Page 19 of Beneath the Stain

He pounded down the stairs, waving bye to Stevie, who was on his way into the apartment, and had thrown himself into the front of the Lexus Grant was driving almost before the apartment door closed behind him.

Grant sat with the air conditioning cranked, and laughed into the crook of his arm. “Jesus, Mackey, it’s like you’re escaping from prison!”

Mackey glared at him. “Fratricide, Grant. I been reading all summer—it’s a word!”

“Well, I’m sure my sister has heard of it,” Grant placated, backing the car out of the tiny parking lot and pulling onto the main street of Tyson. Grant’s sister Alicia was away at college, and Grant had been nothing but glad she was out of the house.

“Why didn’t you go?” Mackey asked. He cracked the window just to feel the breeze and checked Grant’s iPod. Okay, old music—Offspring, Green Day, Rise Against, and Rage Against the Machine. That was good. Traveling music.

“Why didn’t I go where?” Grant asked, and both of them squinted into the sun for a minute. Grant fumbled for sunglasses, but Mackey didn’t have any. He’d just have to squint.

“College, rich boy. You had grades. Why didn’t you go?”

Grant shrugged and grunted.

Mackey stared at him. “That’s not a fuckin’ answer!”

“My dad wanted me to stay and run the business,” he said. “Take care of the property. I probably could have gone if I’d put up a fight, but….”

Under the glasses, Mackey could see his gaze slide sideways and then slip back to the road. “I didn’t want to put up a fight,” he said after a minute.

Mackey suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Me?” he gasped, sort of stunned. “You hadcollegeand you pickedme?”

“And theband!” Grant protested, and just like that, the laughter fell away. “And the business. And my folks.”

Mackey was still having trouble taking in oxygen. “But… but… if you stayed forme, what are you doing datingSam!”

In spite of the music, the car was suddenly so quiet, Mackey could hear Grant swallow. They were coming to the last intersection before the highway, and Mackey realized that this was the last place he could get out. If what he and Grant were going to do—if this relationship—was too scary, he could turn around and walk back home, and they’d both pretend those frantic moments on his mom’s bed, needing each other like blood, with their hands all over each other, had never happened.

When Grant spoke, his voice was… young. He’d turned eighteen in July, and for the first time, it occurred to Mackey that being eighteen and out of high school was not all grown. “I’m… myparents, Mackey? Mydad?”

Mackey turned to him and realized that just the thought turned his face pale and that he was sweating in spite of the chill in the car.

“Bad?” he asked. Grant seemed to be escaping his big dragon house all the time—he’d do anything to spend time with Kell’s family, and Mackey got the general impression that Grant’s parents were worse than prison. Which made Mackey wonder—what would his mom do? But at the same time, he had a safety in his heart. His mom tried so hard. Would she really kick him out or not love him because of something he’d done wrong? Most of him was pretty sure she wouldn’t, but that little lever in him that weighed risk and reward was still choosing silence for now.

Grant’s jaw clenched so tight, Mackey could see a vein in his temple throbbing. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said roughly. “The stage thing. You get up on stage and… and the music owns you, and you don’t worry about anything. Any day now, you’re going to leap into the crowd and they’ll carry you.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his slender throat. “I’ve always got a part of me thinking, ‘I’ll fall.’ ’Cause I know my folks wouldn’t pick me up if I did. But you—you’ve never had a safety net, and you think you can fly.”

Mackey opened his mouth and closed it, and his brain tried to repaint and recut the jigsaw puzzle of what life was like. Failed. He was left with a pile of rubble, impressions of color, snapshots of sound, minor chords and royal blues, bright major chords and golds.

“The music owns me,” he repeated, feeling dumb. “Iamthe music. I close my eyes and… Iamthat chord, or that moment, or that dance. Iam….”The crowd, the guitar, the mood, the lyrics, the heartbeats, the drumbeats, the guitar chords, the sweat, the muscle, the movement, the song.“You can’t fall when you’re there,” he said and swallowed hard.

“Youcan’t fall,” Grant told him gently. “I can.”

Breathing. When did it get to be such a hard thing to do? “Are you saying you don’t want me?”

Grant made a sound like a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “God, Mackey—you made me hard just coming down the stairs. Of course I want you. I’m saying… I’m saying my plans for us are… are tonight. I don’t know when there will be more. I don’t know when I’ll get the guts to break up with my girlfriend or tell my parents I’m….”

The silence in the car transcended the stereo, transcended car noise, transcended breathing.

“Gay,” Mackey said. One of them had to. “We’re fags, Grant. And we’re in love.”

Grant nodded. “That,” he said. “I don’t know if—when… I can’t even say it out loud to you.”

Mackey leaned his head against the window and stared sightlessly at the bleached landscape of Northern California. “Gay,” he whispered. “Faggots. Fudge-packers. Cocksuckers. Fairies. Boy pussies. Fruits. Queers. Nancies. Ho-mo-sex-u-als. That’s me. Mackey the faggot.”

“Shut up,” Grant said, his voice thick. “I’m the guy who wants you.”

Mackey took a deep breath, and then another, and shoved the words back down in his throat. “Can you say it to me?” he begged.