Page 16 of Beneath the Stain

He could smell Grant’s come.

It saturated the shirt crumpled in the hamper, coated the skin of his chest, and was probably flaking off his mouth and throat. Every breath he took reminded him of the feeling of Grant’s cock in his mouth, of the white-blindness of his own orgasm, of the coldness of slipping out of the car without a backward glance.

He ached with needing someone to hold him. His skin hurt with it, his joints throbbed with need of it.

He needed his own skin back.

The water froze first and scalded second, and he scrubbed hard at his face and neck, shampooed his hair twice because of the sweat and the come that had smeared in it when he’d stood up.

He wondered if anyone noticed that Grant had Mackey’s come on his face.

Would Grant wash it off? Would Samantha notice? Would he kiss her good-night with Mackey’s semen still on his lips, tanging his tongue, streaking his chin?

God.

The tears started when the water ran hot and didn’t stop, not long after it ran cold or even after Mackey left the shower. He dressed in threadbare cotton briefs and sweats with holes in the knees and a shirt that had been old before Kell got it and then passed it to Jefferson who passed it down to him.

His hooded sweatshirt, though—that was his. That had been a Christmas gift from his mom the year before, fleecy and warm, plain, blue, and clean.

He left the bathroom light on because he couldn’t make himself care to turn it off and huddled in the corner of his bunk, invisible in the dark, willing the terrifying mix of joy and awfulness to die.

He heard noises, feet on the stairs, the door opening, and then his bedroom was invaded with light. He rolled over and squinted against the light from the bathroom, grateful when his mom’s silhouette blocked the glare.

Cheever was asleep on her shoulder, and from the looks of it, he’d had some night.

“Mom, what’s all that on his face?” Mackey asked, surprised out of his misery.

His mom gave a muffled little squeak. “Jesus, kid, you scared me. Shh… shh….” Gently she laid Cheever down on the top bunk, then pulled the rail up into place. Cheever didn’t move, his four-year-old body limp and heavy. Kell once forgot to pull the rail up when they’d put Cheever to bed. Cheever had rolled out of bed and fallen to the floor and his breathing hadn’t even stuttered.

“C’mon, Mackey,” his mom said, smiling at him tiredly. “Let’s go watch some TV.”

Mackey was the only one of them who really liked television. His mom liked comedies and movies and such—things to escape in—and Mackey could find songs in those places, so he would watch with her, especially in the summer when there was no air conditioning.

His mom kept the desperately old TV in her room, on the little dresser at the foot of her bed, and she piled the pillows high and turned it on, grabbing her own T-shirt and shorts from the dresser as it warmed up. “Lemme shower,” she mumbled. “I want to hear all about your night.”

He curled up on his side and watched the end ofFriends, and it wasn’t until the end of the episode when the two roommates were jumping on top of each other in an effort to get to the door that he realized he was smiling.

He could smile. Good to know.

His mom was a champion at the five-minute shower. She came back in wearing an extra-large white T-shirt that came to her knees, still smoothing moisturizer on her face, while the episode was winding down. She sat on the bed, leaning into the pillows, curling on her side like he was so she could see the television and was comfy at the same time.

The episode ended and the commercials came on before she spoke into the comfortable quiet of the room.

“How’d the show go?”

Mackey smiled a little, remembering how excited she’d been for them. He wouldn’t kill that for anything. “It was great,” he told her truthfully. “Kids loved it. Kids who didn’t even know our name loved it. Frickin’ awesome.”

She laughed softly. “Good to know,” she said. Absently, like she’d forgotten he wasn’t a baby anymore, like Cheever, she started to smooth his hair back from his face. He let her.

“And they let us do seven songs instead of just six,” he continued softly. “That was nice. We did two songsIwrote, Mom. Theylikedthem. It was kind of sweet, you know? Like… like I had something good to give.”

He huddled deeper into the new warm fleece hoodie, and although his mom left the window open at night, it still wasn’t cold enough to have it on.

“It’s always nice to feel like you got something to give,” she said. “Did you and the boys celebrate?”

“Mmhm,” he murmured. The next episode was about to come on, and he hoped it would get there before he gave too much away. “We all went out and high-fived and stuff, but we were thirsty and they had snacks, so we went back in.”

“Yeah? I thought you all would have gone out after?”