Bad Influence (6 page)

Work sucked.

It was one of those half-dead nights that made everyone pissy, including the cook. There wasn’t enough traffic to make time go by fast, and tips were pathetic. Even though there were only two servers on, Silver got shafted the most because he was the newest. Definitely the kind of scene that needed to be montaged, with something like a Goo Goo Dolls song for background. As he pushed the specifics out of his head, he realized that there wasn’t anything different about work today. It was him.

When he’d started working as a waiter, he’d felt as if he’d actually achieved something. A real job. One even people like Thomas and Cheryl Barnett could have been told about—assuming he ever spoke to them again. The job hadn’t changed. But seeing Zeb had dragged up the memory of what a stupid, naïve kid named Jordan had wanted. The idea that if he tried and worked hard, he could have his dreams. Now what had seemed like a decent job was only a reminder of how dead everything to do with Jordan was.

Around eight, Eli’s old boss Nate came in with his boyfriend. Eli’d been so hung up on Nate, Silver had sworn the three of them were going to do some kind of poly thing before Eli moved in with Quinn. Silver rolled his eyes and went to get their usual order of KZ sodas. Plunking the bottles and glasses down at their table, he asked, “So what are you supposed to be, spies? Did Eli send you?”

Nate peered through his Harry Potter glasses at Silver like he was some kind of bug, but the boyfriend Kellan said, “Huh? Eli? Is he okay?”

“Eli’s fine.”
And I’m good too, thanks for asking,
Silver added to himself. Pasting on a smile, he channeled the preppy queen group leader at Path to Glory. “Eli’s swell. What can I get you?”

Kellan looked up intently—probably still worried about Eli—but Nate bitched, “A menu would be nice for a start.”

“What do you need one for? You always get the same thing,” Kellan said, earning his boyfriend’s bitchy attention.

“True.” Nate’s eyes narrowed. “Make it two veggie burgers, Philly toppings, no cheese.”

Kellan flicked some of the sweat from his bottle at Nate. “If I gotta have veggie, I’m getting cheese on mine. And fries.”

Nate nodded, like Kellan needed his permission or something to order his own food. As Silver went back to put the order in, he wondered if they did that same stuff Eli and Quinn did. Christ, it had been loud last night. Even with earplugs.

Silver’s only other table at the moment was a guy writing something on his computer while drinking coffee. He’d inherited him when his shift started, but as Lisa had informed him, the guy had already paid and given her a shitty tip for taking up the booth for an hour. Then she’d been ranting about how she’d told Ben this would happen when they gave free Wi-Fi access, and Silver had tuned her out. He stepped out of the beverage station with the coffee carafe, and ran into Kellan.

“Don’t mind Nate. Bad day at work.”

Since Silver had spent Saturday night in jail and had been driven to work in a police car, he thought he won the whole “bad day” contest. But he was curious. “So he gets to order your food?”

Kellan shrugged. “I like veggie burgers, but don’t tell Nate.” He winked. “Of course, I like ’em better with bacon.”

After flashing a grin and then tapping Silver on the shoulder with a fist, Kellan strode back to his table. Silver refilled Wi-Fi-mooching computer guy’s coffee and went into the kitchen to ask if they’d slide a piece of bacon onto Kellan’s burger. He did not get the whole having-to-sacrifice-something-you-liked-to-please-someone-you-liked-fucking. What the hell difference did it make to Nate what Kellan ate?

The one time Silver had bothered to try to please someone with food…

A ripple dissolve threatened a candlelit flashback. No matter how Silver tried to push it away, he couldn’t completely block out what had happened after Zeb had mentioned that he missed his mom’s beef stroganoff. Nothing stopped his brain from replaying the laughter and love on Zeb’s face when presented with the resulting gluey paste studded with blackened strips of meat.

