Off Stage

by Jaime Samms

  14

  LEN DIDN’T expect the emotional supernova that came when he finally entered the guest bedroom down the hall from Vance’s and began to unpack his belongings. He’d been living out of the boxes his clothes had arrived in, emptying them as he wore the stuff into the dresser next to Vance’s things. It had been such a gradual process, he hadn’t thought much about it.

  Now, confronted with the piles of boxes that had been packed up and sent from the apartment he’d shared with Damian in Toronto, he was overwhelmed by the enormity all over again. That part of his life was over. The days of the new and exciting foray into the world of rock and roll were behind him. He’d been there, done it, and had the scars to show for it.

  “I can’t do this,” he muttered.

  Behind him, a familiar voice piped up. “Got no choice, do ya, buddy?” Kilmer slapped him on the shoulder and squeezed through the door past him. “Ya put it off long enough there’s no more choice. Vance is already pissed there’s no time to repaint, so you’d best at least get your crap outta here. Let’s start with basics. I think we can skip the kitchen boxes for now. The guy might not know a sieve from an espresso machine, but Vance does have a cook with high-end needs. That kitchen has to be well-stocked.”

  “Yeah,” Len replied, staring at the stacks of boxes and totes. “What are you doing here? Aren’t there horses to look after?”

  Kilmer grinned. “Patrick’s got ’em under control, and the rest of the staff are wranglin’ the boarders and their crazy humans. I’m free for the afternoon.”

  “Vance put you up to this.”

  Kilmer grunted.

  “Did he think I wasn’t going to do it without supervision?”

  “There have to be fifty boxes in here, Len. He thought you wouldn’t be able to do it all yourself. He’s supervisin’ the final touches on the cottage, but he’ll be up when he figures that’s under control.”

  “He should just let the professionals he hired do their job.”

  “What the hell has got you so fired up?” Kilmer turned a few boxes to read their labels. “This mornin’, you were practically walkin’ on air. I assumed you finally got laid.”

  Len almost swallowed his tongue but he glared at Kilmer. “You can leave my sex life out of this, please and thanks.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kilmer grinned and set aside another box marked “kitchen.” “Didn’t Damian take anythin’ from your old place? It looks like you have enough here to outfit the whole damn place.”

  Len stared at the jumble of boxes again. He’d been thinking the same thing, and he supposed that was part of what had ruined his mood. Obviously, Trevor had wanted nothing of their life together and had everything they’d shared in that apartment shipped to Len.

  “I guess,” he mumbled, kicking at a box of books. What the hell was he going to do with books? “These can go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Away.”

  Kilmer popped open the box and pawed through it. “There are some good ones in here. You read any of them? Maybe you want to read them agai—”

  “I don’t read.” Len jerked the box out of his reach and snatched the paperbacks from Kilmer’s hand. “They’re Damian’s, and he can flaming well keep them. If he doesn’t want them, then they can be recycled.” He threw the novels into the box, picked it up, and brought it to the top of the stairs. He threw the whole thing down and went back to the spare room for another box. That one too he threw down the stairs. The clatter of VHS tapes spilling out and crunching was satisfying, and he raced back for another.

  Kilmer stood in the doorway, blocking his entrance. “Calm down.”

  “Get out of here,” Len snarled, trying to slip past.

  “Len.” Kilmer took him by both arms and planted him firmly outside the room. “Stop it.”

  “Let me go!” Adrenaline gave Len the strength to throw off Kilmer’s grip, and he took a swing, but it was wild and weak with anger. Kilmer caught his hand easily and forced it down.

  “Seriously, dude? Calm the hell down.”

  “You don’t need to be here,” Len growled, seething at the restraint and the blockade to venting his anger on Damian’s shit. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone like this. Think again.”

  “Get the hell away from me! I don’t need your help!” Len shoved him, and Kilmer stumbled back, tripping and planting a foot heavily on the solid cover of Len’s guitar case. The wood creaked and splintered under his weight.

