Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  “Well, yeah,” Kell said. “But what about Cheever?”

  Blake looked outside of the limo, depressed to see they were still on the 405. “Cheever’s a hope,” he said. “This is a good plan. This is long-term.”

  Everybody but Trav made the same grunt.

  Trav was made of sterner stuff than that. “That’s a chickenshit cop-out answer if I’ve ever heard one. Pretend Cheever’s in on this, Blake. What do you think?”

  “I think it’ll give him time to pursue his art,” Blake said, apparently playing this game to the bitter end. “And then, when we go on tour, he can come with us if he has time.” And that actually felt good. “That would be nice. I’d… you know, like it if he could come.”

  Kell clapped him on the shoulder. “Hang in there, man. You’ll figure out how to hope for the future eventually.”

  But he felt like he let his brothers down. And he worried for the rest of the trip to Seattle how to fix it.

  Standing in the Shadows

  AS SOON as the car pulled away, Cheever’s shoulders drooped, his eyes burned, and his throat ached.

  God, that sucked.

  Not just seeing Blake and the guys leaving him—again. That had been hard, but he was a grown-up now, and he got it. They didn’t want to leave him. It still hurt, but it wasn’t anything he’d done.

  But watching Blake try valiantly not to close down over the last week had about killed him. For a whole two months—after dropping Katy off at her grandparents’ place and starting to pack for the tour—Cheever had seen what living with Blake Manning, whole and unfettered and happy, would be like.

  Every dream Cheever had ever had about someone who loved him, someone who respected him, someone who needed Cheever’s love and respect in return—every one of them had been fulfilled during those quiet, busy, wonderful two months.

  The only shadow had been the one that Cheever had seen in Blake’s eyes. The fact that he was going to have to leave was never far from his mind.

  And because he was Blake, and stubborn, he’d sort of convinced himself that Cheever would want to leave him while he was on tour, and Cheever, again, got it. This was the big test. If Cheever could manage to be alone for the next two months, if he could not break Blake’s heart now, Blake would believe in them.

  Cheever knew he could do that, but he hated sending Blake away thinking his world was going to disintegrate and Cheever wouldn’t be there to pick up the pieces.

  With a sigh, he turned to go into the big house, because fuck, all his stuff was here now, wasn’t it?

  And that was something else he got, but hated. The studio house had been their home. Jesus, Cheever didn’t even get to look at Blake’s fish?

  “Cheever?” Briony called as he opened the front door. “C’mere. We’re in the kitchen.”

  Cheever grimaced. He’d managed to stay out of that woman’s kitchen since that one ass-chewing in June. He’d been hoping to stay out of Briony’s hair for the rest of their lives.

  But as he walked through the house, he could smell waffles and—oh, seriously? Fried chicken. And the early morning babble had the forced cheer of adults who were teaching children how to keep going when they wanted to cry all day.

  And Cheever had to remember he wasn’t the only one who was grieving.

  “Cheever!” Katy had returned right before school, and now she jumped off her stool by the counter and ran into his arms.

  “Katy-bug!” He held her close and blew a bubble in her ear. She giggled and then deflated in his arms.

  “They’re all gone, aren’t they?”

  He looked up and saw Shelia looking exhausted and sick, cutting up chicken and waffles for little Kansas and Kayla, while Kyrie did the same thing for Kale. Briony was manning the waffle iron and the frying pan, and Marcia was on juice and wipe-down detail, looking a little sad herself.

  They were all mourning, and they’d asked him to be part of it.

  That was kind.

  “Yeah, Katy-bug. But they sure didn’t want to leave you all behind.”

  “We can go next year, right?” Katy asked, and Cheever looked up to Briony, who shrugged.

  “Baby, you guys need to see if school works for you.”

  “I like school,” she mumbled. “But who’s gonna sing me to sleep? And teach me guitar?”

  “I will,” he said, hugging her tight. “And Briony and Shelia can too.”

  “No singing!” Marcia piped up. “At least, not from me. But I can tell stories. I know, guys, it’s rough, watching the dads and the uncles go. But what, the moms are chopped liver?”

  “I don’t even know what that is!” Kyrie complained, and the tenseness in the kitchen eased up a little.

