My Busboy

by John Inman

  When I finally had everything hooked up, I grimaced, crossed my fingers, and flipped the On switch. I had consumed three glasses of wine by that time and more than half a bag of cookies, so when the computer screen came to life and I heard that old familiar Apple boot-up ditty trilling through the condo, I couldn’t quite believe it. I did a couple of cheerleader leaps, sloshing wine everywhere and gleefully spitting chocolate chip cookie crumbs down the front of my shirt, which was my way of congratulating myself for getting my new Mac up and running without any help from anybody.

  Of course, now came the hard part. Getting myself online, setting up e-mail, managing my security, and (yes, I had learned my lesson) arranging for some sort of backup in case the damn thing was stolen again. Surely I would be back in Chaz’s good graces by then. I’d let him handle it. Maybe treat him to dinner as payment.

  For the next week, I laid low. I refused to call Chaz, and apparently he was pissed off enough not to call me. I made another trip to the Apple Store and bought a device to save my backup computer data. I wasn’t smart enough to hook it up, natch, so I let it sit in its box on my desk until I got tired of looking at it and stuffed it in a drawer.

  Dario and I chatted every day over the phone, and every time we did, I found myself longing for him more. The way he felt, the way he smelled, the whole damn package. He was swamped with classes, and I was considerate enough not to pressure him to drop everything and come see me. That he wanted to, I had no doubt. He told me often enough. We somehow managed to maintain a mature outlook on the matter. Both of us. Dario’s grades were important. As was his scholarship. He had a future he was working toward. His grades trumped my need to make love to him. Even I had to admit that.

  Perhaps the most amazing result of our week apart was the realization that because of Dario, I found myself working toward my own future again.

  For oddly enough, after my weekend with Dario at the cabin and the ensuing days without him, I suddenly found myself writing again. I began a manuscript the same evening I set up the new computer, and I had diligently worked on it every day since. I even found myself smiling again as I wrote, which hadn’t happened in a long, long while. I jotted down notes on the manuscript twenty times a day. I got excited about twists of plot, snippets of dialog, descriptions of characters—everything, in fact, that used to thrill me about writing back in the days when I was unpublished, and hungry to be so.

  Again, I found myself stumbling out of bed to crank up the computer and work on the book in the still of the night, all alone, naked in my desk chair, while Clutch snored softly from the bed and tried to ignore the tippy-tap of my fingers on the keyboard. Happily, I didn’t need to be online to store the document I was working on, and to tell the truth, it was easier to write without the constant temptation to cruise the net and fiddle around wasting time, which is pretty much what writers always do when they don’t want to write. They either do that, or they clean house, and I sure as fuck wasn’t that desperate.

  Yet on those shadowy nights of pushing back sleep to write one more line, one more paragraph, one more page, I was never really alone. For somehow I felt Dario’s presence there with me, his hand on my shoulder, his breath on my neck, his heat at my back. It was his appreciation and love for my first books that stirred me enough to make me want to write another.

  One night as I sat there in the moonlight plugging away at the manuscript, I suddenly tensed as my fingers stilled on the keyboard. As always, I felt Dario’s presence with me in the room, although he was miles away, sleeping in his dorm room, cramming for a test, or scarfing down pizza with his roommate. No, in my imagination he was at my side, all right. I knew it, even if he didn’t.

  He had to be, you see. Dario was—my muse.

  That realization struck me with such force, I actually clutched my heart to still its sudden pounding. Once I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to suffer a coronary infarction and keel over dead, leaving my cat an orphan, I threw my head back and laughed. There I sat, naked at my desk in the moonlight, laughing. Even Clutch stared at me from the bed, appalled.

  Still grinning like a fool, I gave my head a shake and went back to work.

  Since writing was possible even if I didn’t have the computer fully functional and online, I was determined to plow ahead, writing page after page without worrying about all the bullshit of being online. And it was all for Dario. I could already see his name on the dedication page of the published novel. Nothing like being sure of yourself, huh? Nothing like getting cocky. Here I was writing the dedication already, and the damn book wasn’t even written.

