Bad Influence Read online

  Silver bolted up straight. Zeb no longer had an extra inch on him, so they were eye to eye. “Don’t you think you’ve fucked me over enough for one lifetime?” Even with his voice low, that got a snicker from the bored leaner.

  “You offering someone else a chance at it, pretty meat?”

  Acting like a jealous boyfriend, Zeb moved between them. Like that was going to help. The big guy on the bench didn’t open his eyes, but Silver was sure they had everyone’s attention. Even the guy hunched over the can stopped ralphing.

  Silver shifted around Zeb and mimed a blow job at Bored Guy. With an exaggerated purse of lips, Silver blew him a kiss, then laughed. “In your wettest dreams, man.”

  “No touching.” The guard banged against the bars.

  “Jordie.” Zeb lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “Not the time for attitude.”

  “Not the time to be seen as a pussy either. And don’t call me that.”

  “What should I call ya?” No-Longer-Bored Guy made his way over to stand right behind Zeb.

  For an instant Silver considered that there had to be a dozen ways to cause serious harm to another human body even in shackles, assuming you were willing to take some pain to do it. He preferred a quick assault and then running away, but right now Silver could use the distraction.

  The guard banged his stick against the bars again. “Collins.”

  The guy went back to his previous post, and Puking Guy let loose with something that echoed around the walls.

  Zeb moved up to the front of the cell near the guard. He probably thought good manners and a sincere smile meant he’d get special treatment. Silver eavesdropped.

  “When can we see the judge and use a phone?” Zeb asked.

  “Phone in about an hour, when they finish cleaning in there. Judge’ll be here when he gets here, which might not be until Monday morning.”

  Silver glanced at the clock over the guard’s little table in the hall. One thirty on Sunday morning meant seeing the judge was over thirty hours away. Now it wasn’t only about getting bail. Silver had to take his pill in the morning. A few hours was one thing—though the lady at the clinic had been really emphatic about sticking to a schedule. They couldn’t deny him medication when it was life-or-death.

  Before the panic could get a good squeeze on his lungs again, Silver felt Zeb’s gaze, intent, hot. What kind of intent? Silver met the stare, then lowered his lids partly, let his mouth soften. Zeb swallowed thickly. Really, Zeb, here? At least Silver knew that still worked. He rolled his eyes, and Zeb flushed and glanced away.

  A jangle of keys and the slap of feet on the stairs brought Silver’s attention back to the hall outside the cell.

  “All right.” The new guard unlocked the door. “Blondie and Jesus.” He pointed at Silver and Zeb. “Phone calls. Follow me.”

  Silver pinched his lips against a sarcastic laugh. With shoulder-length wavy brown hair and the stubble filling in around his mouth and chin, Zeb had always gotten some mileage with his Jesus look. The only question was which had come first, the look or Zeb’s martyr complex.

  The phones were in a space between two larger cells, a much bigger space than the first cell they’d been in, reeking of wet, moldy mop and industrial disinfectant. Silver wanted Zeb on the phone first, distracted enough so he couldn’t hear Silver’s side of it. Who would Zeb call? Did he have a boyfriend now? Silver watched Zeb fish a scrap of paper out of his jeans and start dialing. Since that was all the privacy Silver was going to get, he took a deep breath and punched in Eli’s number.

  His friend might have traded in the night life for a sugar daddy in the suburbs, and it was almost 2:00 a.m., but Silver knew Eli would pick up his phone. He had a clinical addiction to drama—and Silver was about to supply one hell of a dose.

  Chapter Three

  AS SOON as they were off the phones, the guards put Silver and Zeb into one of the bigger holding cells. There were more benches in this one. Silver could only manage a halfhearted warning glare when Zeb followed him to the bench farthest from the toilet. Zeb might have been the cause of every miserable thing that had happened tonight, but at least he didn’t reek like some of the guys in the other cell.

  Silver had always managed to do what he had to to survive. Tolerating Zeb’s ridiculous idea that he was somehow saving them both with his presence was cake compared to breathing the air around that meth addict or the puking drunk.

  “Are you ever going to say anything, Jordan?”

