Paint It Black Read online

  “No,” Cheever said shortly, not even able to lie.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Cheever glanced up and saw nothing but honest concern on Blake’s face. “Did that really happen?” he asked, not even able to put words to it.

  “You touching Briony’s boob, or us all sitting on your brother to keep him from losing his shit about it?”

  Cheever ground his palms into his eyes, but it didn’t stop the burning.

  “The reason he got so pissed? Was it because his ass was for sale?”

  Blake sat down, giving a neutral grunt. “Your brother’s ass was never for sale,” he corrected firmly. “Naw. Right after detox, but before rehab really stuck, you know? Some asshole roofied his beer—roofied it so fuckin’ bad, he almost died. Trav got to him before he could OD, but not before the asshole could….”

  “Have sex with—”

  “Rape,” Blake substituted, again, not judgy. Just no bullshit. “Your brother was raped. He did not want it, and he was unconscious, so he couldn’t prevent it.” Blake let out a sigh. “And then he almost died.”

  Cheever was silent then, appalled, because it sort of hit him. He was going through hell, but his brother had already been there. And his brother was mad because Cheever had gone and foisted his hell on somebody else.

  How was Mackey supposed to know? How was anybody?

  And here they were in the same house, and everybody’s hell was so big, so all-encompassing. It was like there was no room for another person’s hell in his brother’s heart. His own hell was already more than he could handle.

  “I was… I was not a nice person then,” Blake said ruminatively into the silence. “I… you know. We’ve all got our own shit to sort.”

  Cheever actually looked at Blake, saw him as a person. Unassuming, in a way, although Cheever had seen the concert footage and knew Blake had it in him to be noticed.

  “What’s your shit like?” Cheever asked, suddenly so hungry to hear about someone whose hell did not begin and end in Tyson fucking Hepzibah, he couldn’t hardly stand it.

  Blake shrugged. “You know, Trav had to take a restraining order out on my mom. She kept hitting the band up for money. Threatened to tell the press about the shit I did to make rent after I bailed.” He looked around Cheever’s house then, at the sweetness with which Cheever’s mother had decorated, once she had a place of her own and money to do it. “I… I would have bought her a place too, if she’d even given me a fuckin’ minute to breathe after I signed the contract. Our old manager just kept paying her off. Trav was the one who put a lid on her and made her stop.” He took a breath then, like he was shoring something up in his chest. “I sort of live in fear, you know?”

  Cheever frowned. He couldn’t fathom being afraid of his mother. “Of what?”

  “Of her deciding it’s not enough and coming back. Trav, he likes to protect us. I’m just going to hope he keeps doing that.”

  Cheever stared blankly. “I never thought of that as a blessing.” Would Trav protect him? After last Christmas, Cheever was afraid to ask.

  Blake didn’t answer. He just looked around the house again and graced Cheever with a smile almost as sweet as Heather Sanders’s pink drapes. “You’re real lucky your mom loves you. She’d love you through just about anything. All the yelling she did at Mackey, at Kell and Jefferson—even Stevie. It wasn’t yelling ’cause she thought they were useless, or ’cause she thought they owed her something when they didn’t. She was just yelling ’cause she was worried.”

  “She doesn’t worry about me,” Cheever said glumly, and Blake’s inelegant snort made him flinch. “What?”

  “You’re her baby. The way that woman looked at you, when she realized what you’d done—she might worry about you most of all.”

  Cheever swallowed. Oh God. She did. And he’d locked himself inside his hell and never even gave her the key.

  Blake stood up then, stretched, and yawned. “God, I’m tired.”

  Cheever squinted up at him and realized that he sported a black eye and a swollen nose. In fact, all of the Outbreak Monkey guys had gotten in at asscrack in the morning, looking like they’d been hit by Satan’s hammer.

  “What in the hell happened to you all, anyway?”

  Blake yawned again and then tried to widen his eyes against it. “Lessee… we finished off an exhaustive tour and took a plane to this flea-shit town—no offense.”

