Page 131 of Beneath the Stain
“Sayin’. But anyway, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It was like, they couldn’t figure out why their shit wasn’t working, and I stepped up and said, ‘Guys, meet extension cord, extension cord, meet outlet. See? They fit together and have electric sex!’”
“Sweet!” Mackey crowed. “Run, dammit, stop talking and make him run, you’re gonna—how’d you do that?”
“Built up my character. Told you. Anyway, so I figured thatnobodyknew what the fuck they were doing. And then we started doing festivals and I realized thateverybodyhad a better setup than we did, and that’s where I was when you met me. I’m just saying—your setup was still better and more organized than most of ’em I’ve seen. I’ve seen somegreatbands look like shit because of crappy equip—fuck yeah! Woot!Your turn, Mackey. Kill the fucker.”
“And I’m dead.” Trav heard the sound of the remote hitting the couch. “Here, I need to get up anyway. Let’s listen to that riff from ‘Tattoo’ again—I think we can do something really cool with strobe lights and shit, you think?”
“Yeah, definitely. Music room?”
“Yeah.”
They got up and wandered away, but Trav had to smile. It wasn’t like Mackey had found a soul mate in the wrong body. He’d found asister—and that made all the difference.
Trav’s resentment faded and he filled up his water bottle. He figured his fierce albeit small circle of protection had just extended to Briony. (Who hated shopping and disdained all girl things but seemed to adore Shelia. Trav loved Briony, but he had a hard time figuring her out when she wasn’t talking to Mackey. She was just one more dynamic presence in a house already bursting with them, truthfully, and he was glad Blake and Kell hadn’t brought any more women into the mix.)
By the time they all packed up their shit and hopped a jet plane for Europe, Trav was on solid ground again. Mackey had a person to talk to so Trav could do his job, and Trav had a good enough feel for the whole gang of them that, with Debra and Walter onboard to round out the entourage and hired security on site, he trusted. He trusted Mackey would stay sober or warn him if things went wrong, he trusted the band would get along and keep making music, and he trusted that the girls wouldn’t rock the boat and make bad shit happen.
And for the most part, his trust was well placed.
In Dublin, when the crowd got too unruly in a soccer stadium, the trust they’d built helped them grab Briony from the ground and run for the exits, where they hid in the dark until the mob cleared. In Amsterdam, when Mackey and Blake got separated from the main group on a bicycle tour, it helped him not make them pee in a cup when they got back. In spite of his own experience that the red-light district was really a very mild, lovely place in the daytime, the rumors of decadence alone made him leery. Apparently Blake thought so too, because he called his sponsor when they got back to the hotel, which made Trav proud of him and just that much more secure.
In Germany, when Blake missed a light cue and fucked up an entire song on stage, Trav trusted that Mackey would get over it, see thatallthe guys were done in, and call a break for the week they had between stops.
When Mackey did exactly that—and with more grace than Trav expected—Trav trusted the band to find their own diversions while he took Mackey to Greece for a three-day stay in an island hotel, the kind with the private swimming pool and the room that overlooked the ocean and the sitting room that was partly a spa and that opened up to the amazing view.
He and Mackey made love all night long and saw the sunrise sitting in that spa, Mackey leaning into Trav’s arms. The moment was so perfectly at peace with the world that for the first time in his life ever, Trav knew what it was to tear up from happiness and nothing else.
Trav learned to trust that Mackey was whole and well, and whatever was coming down the pike, they would be okay enough to face it together.
Sometimes the universe really could not bear for that sort of trust to exist without fucking with it.
THEYHITAmerica last and worked their way from New York to Chicago to Houston to the Pacific Northwest. They were in Seattle, in a little pub-slash-bar, when the call came.
The pub-slash-bar hadn’t been part of the stop, really, but they were taking a tour bus as they made their way from Seattle to Portland to Oakland and then LA. The bus broke down and they ended up staying in Seattle and canceling one of their dates in Portland, and, well, here they were. The place offered good barbecue and okay music, but the bartender was a fan of the band’s—and Mackey’s in particular, which made Trav growly until the guy cheerfully told them all he had a boyfriend. Mackey grinned and offered to sing for their supper, and the guy asked for an hour to call everybody he knew.
The crowd washuge. Briony ran the soundboard on her own, as she’d been doing since Germany, and they put on an hour and a half of toned-down set that, to Trav’s ear, really showcased what they’d learned in the past six months of touring together when they actually liked each other. Mackey wrapped up with the song he’d written Trav in rehab, which he’d been working on during the tour, and Trav held that moment when Mackey looked out over the crowd and winked at him close to his heart.
Early on, in England, Mackey had flirted hard with the crowd, coming on to men and women from a tiny stage that had been close enough for him to get groped almost constantly. When Mackey came off the stage, sweaty and aroused, Trav had hidden his exasperation really poorly.
But Mackey wasn’t stupid. “Look, Trav, I promise, I won’t make a fool of you. Whatever happens with us, I won’t do you like that in public, okay?”
And like their relationship, based on the hope that Mackey was working toward wellness every day, Trav had to take his word on it. So far Mackey hadn’t let him down.
So hearing his song—small, intimate like this, played solo by Mackey himself as a quiet closer—that meant something. Afterward, though, as the band all drank soda and Briony and her band of monkeys (as she called the roadies) helped put the equipment to rights, he had a moment of wondering when the shoe was going to drop—the shoe Mackey had been carrying since he’d run out of the airport, sure that he couldn’t go back home.
It was like the thought invited trouble.
Kell’s phone actually rang, and his sort of squinty eyes grew wide, like the news automatically had to be bad. (It cracked Trav up how much a phone call interfered with everybody’s sense of the universe. He figured they should call Mackey’s generation the Texting Generation, because actual personal contact was so alien to them all.) He nodded soberly to the band and excused himself outside, saying, “It’s Mom.”
He was out there for a long time.
When he came back, he blinked red eyes at everyone and spoke with the choked voice of someone who didn’t have a good grip on the world.
“Trav, we’re done with this next week, right? I mean, the whole tour, done next Saturday.”
Trav nodded. “There’s sort of a party planned at Heath’s office on Sunday, but yeah. We end up back at home. Why?”
Kell grimaced. “Can we skip the party? And….” He looked at Mackey unhappily. “And maybe all of us go back to Tyson for a few weeks? Mackey, I know you’re mad at him, but we got to get over that. Mom said there’s not much time to get over it, and—”
