He was halfway up the aisle when one of the women noticed him. She smiled, and he recognized Kristen from the afternoon with the dog. But where was the dog, and where the hell was Mackenzie?
Someone else followed Kristen’s gaze, and suddenly the whole group became aware of Joe’s presence. The music cut off, and a man in short shorts and a low-cut tank top straightened from one of the pews and stood to block the aisle. “This is private property, officer.”
Joe stared at him. Why did the guy think he was a cop? But Kristen came to her feet, a little unsteadily, looped her arm through the protector’s arm, and laughed. “No, this is Joe.” The man beside her looked at her doubtfully, and she nodded several times, her chin going right to her chest and her hair flying about. “The cowboy,” she said in a stage-whisper.
“Where’s his hat?” someone asked.
“Where’s his horse?”
“Where’s his cow?” Apparently that last one was pretty funny to at least a few of them.
But Joe had only one question he wanted answered. He stepped closer and asked Kristen, “Where’s Mackenzie?”
She looked around blurrily, as if inspecting each face in the circle.
“He’s not here,” Joe said as patiently as he could. “Where did he go?”
She looked puzzled. Finally, mercifully, Mackenzie’s familiar face appeared in the doorway to the back of the church. He was carrying a couple bottles of liquor, and Griffin was at his side. As soon as the dog saw Joe, he bounded happily over, but Mackenzie’s greeting was a little less enthusiastic. He looked at Joe as if confused by his presence, then set the bottles down on a table and looked at his watch. His face was comically surprised as he looked back. “Holy shit, it’s nighttime!”
Drunk, Joe could handle. Hell, he could handle high, too, with a little warning. But this was not what he’d been expecting when he came to town.
Don’t be a princess, Joe. You don’t always get what you want. You need to be more flexible. You need to accept Mackenzie for who he is, not who you expect him to be.
Joe took another deep breath and smiled. “Yeah, nighttime. Kind of. Seems like you all got an early start.” He wished there wasn’t an audience for this particular conversation, but he wasn’t sure how to move Mackenzie somewhere else. Instead, he just edged around the crowd and got as close to Mackenzie as he could before saying, “Do you want me to do anything? Go pick up pizza or something?”
“Pizza would be excellent,” came a voice from the crowd.
“This wouldn’t be good pizza,” another voice contradicted. “Trust me, I grew up in a shithole just like this one. We’re talking thick crust, pepperoni, and grease.”
Joe kept his smile as fixed as he could manage and waited for Mackenzie to do something, or say something, or somehow let him know what was expected. But Mackenzie wasn’t functioning at anywhere near his usual capacity.
“Pizza for those who want it?” Kristen said from somewhere near Joe’s elbow. “We brought snacks, but not enough.” She looked up into the rafters as if searching for the answers to universal questions. “Why are there never enough snacks?”
In Joe’s experience, there was almost always too much food at social gatherings, so he didn’t feel qualified to respond to anything but the first part of Kristen’s communication. “Okay, I’ll get food.” He glanced over toward Mackenzie. “You okay, there? You want some fresh air?”
“You want another drink?” someone asked from the pews, and again there was general hilarity. Joe was way too sober for this.
“I’m good,” Mackenzie said. He did pretty well on the first couple steps, but stumbled on the last one, fell forward, and caught himself on Joe’s chest. Then he let himself sag as if trusting Joe with the responsibility of keeping him upright. “Surprise party,” he whispered in Joe’s ear. “They just… appeared.” He leaned back a little, and Joe moved quickly to wrap an arm around him and keep him from toppling right over backward. “I am so drunk.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” Joe didn’t bother mentioning that it seemed like something more than alcohol might be involved. He glanced over at Kristen, then scanned the crowd to see if anyone was in better shape. The guy in the short shorts who’d thought he was a cop seemed like the best candidate, unfortunately. “Come here,” he said softly to Mackenzie, and they made their way through the group together.
The short-shorts guy looked suspicious as they approached. Joe tried his best nonthreatening, friendly smile, but the guy seemed unmoved. “I’m Joe. Friend of Mackenzie’s. You’re a friend of his too?”
