Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  Yup. Totally naked.

  Blake couldn’t look at him. “So, uh, any requests before I turn on the TV and we watch movies?”

  “‘Coffee Shop,’” they both said in tandem, and Blake stared at them.

  “That wasn’t even a B side.” It had been his favorite song on the whole album. Mackey had insisted he include it because Mackey and Kell loved it too. But Heath, their producer, had told them it wouldn’t get played, and while disappointed, Blake had just been so happy everybody had let him produce his little solo album in spite of how little it would probably sell.

  “It’s my favorite,” Marcia said, hugging her Hello Kitty even closer. “It’s… it’s fun and it’s sad and it’s every dumb breakup ever. You should write more songs like that for Outbreak Monkey. Will Mackey let you?”

  Mackey had, in fact, encouraged him. He’d put his backing behind Blake’s solo effort had offered help when Blake had asked—and had told him, repeatedly, that he was proud. It was Blake’s embarrassment, really, that had put an end to his songwriting. The album had a modest success, but nothing compared to Outbreak Monkey, and Blake had felt… inadequate. As though he’d let his brothers down.

  “Yeah,” he said, his mouth twisting as he found the beat on the guitar. “He likes my stuff.”

  “Then why haven’t you written any more?” Cheever asked, and Blake grunted.

  “’Cause your brother’s too generous with his time, and I don’t need more of it than I already take,” he said, winking in case that sounded harsh. He launched into the song then, letting the quirkiness of the breakup in the coffee shop make the two sad young people smile. Marcia started chiming in first, and then Cheever, and they had a rousing chorus by the time Blake strummed the final chords.

  The song faded, and Blake stood and set the guitar aside, then moved to take Cheever’s half-eaten tray of food away from his bed and set it with his own by the door.

  “They should be by in an hour or so,” Blake said with a yawn. “Will you need to use the bathroom before then?”

  “Maybe,” Cheever conceded. “I’d like to brush my teeth before I go to bed.” He pulled fitfully at the handcuff.

  “Aw, Cheever, again?” Marcia commiserated. “What’s it going to take?”

  “I don’t know,” Cheever said, meeting Blake’s eyes bleakly. “What’s it going to take?”

  “Honesty,” Blake responded. “I’ve poured my heart out to you, boy. You need to return the favor to the doc.”

  Cheever sighed. “That’s fair. Here—you call for an orderly, Marcia, you pick a movie, and we can settle down for the night.” Yeah. “Baby boys” gave orders like that all the time. The kid had Mackey’s organization and leadership when he was chained to a bed. Terrifying.

  When the orderly got there to supervise his bathroom time, Marcia curled up on her side and looked at Blake from across the room.

  “Is he gonna make it?” she asked, and Blake saw her own struggles written plainly on her face. He’d been helping his brothers raise their children for years now. It was a role that suited him, because apparently when not coked up or pissed off, he tended to be quiet and kind and shy. He knew when you gave a child hope instead of pure truth. Sometimes hope kept the dark at bay, when truth—even “I don’t really know,” sort of truth, would let it come surging in.

  “We all are,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Even you, darlin’. Don’t think I can’t see you hurting tonight.”

  She sniffled. “I really loved the concert. Wish you could stay the night every night.”

  Blake came to her bedside and kissed her temple, remembering how badly he’d wanted someone to do that for him. “Well, if I did that, you’d be dependent on me. Don’t worry—you’re strong enough to rely on yourself. You just need some training up.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Manning. How about a rom-com tonight? God, something funny, yeah?”

  “Oh my God, yes!”

  Marcia laughed a little, and Blake settled into their little family routine with a sigh.

  Cheever wasn’t out of the woods, but Doc was letting Blake help him out, and for this night, things might be okay.

  BLAKE SLEPT near the foot of Cheever’s bed again, this time in the chair he’d dragged to the side of it because Cheever wanted to hold Blake’s hand as he slept.

  He’d asked for that, with words, and Blake hadn’t missed the knowing look from Marcia as he’d settled down to what looked to be a truly uncomfortable night.