  Cheever sat Katy down and ventured near the counter carefully. “Anything I can do to help?” he asked Briony, and she gave him a watery smile.

  “Eat. Please. I cooked enough for….” She bravely fought a sniffle. “For all the guys. I wasn’t thinking when I bought everything. Which is dumb, because I was planning to make the kids’ favorite meal for breakfast when the guys left, but I… you know….”

  “Bought enough for the guys.” Ouch.

  Briony shrugged and wiped her eyes on the inside of the shirt, and Cheever couldn’t stand it.

  “Honey, here—go eat with the kids. I can turn chicken and use a waffle iron. I promise not to even open the fridge.”

  He stood up bravely and ventured back to where the stove was, and watched her very carefully cover the chicken and fork a waffle out of the iron to add to a stack of them on a plate.

  “We can freeze those,” she said, her voice thick. “Like the kind you buy in the store but, you know, gluten free and better.”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to booty bump her out of her kitchen so she could fall apart on her sisterhood.

  “Don’t forget to put cooking spray on the iron between waffles.” Her voice was getting more and more clogged, and he very gingerly put a hand on her shoulder, thinking she needed to get out of there.

  “Kell always forgets, and we have to clean it off with a chisel,” she wailed. And then she turned into his chest and cried.

  For a moment, he was baffled, hands out, because oh my God, Briony was falling apart! But he was a brother—he was Kell’s brother, and apparently this came with the territory, and he wouldn’t let his brother down.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight until her shoulders stopped shaking and she backed away, wiping her face and her nose on her Outbreak Monkey T-shirt from two albums ago, and waving at him.

  “Chicken’s burning!” she yelled, before turning and sprinting for the bedrooms.

  “Shit,” he muttered, lifting the lid to the chicken. He turned everything over for what looked like the final time. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “You’re going to have to learn the refrigerator system,” Marcia said knowingly. “Don’t worry. We’ll help you.”

  Cheever winked at her. “I was hoping you would.”

  She really had prepared enough food for an army. Cheever spent the next half hour frying chicken and cooking waffles, making sure Shelia stayed seated, drinking orange juice and eating, and… well, eating a lot of chicken.

  “Protein,” she said, swallowing. “Like, the first waffle was carbs, but now all I want is protein.” She gave a delicate burp. “And fruit. Cheever, could you throw me an apple from the fruit bowl?”

  Cheever complied, pleased when she caught it like a champ and then bit down. She shared it bite for bite with Kale, her youngest, who was the only kid not going to school.

  Oh shit. “School! Marcia, take over for a minute. I gotta call Professor Tierce. I should have left a half hour ago!”

  Fortunately, since the drive to the college was so long, that meant he was giving her an hour’s heads-up.

  He wandered into the hallway as the phone rang so he could have some privacy to leave a message. No one was more surprised than he was when she actually ans
wered.

  “Mr. Sanders?”

  “Oh, hi! Professor! I’m sorry, I…. Something with the family came up, and I can’t make it today. I just wanted to let you know. I already sent you digital files of the work I did this week, so after you see it, if you want to phone conference over it, I’d be grateful. It’s….” He bit his lip. Besides the work on the album cover, he’d been very careful not to draw too many pictures of Blake, mostly because Blake was so self-conscious. But Cheever had come downstairs three nights before, and Blake had been asleep on the couch, slouched, his feet in front of him, guitar still cradled in his arms. Vulnerable, worried—his forehead was still creased—he wasn’t classically pretty, no. But Cheever had sketched him, then used watercolors to soften the imperfections, make the strength around his jaw, his bony fingers, his lean but powerful body, beautiful.

  “It’s personal,” Cheever trailed off, feeling stupid and lovestruck and defiant.

  “It was lovely,” his professor said softly. “It’s… it’s like everything you’ve done in the last month—an amazing improvement over what you were turning in last year. Is the subject the reason?”

  Cheever grunted. “Well, duh. Anyway, he and my brothers left this morning, and usually they take the family on tour with them, but everybody’s staying so the kids can be in school. So, you know, everyone’s sort of a mess.” Cheever had done a small series of the kids, so Professor Tierce knew his family situation.