A table of rowdy women landed in Silver’s section, and the need to concentrate on six special orders and four separate checks was enough to blot out the chance of further flashbacks. When he brought the bacon-augmented veggie burger and the sanctimoniously boring one over to Kellan and Nate, the resulting laughter and bitchery made Silver almost too entertained to be pissed when Eli and Quinn showed up an hour early, acting like they just wanted some loaded fries instead of being there to make sure Silver didn’t sneak off.

The next morning Silver spent lounging on the couch, poking around on the tablet Eli had given him after he’d chased Silver out of the spare bedroom. One of the walls in that room was taken up by Eli’s computer and graphics stuff, and apparently Eli did more than cook and put out, since he claimed he had to do some work.

Silver couldn’t really complain, since the couch was comfy and they had streaming services so he could watch pretty much anything. At first it was fun to catch up on the last three seasons of
Ice Road Truckers
, but that got old fast. Silver didn’t have another shift at With Relish until Thursday.

He went into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. “I feel like a freaking virgin trapped in a tower.”

Eli snorted. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel.” He spun around in his desk chair. “You may have the blond locks, but I think you’re past the expiration date on virginity.”

Crunching his abs, Silver curled up enough to see the computer screen, then jerked to his feet for a closer look. It was a black-and-white picture of one of the ships in the harbor in the pouring rain, and somehow Eli had made it look like there was another layer of water on it. Like if you touched it, your fingers would get wet. Everywhere there were shadows and light that made the picture look 3-D. All of it black-and-white except for a splash of neon reflected on the water.

“Fuck, Eli.”

Eli studied Silver’s face, then smiled. “Thanks. It’s for a show. In an art gallery.”

“Fancy shit.” Silver flung himself back onto the bed. “So this is you now? Quinn’s boy toy slash housewife who makes pretty pictures to keep from dying of boredom.”

“Yeah.” Eli’s grin was huge. “Isn’t it awesome?”

“I guess. If you like that kind of thing.” Silver smoothed a lump in the cover he’d thrown over the unmade bed. “You do really like that kind of thing? I heard him the other night. Hitting you.”

“Spanking me, you mean?” Eli bounced onto the bed next to him. “I fucking love it. I can come just from that and a little friction. Have you ever tried it?”

Silver smoothed the blanket out again. Eli knew about the hustling. The winter they’d met neither of them had been doing too well. But Silver hadn’t told Eli about the web stuff. Might as well. “Kind of.” He poked around on the tablet and handed it over. “Here.”

Eli took it, and his eyes got comically wide. “Holy shit.”

“I did lots of live subscription web stuff. This is out everywhere.”

Eli stared back down at the tablet. “Oh my God. Is that Papa Grande?”

“Yeah.”

“He is so fucking hot. I can’t believe I never saw this, and now I can’t ever jerk off to it. Ow. Those are some swats.” Eli winced.

“People paid to keep it going. And they also gave a free six-month membership to someone who could predict how long I could take it before I’d break.”

Eli turned the tablet facedown on the bed. “I didn’t know.”

Silver shrugged. “I didn’t tell you. It was after the shelter. We’d lost touch.”

“You never said why you took off like that.”

“I was still underage. Was afraid with the social workers and shit that they’d find me.”

Eli was smart enough not to ask who
they
were. Eli always had a half a dozen insults ready to go when he mentioned his asshole parents, but Silver’s weren’t worth the effort.

Eli smoothed the same lump under the cover and then met Silver’s eyes. “Was it better than hustling?”

“Better in some ways, worse in others. Got fucking sore sometimes.”

Eli rolled his eyes. “Seems like cake by comparison. At least there’s furniture—and a director to keep an eye on things.”

“Yeah? You try getting drilled by a dick that size for six hours while they adjust the cameras.” But for the most part, Eli was right. It had felt safer. That first winter wasn’t anything Silver wanted to relive. Eli either. Silver leaned back until he was propped up on his elbows. “Does Quinn know? About you tricking?”

Eli stretched out on his back and folded his hands across his stomach. “As much as he can?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I told him. But I don’t know how much he gets it. How much anyone else can. Any time it comes up, he gets super protective. Which is sweet, kind of, but I don’t want to be packaged in bubble wrap in order to leave the house, you know?”