  Silver tried to put one foot up onto the bench to rest his head on a bent knee, but the chains wouldn’t let him. He braced his feet against the cement floor and stared at the crack between them. “Like what?”

  “Like what happened. I don’t mean tonight. How—I mean—what were you doing with those—?”

  “Hustlers? Streetwalkers? Prostitutes?” Silver looked over to see Zeb flinch at the words. “Maybe I was doing the Lord’s work. Spreading the gospel to Christ’s favorite professionals.”

  Zeb glanced away.

  “What do you think I was doing?” Silver prodded. “Exactly what do you think happens to gay kids who have no place else to go?”

  Zeb’s cheeks turned patchy red. “Your parents didn’t turn you out.”

  “No. They sent me away. Someplace much worse.”

  “I’d heard it was a camp.”

  “Camps are supposed to have tents and marshmallows and swimming. Not cinder block cells with bars on the windows and forced labor.” Not to mention the Reflection Room. But Silver wouldn’t. Because now wasn’t the time to let that memory in.

  Zeb reared back, like Silver’s spat-out description was something he could escape from. Good.

  Silver hadn’t planned to answer Zeb, wanted Zeb to know what it was like to be shut out in the cold, alone, with no explanations. But that wasn’t enough. Anger burned up Silver’s spine. He wanted to slam all that pain and fear into Zeb.

  Silver turned toward Zeb as much as the shackles would let him. “You want to know what you were telling me to go back to when you sent me off that night? Did you think conversion camp would fix me too?” Trapped in the dark, no sense of time, no sound but his own shaky breathing, waiting for them to switch on that light. Craving that moment when he knew they were watching him. For his moment to read his Bible verse and tell them he had learned his lesson.

  “Conversion?” Zeb’s brow furrowed.

  “Yes, to convert me straight. What the fuck do you think they sent me to? Bible camp to put on an all-new production of Joseph?”

  “I’d heard”—Zeb placed a lot of emphasis on that word, like it excused him somehow—“that it was a place for teenagers who had made bad choices, to keep them safe.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” Silver watched Zeb’s wince with satisfaction. “A bad choice? Is that all it was? You and me, fucking for over a year? Just a bad choice?”

  “You lied to me from the day we met.” Zeb had some of his cool back now, the self-righteous idiocy Silver had always been able to chase away, first with a joke, then with his hands and mouth. “I wouldn’t call that good.”

  Silver would use a different tactic to throw Zeb off his game now. “You know how fast everything happened when Tina opened her big fucking mouth about you being my boyfriend? Normally my parents might have kept me under house arrest for a bit, but a spot opened at Path to Glory. Guess how? Kid killed himself. In the dorm room they put me in. Killed himself because of how much fucking fun he was having at the camp to keep him safe from making bad choices.”

  Silver drank in the emotions so plain on Zeb’s face. Shock and then sweet, sweet anger.

  “Yeah, from the first day I was there, I slept in a dead kid’s bed. The other kids weren’t supposed to talk to me because I was on entry-level, but they let me know just the same. Told me how he’d taped plastic over his head and hands. I swore I could still smell puke and shit in that room every night.”

  Lines tightened around Zeb’s mouth. Silver didn’t r
emember them being there before, but he liked being the cause of the emotion that made them surface.

  He rammed another point home. “Some of the kids were addicts, but most of us were there because our breeders didn’t like what we were doing. Having sex. With the wrong people or wrong gender. Couple kids bought into it, really thought Path to Glory would fix them. Make them straight.”

  Zeb’s throat worked like he was swallowing around something thick. Silver wished he could imagine it being a cock, but he was too pissed and too sick with reliving this shit to go there.

  “Did they have counselors or—?”

  “Fuck, didn’t you read that letter I smuggled out?”

  Zeb shook his head. “If you sent something to me, I didn’t get it.”

  “If, right. Because everything Jordan says is a lie. Does thinking that make it easier? Especially knowing what you told me to go back to?”

  Score one for Silver. A shot right to the nuts, because Zeb dropped his gaze and glanced away. Silver had never managed to make Zeb flinch before, always those changeable hazel eyes stayed focused and earnest on Silver’s face, like everything he said mattered. The flash of triumph didn’t do anything to clear the ache in muscles held tight enough to snap. He pushed harder.

