Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  Cheever closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun until the ache in his throat subsided. When he looked back at his teacher, he could smile with all of his heart.

  “The company,” he said gamely.

  She took his hand and raised his knuckles to her lips. “I will eat lunch with you any day, Cheever Sanders. Including next Monday, when I expect to see you in the morning to work with you some more. But do think about whether the graduate program here is really what you want. If you choose to put it off for a year or three, I will leave the recommendation in your transcript. You can get into our program anytime you want.”

  He bit his lip. “That’s generous, Professor. Thank you. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “See that you do.”

  But as they resumed their walk back to her office, where he dropped her off with a little bow—and a surprise hug from her—he knew what he was really thinking about.

  He was thinking about him and Blake, taking a three-month hiatus from the family and the band and living in a little apartment in France. He was thinking about a month with the family and the band, playing in the surf in Hawaii. He was thinking about being a part of the tour next time, visiting cities, seeing historic sites, seeing museums. Or listening to bands and drawing concept art that made people think about music.

  Maybe helping Briony with her lighting concepts, since he had a different background and could give her some suggestions she’d never thought of before.

  Or even, whispered a voice he’d never listened to before, making music too.

  He was thinking that his professor was right—and so was his mother, way back when he’d been in the mental health facility, pale and fragile and sad.

  He was at a crossroads. And where he’d seen his path, all by himself, taking the road his family would never follow, that wasn’t where his heart lay at all. He wanted to be on the bus with them. He wanted to be in their lives. He’d had chicken and waffles for breakfast that morning, and had wiped his niece’s nose and hands and chin for fifteen minutes before she’d run out the door to get into his mother’s car for school.

  In a thousand years, he never would have thought of that as a magical, life-shattering event, and he knew logically that it wasn’t.

  But it was a part of his world now. And he didn’t want to leave it to take that path by himself into the sunset.

  It was a fucking lonely road, and he was getting used to the company.

  BLAKE CALLED him at around eight o’clock, as he was sitting in front of the TV with Kansas on his lap, because Kell’s son missed his father mightily, and Cheever was apparently a good substitute.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “You guys in?”

  “Yeah. We’re all eating in Mackey and Trav’s room. We took a twenty-minute break to go call everyone, so expect—”

  Katy’s pocket buzzed at that moment, and Briony and Shelia both called out across the house from their own rooms.

  “Guys! Dad’s on the phone!”

  Kansas hopped off his lap so quick, he left an elbow print in Cheever’s ribs. Cheever grabbed the remote and put the TV on pause.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Cheever gasped, and Blake’s tired chuckle on the other end of the phone told him everything he needed to know about timing.

  “Sorry. I was trying to be first so you didn’t get trampled.”

  Cheever warmed just hearing his voice. “It was a good thought. You guys all set?”

  “Yeah. We’re at this venue for three days, so we run a sound check tomorrow, and then it’s all tour buses to Tacoma, and then Salt Lake City.”

  “And then Laramie and then Portland,” Cheever repeated dutifully. “It’s tattooed on the back of my eyelids.”

  “Ugh. That’s funny—we always forget where the fuck we are. We get up in the morning and we’re like, ‘God, coffee? Where the fuck do you get coffee in…? Where the fuck are we anyway?’”

  Cheever cracked up. “See—you need me on tour with you. I can help with that.”

  “I bet you could. Oh! Speaking of tours!” Blake outlined the new tour schedule, and Cheever listened happily.

  “So next year, you guys stay here and work on other projects?”

  “Yup. And the year after that, we work up a new album and go on tour. It’ll be good, you know? You can paint and put together an exhibit or a show or whatever, and Kell and I can go find more artists and be home at night for the kids. It’ll be… you know. Domestic.” His voice dropped while Cheever was looking for words to adequately express his elation. “Or boring, I guess—”

  “Shut up,” Cheever said thickly. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth, okay? But this—oh my God, Blake. We can do so much here. We can do a world tour or…. Jesus. We can go to France. Just you and me. Or anywhere, with everybody. We can take my mom on a vacation. Do you know how often she doesn’t go on vacation because nobody’s there to go with her? No, man. This is amazing. How do the other guys feel?”

  From the other room, Cheever could hear excited voices and cheering. Apparently, the wives and children thought it was a pretty damned good deal.

  “They almost cried. Kell offered to have Trav’s babies.”

  Cheever cracked up. “That was sweet of him, but probably unnecessary.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Mackey said.”

  Cheever’s smile went all the way to his toes. “Blake, there are so many good things coming. I’m so excited.”

  “Good.” Blake’s voice sounded so tender. “I’d do anything to make you happy, baby boy.”

  Cheever’s eyes burned. “You know my professor told me she’d recommend me to the graduate program for next year, but….” He chewed on his lower lip. “She said maybe I’d want to go out and live a little first. You and me, we can do some living, right?”

  “I really do want to,” Blake rasped. “I’d… I’d do almost anything to be able to have that future, Cheever. You’ve got to know that.”