  “Jesus!” Kilmer danced to one side, and Len surged forward, grabbing up the broken case, guitar still inside, and threw it with all his might against the wall on the landing below. The corner of the case went through the drywall and the hinges gave. The guitar sprang out and bounced, body over snapping neck, down the second flight of steps.

  They stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at the wreckage. All Len could see of his Gibson was a tuning peg and a pick-up lying amid the books and shattered plastic tape covers.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  “Len?” Kilmer put a tentative hand on his shoulder, and he flinched. When Kilmer tried again, though, he didn’t move.

  “Shit,” Len mumbled. “Holy fuck. What—”

  “What the fuck did you do?” Kilmer sighed. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the therapy hasn’t really touched on your anger management issues.”

  “That’s not funny,” Len muttered.

  “No.” Kilmer sighed again and squeezed his shoulder. “It really isn’t.”

  “Trev bought me that guitar,” Len said. “He bought me that guitar with the very first paycheck we ever earned from a gig. Well. And a hefty loan from his brother, but still. I wrote every song I’ve ever created on that thing.” His lower lip trembled, and his eyes stung, and when Kilmer pulled him around, he didn’t bother to think about how unmanly it was to bury his face in the older man’s shoulder.

  He ignored the tiny voice in his head squeaking at him that there was one song, one very recent song he’d worked out, and it hadn’t begun on that Gibson at all. He ignored it because you couldn’t write grunge rock on a Martin D-28, stupid, twanging country flat top.

  “Okay,” Kilmer said finally. “We have got to get this mess cleaned up before Vance comes in. He’ll hit the roof.”

  “Let him.” Len straightened and wiped his face with the back of one hand. “If he hasn’t figured out there are some things he can’t control yet, then that’s his problem.”

  “He so won’t see it that way. If you can’t control your temper, it’s his job to do it until you can.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Len sniffed and picked his way down the steps to the guitar. He sat on the top step of the lower stairs and cradled the pieces in his lap. “Shit.” He was a complete idiot, and there was no way his asshat behavior was Vance’s problem, and yet the rage boiled so hot and deep he couldn’t breathe through it.

  “Darlin’?” Vance’s deep rumble startled him, and his hands began to shake. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Len didn’t look at him. It was all he could do to hold on to the guitar hard enough he didn’t throw it—to hold on to the bubbling mass of sick fury strong enough it didn’t turn on anyone else.

  “Clearly, something did,” Vance said.

  “And it isn’t your business,” Len spat, falling back on his default, leave-me-the-hell-alone attempt to keep people far enough away he couldn’t hurt them. Except Vance’s face softened to shock, then hardened, almost instantly, to stone-cold nothing. That was his hurt face, Len now knew. And Len hadn’t even thrown a punch. Yet.

  “You can have all that crap cleaned out,” Len said, attempting to redirect the insidious anger to the junk Damian had foisted on him. “Put it in the dumpster. I don’t care.” Len got up to leave, but Vance wasn’t about to let him escape.

  “That’s your stuff.” Vance picked up a book and held it out to Len. “You have to go through it.”

  Len s
natched the book and hurled it at Vance, who ducked and deflected the hardcover volume with his forearm. “Books? I don’t read, Vance! I can’t read!” His grip on the broken guitar tightened. “It’s Trevor’s shit. Every last box of his crap from that dump of an apartment, so clearly, he’s done with me. This is his way of rubbing my face in how over it is. So screw him.” He threw the guitar, and with only a tenuous hold on his common sense, managed to aim it at Vance’s feet and not his head. It bounced and cracked against Vance’s shins. “I’m done.”

  He fled then, down the steps toward the kitchen and the back door. “You are not—” but Vance broke off and Kilmer’s soft voice, telling Vance to let him go, got lost behind the slamming door.