  “Would you have bothered to read it if you had?”

  That backfired. Zeb looked back at him, all emotion smoothed away, covered with a calm Silver knew was fake. He knew everything about Zeb, had studied every expression, shared his body and his breath until they were living in each other’s skin, they felt so close. If they were ranking lies, Zeb’s was bigger. Because you don’t love someone like that and then walk away because of some stupid rule.

  “Jordan,” Zeb began with the same patient affection that used to make everything inside Silver get warm and soft until he had to get them kissing. Had to make it hard and rough because if he let himself give in completely to safety and warmth, he’d never drag himself out Zeb’s door and back to the cold house where Silver still had to live for another thirteen months.

  Right now disgust for the name he’d left behind took care of any old feelings the tone might have stirred. He could have corrected Zeb, but it seemed pointless when Silver was the one dragging their past over hot coals. As long as Zeb’s ass came out equally barbequed, Silver could stand a bit more of it.

  “You can’t think I wanted to—I’d have lost my teaching license.” Zeb went on in that same tone. “Jordan, I could have gone to jail.”

  Silver cut his eyes toward the cell bars and then looked back with a smirk. Zeb started to chuckle, a smile so broad it turned his eyes to slits. Silver felt the laugh start in his own chest and fought with everything he had to let nothing show but a disdainful smirk. It was too easy to remember the sense of the absurd they’d always shared.

  The guards saved him when they came back with the big black guy who’d been sitting on the bench and the skinny white meth head. After asking them if they had any candy or gum again, the meth head started pacing some more, dancing a little to whatever he heard in his head. The black guy sat on the bench opposite them, head back against the wall, eyes closed.

  “I called.” They hadn’t been speaking loudly, but Zeb’s tone dropped to right above a whisper. “On your eighteenth birthday—assuming you didn’t lie about the date as well as the year.”

  “It’s still August fourth.” Gary Carter’s was May first. Eli had thrown Silver a birthday party for the date on the fake license, and Silver had learned Zeb was in Baltimore. God, was it only two weeks ago?

  “It wasn’t your number anymore,” Zeb said, doing the thing where his eyes were wide and intent, like he was so full of honest goodness, in a minute Silver would be apologizing to Zeb.

  “Ya think?” Silver sneered. “They took my phone and computer first thing. As soon as the little bitch opened her mouth.”

  “I was in Haiti,” Zeb threw out like it had some meaning.

  “And?”

  “When I called. I was in Haiti. I couldn’t do anything about finding a new number for you.”

  “Right. Because a happy birthday would have made it all better.”

  The look Zeb shot him wasn’t one Silver had ever cataloged. Maybe Zeb had found it in Haiti. If he didn’t know Zeb better, Silver would have sworn it was cynicism.

  “Exactly what was I supposed to fix, Jordan? The fact that you lied about your age from the beginning, or what you decided to do after that night?”

  Silver stared back at the crack on the floor and dug the edge of his rubber-soled sneaker into it. “Absolutely nothing.” He willed himself to slide away inside the black space.

  When he was younger, Silver escaped most of what sucked by imagining he was starring in the movie of his own life. No matter how much he’d tried, high school refused to completely blur into a longed-for montage, Linkin Park slamming on the soundtrack, drowning out all the fucking assholes with their endless refrain of Die, faggot. And no matter how many times he’d willed the montage into existence in his head, Silver never managed to emerge triumphant and successful, bursting from the school with the last power chords, flipping off the deaf-to-bigots teachers and epically moronic hicks as he got the hell out of New Freedom, Pennsylvania, forever.

  The only movies Silver ever starred in were straight—ha—to DVD or available for subscription online, not much of a soundtrack beyond the slap of flesh, grunts and gasps, interrupted by the occasional gag-inducing Take all that meat, little boy. At least it had beat hustling on the street.

