Beneath the Stain - Part 2 by Amy Lane Read Free Book Online

they knew how to work, and they knew how to treat it like the world’s greatest job but a job just the same. He’d decided to go into consulting because he wanted a chance for a relationship, for a home, not because managing for that group had been too intense, or too painful, or too much of a pain in the ass.
    They’d thrown him a going-away party, with a cake and a silly plaque that had been one of the few things he kept after the breakup. He’d felt needed and competent and like he’d done a good job—but he hadn’t been too closely intertwined with their lives. Sure, he knew who was dating and who broke up and if someone needed some chicken soup and some cold meds. He’d canceled a week’s worth of concerts once because the lead singer and the lead guitarist had picked up the flu and he hadn’t wanted them to perform when they could barely stand. He’d flown in a girlfriend and a wife from across the country to care for them and even hired a babysitter, because the guitarist’s wife kept squirting out babies like a fish and she didn’t want to haul them all cross-country.
    But he’d never been their family. His family was in a nice house upstate, where he visited his perfectly normal, repressed, WASP parents, and his brother and sister, who got him off the hook for the childbearing thing and generally dealt with the world in a sane, rational manner.
    He did not room with five balls of testosterone and angst in a hotel room in Burbank, dammit!
    Somehow, rooming in a house in North Hollywood sounded better.
    The second night after Mackey returned, Trav woke up to the sound of music. The light was on at the desk, and Mackey sat there in a new white T-shirt and a pair of the briefs Trav had ordered, playing the guitar gently and making notations in the last clean spiral notebook. He’d obviously been up for a while, because a few empty cans of soda sat on the desk, and a once-full box of Chicken in a Biskit crackers. Trav stared at the box for a minute and felt an absurd little punch near his spleen.
    All those people he didn’t understand, buying those stupid fucking crackers. Even Kell, whom Trav wanted to blame for half of Mackey’s problems, had bought the stupid fucking crackers.
    For Mackey. Even when they thought he was going to be gone.
    Mackey was picking out a melody, something harsh and astringent interspersed with something seductive and sweet.
    Trav listened to it for a moment and waited until Mackey put the next bit on paper.
    “The harsh part,” he said, propping his head on his hand and squinting into the light. “That’s the part where you do the primal screaming and the guitar cacophony, right?”
    Mackey looked up at him and smiled, and Trav realized that he had a fox’s face. His cheekbones were supposed to be sharp, and so was his chin. But with his hair scraped back from his face in a queue, his eyes were huge, probably because he weighed less than mouse shit and there was so little flesh in his thin face.
    Even in the lamplight, Trav could tell he had freckles, fading with adulthood, but still faint.
    And his smile was like a little boy’s.
    “Yeah,” Mackey said with deep satisfaction. “Gonna be a good song. If I’d known rehab would gimme such good shit to write about, I would have done it months ago.”
    Trav was no longer sleepy. He sat up, crossing his legs under the sheets. He was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, but suddenly Mackey’s youth and vulnerability made Trav feel… inappropriate.
    “Well, yeah,” he said, hating to bring this up. “But you’ve only been through detox. Rehab’s a different fish, Mackey.”
    Mackey stopped making the notations for a minute, then frowned and kept working. Trav wanted to argue with him—he did. But he’d lived with Terry for three years. Terry made a living with his paintings, and Trav had seen it firsthand. Interrupting that kind of concentration was cruel. Trav could wait.
    Mackey kept working for a few moments,