Page 8 of Beneath the Stain

“Yeah,” Mackey muttered, adjusting the feed and the output and then checking Jeff’s guitar too. Jeff could play and maintain a bass beat, but everyone knew Mackey had the best ear for that shit. “Anything else, Tony?”

Mackey turned to find Tony right over his shoulder, body close, sweating in the gym, which was actually a little cool the Saturday morning before prom.

“Uhm….” Tony licked his lips and smiled nervously, then suddenly jerked upright. His face flushed in the cold. “Uhm, no, Mackey. No. I just…. Wait. Are you going to prom with anyone?”

Mackey squinted at him. “I’m a freshman,” he said, puzzled.

“Well, yeah, but someone coulda asked you,” Tony said, and then he looked away. Tony was one ofthosekids, the kind who hung out with girls constantly, the kind who always had his finger in a pie and seemed to be the center of attention. Here, in the empty gym, he was as lonely as Mackey had ever seen him.

“I don’t know any girls,” Mackey said, staring hard.

Tony’s blush got brighter. “Well, yeah,” he said, not meeting Mackey’s eyes. “I, uhm, know lots of girls. I’m not taking any of them to prom.”

Something about the admission shocked Mackey, made his eyes open wide, parted his lips. “You’re asking me to—” he breathed, half-flattered, half-appalled. Tony was a scrawny two-bit like Mackey himself, but he had brown eyes and brown hair and brownish skin, a bold nose, and a mouth not quite as plump as Grant’s.

Just that moment, it occurred to Mackey that Grant’s mouth wouldn’t be the only one that looked so sweet wrapped around his cock.

But Tony was shaking his head. “I’m so stupid,” he muttered, almost to himself, turning toward the drum set for no real reason. “Your brother’ll probably stuff me in a trash can again, and Jesus, this town just fucking sucks, and—” He looked up miserably, almost in tears, his chin wobbling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I just—”

“I won’t tell my brother,” Mackey blurted, pulled out of his shock by the thought that, yeah, Kell probablyhadstuffed Tony in a trash can, because Kell wasn’t real nice to anyone weaker than him. Wasn’t nice, was probably just Kell.

Tony’s chin wobble eased up. “Thanks,” he whispered, still miserable. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I….” Mackey stood up, looked at the little gym, decked out with paper flowers and streamers by Tony and his friends, and had the sudden realization that this gym would never be for him. Or for Tony, either, really, who had just spent two hours making it pretty.

“What’d you think?” Mackey asked, his voice gentle and confused. “We’d… dress nice and dance, like everyone else?”

Tony shrugged, rubbing his finger on the hi-hat. “Maybe just someone to hang out with,” he mumbled, and Mackey grimaced.

“I did not expect this,” he said, so startled he found the word/rhythm place without thinking. “That the person in my skin was so plain to someone else, I didn’t expect it. How is it you can see the guy I’ve hidden mostly from myself?”

Tony was suddenly looking at him—really looking at him, his mouth parted, too, softly, like he was begging to be plundered. “Because you say things like that, Mackey,” he said, half-strangled. “Man… just your voice makes me hard.”

Mackey hardened his face against that want.

“So,” Tony said nervously into the silence. The gym was deserted, and without the people to pad it, his voice seemed to echo, unnaturally loud. “You, uhm….”

Grant’s face popped up in the dark of Mackey’s vision. The angle of his jaw, the way his dark lashes fluttered across his gold-skinned cheeks, the unusually straight bridge of his nose.

The way he’d turned away.

The way Mackey would follow him.

“I….” Mackey started, and his eyes flew open when he realized Tony had moved closer, was close enough that Mackey’s voice didn’t echo off the walls like Tony’s just had. “I can’t,” Mackey whispered, and he hurt inside when he saw Tony’s hurt on the outside. “He’s… he’s got a girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Tony said softly. “That sucks. Straight guys—it hurts.”

And because he could, because Mackey had been kissed, because he’d had Grant’s mouth on his body, he had to spill this secret. To somebody.

“He’s not straight,” Mackey whispered, turned away. Because if Grant wasn’t straight, and Tony wasn’t straight, neither was Mackey.

“Oh.”

Mackey busied himself looping the cords from the amp to the guitars. He knew the trick to it that kept them out from underfoot but let the guys on stage have some movement. “This conversation goes nowhere but us,” he muttered.

“That’s a rule,” Tony said, like he was teaching.

“What is?” Okay, this cord to Grant’s axe, this cord to Kell’s, this cord to the keyboard….