  The awkward and sometimes painful process of faking passion for the camera should have cured him of the fascination of pretending he was in a movie, but he still played the game, zooming out of his body to watch from as far away as he could get, convincing himself it was happening to someone else, poor fucker. Right now the script called for a flashback. Something with a rippled effect, maybe special lighting or a filter like on Instagram to make it look really cool. But he wouldn’t flash it back to the night when he’d begged outside Zeb’s apartment.

  Nope, hit rewind all the way back to the day when Silver had seen Zeb looking a little lost while pouring himself a coffee in the basement of New Hope Church. For most of the congregation, fellowship seemed to be about gossiping about who hadn’t shown up, and so far everyone had ignored tall, slender, sexy, and oh-please-God-let-gaydar-be-for-real. The guy’s build and longish golden brown hair had caught Silver’s—well, back then the audience would have known him as Jordan—eye during the service, but when the new church member bent to pick up the sugar packet he’d dropped, the sweetest ass Silver had seen not on a porn site had him eager to be polite and sociable, like his mother was always nagging him to be.

  “You look a little lost,” Jordan said as he held up a plate of hideously dry cookies from the bargain bins at Stop ’n’ Save. He knew where they’d come from. His parents might be loaded, but God forbid they actually spend any of it.

  The man’s smile was even more devastating than the sight of his ass in tight khakis had been. He placed a hand over his heart in a sign of exaggerated shock. “You mean, New Hope Church isn’t a convention hall for fans of Star Wars: Episode IV?”

  It surprised a laugh from Jordan, brought it bubbling up through all the cynicism that kept him safe in hostile environments. Tall and Sexy was the first person to make the same connection since Jordan’s parents had dragged him to this church. “Do you really think you’ve got the midi-chlorians for so dangerous a place, Padawan?”

  “Blasphemy,” the guy said.

  The word shut down all Jordan’s amusement. So this guy was just like the rest of them. Then he grinned so broadly his eyes turned to slits, and Jordan would have sworn there was a CGI twinkle in one of them.

  “Do not speak of Episodes I through III in my presence.” The man held out a hand. “Zeb Harris.”

  Jordan shook it, dazzled by the impossible twinkle. No sunlight made it to the basement. He had to be hallucinating. Heat flashed where thei
r palms met. Yes. This was it. Like a movie, but for real. Smiling back, he said, “Not even Episode III?”

  “Maybe I can give that one a pass just for you. I saw you sing. Your voice is amazing.”

  Nothing about how he managed to hit deep notes when he was so obviously young or skinny. Jordan winked and licked his lips the way he’d practiced in the mirror. “Lung capacity.”

  Zeb flushed and swallowed. For the first time, Jordan made a heartfelt prayer of gratitude. Hell, yes. Zeb Harris was gay and interested.

  “So, um, I’d love to talk more Star Wars with you.” Damn, Jordan, why don’t you just ask if he wants to see your action figures?

  “Jordan,” his mother summoned. He turned instinctively.

  When he turned back, Zeb was still smiling. “Jordan, huh?” Zeb’s voice was warm, like his hand had been.

  “Like the river.” Jordan sighed. “Um—my parents haven’t quite—come to terms with—” It didn’t matter how carefully he whispered it, dropping the word gay in the church basement would echo like a gong. He gestured between them, hoping Zeb would understand.

  Zeb nodded. “Mine either. Fortunately, they’re in Ohio.”

  “Oh. So, maybe we could meet for coffee sometime?”

  Zeb’s feet didn’t move, but suddenly there was a distance between them. “Jordan,” he began, and four years in the future, a guy in a jail cell remembered everything about how hearing his name like that had felt.

  Jordan knew what the problem was. “I’m”—eighteen would sound too dead-on—“nineteen. I know I look younger. Get that all the time. Guess it’s better than looking older, right? I live with my parents because I’m going to Pleasant Valley Community College, trying to save money to go to a bigger school. No point starting out in debt, right?” Stop babbling, Jordan.

  A pencil and the edge of a mini memo book stuck out of Zeb’s pants pocket. Without stopping to think, Jordan grabbed them. Zeb pulled away, then relaxed.

  “I have to write stuff down or I forget it.” The shy smile on Zeb’s face made him look younger than Jordan’s real age. Not like age was a big deal. But the guy couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-one himself.