  “Well, that’s to be expected. Were you planning to come in later today? You know I have class, but the rest of my day is free. If you want to get here around lunchtime, we can go out and discuss what you’re going to do next year.”

  Cheever bit his lip. “I’d like that. Thank you.” Truth was, he needed to see what the band was going to do next year, but that was hard to explain over the phone, especially to someone who thought the whole reason he’d held a razor to his wrist was because he didn’t make it to graduate school.

  “Excellent. I’ll see you by my office at twelve thirty. I hope your family’s okay, Mr. Sanders.”

  “Thanks, Professor.”

  Cheever hit End Call, then slid the phone into his back pocket and sighed. He turned toward the kitchen just as Briony emerged, face washed, wearing a different Outbreak Monkey T-shirt—this one two sizes too big, with the neck and sleeves ripped off. It had obviously been Kell’s to start with.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, sounding very much like she hadn’t been crying her eyes out an hour before.

  “Gonna be late. Had to tell my professor I’d meet her for lunch.”

  Briony grunted. “Nice. You’re practically a grown-up.” And if Cheever hadn’t just seen her fall apart, he might have missed the little smirk that said she was kidding, just like the guys did.

  “That’s a lie,” he said, “and you need to take it back.”

  She gave a weak chuckle. “Look, come in and help me clean up while Marcia and Shelia get the kids rounded up. I can show you how the refrigerator is organized so you don’t have to run next door to get a soda or cookies for the next few months.”

  Cheever hadn’t wanted to admit it, but that had been his entire strategy. “That’s kind,” he said, relieved. “Thank you.”

  They took a few steps. “I didn’t mean to scare you so bad, that first day, you know that, right?” she said.

  “You were terrifying.” It wasn’t anything he hadn’t said to his brothers.

  “Well, yeah. But so were you.”

  He opened his mouth in shock, but nothing but a squeak came out.

  “Yeah, you. Think about it, Cheever. I knew… jack about you, except that you’d been a particularly shitty teenager. And that you’d hurt the guys—all of them—a lot. I know you didn’t mean to. But… but Kell kept inviting you to car shows, and you’d say, ‘Yeah, maybe,’ and we’d all show up and you wouldn’t. You’d text at the last moment, but… you know. It hurt. The twins would try ball games, Mackey tried everything. And then you showed up, going to live with us—hur-fuckin’-ray, right? And Blake was… was just this big oozy hole over you. And I couldn’t stop you from hurting the guys. I couldn’t stop you from hurting Blake. Honey, did you know he lost about twenty pounds at the beginning of the summer that he’s only now starting to make up now? And all I could do was make sure you didn’t hurt our kids, you know?”

  Cheever nodded, trying not to be hurt. Everything she said was true. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I… I know you know… well, sort of why I was an asshole—”

  “I do,” she acknowledged. “And we really do get it. And these last months, you’ve been great. The kids love you. But… but in that moment, all I knew was Blake was hurting because of you.”

  Cheever couldn’t even laugh. He’d been so together all morning. “And now I’m hurting because he’s gone.”

  She turned to hug him so quickly, he didn’t have time to fend her off. He didn’t cry, but that was only because he’d cried himself out three nights ago, sketching the lines of his first lover, the man who didn’t think he was loved.

  A ruckus drifted in from the front of the house, and Briony pulled away. “C’mon. Your mom’s here to take everybody to school. Let’s let Shelia off the hook before she falls asleep at the table.”

  As they were walking, Cheever remembered something. “Hey, did they ever figure out she’s pregnant?”

  Briony just laughed.

  LATER THAT afternoon, he sat in a really fancy salad place and looked doubtfully at the thing on his plate.

  “Doesn’t look like a Caesar salad?” Professor Tierce asked, prodding her own with her fork.

  “No, ma’am. Honestly, I’m just glad we had chicken and waffles for breakfast. If I catch a burger after I drop you off, I might not starve to death.”

  The professor had a great laugh, warm, round, fully committed. It made him glad she’d offered to take him on as a student to make up his grade. Getting to know her—her passion for art, her dedication to making her own art as perfect as possible—had given him some insight as to what kind of heart a true artist had.

  And it had let him know he had a long way to go before he could consider himself a success at any art at all.

