Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (5 page)

Trav laughed a little, because he got that shit, and Blake rolled his eyes.

“You couldn’t just say ‘headache,’ could you, Mackey?” Blake snapped, but it was an empty sally, and everyone in the limo knew it.

Trav handed him sunglasses—obviously
Trav’s
sunglasses—and Mackey sighed.

“Naw, Trav, I won’t take your shit from you so I can be a diva. Just—”

“Take them, Mackey. I’ll get more. Now before we get there, I need you guys to touch the screen here, and here, and here—”

They spent the next twenty minutes signing paperwork. Mackey was honestly surprised when the limo pulled up in front of the now familiar beautiful garden grounds with the giant flower bushes and the fountains and the building that looked like a retirement home for active seniors.

The limo stopped there, idling, and Mackey stared moodily outside while waiting for the driver to let him out.

“You’ll make it happen this time,” Trav said, but he sounded more hopeful than sure.

Mackey grimaced. “I only need to make it stick once, right?” he asked, trying to sound insouciant and breezy.

Trav’s gentle hand on his shoulder made him want to cry. “That’s right, Mackey. Only once.”

“Speak for yourself,” Blake said. “I plan to get my blood replaced like Keith Richards until I’m too old to go on stage.”

Mackey would have bitten his head off, but he sounded nervous too—and besides, it was funny.

“Yeah, just remember that having the blood of an eighteen-year-old girl
in
you isn’t the same thing as being inside an eighteen-year-old girl,” Mackey returned, and he could tell by Blake’s reluctant snicker that it was the right thing to say. Well, good. As much as Blake got on Mackey’s nerves, Kell seemed to like him, and God, wouldn’t it be a pain in the ass to have to train up another lead guitarist. Mackey fought a shudder. No. No more new lead guitarists. Trav was right. He’d have to make his peace with Blake and make it stick, and this was the place to do it.

Mackey was reaching in to grab the suitcases when his phone
buzzed. He set the cases down and leaned against the limo to answer while the driver got a porter from the rehab place.

The press says you got hurt. Kell says you’re going to rehab. I’m sorry.

Grant. Oh God. Mackey had gotten the phone the day after they’d signed, and sometime in the past year, Kell had passed Mackey’s number on. For the most part, Grant left him alone. In fact, this made three texts total.

Wish me well, McKay—I’m married
had been the first one. He’d gotten it the morning before his first one-night stand.

Her name is Katy, after McKay. Don’t hate me—I had to have a memory of you
had been the second, accompanied by a picture of his baby girl. Mackey had saved the picture, but he hadn’t replied.

But this one—this one he had to answer.

Don’t be. You’re not the dumbass with the pills.

Don’t let me off the hook that easy, McKay. I thought I was doing you a favor.

Oh God. Oh, Grant—don’t do this.

God save me from dumbasses doing me favors. I gotta go.

He pulled Trav’s sunglasses over his eyes and pushed off of the car with a grunt.

“Was that your mom?” Trav asked, squinting at him perceptively in the California smog glare.

Mackey grunted again and shook his head. “She called this morning—saw the press release.” Mackey had calmed her down—as, apparently, Kell had been unable to. “I told her I was going to a… whatstheword?” God, his brain had seized up, a rictus of remembered pain, as soon as he’d seen Grant’s text. “Retreat. Yeah. I’m going on a ‘restorative retreat.’ Some bullshit. Fuckin’ LA—it’s like shrink city here, you know that, right? The shrinks have shrinks who have shrinks who have kids who buy our records and tell us they’re just as fucked-up as me and my brothers are. It’s insane.”

He rambled—he knew that. He did it on purpose, because letting his brain just spew forth with whatthefuckever was an easy way to dodge the hard shit.

Apparently cutting through whatthefuckever was Trav’s best talent. “So if that wasn’t your mom, who the hell was it?”

Mackey glared at him through the glasses. Nosy fucker. “The ghost of Shannon Hoon. Whatsit to ya?”

Trav narrowed his eyes, and Mackey took perverse pleasure in the thought that Trav was squinting against the sun because Mackey was wearing his sunglasses.

“Whoever it was made you look like you wanted a fucking Xanax, Mackey. Tell me who it was so I can block the call, or I’m taking your goddamned phone. I’m not shoving you into rehab so you can get cozy with your dealers all over again.”