  “HE’LL TAKE off again,” Vance fumed, rubbing at the bump on his forearm. Just what he needed. A bruise he’d have to wear long sleeves at the height of summer to hide from Len’s family and friends. Perfect.

  “Leave that,” Kilmer said, removing Vance’s hand from the injury and peeling back his sleeve to look. There was no broken skin, only a welt that would eventually leave a deep-purple bruise.

  “I can’t let him get away with hittin’ me, Kil. Not again.”

  Kilmer frowned and pulled Vance’s sleeve back into place. “I fucking knew it,” he muttered.

  “Don’t. It isn’t like that.”

  “Oh, fuck that. I just saw exactly what it’s like. He went off on me first. There was nothin’. Blank nothin’. And then flash lightnin’, and everythin’ in his reach was trashed. How the hell do you live with that shit?”

  “I control it.”

  “Oh shit, Vance.” Kilmer closed his eyes briefly, then sighed and began picking up the books. “You can’t control that shit. And if he can’t, my friend, you are fucked.”

  “I’ll figure out a way,” Vance said. “Get the boxes out of the room. We’ll need the space. Put them in”—he waved a hand in the air—“somewhere out of the way. Somewhere he won’t trip over them. Leave all the instruments in the livin’ room.” He picked up one of the novels and read the title. It was sci-fi, from the eighties. “And give these away. He’s right. He doesn’t need ’em.”

  “He really can’t read?”

  “Leave it, Kil.”

  “Why don’t he learn?”

  “Just….” Vance sighed. “He’s severely dyslexic. He doesn’t read.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Well, obviously he doesn’t announce it.”

  “No, I mean, he’s a smart guy. He’s got a lot to say on a lot of things, so he don’t come off as a guy who can’t read.”

  “He is a smart guy. He listens to the news and the radio. He talks to people. He gets by.”

  “Better ’n most if you ask me.”

  That made Vance smile. “He would appreciate hearin’ that, Kil.”

  Kilmer growled. “I am pissed off at him right now. He can kiss my ass.”

  “Be nice to him.”

  “He don’t deserve you, Vance.”

  Vance’s smile faded away. “That ain’t true at all an’ you know it, Kil.”

  Kilmer just shook his head and went to work cleaning up Len’s mess. Vance wasn’t in the mood to force his sub to do it. He had no idea how he was going to make Len account for this latest break in temper. He had thought they were making progress over the past few nights, but clearly, there were unresolved crapfests of emotion Len wasn’t dealing with.

  He followed Len outside, and after a moment of searching the yard, decided to try the barn. Since he’d started working there, it had been the place Len seemed to feel most comfortable.

  Len was in the tack room sorting through a jumble of harnesses that had been left behind by the last stable hand who hadn’t bothered to hang any of them up. He’d simply moved them from surface to surface, tangling them more with every shift and adding to the pile until there was little serviceable tack left hanging on the wall. The cleanup was a job that needed doing, but one none of the full-time hands ever seemed to fit into their schedules. Kilmer hadn’t hired a new hand since he’d fired the last one, and Len had taken up the grunt work.

  “Hey.” Vance leaned on the doorframe and crossed his arms. “You okay?”

  Len shrugged. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Just a bruise.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ain’t good enough, darlin’.”

  “I know,” Len whispered. “I know. But I still am.” His voice was choked and soggy, and his hands shook as he worked, but he did work. “Kilmer was going on about the jumble in here. I figured I’d get a start on it for him.”

  “Good. You’ll do his share of the stall mucking and feeding tonight too, since he’s in there taking care of your shit for you.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Len whispered.

  Vance couldn’t deny it still made his heart clench to hear those words. That uncertain crack to Len’s voice just about broke it in two. He wanted to comfort his boy. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t give the right message. If he wanted forgiveness for this latest violent transgression, he’d have to do more than straighten out a few harnesses and shovel a bit of shit to earn it.

  “Good.” He stood, ready to leave Len to his work when his sub spoke again.

  “I wrote something when I was fiddling with your guitar this morning.”

