiled clothes hit the tiled floor before he even remembered that he might not have any clean clothes in the morning, and as he stepped under the hot water, he found himself wondering if they’d let him on the next plane wearing a robe.
He scrubbed hard, glad for the moment that Mackey wasn’t there. He needed the time alone in his own skin, the heat and the ocean roar in his ears his only companions.
God, so many things about this night he couldn’t believe.
He couldn’t believe he’d allowed Heath to take over a detail like the equipment. But so much of the past month had been desperately tryingnotto leave Mackey alone, and he’d needed to take Heath’s word for it for that to happen. He couldn’t believe he’d flown nonstop to get to Oakland just to let Mackey see he could be a stand-up guy. And he couldn’t believe he’d let Mackey haul him into a greenroom and give him the blowjob of his life.
Especially that last one.
Get up in the morning, go running, have breakfast, work, have lunch, do some light exercise to keep your mind up, make calls, do work, maybe have a snack, enjoy leisure time, sleep, repeat. He liked the order of things: it had worked in the military, and he’d made it work in his real life.
But not with Mackey. With Mackey, doing what you were supposed to do, behaving logically, just didn’t fly. With Mackey there needed to be a better reason than logic. Helikedsleeping in a corner or on the floor. If he was going to sleep on a bed, he needed a better reason than “you’re supposed to.” Truth was, he could be just as demanding as Trav sometimes—but never just because the world expected a certain thing. He required the best in the name of his craft being its best.
Mackey had a way of turning things upside down, like making the corner between the bed and the wall home and making a dress shirt sluttier than nothing at all.
And Trav, for all he liked order, didn’t feel like his life was really in order unless Mackey was in the next room.
On that thought, he turned off the water and toweled himself dry, feeling strangely at peace. Of all things, knowing Mackey held Trav’s equilibrium in his callused hands evened Trav out. There wasn’t a force in the world that could change Mackey unless Mackey let it happen. Yeah, Trav had taken him early, borrowed him against the time when he’d be completely healthy, whole inside himself, but Trav couldn’t make that happen any quicker if he kept turning Mackey away. All he’d do was maybe lose Mackey by not having any faith.
He couldn’t bear that thought, not at all.
When he got out of the shower, Mackey was lying on the bed on his stomach, watching Nick at Nite, eating a hamburger. His robe was rucked up past the bottom of his ass, his thighs spread wide enough for Trav to see everything, including his balls, but Mackey didn’t seem to care. He was laughing at a kids’ cartoon and licking ketchup from his fingers when Trav walked into the room and slid a grateful hand along the back of his thigh.
And stopped and grimaced at the black marks surfacing on his pale skin.
“Jesus, kid, did that happen when you were crowd surfing?”
Mackey turned to him and grinned. “Yeah—ain’t they somethin’? I got a doozy on my hip and my ribs and my shoulder too. It was madness out there tonight!”
