Bad Influence (24 page)

His fingernail caught in the wire stitching and pulled up a loop. He tugged and pressed it down, but it sprang back up. Jail or no, Silver couldn’t sponge off his friends forever. He smoothed the spot out again.

Marco glanced up and scooted over. “It’s bigger than the room I’ve got at Timo’s.” He settled his head on Silver’s stomach. “Everything is bigger here.” He leered, eyeing Silver’s crotch.

He was willing to take some of the blame for that. Patting down the pull in the comforter might have been seen as some kind of invitation.

He tried to nudge Marco to a less sensitive spot without being too obvious about it.

“Do you want to go do something? You said you were bored.”

“Just this is nice.” Marco rolled his head so he could see Silver’s face. “Being here is a nice break from Timo’s lectures.
Your grandparents didn’t save all the money to send you here so you could turn
maricon
.
” Marco imitated his brother’s deeper voice, then rolled his eyes. “And they didn’t save all their money to send him here to boost cars and end up in juvie either.”

Silver smiled. “Did you tell him that?”

Marco nodded.

Brave fucker. Silver wouldn’t have dared.

“
Pinche culero
took my phone.” Marco reached up and touched the bruise on Silver’s cheek with a gentle finger. “Did you tell someone something to get this?”

“No. It was an accident.”

“At work. Riiight, hon.” Marco mimicked a native speaker’s sarcastic drawl.

“Doesn’t matter. Sorry Timo found out.”

“He had already guessed. Always ‘
pato’, ‘mariquita’,and ‘
Walk like a man, Marco’.’”

“That sucks.” Silver didn’t have to put up with that kind of crap anymore. And up until the end, his parents didn’t have any real evidence.

“If I made more money, I could try to find a room like yours. But I’d have to quit school to work.”

The thought of Marco on his own in a place like Tyson Street was terrifying. Marco, who didn’t even know enough to watch his drink at a party. Silver may have spent his late teens getting fucked, but at least he knew what was happening. Had chosen to go down that path.

“Don’t do that. Get your degree first. Maybe you could get a scholarship to another school.”

“That’s so long—so far—away. I can’t keep waiting to have my life.”

Silver got that. Hell yeah did he get that, but Marco couldn’t make the same choices. He didn’t deserve it—not like Silver had deserved it—but Marco wasn’t ready to face some of those decisions.

“Maybe I should get arrested,” Marco said. “It was good for you.”

“If you don’t count the jail part of it.”

“You won’t go to jail.” Marco’s confidence didn’t do anything to keep Silver from picturing June sixteenth on the calendar circled in red with the following days all blacked out. He wondered if people in jail made those hash marks on the wall like they did in movies. That night, he’d only seen the usual graffiti.

Marco sighed, and his head moved on Silver’s waist, really damned close to a dick that had just remembered how fucking awesome sex with another guy was. Maybe it would be better to risk being scarred for life by someone’s Greek-yogurt kink than to be stuck in his room with a horny teenager.

“We could watch a movie downstairs. They’ve got a couple of streaming services to pick from.”

“I think they’re fucking.” Marco’s head shifted again, and Silver swore Marco’s hair was starting to brush against Silver’s cock.

Down,
he thought. Silver might not think of his friend like that, but Marco was still another guy. A cute, desperate guy. Who wanted him, Silver. Not Jordan. Not Branden Woods from the porn vids.

“Can you hear them, at night, when they do it? Like porn?” Marco’s cheek moved less than an inch from where things were getting very tingly.

Silver definitely wouldn’t call it porn. Awkward was the first thing that came to mind.

“It would make me
arrecho
. Horny.”

“Breathing makes you horny, Marco.”

“
Si.
It’s true.” Marco nodded, and Silver’s dick got another little shot of
hey, how you doin’.
God, it would be really easy to give in to this. Not only the rush of sex, but the extra throb of heat from how much Marco wanted this.

Which was why things had to stop right now.

“Marco—”

Too late. Marco rolled, his face, breath,
mouth
right there, heat and humidity on Silver’s way-too-interested dick. “You don’t have to do it to me back. I want to. Want to do it to—with you,
argénteo
.”

“No.” Silver said it as softly and gently as he could.

“Why not?
Tu verga
—your cock—is getting big. You’re horny too. And you don’t have a
novio
—boyfriend.”

It was true they hadn’t quite worked out the details, the conversation going everywhere but a definition of what they were doing now. But even if Zeb weren’t part of the decision, the answer still had to be no. Silver couldn’t be that person for Marco.

A weight, bitter and burning like acid, dropped into Silver’s gut. Had it been like this for Zeb—shit, was it still like this for Zeb? Could the overwhelming intensity of someone wanting you so badly be pressure enough to shift your feelings? Maybe that was all they’d had. Not this epic love story Silver had spun for Eli, one even Silver had believed. If he could convince himself—a born cynic—maybe he’d convinced Zeb of the whole thing too. It would have been a hell of a lot harder to say no to Marco back in New Freedom.

Before Marco could take Silver’s silence for agreement, Silver put a hand on Marco’s cheek and eased out from under him, stroking his hair for an instant and then letting go.

“I kind of do have a— I’m seeing someone.”

“Oh.” Marco’s thick lashes dropped over his eyes.

But that was the easy way out. Silver had to make him understand. “You’re really cute. But, I can’t— I don’t think of you like that.”

“Oh.” This time the word was sucked in, like an exclamation of pain. Marco sat up and slid off the bed.

Silver tried to salvage things. “I don’t think of Quinn like that either.” He shrugged. “It’s just when you—you’ll know what I mean when—” finishing his sentence with
when you start having sex
was not going to score any points with Marco right now. “Think about it, you don’t want to fuck every guy you see, do you?”