“I’ve known him since he was a teenager,” the man said pointedly.
“Great, so you’ll want to take care of him.” Joe smiled again. “I’m just a bit worried that this party could hurt his business if it spills out into the neighborhood. You know? He’s trying to make connections and work his way into the community, and people are pretty open to the idea of a wedding chapel in the village. But the gay thing has them thrown a little. And it doesn’t help that he’s from the city. And it really, really won’t help if they start thinking the church is going to turn into some sort of nightclub or something. You know?”
The man’s smile was too sweet to be real. “That’s really good news,” he purred. “Because the theme of this party? It’s ‘Get Mackenzie Back to the City Where He Belongs.’ We came up to remind him that he has friends, and he has a life, and he does not need to hide away in Buttfuck, Nowhere, just because he had a fight with his boyfriend.” The man looked positively triumphant, now. “If we need to outrage the neighbors a little in order to make it clear to Mackenzie that he’s trying to live somewhere that will never accept him, then I guess we have our plan for the evening.”
“In my experience, Mackenzie usually catches on to things pretty quickly, usually just with conversation. I don’t think you need to stage a big scene just to help him get your point.”
“‘Stage a big scene.’ Yeah, Mackenzie said you were like that. He said you didn’t really understand gay culture. Said you didn’t accept it.” The man raised an eyebrow imperiously. “Life is a scene. And some of us want our lives to be big. And, if our lives are big, our scenes must be big as well, no?”
Joe really wished he’d turned around in the parking lot, but he needed to try to salvage something from this, for Mackenzie’s sake. “It’d be pretty sad if Mackenzie left here because he couldn’t stay. Wouldn’t it? I think it’d be a much better scene if he got to go back to the city triumphantly, not crawling away with his tail between his legs because the ignorant rednecks wouldn’t accept him. Right? I mean, if people want him to leave and he leaves, then the people up here win. But if they want him to stay and he leaves… he’s made a point, right?” For the time being, Joe tried to focus on the effect his words were having on the man in front of him, not on himself.
“And he needs to hide who he is in order to make them accept him?” The man still sounded snarky, but maybe not quite as sure as he’d been before.
“He can be who he is. But he doesn’t need to be a bad neighbor. He can have a party, but it should stay inside. That sort of thing. If people don’t like him, you want them to have to admit they don’t like him because he’s gay. You don’t want to give them the excuse of saying they don’t like him because he woke up their kids and his friends puked in their flowers.”
Finally, Mackenzie seemed ready to join the conversation. “I’m coming back, Anton!” He said it like it was obvious. “I didn’t move up here forever! It’s just for a little while. Of course I’m coming back!”
Joe fought to keep his face expressionless. It wasn’t like Mackenzie was saying anything Joe hadn’t always known. Maybe he’d let himself forget it for a little while, but he had no reason to be shocked by hearing the reminder. Mackenzie was a city boy. He was just visiting. “He’ll get a better price if he can sell a profitable business, not an empty church. He’s got plans, and this little gathering can’t get in the way of that. Okay?”
>
The man looked thoughtful, but finally, slowly, he nodded. “That makes sense. Mackenzie should have something of his own. A little nest egg hidden away. That’d be good.”
Joe didn’t really follow that part, but at least the man seemed to be getting on board with the contain-the-party plan, and that was something. “I’ll get some food—it probably won’t be what you all are used to, but it might help soak up some of… whatever. And you’ll keep the music down, and people will stay inside? Does that sound like a plan?”
Again, the man’s nod was slower than Joe would have liked, but it eventually came.
Mackenzie, meanwhile, was getting heavier by the minute. “You need to sit down, buddy.” Joe lowered him down to sit on one of the pews and tried surreptitiously to gauge Mackenzie’s vitals and responses. His first-responder training had made him more sensitive to the signs of alcohol poisoning and drug overdose than he’d been as a kid, but there was often a clash between medical standards and what was expected by the public, especially at a party. How many people passed out after one of Mackenzie’s typical nights out? Technically, any of them who couldn’t be awakened should be rushed to the hospital for treatment, but nobody really followed that rule.