  “Good.”

  Cheever already knew that life was never as easy as planned, though. That conversation would haunt him in the weeks to come.

  THE FIRST week crawled by. It was busy, yes, but there was no denying it—the biggest bright spot for the entire family was the mass phone call that came around eight o’clock, and comparing notes afterward. Katy would come in and talk about how Mackey wrote her a song about clouds and sang it over the phone, and Briony would tell Cheever privately that Mackey had been flat on his back for the trip and stuck looking out the window and bitching incessantly about how the sun hurt his eyes. Shelia would come in and add that Stevie and Jefferson used the sandbag after the show and Stevie sprained his wrist, and Cheever got to tell them all that Blake and Trav had to talk Mackey into taking a pain pill before his brothers strangled him in his sleep.

  Funny how they had to look through six lenses to get an accurate picture, right?

  At the beginning of the third week, Cheever got a phone call when he was in the studio house, practicing the guitar.

  Since his conversation with Professor Tierce, he’d been driven to music, more and more. He’d penned a couple of songs, neither of which were nearly as raw and as good as the one he’d written for Blake. But he kept trying.

  He’d heard the guys working up a couple of songs for the album—not even sure which album—and looking at him with furtive eyes. He knew Blake had written songs that nobody wanted Cheever to hear, and knew there were bloody, aching tears in Blake’s heart still. But he also knew they were things that would heal with time. He’d pirated those songs, took pictures of the sheet music when the guys were breaking for lunch.

  He was practicing them now.

  Cheever was finding that he could say as much with music as he could with painting and sketching, and alone in the house that still held echoes of Blake’s voice, he could learn the vocabulary his brothers had picked up on when they were kids.

  He’d started singing the children to sleep as part of their nightly ritual since th
eir daddies were gone, and including bits of nonsense from his own head. The kids—these kids—accepted that as normal, that someone would just sing random bits of rhyme in a tune pulled from the air.

  Cheever felt like he could fall, in his own time, into the world of Outbreak Monkey, learn to swim in it, learn to dance.

  And he felt so much closer to Blake in that room, with the guitar on his lap. It was almost like Blake was there, somewhere else in the house, and Cheever wouldn’t be going back next door to sleep alone.

  The phone buzzing in his pocket was a surprise.

  “Blake?”

  “Yeah—wanted to give you a heads-up. There was a blog interview. Your name came up. They’ll be calling you for a quote. Trav gave ’em permission.” Blake’s voice changed pitch. “I’m telling him right now! No, he hasn’t seen it yet!”

  “Which blog?” Cheever knew the major ones, and he was pretty impressed. “Okay, so, just me or the whole family?”

  “They’ll be calling Briony. She usually speaks for everyone. But you’re getting special treatment ’cause you’re a Sanders. Just, you know, tell ’em what you’re comfortable with, okay?”

  “Yeah. What was the—”

  “Shit. I gotta go, Cheever. They need some headshots. Gross. Anyway, talk more tonight!”

  Cheever stared at the phone and then set down the guitar.

  Shit.

  Briony was unimpressed. “Yeah, I got a shit-ton of these when Kell and I got married. Suddenly everyone was going, ‘Wait, your light board person was a girl?’ and Kell was like, ‘Derp. And she’s pretty too. We done?’ Anyway, there’s gonna be speculation because everybody’s pregnant—”

  Cheever stared at her, and Briony grimaced.

  “Everyone?”

  Briony pulled fitfully at the long strawberry-blond braid that went to her ass. “Yeah. Everyone. Figure I’m about a month along. Kell wasn’t gonna—said something about adopting, which was superfuckin’ dumb because I obviously don’t mind growing my own—but, you know.” She smiled cheekily. “Wiles. I got ’em. Anyway, that shit’s gonna come up. Especially since they’re changing their tour schedule and only doing big venues mostly. Just, you know. Be honest.” She paused and bit her lip. “And, you know, don’t tell them anything Blake doesn’t know already.”

  Cheever nodded. “Believe it or not, I picked that up already. I’m not fourteen anymore.”

  She sighed and leaned over the counter. “I know you’re not. But… look, it’s different. I’ve seen my name in those blogs, and I’ve seen the gossip. You know how Blake and Kell scout talent? They found this beautiful little pixie singer, Gracie King—”

  “I know her. She’s awesome. They found her?”

  “Yup, playing in a shitty dive in Sacramento. Anyway, they got Heath to sign her, set her up on her way. Then, two weeks later, Kell was doing backup for her down in LA as sort of a, I don’t know, ‘welcome to the party’ thing, and suddenly the blogs are plastered with photos of the two of them hugging it out backstage. I know what it was—I know my husband—but I’m getting five calls a day asking me if I’m okay with him stepping out on me. I was pregnant with Kansas at the time and as big as a fucking house. Then some papa-rats-i sneaks past the gate here, and there’s me, big as a Volkswagen, swimming in the pool so my feet don’t swell, and I’m asked for a quote as to whether or not Kell left me because I’d put on two hundred pounds.”

