Page 159 of Beneath the Stain

“It’s not air if it doesn’t smell like you.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Briony muttered from above them. “Are you two done? I’ll take my chances with Cheever—”

“No!” they both said in tandem, because Cheever had been lying low, but they didn’t want to tempt fate.

“Briony?” Mackey said, his voice muffled from Trav’s armpit. “Why aren’t you sleeping with my brother yet?”

Briony’s response was a long, wet cough. When she recovered, she said, “Because my inner sex goddess has not yet descended.”

Mackey giggled and Briony did too—and Trav groaned.

“Children, I realize I’m getting no sex tonight, but do I have to separate you?”

“No,” Briony begged, her voice piteous in the dark. “Please, Trav?”

Mackey tapped Trav on the shoulder, and Trav sighed. Trav wouldn’t deny Briony anything, especially when she was sick and away from home.

“You wanted to be needed,” Mackey mumbled, and he felt Trav’s kiss on the top of the head.

“And I am,” he said.

Mackey thought about the next day and shuddered. “You really are,” he said fervently.

God. What would he say?

Everyone knew where Grant Adams lived. People whispered about it when they passed the long, curving driveway lined with decorative shrubs and framed with wrought iron. The suburb sported a couple of massive houses, hollowed out from the oak and manzanita that lined the hills. Landscapers reformed the earth, making things lush and green and trimmed, even in the summer, and even though most of the houses had an attached “farm” for horses and really expensive showpiece stock, what greeted visitors driving up was the grand multistory house—in this case faux brick—with gables and insets and bright black shale tiling the roof.

Grant’s mom had come from the South, so they’d tried to make it look like Kentucky, which was funny because the terrain in this part of California was hilly and dry. Outside of this tiny little patch of perfect green, the landscape consisted of red dirt and brown grass—even behind the house itself—but driving up, it seemed like a whole other world.

When Mackey and his brothers were younger, they had never, not once, questioned that Grant would rather hang out in their two-bedroom apartment or, when Stevie’s dad wasn’t there, in Stevie’s garage.

For one thing, it didn’t feel quite real thattheir friendGrant, who traded his Lunchables for Kell’s PB&J, would come from such a grand place. Yes, his clothes were better, but he got just as dirty as the Sanders boys when they played at school. Yes, when they started the band, his equipment was always new, but he worked just as hard as they did learning how to play it.

The fact that when he was sixteen he got to drive his mom’s car was awesome—but he would have been their friend if he’d had to ride his bike.

He’d told Kell once—when Mackey could hear—that he’d threatened to ride his bike when his mom didn’t give him a ride. He’d been desperate to escape.

So the house on the hill had never really seemed grand or real to Mackey—or any of his brothers. It had seemed more like a gate-keeping dragon, a brooding presence that allowed Grant to escape its grasp on occasion but that he had to elude if he wanted to play with his brothers. Yeah, sure, the Sanders kids were scrappy and their clothes were torn, they wore their shoes until the duct tape fell off, and sometimes they had PB with no J, but they didn’t have to escape a dragon to play with their brothers.

After Grant’s first kiss and his first admission that he’d be with Sam when he loved Mackey, that house had seemed even grander, even more imposing, even more of an obstacle to Grant ever coming out to play.

As the SUV glided up the recently paved road, Mackey had a sudden, absurd thought: The dragon was never going to let Grant out again. After all this time of Grant escaping in little pieces to play with his brothers, it was finally going to swallow him whole.

Briony and Shelia had stayed with Mackey’s mom. Cheever had gone back to school that morning, so Mackey was glad for his mom, but he missed the two of them. They didn’t talk much to each other, but they had bonded, being the only women in the group, and somehow Briony’s sarcasm made moments like this easier to bear.

“What are you thinking?” Trav asked next to him. He had his arm slung over the back of the seat, which looked only natural because the lot of them were cramped, even in the big modified Tahoe, but Mackey knew he did it to give Mackey a place to hide.

“I’m thinking that even if this place is sunshine and fucking roses, I’m going to hate it like poison,” Mackey said passionately, and his voice carried.

“God, me too,” Kell muttered. “I swear, we see houses bigger than this every day, but somehow… I mean, he used to sneak out. I remember his mom used to call us because Grant had gone missing, and Mom would go driving toward his house and find him trying to find us. He always said he just wanted to play.”

Kell’s voice wobbled a little, and Mackey found his favorite refuge.

“Don’t talk like that,” he snarled, making everyone in the car jump. “Grant is still alive, and that place is just a fucking house. I brought his goddamned guitar—he says he can play if he sits down. We’re gonna go play with our friend, and he’s gonna meet Blake and talk about what a pain in the fucking ass Kell is. Stevie and Jefferson can talk about married life, and we’re gonna see him hold his baby—that’s what’s happening today, do you all fucking hear me?”

There was a rather cowed response of “Yes, Mackey,” and Mackey harrumphed in response.

“We willnotget soft about this,” he promised. “Not this visit. Maybe next one, yeah. But not this one. This one, we’re just sayin’ hi.”