Page 114 of Beneath the Stain

Mackey closed his eyes and breathed.

Appreciate it, he texted.But you don’t need to be bringing a junkie home to mom and dad. Gimme a year. If I’m clean in a year, I’ll meet the fam.

The phone rang, and he grunted and pushed himself off the couch to have this conversation in the next room. “You know, I don’t know why you even bother texting if you’re going to do this every time.”

“That’s stupid.”

“You’re the one who keeps calling.”

“The year thing. That’s stupid. That’s like… like hoping you’ll fail.”

“I thought it was my reward if I succeed.”

Trav’s frustrated grunt carried loud and clear. “Do you know what time it is here?”

“Four a.m.,” Mackey said promptly. “What in the hell are you doing on the phone to me at fucking ass-crack-o-dawn?”

“I miss you.”

Mackey sucked in a hard breath. “Yeah, well, I miss you too! That doesn’t explain four—”

“I knew this was when you’d be watching television, so I set my alarm to talk. I’ll go back to sleep in a few.” And that was when Mackey heard the sort of smoky undertones of a man who’d just woken up and was talking in the dark.

“So you woke up early just to talk to me? That’s sort of swe—”

“I’m not like this,” Trav snapped. Oh yes, there was a man without coffee.

“Not like what? Fucking grumpy? ’Cause I beg to dif—”

“I’m not this thoughtful, dumbshit. Terry and I broke up because he was begging me to be there, and I kept telling him to grow up and be a man.”

Mackey’s bowels froze a little. Yeah, he knew that Trav. That was the Trav who’d yelled at him until he went to rehab. It wasn’t the Trav who’d been his texting buddy when he was there. It certainly wasn’t the guy he’d been living with for the past month. But it was the Trav he’d first met.

“Well, I’m not always a nice guy either,” Mackey said truthfully, trying to keep that level of freeze from creeping up to his lungs. “I pretty much bitched Blake into addiction—”

“He was heading that way anyway—”

“And I deserted Tony—”

“You offered. You can’t save every—”

“And I think the tech crew is gonna fuckin’ kill me, but I might rip out their throats first.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know what the hell to tell you about that.”

“How hard is it to set the amps where we put the line in Sharpie and coil the mic wires so they don’t get tangled when I run around the fucking stage? I mean, where in the hell do they get these people? Flunkies-R-Us?”

“Not anymore, Mackey. Flunkies-R-Us quit on your scrawny ass. Heath had to negotiate with another labor union to get you guys covered in Oakland. But you’re missing the point. The point is, I’m not a nice guy. I’m not a supporter. Or I wasn’t, until….”

Suddenly Trav’s voice sank, grew uncomfortable, and Mackey cocked his head, liking the way the silence was as expressive as the words.

“Until what?” he prompted, hungry for the end of that sentence.

“Until you. In rehab. That third time.” Mackey heard the long exhale of something painful. “I just… I couldn’t think of you alone in there, Mackey. I… couldn’t think of you alone, period. It was like, suddenly I got what Terry had been trying to tell me, about how being with someone keeps the scary monsters away. I’d never seen the monsters, honestly. But you were alone in rehab, and I just… all I could do was imagine them around you. And I needed to keep them away.”

Mackey closed his eyes, let the image wash over him. Mackey huddled in the dark, Trav standing in front of him with a knight’s sword, keeping the scary monsters away.

“You do a good job of that,” Mackey said, feeling better than he had all day. Maybe that would be his next tattoo—a child huddling in a corner, surrounded by monsters.