Bad Company (9 page)

Nate sure as hell couldn’t handle that when he got so stupidly worked up over a kiss. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, but that hadn’t stopped the uprising in his pants every time he thought about Kellan hard against him, mouth open, throat vibrating with a moan. And now Nate had another reason to stay here until long past everyone else shutting down and heading home. At least here he could jerk off in the bathroom in peace—rather than have to do it at home with Kellan in the apartment. Flushing his pipes should at least make him able to stand being in the same room with Kellan. Now he had to figure out how to sleep next to him.

Broad chest stretching out another of Nate’s T-shirts, Kellan lay sprawled across most of the bed when Nate finally made it through the door at two. Tomorrow Nate could sleep in, unless there was an emergency with the printing and distribution. After he got out of the bathroom, he surveyed the landscape by the light from the streetlight on the corner and executed an acrobatic arch around Yin to find a spot on the mattress.

As soon as Nate got the sheet over him and his pillow precisely the way he wanted it, Kellan flopped an arm over Nate’s hips.

“Shove over, Kell.” The déjà vu from those three words made Nate smile until an equally strong frisson of agony had him bolt up, feet on the floor. Because this wasn’t one of those hundred times they’d been tucked together in Nate’s bed as kids, when a shove from a hand or a hip meant nothing more than friendship. Now he was surrounded by the smell of Kellan’s skin, the sound of his breath, drowning in the need to roll on top of Kellan and put way more into him than his tongue.

“What’s wrong? Drunk again?” Kellan’s voice sounded deeper than usual in the dark.

“I’m fine. Just thought of something about the paper.”

Nate heard Kellan drop hard onto his back.

“Yeah, the paper.” Kellan’s laugh was more breath than sound. “At least you haven’t cut yourself off from ever getting laid again. While every guy you were ever friends with is wondering if you take it up the ass.”

“Christ, Kellan, then why the fuck did you do this?” Nate spun around to face him, moving so abruptly Yin took off to find a quieter spot. She paused by the kitchen island to level an evil glowing glare in his direction.

Kellan sat up and dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I guess it seemed like a good idea. I mean, I still think it’s a good idea, but it feels weird.”

Nate turned back to face the window. “Yeah. Weird. I get that.” A Kellan a lot hotter than anything Nate remembered, who he got to sleep next to and kiss but not really touch, was about as weird as it got.

Kellan laughed, an audible chuckle this time. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so weird if I actually was doing what everyone’s going to think I’m doing.”

“What are you saying? You want to be doing it?” Nate turned on the bed so he could watch Kellan’s face in the light from the street. Was Kellan trying to ask Nate for it?

Kellan shrugged.

Nate launched himself on top of Kellan, pinning him on his back with hands on his shoulders, and leaned close to his ear. “You want me to fuck you, is that it? You want my dick in your ass, Kellan?”

Kellan’s lips curled in before he spoke. “I didn’t say that.” But Kellan didn’t try to shove Nate off. Broad shoulders flinched under Nate’s hands.

Nate wanted to scream in frustration. This was another one of Kellan’s games, to get Nate to go far enough so that Kellan could laugh it off as a joke and make Nate the aggressor who took things too seriously.

“I might be doing this for my own reasons, but I’m not that much of a whore.” Nate sat up, still straddling Kellan’s hips, and lunged across to the end-table drawer. Tossing the lube and the dildo on Kellan’s chest, Nate said, “Try it out and let me know what you think. Practice sucking it too. I’m not into virgins.”

He swung off Kellan and stood up.

Kellan rolled onto his side facing Nate, picked up the dildo and tossed it at his feet. “Now I know why you’ve got one of those. You’re such a self-righteous prick you’re the only one good enough to fuck you.”

Nate gaped at him, hands curling into fists. He’d never wanted to punch someone before in his life.

“That’s right,” Kellan went on. “You may not be whore enough to fuck me, but you’re whore enough to fake a big gay love for revenge. Get off your high horse, Nathan. This is so much more about my dad than saving the city from some evil corporation.”

“Do you know what it did to my dad? Did you hear what happened when old Geoffrey went public with the energy-drink formula he stole from my dad? KZ Cola threatened to put him in jail for industrial espionage and theft. We lost our house. Everything.”

