Boy in the Club a boy & billionaire novel - Rachel Kane Page 0,6
last party at our house, half our spoons mysteriously went missing.
“Shit,” he says, and at first I think he burned his tongue, but no, he’s thoughtful. “Do you know what the job market is like right now?”
I think of the app on my phone. The scarcity of job listings out there. “I do.”
“If I have to go back home to my parents, I’ll die. I’m not even being dramatic.”
Some little part of me cringes when he says that. It’s unfair. It’s not his fault that he can go back home, while I can’t. Not his fault that I’m an orphan.
Sometimes the stings come out of nowhere, and I don’t even know why I’m feeling them.
I pat his shoulder. “We’ll figure something out. Maybe there’s room for one more guy upstairs.”
“Yeah, a guy who’ll actually pay rent? Not an actor who uses the rent for headshots? Not an up and coming musician who just needs us to be generous for one more month, maaaan?”
That has me laughing. That guy had been a total mistake as a roommate. Unemployed stoner making vaporwave albums on his laptop. Maaaaan. We were lucky to have found Graber and Roan. They’d been here a couple months, and aside from the usual battles over who would vacuum and who would replace the milk when we ran out, things had been good, finally.
“I’m looking for something steady right now,” I announce, sitting down with my own cup.
Polly’s eyebrow creeps up. “You? Steady? What about your life as a pampered boytoy?”
“That’s not— Ugh. God no. I’m sick of the club.”
“And here I was, bragging to my friends that I knew an actual male prostitute.”
I stuck out my tongue. “Gross. Stop. I’m a waiter. That’s all.”
“Selling his body on the streets, the only way he knows how to survive—”
“I will literally poison your coffee. Also, you don’t even have friends to tell. I’m your only friend.”
“So if you’re not peddling your succulent ass to the wealthy men of the city, what are you going to peddle so we make rent?”
“Did you say succulent?”
“I said no such thing.”
“Why Polly, I didn’t know you cared.”
He grimaces like there’s salt in his cup, but there’s an affection there. Of all the roommates who have passed through this house over the years, he’s the only one who has been here as long as I have. Does that make us friends? Sometimes I think I’m not a friends person. People are hard to figure out; you never know what they’re thinking. It was the one good thing about the club. You always knew exactly what people wanted…and they didn’t want me. The need was naked, in the open, and directed at someone else. You could hide in a room full of people.
I don’t want to go back.
They’re so ugly. I don’t mean their faces; no, everyone is pretty and perfect and beautiful there. I mean their entitlement. Their sense that they can do anything they want with you.
Even if you’re a waiter. Even if you’re clearly off-limits.
I can’t count the number of times someone has slapped my ass, nearly toppling my tray of drinks. Not out of lust—nobody wants me, and that’s the way I like it—but out of possessiveness, this sick need for control that rich guys have.
The one time you make a mistake—the one time…
“So, if my call today works out, maybe I won’t have to go back to the meat market,” I tell Polly, injecting more hope into my voice than I actually feel.
He’s been staring into his coffee like it’s a crystal ball telling him his future…and that future looks pretty grim. “Yeah? You got a job lined up?”
“Administrative assistant.”
“How is that different than boy-whore?”
“I’ll be wearing more clothes, for one thing.”
Our coffee cups don’t match, and when he sets his next to mine, I think about my parents—gone now, both of them—and how all of their plates and cups matched, how they had a full set of silverware. These little touches that let you know you’re stable in the world.
When was I going to find that kind of stability? When do you reach the all the cups match stage of adulthood?
Probably it happens after you get a real job. Not slinging drinks in a place that would make your mom hang her head in shame.
I’m glad my folks didn’t live to see this part of my life.
The moment I think that, I feel a sick chill in my belly, and that nauseating guilt I know I cannot allow myself to