  “I saw that,” Cheever murmured, after the orderly came to turn out the lights.

  “What?”

  “You rolled your eyes, like this doesn’t mean anything.”

  Blake let out a breath. “It means you have people in your life that care,” he said, laying his head down on the side of the bed.

  “That can’t be comfortable,” Cheever told him. And then he pushed Blake’s hair back from his eyes.

  “It’s not. Doc’s gonna make me go home tomorrow.”

  “Then I’ll just have to live,” Cheever said, surprising him.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I want to see you sleep sometime when you’re comfortable and everybody’s safe and you don’t have this.” Cheever used his forefinger to smooth the line between Blake’s eyebrows, and a relief so acute it was almost painful flooded Blake, from his tightened face to the back of his shoulders.

  “You should jump on tour with us sometime,” Blake told him, melting a little. God, he hadn’t even been aware of how tense he’d been. “Feels like all we do is sleep on the bus.”

  “I used to be jealous,” Cheever said softly. “I think I still am. You guys, all together.”

  “Driving each other batshit,” Blake laughed, remembering how Trav had made the bus stop in the middle of Bakersfield one year so he could break out the boxing gloves and let all the guys take swings at each other with padding and some rules. Otherwise, he’d said, they were going to snipe each other to death—if Trav didn’t kill them all first.

  “Y’all fight?” Cheever was drowsy enough to drop the rich kid voice, and as hard as Blake worked to drop his own trailer-park twang, he found that when Cheever used it, the effect was… charming.

  “Lots,” Blake told him. “We started carrying around boxing equipment so we could go after each other in the ring when shit got too real.”

  Cheever frowned, his eyes closed. “That’s sort of… you know. Caveman.”

  “Yeah, that’s ’cause you didn’t see Briony and Shelia go after each other when Briony made Shelia’s kids start washing their hands before dinner.”

  Cheever’s eyes popped open. “They did not!”

  “Sure they did. And we told your mother all about it last Christmas.” Blake felt that line come back between his eyes.

  “After I left,” Cheever said sadly.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish I could be like you. Like a brother.”

  “So do they,” Blake told him. He reached out with his own finger and smoothed the lines between Cheever’s eyebrows. Seeing that full mouth turn up at the corners was enough to make Blake smile in return. “That’s something worth living for.”

  “So’s watching you sleep.”

  Blake was so tired. “Nothing to see here,” he said, closing his own eyes with a yawn. “Trailer park boy who got incredibly lucky, that’s all.”

  “Got out of the trailer park,” Cheever mumbled, obviously close to sleep himself. “You got out of the trailer park. I can get out of that room.”

  “Good,” Blake said back, almost done. He didn’t realize how much he was hoping for that to be real, though, until he felt Cheever’s thumb, wiping across the bridge of his nose, taking away the moisture he was prepared to deny existed until the day he died.

  Emotional Rescue

  “YOU READY?” Marcia asked, and Cheever checked his appearance in the bathroom mirror one more time.

  “No.”

  “Tough. We both look like crap. I’ve got
judgy parents to talk to. You’ve got your mother, who is trying not to lose her shit.”

  “And Blake.” Because that was what had gotten Cheever through, this far. It had been four days since Doc Cambridge had allowed Blake to sleep in their room—four days marked by Marcia waking him up once a night with a soft, “Cheever, you’re dreaming again,” when he was well aware he’d been screaming—at least inside his head.

  “That’ll be nice,” Marcia admitted sweetly. “I mean, he comes every day as it is, but only for a little while. This will be like my parents are meeting him.”

  Cheever gave her a guarded look. “Like a boyfriend?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, Cheever—I wouldn’t do that to you. I just mean….” She had such a tiny smile, the kind that made her cheeks and chin point. “He told me I could come stay with you when this was over. Live in a big house with too many people, all up in my business. Kids. Like, five of them, he said. Do you know I like kids? I have two cousins that we see, like, twice a year, and they’re the best part of Thanksgiving and Easter. I can spend my summer vacation playing with kids, and Blake will be a part of that. It’s….” She looked away shyly. “It’s such a lovely dream. So much better than heroin. Just so… so noisy and crowded and awesome. My whole life, I’ve felt like I’ve been screaming in an empty room. Anyway. You know. He’s part of that. I want them to see.”