Joe looked down at Mackenzie. He was going back to the city. He’d been the one who’d pushed to spend more time with Joe, but that was because he had the normal ability to keep things casual, to spend time with someone and share a bed with someone without thinking it was a sign of some big deal. Mackenzie hadn’t done anything wrong. It was Joe who’d made the mistake, even though he’d known he shouldn’t. “You’re not looking too good, Mackenzie. You feeling okay?” Joe sank down onto the pew and tried to ignore the curious looks from the crowd. They were probably wondering why he hadn’t gone to get their pizza yet.
“I’m totally out of it,” Mackenzie said. “I don’t know what happened. I mean… I drank too much. I….” He looked almost guilty, then just confused. “I took a pill. I’m not even sure what it was. They just said it would be fun.”
“Maybe it was. Maybe you’re just tired now, if you got an early start. You want to go sleep it off?”
“I’m the host,” Mackenzie said, obviously scandalized by Joe’s suggestion.
“It’s a surprise party. You’re more the guest of honor. And I think guests of honor get to do whatever the hell they want.”
“And if I want to go outside?” Mackenzie sounded crafty now, and the way he slid his gaze across to see Joe’s reaction made it clear he’d heard and understood at least part of the earlier conversation.
Joe sighed. “I’m not your babysitter. If you want to go outside, go outside. If you want to run around naked and singing, go for it. Take your whole band of brothers with you. Your call.” It was a bit harder to fight for Mackenzie’s business future when Joe was seeing it strictly in terms of Mackenzie selling out for a better price rather than Mackenzie trying to make a living. And a bit harder to fight when Mackenzie himself seemed interested in destroying it.
“What if I want to go to bed?”
“I think that would be a good idea.”
“No, not to sleep. What if I want to go to bed with you?”
“With me to sleep? Okay. But, no, I’m not real interested in having sex with you right now. Not when you’re all messed up.”
“You only want me when I conform to your standards?” Mackenzie’s consciousness was clearly getting its second wind, but it wasn’t feeling too friendly.
Joe shrugged. “I’m just not in the mood,” he said quietly. No point in having a fight that Mackenzie might not even remember the next day.
“What if someone else is?” Mackenzie looked around the room. “I’ve fucked three of the guys here. You want to guess which ones?”
“What are you doing, Mackenzie? If you want me to leave, just tell me to leave. You don’t need to… whatever you’re doing. It’s not necessary. You don’t need to pick a fight.”
“You’re always so calm,” Mackenzie sneered. “So fucking careful. Do you ever lose control? Do you ever just let yourself go?”
“I think I’m going to let myself go right now,” Joe said. He tried not to let Mackenzie’s words echo in his head, tried not to wonder whether maybe he’d been too careful at the fire. If he’d just pushed everything a little more, if he hadn’t cleared the glass as thoroughly or hadn’t made that one little bounce when he checked that the roof was going to hold his weight… maybe those had cost him the crucial seconds…. He slipped away from Mackenzie and stood up. “You’re a nasty drunk.”
Mackenzie’s expression was unreadable. Joe was giving him what he clearly wanted, so why didn’t he look happier? Just another mystery of the miserable evening, Joe supposed. “I’ll see you later,” he said, but Mackenzie just turned away.
Joe headed for the door. He knew he should stick around and make sure everyone was okay. He should try to contain the situation and take care of Mackenzie’s business future. But it seemed pretty pointless. Maybe a better man would have done all that, but Joe just wasn’t that strong. He would at least order the pizza, he decided, but he’d do it from the truck, and he’d ask for it to be delivered. He could use his credit card over the phone.
He headed out into the night and closed his eyes for a moment as he barreled down the path to the driveway. He almost ran into a man coming toward the church. He was smaller than Joe, older, and wearing a suit, albeit one with the tie off and the neck of his shirt open. Joe had never seen a picture, never even heard a full description, but he knew at once who he was staring at.
“Is this Scott Mackenzie’s church?” the man asked.
