Beneath the Stain - Part 4 Read Online Free PDF

tasting.
    He made it to his room instead, slammed the door behind him, shoved his hand into his jeans like a teenager, and squeezed his cock just hard enough to hurt—which made him come.
    Then he sank to the floor, breath rasping in his chest, and leaned his forehead against his knees.
    Dates. That was it. They were going to date. He was going to date a kid just over half his age, and if he was lucky, that kid wouldn’t chew him up and spit him out before they actually got to make love.
    A part of him was laughing viciously, like Terry would laugh if he ever found out, but a part of him was terrified. Mackey had him enraptured, shredded, dependent on a recovering addict for all smiles, all tears, all joy.
    What would happen if Mackey couldn’t keep those promises to stay clean and sober, not to drive himself beyond exhaustion, not to yearn for Grant Adams?
    Oh, fuck it, Trav — rehab won’t fix you if Mackey breaks you. There won’t be enough of you left for Mackey Sanders to snort.
    Fuck.
    He willed himself to get up and change into a clean pair of sweats, wash his hands, and go to work at his desk. He would do this eventually, but not at first. At first he had to stay curled on the floor, seeing all of the possible ways this could go wrong and Travis Ford would never find himself again.
    For the very first time, he felt with all of his heart why Mackey had taken that first pill, that first bump, that first shot of juice.
    Because this? This promise of pain? This was one of the fucking scariest things Trav had ever felt.
    He should be as strong as Mackey.

I Wish That I Could See You Again
     
     
    I T WAS unaccountably nerve-racking, going on that first date. For one thing, Mackey did not have a clue what to wear. He finally had to ask for advice from the one person in the household who could actually dress but who wasn’t Travis Ford.
    Shelia was thrilled.
    “Something sexy,” she said, poring over the computer catalogue with him, “but not… you know. Not your concert stuff, where you look like sex on legs.”
    Mackey grinned at her. “I am sex on legs,” he crowed, but she didn’t follow him down the bantering lane, and he was disappointed.
    “Here,” she said, thoroughly engrossed in the shopping aspect. “These jeans, right here. The black ones that come right to your hips—”
    “Not the low-waisters?” Mackey had waxed again and everything.
    “I thought we weren’t doing strangers in the green room anymore,” she asked, but without judgment or even sarcasm. She was just trying to make sure.
    Mackey smiled at her, and it occurred to him that she was a sweet kid, and he liked her, but they weren’t ever going to be best friends. “No,” he replied, perfectly sincere. “No strangers in green rooms. Just a trip to the movie theater. It’s not even a premiere. Then dinner. Then a walk on the beach.” Mackey held up the Post-It Note, which, true to form, had the date, Saturday, and the time—leave the house at six—and the itinerary. “See? Schedule and everything.”
    Trav had probably been aware of the irony.
    Shelia just nodded.
    “Okay. Good. Then we know what we need. A jacket—nothing too fancy, something sort of classic…. Here. Black, like the jeans, with that white seaming so it’s trendy? Yeah, you see.”
    “And if we order this now, it’ll get here in time?” he asked.
    Shelia nodded. “It will if you pay the extra shipping. It’ll probably get here tomorrow—I think the distributor is in LA. I used to work for them.”
    Now that did surprise him. “So you worked retail before you… uhm, met the twins?”
    “Oh yeah. You probably don’t remember, but the last time you played the Coliseum in Oakland, there was a radio contest to go backstage. It was one of those festival things—you guys were in the middle, which meant you did like six or seven songs—and there were a bunch of us just eating off the cart. You disappeared, but Stevie and Jefferson came over to talk.