  Chaz and I maintained a cool cease-fire for most of the week. Finally, even as I was getting excited about seeing Dario again on the weekend, Chaz called and asked if I would like to join him for dinner. Nothing was said of the busboy who had sparked his jealous snit, so I thought perhaps he had accepted Dario’s existence in my life and decided to move on.

  He arrived at the condo on Thursday. While I stood on the balcony and surveyed the city streets below, Chaz took pity on me and sat down at my new computer for a grand total of thirty minutes. In that time he managed to hook up my new data backup system, get everything else up and running and passworded out, and even hooked me into the World Wide Web, not that I much gave a shit about that—and he did it all before I could polish off a box of Moon Pies.

  Once that was accomplished, we headed out. It was a balmy evening. Spring was turning quickly to summer, the city still sparkling clean from the storm the week before. Crowds had amassed in the Gaslamp once again, milling, marauding, mingling. Chaz took my arm as we forged our way through the mob. He was walking like he had a purpose.

  “Thanks for the computer work,” I said.

  He eyed me unsurprised. “Well, I sort of had to, didn’t I?” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact.

  “I suppose you did. Poor bastard. So where are we having dinner?” I asked as he pulled me along through the crowd like a pull toy.

  He didn’t slow, or even turn around to look at me when he spoke. “I have a craving for Mexican food. We’re going to Sombreros.”

  I dug my feet into the pavement and dragged him to a stop. When I finally had his attention, I said, “What are you doing?”

  He gave me his innocent stare, the one that never ever fooled me the least little bit. “Can’t a guy crave Mexican food?”

  I narrowed my eyes and tried to burn a hole through his face to see what was going on inside his cast-iron head. “This isn’t about Dario, is it? You know he’s working tonight.”

  “Who’s Dario?”

  “Oh, please, Chaz. Answer me. What are you doing?”

  “I want to meet your young friend. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Everything’s wrong with that.”

  Chaz cast me an amused glance. “Not willing to share, huh?”

  I shot him a glance right back, but mine wasn’t particularly amused. “Not willing to let you put him on the spot. Or embarrass him. That’s what I’m not willing to do.”

  “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?” With a wide-eyed, innocent glint in his eye, he crossed his chest like a good little Boy Scout and said, “I’ll be polite. I promise.”

  I still didn’t trust him. “Let’s eat somewhere else.”

  Chaz punched my shoulder, acting all buddy-buddy. “Oh, come on, Robert. I’ll have to meet him sometime. Might as well get it over with.”

  I took a fistful of his shirtfront and flapped a finger back and forth in front of his face. “Uh-uh. No way. I’m not doing this. I don’t trust you, Chaz. I know how snarky you can get. I won’t let you take out on Dario how you feel about me.”

  “And how exactly do I feel about you?”

  I refused to answer. We stood there in the jostling crowd, glaring at each other.

  Finally, he pried my fingers off his shirt and smoothed out the wrinkles I’d left behind. He spoke coolly. Too coolly. “Whatever you say, Robert. Call me when you decide
to dump your little trick and you need a friend again.”

  I hissed out the only response I had inside me. “I’ll never need a friend that bad.”

  Chaz’s only response was to turn and walk away.

  Trying to ignore the ache in my heart, I watched him go. Damn.

  Chapter Eleven

  DARIO’S BURNISHED, golden-brown eyes smoldered from within their framework of lush black lashes. His face was healed now, of course. He was as pristinely beautiful as he had been the first time I saw him back in March, two months earlier. Chiseled Hispanic features, acorn-colored skin, luscious, unscarred lips that turned up in a smile at the least provocation. But those eyes!

  He stared up at me now as I hovered over him, his strong brown legs resting on my shoulders. With every inward stroke of my cock into his heated depths, his lips parted, and he emitted a tiny cry of bliss. When I slowed my movements to make the piercing less hurried—and to postpone my own imminent ejaculation—his cries increased.