Silver didn’t know. No one had ever really given a shit about protecting him. Controlling him, yeah.

When he’d been with Zeb, things had gone like they had the night in the cell. Silver having to look out for himself while Zeb floated around in his flower-child, Jesus-loves-you bubble. How the hell had Zeb managed two years in Haiti? Only in private did Silver ever get to see the real Zeb. The one with the wry smile and the absurd sense of humor.

Silver rolled onto his side, careful not to touch Eli. Didn’t matter. Eli didn’t get the concept of boundaries. He reached over and shoved Silver.

“So how come you’re not loaded, Mr. Porn Star?”

“Pretty twinks who’ll fuck on camera aren’t hard to find. I had to do the spanking and bareback stuff to make much. And it was hard to hang on to without a bank account.”

Eli shot off the bed. “Bareback?”

Silver had known the explosion was coming. Figured now was as good a time as any. He gave Mr. Safe-Sex Lectures a bored look.

“Is that where you got it?”

“Which? Gonorrhea or HIV?”

“My God—”

“Save it, Eli. I’m not stupid. And there’s no guarantee it was the modeling.” Silver’s mouth quirked in a half smile as Eli responded to the euphemism with a predictable echo of modeling and flinging his hands over his head. “I did have two boyfriends.”

“And you weren’t safe with them?”

“Come off it. Don’t tell me you aren’t getting bred by Daddy every night.”

Eli stopped flailing and folded his arms defensively across his chest. “We waited. And got tested.”

“How poster-child perfect of you.” Silver rolled off the far edge of the bed and started for the door.

“Silver, wait.” Eli caught his wrist. Not roughly, not anything Silver couldn’t yank free of, but if he was going to get an apology, he’d stick around for it.

But Eli pushed him onto the bed. “You are a serious mess, my friend.”

“Fuck you.”

What was it with everyone thinking they could give Silver the tough-love lecture? First that fucking cop, and now Eli? Bad enough he had to stay here, but he didn’t need the lectures on top of it. If he couldn’t leave, he could sure as fuck check out. He picked up the ear buds he’d been using, but before he could take the tablet and turn his back, Eli yanked the cord out of the tablet.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Eli demanded.

“To who?”

“Me, dickhead.”

Silver shrugged. “You didn’t owe me anything. Why was any of it your problem?”

“I thought we were friends.”

“So?” Silver whipped the cord out of Eli’s hands. “That entitles you to hear about all my problems?”

“No, that entitles you to tell me about them. And me to help you if I can.”

“By help you mean I get whisked away to Boringland with you and Quinn?” Silver rolled his eyes.

Eli shook his head. “I mean you could have been safe.”

Chapter Five

Safe. For the rest of the day Silver turned that word over and over in his head. What the fuck did Eli mean by safe? Usually when it came out of his mouth, it was as a pair, one word.
Safesex.
But Silver didn’t think that was all Eli meant this time. What? Safe like they’d been in the shelter, barely off the freezing street, surrounded by drunks? Safe like Eli was, trapped here in suburbia, cooking and cleaning like a good little housewife? Or safe like they’d offered at the clinic, under the supervision of case managers and social workers crawling into every bit of his life?

He hated this feeling. Eli acted like there was some kind of simple answer that Silver couldn’t see, when he’d been trying everything to keep himself safe.

The sound of the front door opening had Silver ready to retreat to his room in case Quinn launched into his own version of the your-life-sucks-and-it’s-your-own-fault speech. But when their paths intersected in the hall, Silver saw Quinn had brought home a nice,
safe
target for Silver’s anger.

He stood in front of Zeb. “So what are you supposed to be? My gentleman caller? Is he on the approved list, Daddy?”

Before Quinn could answer, Eli came out of the kitchen. With a sneer in Zeb’s direction, Eli got up in his boyfriend’s face. “Did it follow you home? I’ve told you to wipe your feet before you come in.”