Kellan’s face, pale against the shadows, grew dark as he flushed. “I didn’t know all that.”

“No. You were too busy at your new school, in your new mansion, to worry about that. Not that you even gave a shit about me then.”

“I could try to fucking apologize again, but I don’t know what the hell would be good enough for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t born perfect. I’m sorry your life sucked. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to be there, Kellan.” It was Nate’s turn to shove the scar on his forearm under Kellan’s nose. Nate kept his voice low and tight so it wouldn’t break with the still-raw memory of that betrayal. “I never let you down. What happened to you?”

Nate was learning to read this older Kellan. The lip biting Kellan had done when he was anxious had become a quick pull in between his teeth, pushing it out to make his bottom lip fuller.

This time though, Kellan bit his lower lip so hard Nate thought there’d be blood. “I turned into a dick. Does that make you happy?”

“No.”

Kellan glanced over at the clock on the table. “Shit. I’m supposed to be back at the café at six thirty.” He ran a hand over his face. “Unless you’re going to toss my ass on the street.”

“No. I promised you could stay.”

“Right. Noble Nate.” Kellan stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Newsflash: we ordinary people have to take a piss every once in a while.”

If Nate climbed into bed now, maybe he could fall asleep before Kellan got out of the bathroom. One of the things about knowing someone for a long time was that you could always save the argument for later. That was, until you ran out of laters.

Chapter Eleven

Kellan headed off on his twenty-block walk to Manna Café with time to spare, relatively clean and dressed. Yesterday he’d taken advantage of the key Nate had handed him to let himself into the apartment and wash out his socks, shorts and shirt in the tub. His jeans were pretty bad and getting riper. He needed to find another pair or a place to wash them. There was no way he could fit into a pair of Nate’s, and yesterday Yolanda had made the no-sweatpants-or-pajama-pants-at-work rule clear enough.

But not stinking up the place wasn’t Kellan’s only problem. Not even his biggest one. No, that went to figuring out why he’d been pretty close to having sex with Nate last night.

Was what he’d almost talked himself into some kind of flukey short in his wiring, or could he really play for either team?

If he took That Summer out of the equation, Kellan had been pretty happy scoring with girls. He liked their tits, their mouths, their softness, and he liked fucking them. When it came to the actual bumping-uglies part, he still wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who got off just staring at a pussy, but once he had his tongue or finger or dick in one, he liked them a lot. Things took over and it was good. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t get hard from nothing but staring at a dick either, so would things take over if he was with a guy? If he was with Nate?

And when he put That Summer back into the mix, his stomach got a lot more squirrelly and his nuts more shrivelly at the theory that maybe he could go there with any guy. But Nate wasn’t any guy. And there was no shriveling and only the good kind of squirrelliness when he thought about Nate kissing him, Nate’s body on top of his, Nate’s hands holding Kellan’s hips as—as what? That was about as far as he could go before his mind backed off like it was looking over the edge of a sheer cliff.

He cut through two alleys and over a fence to avoid going around the block to arrive at the café’s back door by quarter after six. It was the first time he’d ever been early for anything in his life, but before he could take a deep breath of the rich morning smells from fresh roasting coffee beans, Brandi yanked him through the back door.

“Holy crap.” Brandi tugged him through the kitchen. “Yolanda’s having kittens. Terrell isn’t on until ten and there’s already a line.” She pointed.

Kellan peered through the dark of the café to the glassed front where about ten girls were waiting, all of them looking at least one year under legal. Maybe there was a school close by.

Yolanda was pouring beans in the roaster and filling tanks. She did look ready to start snapping her fingers along with her directions the way she had yesterday during the lunch rush.

Yolanda grabbed the arm Brandi had freed and led Kellan behind the counter. “Kellan. Good. You can work the register this morning.” Her Spanish accent was thicker today, maybe because she was in such a hurry. “The prices are all listed on the side there.” She tapped her dark red fingernail on the laminated paper. “You take the money and make their change. The register will tell you how much. Sandra, show him. If there’s a charge, Sandra will do it. You call her.”