  Cheever found a smile somewhere in his shame. “None taken.”

  “And then Briony was sick, so Mackey and Trav were in the hospital all night with her.”

  Cheever groaned. “I… I did not know that. I got here the afternoon after you all got back.”

  Blake nodded and wrinkled his nose. “A quiet apology might be in order. She had walking pneumonia and a sinus infection and is taking enough antibiotics to kill a horse. That girl had a rough two weeks, if you know what I mean.”

  At school, with Aubrey and the gang, Cheever would have expected that to mean sex, but the girl Cheever had violated—oh my God, he had!—had apparently been recovering from the mother of all bugs. Fuck.

  “Yeah,” Cheever rasped, wanting to die a little.

  “And then we met Grant.” Blake’s voice dropped some.

  “Yeah.” So did Cheever’s. God. So many hell universes, all under this one fucking roof.

  “And then last night we played in some dump called the Nugget, and your brother played two love songs. And the first one was okay, I guess, because it was about keeping things a secret. But the second one was for Trav, and I guess there’s no keeping that shit a secret, because that almost started a motherfuckin’ riot.”

  Cheever’s mouth dropped open. “He just… just told everybody? He was in love? With a man?”

  Blake shrugged. “No sin in loving someone.” He flashed a self-deprecating smile. “No matter what these assholes say. Anyway, there was a helluva fight, our boys held our own, and we all ended up in jail. Guy who pays our checks showed up to take a picture of Trav ’cause they’re best buds and he thought it was hysterical, and then he bailed us all out, and we got home. And then you grabbed Briony’s boob. There we go. We’re all caught up.”

  Cheever let out a laugh, because Blake was dry and sort of funny, and then it hit him.

  How he’d thought his misery was the center of the world, when really, he’d just been making the people around him even more miserable, and they had more than enough sadness to share.

  Mackey had reamed him—reamed him good—on his way out the door, and Cheever had sat there, resentful and angry, wishing he’d go fuck off.

  Wishing he’d go to hell.

  Remorse hit him. Hard. In the gut where it counted, and his next breath wasn’t even or free.

  “Hey,” Blake said softly. “Cheever, look at me.”

  Cheever met his eyes, plain and hazel, feeling foolish because he was well on his way to a full-fledged pity party, but Blake didn’t laugh.

  “I cannot count the number of ways I have fucked up as an adult. Or the number of second chances I’ve gotten, in the last two years alone. You’re a kid. You’re gonna fuck up. Did you learn anything from all the fuckin’ drama that went down here on your mama’s kitchen floor?”

  He was going to do it—be a facetious little fucker and say, “Don’t grab a girl’s boob,” but he couldn’t.

  “Don’t share your hell,” he said miserably. But Blake’s sigh let him know that was wrong too.

  “You can share your hell, little man, if that’s gonna make you feel better. But don’t foist it on someone else. If someone out there is making you feel like a piece of meat so you think what you did was okay, that’s bad. That’s not just bad for what you did, that’s bad because someone’s out there teaching you the wrong fucking lesson, and it’s hurting you as much as you hurt Briony today. So maybe share your hell, if that’s what’s going on with you. But don’t take it out on an innocent bystander. Maybe we can go with that, okay?”

>   Cheever took a breath and wiped his face on his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

  “I’m going to just leave you alone,” Blake said, sounding weary. “I hear you. Good talk, kid. Don’t grab people no more.”

  Cheever couldn’t look at him, but he nodded. “Sums it up.”

  He went to his room then, pretty much for the rest of the day. His brothers mooched about, all of them as tired as Blake had been, as ready to play video games or nap and snack as the next guy with a hangover, but Cheever didn’t want to participate.

  He didn’t feel worthy to participate.

  His mother got home and knocked on his door. “Cheever, can I come in?”

  His heart hitched in his chest because he realized he could say no.

  Oh my God. I can say no!