  Cheever was not a hugger. His mother always hugged him when she saw him, and he spent a lot of time wishing he could crawl out of his skin before she absorbed something from him he didn’t want her to see. But right now, Marcia was so hopeful—not overboard hopeful, like this dream could topple on her head and crush her, but tentatively hopeful, like maybe, even if some stuff wasn’t awesome, it would still be a decent dream.

  He turned to her awkwardly and gave her an impulsive hug, which she returned.

  “What?” she asked when he pulled up in a hurry. “I did that wrong?”

  He shook his head, embarrassed. “I’m so bad at it!”

  “I know! Me too! My whole life, I’ve been embarrassed that somebody would hug me in case I screwed it up, but….” She bit her lip. “We should do it more often,” she said. “So we get better. You’re a good friend—you saved my life. I should be able to hug you.”

  “You saved my life too,” he said, and he thought about Blake, and hugging Blake—maybe even today. “And I think you’re right. We should practice on each other. So we can do this right.”

  They both caught each other’s eyes nervously. Cheever had made some progress. He’d admitted to the doc that he’d been bullied, had even used that same word to Blake. But they’d both looked sad when he said it, like they were very aware of the word he was hiding behind the easy one. He wasn’t planning ways to hurt himself anymore—but he wasn’t finding out who he was outside of that miserable fucking room either.

  So, some progress. But today they had to visit their parents, and some progress wasn’t cured. It wasn’t a promise. It was just a start, and that didn’t always feel good enough.

  He swallowed. “I have to tell my mother what I did,” he said, because that had been looming over his head since he’d woken up in the hospital, feeling like shit and looking at the stitches on the inside of his wrist, like somebody else had held the razor.

  “Use the word,” Marcia said. He’d noticed she’d gotten pushy here—maybe because people were always pushing their way into Marcia and Cheever’s business, she was picking up some skills.

  “Suicidal,” he said, surprised that it just popped out. “I was suicidal.”

  She nodded, pressing her lips together. “I’m a recovering drug addict.”

  Okay. They were doing this.

  Without knowing he was going to do it, he fumbled for her hand.

  “Let’s get it done.”

  MARCIA’S PARENTS were… reserved. Her mother—a blonde woman in a white suit, even on a Saturday, looked like a stiff wind would shatter her makeup and break her hair in half. Her father, a stocky man with Marcia’s almond-shaped eyes and slight build, said very little as her mother made brittle conversation.

  Cheever’s mother was quite a contrast.

  Heather Sanders had spent twenty-three years of her life working her ass off so her kids could have food, clothes, and a place to sleep.

  The minute Outbreak Monkey made it big, Cheever’s brothers had bought her a house and clothes and a big shiny SUV.

  The first thing Heather had done was open a tiny hair salon in the basement of her new home so she could still see her old clients.

  After moving to LA—into a modest house by the beach so Cheever could go to a high school in which surfing was part of the curriculum—she’d done exactly the same thing. She didn’t work a lot, maybe two days a week, but she liked to keep busy. And once her sons started giving her grandbabies, she was in her glory. Spoiling her grandchildren was her favorite thing to do.

  Cheever couldn’t count the number of times she’d looked at him wistfully and told him her one regret was the time she didn’t get to spend with her boys when they were growing up.

  In high school, Cheever had been mortified, but as he’d grown up—and seen the sort of benign neglect his peers had grown up with—he’d made an amazing discovery. His mother wasn’t embarrassing. His mother was awesome. But by then, he’d devoted so much of his time to convincing himself he didn’t need her as a mother, or as a friend, or as anybody substantial in his life, that he didn’t know how to let her back in again.