Mackey’s throat shriveled up. “You’ve met my dealers,” he said, shoving the phone at Trav and grabbing his suitcase. “One of them is dead and the other’s going to rehab with me. Happy now?”

“No,” Trav said shortly. He took two steps forward and shoved Mackey’s phone in the back pocket of his jeans. “Here. Keep your damned phone. Text me if you need anything. And whoever that was who texted you—man, stay away from them. That look on your face just now—that was a bad thing.”

Mackey stayed still as Trav pulled his hands away from his hips. For a moment under the orange sky, everything stopped—the wind, the birds, the whirr of the engine. Mackey cursed the suitcases in his hands—he wanted to lift his sunglasses and look Trav square in the eyes. Trav had nice eyes. That redhead’s brown definitely suited him.

Trav took a deep breath and slowly raised the sunglasses, then set them on top of Mackey’s head. Mackey took a deep breath and smelled… Trav. It had gotten so that Trav’s smell, his animal, had pervaded Mackey’s sleeping and waking in the past few weeks. Suddenly Mackey was comforted and turned on at the same time, and he was
so
not ready to deal with that.

Slowly he licked his lips, still captured by Trav’s brown eyes. “This,” he said, too softly for Blake to hear, “is for boys who don’t have to go to rehab.”

Trav nodded slowly. “You won’t always have to go to rehab, Mackey. But you do now.”

Mackey took a step away and turned toward the entrance. Blake was already halfway up the walk, and Mackey expected that he’d just walk in by himself, like that.

He was surprised and unsettled when Trav fell in stride next to him. “I can do this by myself,” he muttered.

Trav bent and took his largest suitcase from him. “You don’t have to
now.”

Somewhat reassured, Mackey kept walking.

T
HEY
CHECKED
in, and, thank
God
and maybe thank some of that money they had rolling around, they got separate rooms. Mackey was both relieved and a little spazzed out about that, actually. His room was small, with a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a chair—much like most of the nicer hotel rooms he’d ever been in, except with fresh flowers and no minibar—but Mackey wasn’t used to sleeping alone. Most of the time, he’d slept in Gerry’s room, and on the odd times they hadn’t roomed together, well, Mackey had found ways not to be alone.

The first morning, his phone went off at six, all the better to start the day with some good old-fashioned PT. He hit the Dismiss key with every intention of getting up, and then fell back asleep in the little spot between the bed and the wall.

When the administrators—Dr. Cambridge included—came in to wake him up, he was fast asleep and nobody had seen him. If his phone hadn’t buzzed insistently in his hands, he could have stayed happily like that until noon.

“Wha’?” he answered, remembering to hold it to his ear.

“Mackey, where the fuck are you?”

“Trav? I’m in rehab. You walked me here, remember?”

“They’re looking all over for you!”

“I’m asleep.”

“I can hear that,” Trav replied with some humor in his voice. “
Where
are you asleep?”

“Same place I’m always asleep. Why?”

“Never mind.”

Trav hung up and Mackey went back to sleep—for a whole five minutes. This time Dr. Cambridge alone came in to get him.

“Hi, Mackey—what are you doing down there?”

“Is this a trick question?” Mackey squinted up at the top of the bed, where the nice doctor with the sweep of gray hair and the matching goatee was lying on the bed, peering over the edge.

“Nope. First of all, I think we need to apologize.”

“Wha’ for? I overslept.”

“Yes, but until your manager called us, I didn’t realize you probably weren’t up for PT anyway.”

Mackey squinted some more. “So
maybe,
” he said pointedly, “you could
let me sleep
!”

Dr. Cambridge smiled patiently. “No, Mackey, I think it’s best if we start you out in the same schedule as everybody else. The rest of the residents are out taking a morning walk—or run, if that’s their preference. How would you like to have a cup of coffee with me?”

“Caffeine is okay here?” Mackey asked guardedly, trying to make sure it wasn’t a trick question.

“Just fine,” Dr. Cambridge assured him.

“Great. Lemme take a shower, okay?”

“Fine, Mackey. Make it quick?”

“Yeah, all right.”