  And that’s when he realized he had to say yes.

  “Sure.”

  He’d been lying on his bed, staring moodily at the burgundy walls she’d painted at his direction, at the sci-fi posters hanging at the foot of his bed.

  At the window that went nowhere.

  He’d been pulled out of school for the guys’ visit. Somewhere in his mess of expectations and the stupid thing he’d done that morning, he’d forgotten that little fact.

  Aubrey didn’t have an all-access pass to his ass here.

  He was free in his mother’s home.

  “Cheever, how you doing?”

  He gave her a small smile. “Feeling dumb.”

  “You should,” she told him, and his small smile turned to a bitter laugh.

  He turned his face to the wall. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  Her weight on the bed was welcome, and her fingers through his hair…. He sighed, easing the weight on his shoulders.

  “Cheever, are you happy? At that school? With those kids—whoever they are—who let you think all that in the bathroom was okay?”

  He thought about telling her then. About Aubrey Cooper. About the visits to his room. About being a piece of meat for the taking, trading his self-respect for a chance to walk down the hall unmolested.

  Hell, about being gay.

  Thought about it.

  Didn’t.

  “No.”

  “When all this is over and your brothers go back to LA, what do you want to do?”

  He had his face turned from her, so she didn’t see the way the tears just seemed to slide from the corners of his eyes into the comforter. “Anything,” he whispered. “Anything but go back there.”

  “So you won’t,” she told him. “I’m not sure what we’ll do. Home study, maybe for the year. Maybe we’ll move to LA…. I was afraid of being there last year, but now? I’m thinking it might be a good idea. Would you like that?”

  No. Yes. He had no idea. None. He didn’t answer her, but just stared into space and let her smooth his hair back, like she had when he’d been a little kid.

  “Think about it,” she said, standing so she could kiss his temple. “We’ll make a plan.”

  She left, but he couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t make a plan. All he could do at that exact moment was lie there and cry, feeling empty and blank and uncertain.

  His brothers all had matching tattoos. They had the band. They had this friend who was going to die and bind them all together in grief.

  Cheever just lay there on his bed and wondered what defined him.

  He had his art, sort of. It was the whole reason he was going to this special magnet school, right? Because he could paint a pretty picture, draw a cartoon, use crayons like a pro.

  His brothers had their band; he had his art.

  He remembered his brothers, bringing him home penny crayons, stealing copy paper from school, anything so he’d have something to draw on besides the walls.

  He hadn’t taken an art class this semester.

  Had gotten too caught up in what Aubrey and them were taking.

  His mother—God bless her—was going to give him a do-over. Was going to give him another chance to become that other person. He’d been Cheever Sanders, nobody at his old grammar school. He’d been Mackey Sanders’s little brother—and Aubrey Cooper’s bitch—at Tyson/Hepzibah Prep.

  She was offering him a chance to go somewhere else, be someone else.

  He would be Cheever Justin Sanders, artist.

  A part of himself—the part that hadn’t stopped howling when Aubrey had first hit him, first groped him, first assaulted him—amped the howling up a notch. You think you can forget me? it said. You think you can just forget you were that sniveling piece of meat on the fucking floor letting that bastard use you?

  But that voice was drowned out now by the rush of relief.

  He’d been a little fucker that morning, trying to touch another human being like she had no feelings, no say.

  He could fix that person. He could fix himself.

  He was sure of it.

  His mom was right.

  He had a plan.

  One week before Mackey fell from the sky….

  “NO, MAN. I’m not scoring this weekend.” Cheever shrugged at Connor Gilroy gamely. He wasn’t a choirboy, no—he did some weed, some X, when he was destressing from finals. But ever since his mom had taken him away from Tyson/Hepzibah, he’d been damned conscious of that whole second-chance thing.

  He had an allowance, and he stayed within his limits, and he paid his school bills and didn’t worry his mother.

  He showed up for family gatherings, was respectful to his brothers, played with the kids, left before he could be a pain in the ass or make anybody uncomfortable.

