Page 138 of Beneath the Stain

Grant closed his eyes and nodded. “Well, you tell Trav that it’s enough you guys came. You tell him to stick around. I don’t want any more of your soul than you already gave me, Mackey. I don’t deserve more. I just want my brothers back before I go.”

“Well then get the fuck out of the car, man,” Mackey said, pulling himself together by spit and shoestrings. “They’re probably all at the kitchen table, letting my mom feed ’em. It’s been a long fucking time since dinner.”

Grant nodded and opened the door. The stench of pot that had lingered as Mackey stood there rolled out of the car, and Grant looked embarrassed. “It’s legal now,” he said with a wink. “I can’t drive for an hour, but don’t worry. It’s all legal.”

Mackey rolled his eyes. “Oh sure.Nowit’s legal. When I realized how many years of prison time I shot up my nose, I almost crapped my pants!”

Grant grunted and shut the door with an effort. His belt flapped halfway around his waist because he’d pulled it to the last notch in an effort to keep his skinny jeans on his hips, and Mackey had a glimpse of pale, countable ribs as he slid out of the car. Jesus, this cancer bullshit wasn’t for the weak.

“Coke, Mackey? I’d say it’s tacky, but at least you got your teeth. Them’s rock star drugs right there.”

Mackey stuck out an arm. Grant took it unashamedly, his fingers gripping weakly through Mackey’s thin hoodie, and Mackey felt a sudden pang through his chest. Grant wasn’t going to be mobile for long. Another couple of weeks, maybe three, and Grant wouldn’t be walking creakily through his mother’s door to have breakfast. They’d be trying to push Grant’s mother aside so they could visit him by his bed.

“I tried heroin,” Mackey admitted. “Made me queasy, so I tried it more than once. Good dreams, but it makes the space-time continuumreallyfuckin’ hazy.”

“Does it make time stretch out longer?” Grant asked. “’Cause as shitty as I feel, I ain’t been this happy since… since….”

Mackey found the courage to give him this. “Since I wrote you your song,” he said, and Grant paused. Mackey turned his head to the side and saw that Grant’s eyes were closed, and a little smile tilted his once full mouth.

“You probably hate me,” Grant said, his eyes still closed. “You’re probably trying really hard not to yell and scream and just rip me up with your tongue. Well, maybe you can do that if you stay for a little while. You’ll forget I’m sick, and you’ll just get out how pissed you are, and I’ll be okay with that. But right now I don’t care, McKay. You gave me my song, and it’s on your CD, and that gets to be me and you, going into other people’s homes and making them fall in love. You can go ahead and hate me because we’ve got that, and it’s all good.”

But I got Trav’s song too! His song’s what I feel in my blood right now. I don’t feel “River Shadows,” I don’t want “River Shadows,” I don’trememberwhat that song felt like inside of me, I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t….

And maybe Mackey would have forgotten that Grant was sick and said all that to him right there on his mother’s lawn, and maybe not. It didn’t matter, because Trav opened the door and, seeing them making their way across the pathway, he hopped down to Grant’s other side and let Grant take his arm too.

If Trav could make that effort, then Mackey could put aside the bitterness and acid and bring Grant home.

“Grant, this is my boyfriend, Trav Ford—Trav, this is Grant Adams.”

Trav hmmed noncommittally as he helped Grant up the stairs.

“Pleastameetya, Mr. Ford—”

“I could have put off the honor, actually,” Trav muttered. “Jesus, you had to be dying of cancer?”

“Well, I wanted to be dying of something rare and exotic, but the missionaries in Africa got that shit and I got cancer,” Grant replied.

Mackey could tell by the startled look Trav sent him that Trav probably approved.

“Well, I’ll be sure to remember that when it’s my turn to go,” Trav said shortly. “I’ll have to fly that plane upside down through the shark tank all by myself.”

“I’m going out fighting aliens, myself,” Mackey said soberly just to see them smile. “I’m going to take out a zillion of them, save the planet. People’ll be writing my name in lights foryears.”

Trav opened the door and led them both in while Grant replied, “Oh, leave it to you to find a way to go out that’ll leave you famous. No just lying down and taking a dirt nap for you!”

Mackey wrinkled his nose and looked to his left. The kitchen—the freakin’ huge white-tiled kitchen—held pretty much everybody who needed to be there. Like Mackey thought, everyone was still up, cycling in from the showers after their run—all they were missing was Debra and Kell.

They all looked up in surprise to see Grant leaning on Mackey and Trav, and Mackey did his damnedest to keep the moment normal.

“Asif,” he said in response to Grant’s comment. “Seriously—Stevie, Jeff, if you guys got to choose how you went out, how’d you go out?”

Jefferson and Stevie looked at each other—partly to make sure of their answer, Mackey knew, but also partly to recover from seeing Grant looking like he did.

They got up in tandem and came over to hug Grant. “Together,” they said as they stood, and Grant laughed like the answer somehow comforted him.

“Good to see yous” echoed about the entryway, and Mackey stood back and let the twins flow around Grant and surge him toward the table. They introduced him to Blake, who stepped forward hesitantly and offered his hand. He looked over the crowd and met Mackey’s eyes as he did so, and Mackey nodded. Blake had been through enough—no reason for him to feel bad about meeting the first guy who played his axe.

Grant sat at the table with some help. Mackey’s mom, looking stylish in leggings and a running jacket with her hair up in a little twist, offered him some orange juice.