Sandra murmured and pointed at the keys, but other than figuring out what the drinks actually were when the customers got to him, it wasn’t much different from hitting keys on a calculator.

“Of all days for the bakery truck to be late—” A beeping interrupted Yolanda, and she and Sandra rushed off to the kitchen.

They knew what they were doing, so Kellan stayed out of their way and tried to memorize the number and the items on the card. If he put it into a singsong rhythm, it wasn’t that hard. The bakery items went into only two price categories—regular and special—and someone’s tiny print gave examples of what each was underneath. He tapped his fingers lightly on the keys, getting the beats right. The only problem would be special orders, like extra shots of espresso or syrup. At least he didn’t have to be the one making the half-skinny, half-soy, mocha and caramel, no-foam latte Kimmie had always demanded of the production assistants.

Yolanda unlocked the door and the customers streamed in. The first five girls were in matching school uniforms which made Kellan think his guess was right. They all ordered vanilla coffee milkshakes, which had Sandra and Brandi gritting their teeth because they required a lot of individual work. Each of them paid separately with a twenty which depleted Kellan’s cash drawer, but then they each dropped two ones in the tip jar that read
Support Counter Intelligence
with a shy, “Thanks, Kellan.”

It wasn’t until after the third girl had tipped and stepped aside to murmur with her friends that Kellan realized he wasn’t wearing a name tag. He kept eye contact with the next girl as he rang in her order and gave out her change. She blushed, but still thanked him and dropped money in the tip jar.

The other five girls only dropped their coin change, but they were less shy about eye contact and about using his name. A few people he guessed were regulars came in after the underage stalker parade, but the two groups of girls clustered at the end of the coffee bar and kept watching him.

Whether they wanted to get a look at someone who’d been on TV or to see a gay guy in his natural habitat, Kellan felt like he was in a zoo exhibit. Five more people came, the last two looking his way. Yolanda moved behind him muttering, “Hiring you as a favor for Nate is working better than his promise of free ad space for a week.”

Kellan remembered Nate throwing around the word whore last night. He’d bargained for Kellan’s job, which given Nate’s over-exaggerated morals was kind of a shock, in a nice way. And it wasn’t that Kellan minded the job. If people wanted to stare—well, it wasn’t that different from his life before. They were just staring for another reason. He smiled back at the customers, turning up the charm, and more bills and change landed in the tip jar. Brandi gave him a friendly punch on his arm when someone tossed in a five.

By the time the coffee and pastry crowd had slowed to a trickle of people who stayed to sit and drink in front of laptops at the various tables, the huge jar was half-full and Kellan had only had to ask Sandra for help with the register once. Kellan couldn’t remember ever getting something right like that the first time before. It was nice. The girls were nice. Yolanda was nice. And when Terrell strolled in and made a sexy whistle at the sight of the tip jar, his comments about Kellan shaking his ass for tips had them all laughing as Kellan acted it out.

Kellan wished the lunch crowd would start soon, because wiping down the empty tables gave him too much time to go back to wondering about where things stood with Nate, and if he wanted to actually find out—those things.

Nate would think it was a joke if Kellan flirted like Eli or Terrell, and Kellan couldn’t see Nate being wowed with flowers or presents, not that Kellan had money to buy him something. It was weird to try to figure out how to get someone in bed with you when they were already there. Especially when you weren’t sure what would happen and whether you wanted it to.

Kellan looked up from the table he was cleaning to see a black Town Car block the spot in front of the fire hydrant across the street. He already had a sick sensation in his stomach before he saw his dad’s driver get out of the car.

Instead of opening the door for Geoffrey though, Shepherd kept walking, across the street and into the café. Kellan wiped the table again and waited.

“Mr. Brooks?” Shepherd held out a cell phone.

With a sigh, Kellan dropped the rag and put the phone to his ear. He knew one thing. There wouldn’t be an apology on the other end of the phone.

“Kellan, please hold for your father,” his dad’s secretary said in the polite tone he’d heard so many times before his dad started screaming in his ear.

There was a longer pause than usual, then instead of screaming, his father’s voice was pitched low and even. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”