  He didn’t make himself a bother, but just worked damned hard on his art.

  That was it.

  There was no depending on his family for too much—not attention, not affection. He’d seen it, that long-ago afternoon. Everybody had their own hell. His job was not to inflict his on anybody else, right?

  Cheever was getting good at that. Not inflicting himself on people. Staying clear of drama. Hanging with his brothers was loud and messy and people up in people’s business. Cheever watched Mackey about lose his fucking mind when Briony got pregnant the second time. The first pregnancy had been particularly difficult. Kell had been a wreck because he really did love that woman, and since she’d forgiven Cheever—or at least, she hadn’t been awful to him—Cheever didn’t blame him.

  The second one was worse, and Mackey—Mackey had been messy and high-strung and freaked-out almost as bad as Kell.

  It had boggled Cheever, caring for someone that much. He’d almost—almost—cared for Aubrey Cooper, and that betrayal had nearly destroyed him.

  Caring for a friend—just a friend, not a lover—as much as Mackey cared for Briony, or hell, as much as Kell cared for Blake Manning, that was just too… too….

  Messy.

  Painful.

  Cheever went to school, socialized with a few friends, and basically that was it. He kept things light. Skimmed the surface. Didn’t get involved.

  But he woke up in a cold sweat most nights, afraid someone was coming in through his door. Which was why he slept alone. Always.

  It was so much easier that way.

  He didn’t have to think about the last way he’d been touched, Aubrey’s hands on his skin, the stink of adolescent sweat and cologne. Didn’t have to worry that he hadn’t come out, his family didn’t know, didn’t seem to care.

  They saw him with girls a lot—maybe that was it.

  Girls liked him. He had party drugs, he didn’t try to get in their pants, he didn’t obsess about boyfriends. A party girl in his car was like family-repellent. He knew a few.

  And once his mom had gotten him here, to this place where everybody’s brother or mom or dad or sister was rich and famous, and nobody gave a shit that his brother was gay, he could just fade into the scene.

  It was awesome.

  And, like he was trying to explain to Connor right now, he just didn’t like being too deep.

&nb
sp; “Dude, no. I’m not partying. I’ve got my portfolio review in three days. I need three more pieces—and they’re not easy—or I don’t make it to the graduate program, okay?”

  Connor was a good-looking surfer boy—rich kid, red Mustang, C student at CalArts in animation. Dealing party poppers was Cheever’s equivalent of working a fast-food job in high school. He didn’t really need the money, but he liked having something to do and a way to meet people.

  “Aw, come on, Cheever! That girl—Marcy?”

  Cheever grimaced. “Marcia.”

  “Whatever. She likes you. You come to that rave in Resita tonight with some X, and she’ll give me the time of day!”

  “She’s in rehab,” Cheever said flatly. “I took her there. No more party drugs for her.” No more heroin either. God, he’d been the one to find her with a needle in her arm, knocking on her door asking for a spare toothbrush for his sculpture, for fuck’s sake.

  He hadn’t realized she’d broken up with her boyfriend, or that the habit that Cheever indulged in, maybe twice a year, had become a hands-down need for her, something she’d rather die than not have.

  Cheever didn’t really see the point of these kids doing all the fucking drugs. A little, well, who didn’t? Doing smack until your heart stopped or coke until your brain ran out your nose?

  It was like love or hate or family or other people.

  Just too damned much work.

  And Cheever had his goal. Graduation was in a month, and most of his classes were a lock—but this one in mixed media arts was the most important. He had decent grades, but this class, this class he needed an A in.

  He wanted to work in the master’s program, figuring he’d get an MA in Fine Arts, and then he could start building a collection and selling pieces, maybe even start a studio of his own.

  He liked oil paints and watercolors, but he recognized the use of computers in what he was doing. It was just that art—painting, drawing, whatever—was the one place he liked to get his hands dirty, that was all.