  “Did you?” Vance ruthlessly kept his voice level, even though his heart spiked with something resembling hope at that announcement. For someone who’d lived and breathed music his whole life, the past months had to have been a nightmare of desert landscape without it. He knew he ached almost physically with the lack of time to play himself.

  Len nodded. “I wanted to play it for you later.”

  “Hard to do, since you don’t have a guitar anymore,” Vance said.

  Len’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Guess I’ll ask Stan to ship me my practice one.”

  “You can’t just break everythin’ in your life and expect to be able to replace it with somethin’ newer an’ shinier, Len. It don’t work like that.”

  Vance pushed himself away from the doorframe and stomped out of the barn and back up to the house. He had paperwork to do.

  HOURS LATER, Len appeared in the office door, still smelling like the barn, hay in his hair and a smudge of dust across his pale cheek. “You aren’t a newer and shinier anything,” Len said. “You’re the only one I understand right now. This is the first time being in love has ever made any sense to me.”

  He had his arms crossed in that hand-on-elbow way of his, and his eyes were bright, but fixed on Vance’s face.

  “That so?” Vance’s heart stopped abruptly at that confession. He wondered if Len even realized what he’d said.

  Len nodded. “Yes, Sir, it is.”

  “Because I don’t get you even a little bit sometimes, darlin’.”

  Len smiled a wan smile. “You’re hardly the first one to say that.”

  “Shocking.”

  Len’s smile firmed up. “I know, right?”

  Vance wrapped iron will around his pounding heart and ground out the words he had to say. “I don’t get how bein’ in love with a man gives you the right to go off on him like you do. I don’t see how lovin’ a man can be reconciled with mistreatin’ him.”

  Len paled and swayed a bit. “No, Sir. You’re right.”

  “You owe Kilmer an apology, Len. A big one. And a thank-you for cleanin’ the room out for you.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Vance turned back to the books he was balancing. “Go get cleaned up. There’s sandwiches in the fridge. Get some sleep.”

  “I’ll see you up there, then,” Len said, the sadness at not having his sentiments returned clear.

  “I’ll be sleepin’ down here tonight, I think,” Vance said, eyes on his books.

  There was a long pause and a sigh. “Yes, Sir.”

  THERE WAS no way Len was going to find rest in that big, empty bed. Vance had told him to, and so he lay down, fresh from the s
hower, sliding his naked body between the cool sheets. They never warmed his skin, and he shivered every time he shifted, which was a lot. He tossed and rolled, stared at the ceiling, out the crack between the blinds and the window frame, out the open door to the hallway, but Vance never took the invitation, and the doorway remained empty.

  The house, still and quiet, reflected his own emptiness. He wasn’t sure, then, when he first heard it, if the sound was something real, or something born of his wistful imagination. It began with the soft strum of guitar strings and filled out, a while later, with Vance’s deep voice. Len strained to hear the song he was singing, but the office was too far from the bedroom for him to make it out.

  He wanted to know. Maybe he wanted to hear Vance’s voice, if not speaking to him in that buttery-soft tone, at least in the next room, washing over him and soothing the tears in his soul. He wrapped the comforter around himself, grabbed his pillow, and tiptoed down the stairs.

  The living room couch was a showpiece of style and design, but not particularly strong in the functional category. Len squirmed around until the hard cushions were at least not jabbing their unyielding square corners into his ribs, and watched the elongated triangle of light on the floor coming from the partially open office door.

  Vance’s voice rolled over him, and he plucked his fingers on the pillow to the familiar thread of music he’d written that Vance had fitted those country words to. Every once in a while, the song stopped and Len waited. It would pick up again, the words rearranged, or Vance would hum and mumble, as if trying to find just the right ones to complete the last, ragged verse.

  I have this bottle beside me, easy to hide in

  I know where the hurt ends, numbed by the gin

  You are my tonic, my safety net

  Comfort and home when my heart forgets