Free Beneath the Stain - Part 7 by Amy Lane

them. It was pretty damned clear the band didn’t have words of their own. That was okay. Sometimes that’s what rock’n’roll was for.
    He looked up then, conscious that he was a grown-up, and he needed to mend his fences as he busted them. “And I’m sorry, Mom, for swearing at you in your kitchen.”
    His mom grimaced. “And I’m sorry, Mackey, for picking the wrong way to parent at the wrong damned time. Go shower. I’ll let Briony set up the garage.”
    “Sure thing, Ms. Sanders—just let me talk to Mackey first.”
    Briony met him in the hallway just as he was wondering if he was really going to need some Motrin for a little bit of weed. No. No, because the hangover, the letdown, was important. He didn’t like this feeling. He should remember that.
    “How are you?” Briony asked as Mackey grabbed the handle to his door.
    For a moment Mackey let his shoulders sag. “Trav ain’t talked to me since we left,” he said, letting her see it. “I… it’s complicated. But I was tender with Grant. Sweet. I think Trav saw. I woulda told him, but….”
    “He’s not the forgiving sort,” Briony said softly.
    “I had to,” Mackey said, believing that. “God, Briony. It don’t matter what we were to each other when no one was looking. He was a boy I grew up with— the boy I grew up with. It’s….”
    Trav walked in, and suddenly Mackey couldn’t talk. He had no words. None. He walked away abruptly, heading for the shower.
    Ah, God, water was supposed to purify, wasn’t it? Help me, Jesus, wash away my sins, wash away my past, ’cause I wouldn’t trade a thing, but it wasn’t meant to last.
    He started singing, loud, louder, the rhythm of the water nothing on the rhythm inside him.
    Help me put shit into boxes, help me ship it all away, ’cause I don’t want to trade the home I built for the shelter I built yesterday.
    Oh God. God, Trav’s eyes searing into Mackey from across the hallway. Mackey didn’t know what it meant.
    Help me read the grown-up runes carved in my skin and bone. Help me keep my lover while I learn to stand alone.
    He could. He could stand alone.
    Help me make amends, oh please, ’cause it sucks to be alone.
    It’s hard to take the memories, hard to put them on a shelf
    Even harder when I’m by my fucking self.
    ’Cause I put the dishes with the clothes and
    Clothes with the magazines
    And none of the labels I got for shit
    Are really what they mean.
    And I’m working hard on frameworks
    And I’m starting to break a sweat.
    ’Cause every box that I’ve unpacked is labeled with regret.
    I’m fucking tired of regret.
    Break that fucking box, destroy what’s all inside.
    Until there’s not another regret to fucking find.
    He screamed the last part, screamed it hard, the melody conforming to the words as he sang. He wanted percussion here, and he wanted guitars, both of them, here , and he wanted them real, in his ears—
    I need the water off my body,
    Let it cleanse my fucking mind !
    He stood naked in the shower, panting, barely aware that Trav reached inside and turned off the tap. The shower curtain whisked back, and Mackey realized he was naked, literally, in body and spirit.
    Trav handed him a towel and gave him a hand out of the tub. He needed the hand; his knees were shaking.
    “What’re you doing?” Mackey muttered as Trav wrapped another towel around his shoulders and started drying him off.
    Trav closed his eyes and pressed his temple against Mackey’s. “This shit in your head, it’s here to stay,” he said softly. “Give me some time, but don’t worry. It’s not anything I can’t live with.”
    Mackey closed his eyes, felt Trav’s warmth against his face, felt his heartbeat even out a little, and some of the fight drained out of him. “That is so fucking good to know,” he said, at ease for the first time since they’d left for Grant’s that morning. “Are the guys set up?”
    “I told them to give it twenty minutes. Write the song down. I