  His hands were at the back of my neck, holding my face inches from his own, his warm sweet breath blowing over me. His eyes were so welded to mine I couldn’t drag my own away. No one—and I mean no one—had ever savored a fuck from me as much as Dario was savoring this one at this very moment.

  “You feel so good,” I mumbled, my cock buried to the hilt inside him.

  Dario’s hands slid from the back of my neck to my ass, and he pulled me closer, deeper, anchoring my cock far inside his core, refusing to let me pull away to begin another long stroke, refusing to take his eyes from mine as my cock throbbed inside him and his ass clenched around me.

  His voice was shattered and weak, torn to shreds by his gasping breaths. “R-Robert, I’m going to come. Stay in me. Just like that. Oh God, stay in me!”

  I tilted my gaze down to where his cock lay beneath my stomach, so hard, so throbbing. So beautiful. I moved my hand toward it, and Dario gasped.

  “Yes, baby! Touch me!”

  He didn’t have to ask twice. I scooped his beautiful cock into my fist, and at the same moment, I slid my own cock a fraction of an inch deeper inside his welcoming ass. He grimaced as if I had set fire to him, and a moment later, the come gushed from his cock to spray my stomach, my chest, my chin.

  I licked the delicious splatter from my lips as he shuddered and quailed beneath me. Finding his mouth with mine, I slowly pulled my dick free, easing it from his velvet ass. He moaned when I parted from him completely. Straddling him quickly, I pulled the condom away and flung it to the floor at the side of the bed.

  He eagerly reached between us and gripped my cock, tilting it toward his face, wiggling down in the bed at the same time to draw it near. The moment I gasped out a warning, he gripped my ass and slid his warm lips around my cock to claim my juices for his own.

  I shivered and gasped as my seed spilled into that delicious hot mouth. His hands were everywhere on my body, but always drawing me closer, never letting me slip away for an instant. I thrashed like a beast caught in a trap, but what a wonderful trap it was! Only when my spurting slowed did the ministrations of his mouth on my tender cock slow as well. Not once did he let a single drop of semen escape him.

  Smiling now, his heavenly eyes centered on my face looming above him, he let my softening cock slide from between his come-moistened lips. Before I let myself collapse on top of him, I scooped up his come from my chest with my fingertips. Then, squeegeeing it from my neck and chin, I carried it to my mouth, where I lapped up every drop, every splash, every glistening string and shining droplet.

  Watching wide-eyed, he trembled beneath me, as I continued to tremble over him.

  When we were both at last slaked, when our desires were finally quenched, at least for the moment, only then did we fall against each other, eyes closed, hearts winding down, at peace.

  I rested my face at Dario’s throat and kissed him there. Lingering. Absorbing his heat.

  His hand was once again at the back of my neck as he held me in place. His mouth was at my ear.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, his words barely audible, lost in a sigh of contentment.

  Still catching my breath, I slipped away to hang over the side of the bed, exhausted.

  “Poor old guy,” Dario cooed. “I’m wearing you out.”

  I ignored him. Reaching down, I picked up his tennis shoes from the floor. They were the same shoes I had given him two months earlier after our first weekend together in my desert cabin. They had been the happiest months of my life. Well, the weekends had anyway, for that was the only time Dario and I were together. As always, his schooling came first.

  The only stain on my happiness was the fact that I had seemingly lost Chaz forever. We had not spoken since the day he walked away from me on the street below. Did I miss him? Yes. Would I give up Dario to reclaim Chaz’s friendship? Never.

  I had grown adept at pushing thoughts of Chaz away, and turning back to Dario beside me, I did so now.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  Dario’s hand stroked lazy circles over the small of my back. He slid down into the bed to lay his lips to my rib cage. His voice was lazy and hoarse, sounding almost tortured as it always did after sex. “Hmm? How do I do what?”