  “If you’re stopping for a burger, Cheever Sanders, I had better be in the car. In fact, I’m a little miffed you didn’t bring me chicken and waffles.”

  Cheever grinned at her. “Next time Briony makes some, I’ll pack you some in Tupperware,” he promised. “Man, I have never had anything like it.”

  “Now who’s Briony again?” The professor eyed her salad like an adversary and then carved off a piece of lettuce, a crouton, and some desiccated fish all together in one bite. She put the mess in her mouth and frowned speculatively.

  “She’s my oldest brother—Kell’s—wife.”

  “And Shelia?”

  That was a little tougher. “Well, she’s Jefferson and Stevie’s, uh… wife.”

  Her eyes widened, and she swallowed and then coughed until she cried. Cheever pounded her on the back a little and let her drink both her water and his. The waitress came over, concerned, and they met gazes and nodded. “Check please,” Cheever said, without any further ado.

  They beat a hasty retreat, and she grilled him some more in the car on the way to In & Out.

  “So they all live in one house like a commune?” she asked later, as they were taking a walk around the college campus, finishing off their shakes. Cheever had to admire her—she had a round, voluptuous figure and gave zero fucks and fewer shits about downing a double-double with cheese and a large strawberry shake. He was sort of depressed that his own inhibitions had kept him from seeing what an amazing person she was, and how much she had to teach him about life, really.

  You should never settle for a crouton and a leaf of lettuce when you could have a double-double and a strawberry shake.

  “Well, they’re sort of bummed,” he told her. “Their families are getting big enough that Jefferson and Stevie’
s family needs their own house. Blake and I have been living upstairs in the house next door—the downstairs is a recording studio, but upstairs is really nice. I have my own painting suite. Or I will, when Blake gets home and I move back.”

  She chuckled. “You boys really do have stupid money, you know that, right?”

  Cheever shrugged. “I do. I… I mean, I think I could be just as happy in a little apartment, as long as he was there. I… I know when I was a kid, and all of us lived in a two-bedroom apartment, I… I was happy. Because my brothers were there with me. This is the same thing. A place to sleep and a refrigerator. But, you know.” He shrugged and looked around the college grounds. He’d never been one of the kids hanging out on the grass or playing Frisbee or hackey-sack. He’d always been too driven—to do a thing he loved but not the only thing he loved. “This was a good place to go to school. I shouldn’t take that for granted.”

  “You sound a lot more grounded,” she admitted, finishing off her milkshake with a slurp and tossing her cup in the nearest can. She held her hand out for Cheever’s, and he gave it over, and she tossed it true. “Which is good.” She paused, and made sure he was looking her in the eyes. “I really love what you’re painting, Cheever. It’s a lot more heartfelt than your other work.” Then she looked away. “And you said you’re getting commissions already—that sort of thing spreads. You’ll be making money on your work, which is not something a lot of people can claim.”

  Cheever heard it in her voice then—and a year ago, it would have broken his heart. Five months ago, it had sent him screaming to oblivion.

  Now it hurt a little; he wouldn’t lie. But he’d seen it coming too.

  “I’m not good enough,” he said sadly. “Not good enough for the graduate program. Or to… you know. Be great.”

  “You’re certainly good enough for the graduate program,” she said, smiling gently. “And there are some real opportunities there—if you want them.”

  “You think I don’t?”

  She patted his cheek. “Someday, after some more living, after being in love a little longer and seeing the downs and not just the ups—” Cheever thought of Tyson and rolled his eyes. “Or the sustained downs and not just the ups,” she corrected, “after you’ve seen more, bigger things than just where you grew up, or where you’re living now, you could very well be great. It’s just… I get the feeling you’re not done knowing who you are yet, Cheever. You fell in love, and that’s great. And it could very well be forever. It was for me and my wife. We were eighteen, living in a shitty apartment and eating ramen and leftovers from the restaurant we worked in. We knew we’d live that way forever if we could just be together, and that hasn’t changed. But she’s on her third career. And I was going to be a street artist. But it turns out, she’s great at teaching middle schoolers, and I wouldn’t trade guiding young artistic voices for anything in the world, even fame, I think. I just…. You have some of that growing up to go, Cheever. And if you can do it and keep making commissions in the music industry, I don’t know why you’d want to hang around here.”