Beneath the Stain - Part 1 Read Free Page B

he did when he was making a list of things to fix for the next set.
    “Good?” Mackey asked, because this, here, this was the one place he needed approval. The band was the one place someone else’s opinion mattered, and the one thing he could put in his pocket during the day with the shit-for-brains kids who couldn’t just read the fucking books and stay out of his face, or with Cheever, who knew he could get any of the boys in trouble just by falling on his own toys and blaming the bruise on them.
    But here, in this little circle, with his brothers looking at him, he could have something good.
    “Yeah,” Kell said, frowning as he continued with his list in his head. “Yeah, Mackey. I like that one. It’s sorta dirty, but teachers won’t be able to stop it ’cause it’s clever. Whaddayou think, Grant?”
    Grant was looking at him, hazel eyes like liquid, juicy lower lip worried by his teeth. “It was awesome,” he said, his voice throaty and quiet. “I especially liked the part about lost inside your eyes.”
    Mackey couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. He looked down at his keyboard and made some notations in his notebook about where the bridge fell apart and how they needed to clean that up. “Yeah, well, girls seem to like that shit,” he muttered. He risked a glance at Grant then and was mortified when he realized Grant knew exactly what he meant by that. Those hazel eyes were devouring him, scolding him, and needing him, and Mackey couldn’t seem to make them stop.
    “Mackey, start us over again,” Kell said. “Grant and I need to clean up the guitar parts or I’ll never get to sleep.”
    “Yeah,” Mackey said, his throat dry. “I’ll conduct this time and work on the lyrics next time we practice.”
    “You do that,” Grant said, his voice so growly Mackey might have been the only one to hear it.
    Didn’t matter.
    It was more than enough that Grant knew Mackey hurt. It was Mackey’s only weapon in the war they’d fight for the next five years.
     
     
    P ROM . H ELL , it wasn’t even Mackey’s prom—he was still a freshman. In fact, although Grant was still seventeen and Kell had just turned eighteen, they didn’t even think of it as their prom. Seniors got a ball, and since Kell couldn’t afford to go and wasn’t dating anybody, Grant had decided he wasn’t doing it either, girlfriend or no. Jeff and Stevie were juniors, but they hadn’t taken an interest in girls yet. Or, well, apart they hadn’t taken an interest in girls. So far, their entire adolescence had been spent taking an interest in the same girl, one girl at a time. They didn’t compete, either. They just both looked at the same girl longingly and consoled each other when she didn’t look back.
    The weirdest part was that nobody seemed to notice how weird it was. Mackey just accepted it for Jeff and Stevie, and that was okay, then, right?
    But the fact that nobody in the band was actually going to the prom didn’t stop everybody from getting dressed up. They assembled at the Sanders boys’ apartment a week before prom, bringing their best clothes, with the intention of making sure they didn’t look like shit when everyone else was going to be in tuxes.
    But the Sanders boys had underestimated the bond of brothers—even ones who didn’t live in a two-bedroom apartment and swap clothes until they disintegrated. Grant’s and Stevie’s parents could afford suits—Mackey had already figured that. He didn’t expect Stevie to bring Jeff a barely worn sport coat to go over his best jeans and the collared shirt he wore to church on the rare occasions their mother still made them go. It was the same cut as Stevie’s best sport coat—the illusion of their shared parenthood was even greater, but Jeff didn’t acknowledge that. He smiled shyly at his best friend and stroked the arm of the nice wool. “Thanks,” he said softly and then held his arms in front of him, pretending he was holding his guitar in the suit to