  Cheever groaned.

  “It was thirty-fuckin-five pounds. I told them my husband would rather rip out the reporter’s spleen and eat it than cheat on me.”

  Cheever chuckled, and Shelia, who had just settled Kale down to sleep and wandered in as Briony was going off, added, “And Mackey grabbed the phone and said he hoped the reporter died of syphilis with a chainsaw up his ass.”

  Briony nodded. “Yeah. Good times. Anyway, none of that made it into the blog, but they did print a retraction of the ‘Kell cheating on me’ story, which is the only reason Trav gives them the time of day. But what I’m saying here still stands.”

  “Be careful,” Cheever said. “Stick to the facts. Don’t exaggerate. But don’t be hostile unless it’s called for.”

  Both women nodded. “Exactly. If we give them a little bit of play, they give us a little respect. It’s a good system. Also, if you need it, have someone on your side who will arrest the guy who trespassed to get pictures of you without your permission. I hope the fucker had a roommate the size of a tank, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Trav don’t play,” Cheever said, remembering the way Mackey’s husband’s muscles had strained as he tried not to pound Aubrey Cooper into the ground.

  “No, he does not.” Briony poured herself a giant glass of orange juice and pulled out a soda for Cheever. “Here. We gave you a little shelf on the side for sodas and milk. Also, there’s a cupboard overhead for you, since you’re tall. You see it?”

  Labeled like everything else. “I appreciate it.”

  His phone buzzed with a push notice, and he checked it. “Hey, guys, wanna see the interview?”

  “Damned straight!”

  Briony and Shelia gathered at his shoulders, and Marcia came in from where she’d been straightening the kids’ rooms to look over the counter.

  The interview had been done in a lobby or a lounge or something—not too much background noise, all the guys on a couch, with Mackey sitting on the arm of it next to Kell, and Blake between Kell and Stevie.

  They sat like guys who’d been together for nine years, like guys who’d been family for nine years. Close and not worried about who was touching who.

  The reporter spent some time with Mackey, asking about his health, and he’d grimaced and confessed to hating pain like poison. The band chimed in and talked about his stretches and how they helped him each morning and night.

  Then came the band’s personal lives—and Cheever could see the difference there, between how they talked among themselves and how they had learned to talk to the press.

  “So, guys, I understand you’re all devoted family men. Mackey, you and Trav take care of your former bandmate’s daughter when you’re home, is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Mackey said dutifully. “Katy’s in our custody legally, but her mother is fully in her life. We just….” He looked at Trav, who nodded. “Her father died and wanted her with us as much as possible. We’d never planned on kids, but she’s proof that shit can change.”

  “What about the rest of you guys? Kids still front and center?”

  “We had to leave ’em behind for this leg of the tour,” Kell said. “Everybody was starting school, and it just wasn’t okay to take them out.” He looked at his bandmates. “We all had a sucktastic school experience. It would be great if the kids had a better one.”

  “So, how many kids total?” The reporter was a young man, a tad scruffy, wearing a shearling coat in deference to the weather in—where was it? Laramie? But overall, a good-natured sort of guy.

  “Changing every day,” Jefferson grunted, and Stevie snorted.

  “Changing in five months, anyway.”

  “Eight months for me,” Kell muttered. He looked over his shoulder. “Nobody seems surprised.”

  “Women talk,” Stevie said briefly.

  “What about you, Blake. You jumping on the baby bus anytime soon?”

  And Cheever could see it happen. He saw Blake open his mouth to say something noncommittal, and then everybody met eyes, and Mackey jumped on the grenade.

  “Not if he keeps sleeping with our little brother.”

  Blake’s mouth fell open, and Mackey met his glare head-on.

  “Makes babies a different proposition,” Blake admitted after an electric breath. “We might just be uncles for a while.”

  Mackey nodded like something had been decided, and the reporter let out a startled gasp.

  “Everybody’s fine with that?”

  “Cheever’s grown,” Kell said. “All we asked is that they treat ea
ch other decent. So far, so good.”

  Color had flooded Blake’s face, and Cheever knew—knew—he was thinking about the last time they’d made love. Blake had straddled Cheever, at Cheever’s request, and had ridden him, panting and shouting, chasing his orgasm like a shooting star.

  “Real good,” Blake said weakly, and the band chuckled a little, like they hadn’t seen the hard emotional work that went into their relationship, like every one of them hadn’t worried about Blake and Cheever’s well-being.

  And that was the difference between real life and the press. One vaguely off-color joke and the press was satisfied.

  In real life, Cheever was suddenly missing Blake in the pit of his stomach.

  The video ended and everybody sighed.

  “Fair enough,” Briony murmured. Her phone went off, and she pulled it from her pocket and sighed. “Yup. Okay, guys, I’m first. Let’s get this over with.”

  The girls each took about five minutes, but Cheever wasn’t getting off the hook that easy.

  After the reporter introduced himself, he started questions that got less and less comfortable.