  Today, as he and Marcia made it into the tastefully decorated dining room—it had carpet and heavy wooden furniture and flowers at the tables, live ones—he saw his mom sitting in her spot, demure and nervous, and realized that maybe she was fifty, but she was also beautiful and vulnerable and about the most amazing woman he could possibly imagine in his life.

  And she was worried about him. He owed her better.

  She saw him, and her face—a little vulpine fox’s face, like Cheever’s and Mackey’s—lit up, and she rushed across the dining room and into his arms.

  For once, he couldn’t let her down.

  He opened his arms wide and hefted her up in the air, because he was five ten to her five-foot-nothing, and she gave a little squeal and held tighter.

  “Oh, baby,” she whispered, “why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me you hurt so bad?”

  He closed his eyes and held her closer. “I didn’t have words, Mama. I’m so sorry. I didn’t have words.”

  No pretenses, not here, with his mother. He’d tried to commit suicide. Whether it was suicide by coke or suicide with a razor, that had been him. He’d done that. He’d scared her, made her cry, made Blake—oh God, Blake had aged in the past week—made Blake exhausted and sad.

  I need to tell Doc Cambridge that. I need to tell him I didn’t know I mattered.

  He had to put her down, sooner rather than later. People thought that losing blood was just a matter of getting it replaced, but he’d felt like an old man all week. Besides the antidepressants making him sleep, the thing he’d done to his body had been brutal and damaging.

  It had never felt so brutal as it did when he stumbled a little and set down his mother.

  Blake was at his elbow to catch him. “Oopsy daisy.” Such a child’s term from this grown man. Cheever’s heart warmed a little, and he allowed Blake to escort him to their table before turning.

  “Wait.” He turned while Blake still had his elbow. “I didn’t get my hug from you.”

  Blake stuttered, staring at him. “Uh—”

  But Cheever had broken the ice with his mother and with Marcia; he could be brave now. He wanted to feel Blake’s body up against his own, wanted to see what someone warm and kind felt like, on his terms.

  He didn’t hug hard, like a child. He rested his head on Blake’s shoulder and clasped his hands loosely around his waist.

  And waited.

  Blake’s arms rose up uncertainly around his sho
ulders, and then Cheever melted into him, firmly. Blake hugged Cheever’s brothers all the time. Cheever had seen him hug the children—even Cheever’s mom.

  But this—this was special.

  Blake leaned his cheek on the top of Cheever’s head and the two of them eased into each other’s space.

  Ah!

  Cheever felt safe. He couldn’t remember feeling this safe since he was thirteen years old, and Blake pulled him tighter, and Cheever’s entire body fluttered, like his libido was batting its eyelashes and saying, “Oh, yeah! I live here!”

  Blake shuddered hard, and Cheever felt his lips rub Cheever’s temple for a blissful moment, and then it was time to let go.

  Blake settled down into one of the chairs at the table, and Cheever settled next to him and scooted the chair closer, carefully not looking at his mother’s raised eyebrows.

  “How you doing, Cheever?” Mom was leaning on her arms and not smiling. “I… I gotta admit, you had us all fooled. Mackey fell off that amp, and we were thinking, ‘Yeah, well, Mackey would do that.’ But you—you caught us by surprise.”

  Cheever cast an unhappy look at Blake, and Blake gave a sympathetic shrug. He’d tried to warn Cheever, but nothing could prepare you for telling your mother the truth after lying for eight years, could it?

  “I…. Mama, remember when you asked me if I wanted to go back to that school?” He’d taken his step out. He had. And he didn’t have a superclear vision of who he was out of that room, but he knew part of it involved being honest with his family.

  “Yeah, honey.” She took one of his hands in hers. “I remember. You were… so unhappy. Acting out with Briony. Saying things, doing things—we were worried.”

  Cheever nodded. “Well—wait. Did anybody tell you I’m gay?” He honestly couldn’t remember, but his mother’s eyebrows didn’t even flex.

  “No, sweetheart, but just like Mackey, nobody had to tell me. I was just waiting for you to get around to it yourself.”