Joe was temporarily speechless. Scott Mackenzie. Joe had never asked for Mackenzie’s surname; he’d never even been curious, really. Never bothered to look at any of the paperwork Will must have had for the work on the church. But all along he’d known Mackenzie’s last name. He’d just never known the guy’s first name.
It was a little thing. Just a silly detail. Except that it wasn’t. “Yeah, this is his church,” Joe said slowly. He thought about how Mackenzie had pushed for a fight, and it made sense now. He’d been eager to get rid of Joe before Nathan showed up. “I think he’s expecting you.” And then Joe got in his truck and drove away.
Chapter 11
MACKENZIE’S BRAIN felt too big for his skull. The pressure was even, pressing out on all sides, and it wasn’t so much painful as it was nauseating. Or at least, something was making him nauseous.
He looked around him blurrily and saw his familiar bedroom in the church basement, a body-shaped lump in the covers next to him on the bed. He didn’t have time to investigate any further before his stomach’s revolt kicked into high gear and he had to race for the bathroom. He hovered over the toilet for a moment, as if his gut had suddenly changed its mind, then it took advantage of the opportunity and emptied itself, a disgusting stream of whatever the hell Mackenzie had consumed the night before. He was shaking and weak by the time it was over, but he pulled himself to his feet and flushed the evidence away. Then he stumbled to the sink and braced himself with his forearms on the enamel, gathering strength for a few moments before managing to turn on the tap and rinse his mouth out. He felt a bit better now that his stomach was empty, and he managed to feebly brush his teeth before raising his head and looking in the mirror.
The sight that greeted him was appalling. Not his own pale, drained face, although on a normal day that certainly would have been upsetting enough, but the man standing in the doorway behind him, wearing Mackenzie’s silk robe… a robe that had been a gift from the man himself.
“That sound is no way to start the day,” Nathan said. He sounded like a less than patient schoolteacher. “And the ventilation in here is atrocious—the smell is going to be with us for some time.”
“What are you doing here?” Mackenzie stammered. The lump on the bed—it had been too small to be Joe, now that Mackenzie thought about it. And Joe didn’t usually burrow under the
blankets like that—he slept sprawled out and uncovered. Mackenzie looked down at himself and was relieved to see he was still wearing his jeans; someone might have been able to get those off of him while he was incapacitated, but they’d have had a hell of a time getting them back on. But his fly was undone, his underwear bunched in a way that could be the result of a night’s sleep or could be… “What happened?”
“We’ve had the talk about your overconsumption before,” Nathan said. He edged past Mackenzie and opened the robe enough so he could pee in the toilet. “It’s not healthy for you, and it’s not something I want to be around. You need to practice a little self-control.”
Yes, they’d had that talk. Repeatedly. But not recently, because Nathan no longer had any say over how Mackenzie lived his life. Did he? “What the fuck is going on?” Mackenzie groaned. His head was in no condition for this sort of bewilderment.
Nathan nodded sympathetically as he shook off and moved to the sink to wash his hands. “That’s about what I said last night when I arrived. Anton had invited me to a small gathering in your honor. I was expecting a dinner, perhaps, or some light cocktails. With an invitation from Anton, of course, I should have known better.” Nathan smiled at Mackenzie in the mirror. “But it’s okay. I understand my presence was a surprise for you. I’m sure you’ve been… unhappy lately. And when you’re unhappy, you engage in destructive behavior. I’ve always found that the best way to keep you on track is to keep you happy. Doesn’t that sound about right?”
“Where’s Joe?” That was what Mackenzie had to cling to. Joe would make everything make sense.
“Who?” Nathan turned around and said, “There are quite a few people upstairs. They brought sleeping bags.” He pronounced the words as if they were from a foreign language. “I didn’t catch all of their names.”
Joe sleeping upstairs while Nathan shared a bed with Mackenzie? No, that wouldn’t happen. Maybe Mackenzie should stop asking Nathan questions he couldn’t answer and ask the one that he could. “Where’s your boyfriend? What’s his name, again? Calvin?”
The Fall Page 15