  With a grunt, I dragged myself back up onto the bed, bringing his bedraggled pair of tennis shoes with me. I dangled them in front of his face by their filthy shoelaces.

  “How do you wear these things into a frazzle in only a few weeks?”

  “Oh lord, you aren’t going to buy me another pair, are you?”

  That hurt. “You don’t like it when I buy you things?”

  He cast me a teasing look. “I’m fucking myself to death trying to pay you back.”

  Seeing the hurt look on my face, he erupted into laughter, burying his face in my chest. “I knew I couldn’t say that with a straight face. Actually I’m fucking myself to death because I like the way you fuck. That better?”

  I stuck my face in his hair and sucked in his scent. “Enormously better,” I said around a smooch to his scalp.

  “And I do appreciate it when you buy me things, Robert. It’s just that it makes me feel so… what’s the word? Oh, yeah—poor.”

  I stroked the back of his neck. “You are poor. You’re a starving student. Someday when you’re a veterinarian, I’ll let you pay me back by putting my fucking cat to sleep with a sizable discount. How would that be?”

  We both turned to stare at Clutch, who was gazing at us from the windowsill like he wanted to rip our nuts off and bounce them off the balcony.

  “Uh-oh.” Dario grinned. “I think he heard you.”

  Was this the time to ask Dario to move in for the summer? School would be out for the year soon, his finals completed. He would have to give up his dorm room for the break anyway. It was either give up his job at the restaurant and move to Los Angeles to live with his brother, or keep his busboy job, if he wanted, and stay in San Diego with me. Unless I was sorely mistaken, and Mexican families weren’t as straitlaced as I had always heard they were, he couldn’t fuck himself to death if he stayed with his brother nearly as efficiently as he could fuck himself to death if he stayed with me. Besides, my stomach clenched up even thinking about having Dario in LA while I stayed here.

  I opened my mouth to speak, and even I didn’t know what was about to come out. “The school year will be over soon,” I ventured.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You have to make arrangements for the summer,” I ventured further.

  “I know. God, you taste delicious.”

  He pressed his lips to my side, kissing each individual rib as he slowly slid downward. When his mouth reached my pelvic bone and slid toward the fuzz surrounding my belly button, I pulled him up in the bed and trapped him in my arms.

  His kisses didn’t stop for a moment. Now he simply centered them on my mouth, my chin, my nose. His tongue slid across my lips. I squeezed my eyes shut to savor the sensation. His lean body lay hot and velvety against my ow
n, his sleeping cock brushing my leg, the hard nubs of his kneecaps snuggled up against my own, his hand at my waist, kneading, kneading.

  Suddenly I felt him tense in my arms.

  I opened my eyes. “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  His warm mouth brushed my cheek as he spoke. He had reclaimed his voice. It was strong again. Strong and with that tiny hint of Mexican heritage mixed in to give it spice. Funny that only at his most vulnerable moments did his faintest of accents appear. In anger. In laughter. After sex. His breath smelled musky now with the scent of semen. Undoubtedly mine did as well. Yummy.

  “I was online the other day,” he said. “I was reading reviews of your books.”

  I groaned. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

  He tilted his head back far enough to capture my eyes with his. “Don’t you read your reviews?”

  “Never,” I said, which was a lie. “At least I try not to.” That was closer to the truth, since it’s almost impossible not to wonder what readers are saying about the books you practically coughed up a lung and sold your soul to get published.

  Dario’s chestnut eyes, still mellow and sated in the aftermath of sex, fell on me and studied me closely.

  “A vast majority of the reviews are great, Robert. A lot of people out there love your books as much as I do. You know that, right?”

  I nodded, unable to prevent a teeny smile from twisting up the corners of my mouth. “God bless ’em, yes.”

  Dario’s gaze softened as he watched my smile appear. Then a troubled look crossed his face, while his eyes still burrowed into mine. “A lot of people write really nice things. I mean, sometimes even if they don’t like the book, they still manage to be nice about the way they critique it.”