“Only the hot ones. But I am
cute
. Not hot enough to fuck.”

“That’s not what I meant, Marco.”

“I know what you meant. I’m cute enough to be your ride, but not your
novio
—boyfriend.” He spat the correction like a curse.

“Marco.” It wasn’t much help, repeating his name. But Silver didn’t know what else to say.

Eli would know the right thing. Zeb too, probably. Hell, even Jamie—the asshole—wouldn’t have fucked things up this much.

“You’re my friend.” Which guaranteed Silver would be winning the Lamest Thing to Say award for the year, no matter how much backtracking he did to avoid the nomination.

“Well, I don’t need friends. And I get more than enough advice from Timo. If you need a ride somewhere,
vete la
chingada. No me llame.
” Marco paused, straightened then enunciated with only a tiny trace of accent. “Fuck. Your. Self. But don’t call me.”

He took off.

It wasn’t only guilt that made Silver ignore the threat of witnessing active yogurt to chase Marco down the stairs. It was a sudden fear that Marco was serious about staying the hell out of Silver’s life.

“C’mon, Marco. Wait a second.”

Silver caught his breath more from emotion than exertion when Marco stopped and waited with his hands spread flat on the roof of the Firebird.

“Why?”

“I’m an asshole. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Can I try to apologize? Explain?”

Marco kept the car between them, studying him for a second.

“If I didn’t want to fix things, would I have chased you out here?” Silver asked.

“How do I know anything? You’ve been playing me the whole time.”

Marco had a point there. But until a few weeks ago, Silver had been playing everyone, including himself.

Silver tipped his head toward the front steps of the house.

Moving like a deer ready to bolt, Marco crossed the sidewalk and perched next to Silver on the cement stairs. One thing Silver would miss if Marco rightly decided to tell him to fuck off was the way Marco always seemed to know when to fill the space between them with distracting chatter or comfortable silence. Right now, in the tight press of Marco’s lips, Silver saw him waiting for any reason to go flying back to the car.

“I’ve really been an asshole.”

“You said that already.”

Yeah, well, Silver was still waiting for some inspiration to strike.

“You’ve been a better friend than I deserve.” Silver started off in Zeb script.

Marco snorted.

The whole martyr thing didn’t really sell it for Silver either. He tried to imagine what Eli would say. “Upstairs. You saw I was hard. I was. You made me hard.”

Marco sat up straighter. “I did.”

“And I was scared.”

“Because of your…boyfriend?”

“No.” God, honesty sucked. Was it really worth it? Silver thought of how many times Marco had made him laugh. How he had always been there when Silver called. And how much Silver had taken it for granted. “I was scared because of how much you reminded me of me.”

Silver wondered if he made the same expression when he was trying to figure out Marco’s shifts between Spanish and English slang.

“I remembered what it was like, how crazy I was to get laid. And I did some really stupid things.”

“I remind you of you being stupid? Not much of an apology.”

“I never told you what I was doing before I got the job at the restaurant. I was a whore. I had to have sex with a lot of guys who weren’t hot at all.”

“And me offering to suck you makes you think of that?” Marco looked even more hurt.

“No. If I didn’t have a—if I wasn’t seeing someone—I probably would have let you.” A smile twisted Silver’s mouth. “And it would have been wrong for another reason.”

“Because you would only be pretending? I know you don’t really want to be
mi nov
—my boyfriend. I understand that. But I want. I think about dicks all the time.”

Silver let a thin laugh past his throat. “I remember that feeling. But I got scared for another reason, and it’s why you need to be really careful.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Oh, Timo lectures all the time about AIDS.”

Silver stared down at the edge of the bottom step. It had started to crumble at the corner. “I’m positive.”

“I know. It’s the first thing everyone thinks about being gay. Wait. You weren’t only agreeing. You did not mean—Silver?”

“I’m HIV positive.”

Marco grabbed at Silver’s hand. “
Realmente?
”

Silver nodded.

“I’m so sorry.”

Silver shrugged.

“Who you are seeing? Is he too?”

“No. We’re being careful. Going slow.”

“You would’ve told me before I—?”

“Of course. But that’s why—” Silver needed Marco to really understand. “I know what you’re going through. My parents didn’t like that I was gay. And I didn’t have anyplace to go. So I had to do whatever I could. You can’t ever know if someone is positive. I know Timo is a prick, but you’re going to school and you’re going to have a good job. Don’t let being horny fuck all that up. I get scared when I think of something bad happening to you.”

Marco bumped Silver’s shoulder. “If you couldn’t be
mi novio
, why couldn’t you have been
mi herm
—brother?”

“I think Eli and Quinn should be done getting freaky. Wanna come in and watch a movie with me?”

“Can it be something where Channing Tatum takes off his shirt?”

Silver was pretty sure it happened in all of that guy’s movies. “That can be arranged.”

He left Marco on the couch with the remotes and peered cautiously into the kitchen before slipping in to nuke some popcorn.

Eli came in behind him. “I heard some doors slamming. Everything okay?”

Silver shrugged.

“You knew he had a crush on you, right?”

“I did. I guess somehow I forgot how that can be. But I think it’s cool now. Would you mind if he stayed for dinner? He’s living with his brother and has our kind of family issues.” Silver jerked his thumb between himself and Eli.

“That sucks out loud.”

The microwave beeped. Silver reached in and shook out the bag. “I worry he’ll end up running away and doing something stupid.”

Eli’s eyes got big and wide. “Gee. I wonder if there’s anyone around who could warn him of the dangers in that.”

“Fuck you.” Silver shoulder checked Eli against the counter.