Mackey was a champion at the quick shower, and he soon found himself in the dining room, eating apple fritters (the ones Trav had brought him were better) and drinking coffee with Dr. Cambridge, who explained the stuff he’d been too tired and in too much pain to remember from the day before. He wiggled on the chair, grimacing, as Dr. Cambridge explained about the schedule, the therapy—both group and individual—and the trust and self-help exercises he’d be doing.

He narrowed his eyes. “Trust? And self-help? Seems to me that sort of cancels shit out, doesn’t it?”

Dr. Cambridge sighed and poured himself another cup of coffee. “No,” he said shortly. “If you can have faith in your fellow human beings, you can have faith in yourself.”

Mackey hmmed, shifted on his sore ass, and then made a sorry little sound in the back of his throat.

Dr. Cambridge eyed him sourly. “And speaking of asking for help, Mr. Ford said something about letting you have ibuprofen on doctor’s orders?”

Mackey felt pathetically grateful as the man pulled out two tablets and let him have them with his coffee. He chuckled evilly as he washed them down. “Gotta say, Doc, you’re not filling me with a lot of confidence here. Trust everybody but help yourself? No drugs but wash down your muscle relaxants with your stimulants? Telling ya, I think your theory’s a little cracked.”

“You’re very funny,” Dr. Cambridge said in a voice that indicated he didn’t think Mackey was funny at all. “With lines like that, you should do stand-up instead of music.”

Mackey grinned and pulled his sunglasses down to cover his eyes. “Where’s the fun in that?” he asked, all swagger. “Doesn’t everybody want to be a rock star?”

“Not particularly. Now I’m going to give you some time to go get gum from the little gift shop. Trust me, by the end of the day, everybody wants gum. Gum or cigarettes. Stock up.”

Mackey nodded, thinking that gum might take up some of his body’s boredom if he was going to be sitting around talking so much, and then looked hard at Dr. Cambridge. “Thanks for the advice, Doc. Now what did I say to piss you off?”

The doctor grimaced. “You pointed out what you felt to be contradictions—which is fine. But the fact that you did it? Makes me pretty sure you’re set to find reasons for the program to fail. You find reasons for something to fail, Mackey, and it’s going to live up to every bad expectation you have.”

Mackey sighed. Yeah, well, couldn’t argue with that. But he couldn’t let the doc think he was whipped either. “Man, you have no
idea
how bad my expectations are here. So far I’ve been pleasantly surprised.”

Cambridge shook his head. “I only wish
I
had been. Go get your gum. First trust exercise is at eight o’clock, down the hall and to the right. It’ll look like a big living room, with coffee, water, and snacks.”

“And flowers,” Mackey said, making Cambridge blink.

“Yes, we do have them—”

“
That
is a good thing, Doc. My mom used to say flowers made everything better. We’d bring her handfuls of them—dandelions, mustard flowers, poppies before she told us they were illegal to pick.” Mackey shrugged and stood, picking up his coffee. “I mean, we send her big bunches of them now when we get the urge, but looking around here? She’s right. The flowers are a nice thing. Make sure you keep doing that.”

He left, aware that Cambridge was staring at his retreating back and not giving a fuck why.

T
HREE
DAYS
later Mackey had about had it. This whole rehab gig was such an endless repetition of questions.
Why are you here? What different choices can you make? What are your triggers? Who have you hurt? How would you make it up to them?

Mackey didn’t feel like answering any of that shit.

And the trust exercises made him roll his eyes.

“So lemme get this straight. You want me to fall into Blake’s arms and see if he catches me?”

“Yes—you can see everyone else is doing it.”

Mackey surveyed the room with deep suspicion. So far he’d met starlets, bankers, producers, and agents. Everyone was too pretty, too made-up, too rich, and too obsessed with being pretty and made-up and rich.

The girls were falling into men’s arms and getting all happy and clapping, and the men were heartily shaking their own hands for daring to trust their bodies to women who spent more time in the gym than Mackey probably spent sleeping.

“Yeah, Doc, it’s a laugh riot, but me and Blake don’t have to do that.”

“Why not?” Dr. Cambridge asked, looking at Blake to see what he had to say.

Blake shrugged and Mackey rolled his eyes. “’Cause he’s my lead guitar, that’s why! If I couldn’t trust him to catch me, I’d never cut the band loose for a bridge! Of course he’ll catch me, watch!”

And without preliminaries, Mackey spun himself around and fell backward onto Blake, who caught him and shoved him back to his feet none to gently.