Page 112 of Wingmen

“Mano, mamabicho. Hijo ‘e puta. Hijo de la gran puta y me cago en la calavera de tu madre. You fucking better.”

Ten minutes later, when Roddy had calmed down and stopped sulking, they lay face to face on their separate pillows and Dustin practiced the thing he kept thinking about saying. He didn’t want to say it down the phone like this, so he’d gotten in the habit of saying it a few times inside his head whenever it popped in there – which was all the time now. He figured that was a good place to start: like making eggs before you tried something complicated.

Roddy’s eyes were half-closed, and Dustin thought he might already be asleep until he mumbled, “I have a question.”

“Mm.”

“Do you think…” Roddy opened his eyes. “Do you think you would ever tell people? That my Instagram turned you bi?”

Dustin sighed. It was something he’d been thinking about. He felt bad watching Roddy take all the scrutiny alone. But when Roddy had made his statement, Dustin hadn’t felt ready to join him. He’d made himself promise to focus on recovery, and having to deal with the media frenzy that would’ve ensued would’ve made that impossible.

“Do you want me to?” he said.

Elliot half shrugged. “No, I wouldn’t ask you to do that. Butsometimes…” He yawned, closing his eyes again. “I don’t know. It’s nice that you’re proud of me. I want people to know.”

Dustin’s chest actually thumped. Only Elliot and Jordan could make it do that. He watched Elliot’s face as it relaxed and became peaceful and said, “I can do that. Can you give me some time to think about when?”

Elliot didn’t respond.

“Roddy?” Dustin tilted the screen. He was asleep. Smiling, Dustin reached over his head to turn off the light and lay there watching him until he fell asleep as well.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

FRIDAY

Elliot

The arena was vibrating with the sound of nineteen thousand fans hanging on the edge of their seats. The clock ticked under forty seconds and Elliot’s lungs screamed as he tracked the play through a visor smeared with sweat and rink-smudge. His defenseman picked up the puck behind their own net and fired a hard pass right onto Elliot’s stick as he crossed the center line.

It was a deadlocked third period. They were playing Denver, which was weird because Dustin wasn’t on the ice, and weirder because he was up in the box, watching. Elliot almost felt bad that he was about to undress Bennet’s teamagainwhile he had to sit there and do nothing about it.

Almost.

He crossed the hash marks into the scoring area as the opposing defense skated in to flatten him. He dodged and hit a high-speed toe-drag, pulling the puck back through his own skates, and in a fraction of a second, jammed on the brakes, dragged the puck to his backhand, and sent it into the net.

The red light flashed.

The goal horn detonated.

Up in the box, Diego was probably gleefully yelling into Dustin’s face that that was, “Filthy!” and asking him how he liked getting his ass whooped by Elliot Rodriguezagain.Well, they had to get to know each other somehow.

The stadium erupted and nineteen thousand people screamed with either excitement or disbelief as Elliot was swallowed by a mob of jerseys – right in front of the plexiglass where Dustin stood watching. He wasn’t in the box. Elliot hadn’t realized he’d come down to the bench.

Later, he couldn’t remember what happened next. He didn’t remember being hoisted into the air and carried around like a girl at her quinceañera – he saw it later on social media. He didn’t remember skating off the ice. He just remembered Dustin, leaning with his arms folded at the gate at the edge of the rink, in his leather jacket with a VIP tag around his neck, smiling and holding up his hand for a high five.

Elliot clamped his hand in his glove. And for reasons he’d never be able to explain to himself later, pulled Dustin in and kissed him.

Dustin

The next three minutes were anarchy.

As Elliot’s mouth touched his, the noise in the stadium doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and then reached a fever pitch he hadn’t even heard during a Stanley Cup final. The cameras and cell phone flashes went into a frenzy that might have given people seizures. On the PA, the announcer was stammering the same sentence over and over and over again, and in the cornerof his eye, Dustin could see him and Roddy on the jumbotron, thirty feet tall.

Roddy seemed to realize what he’d done, and tried to pull away.

Dustin grabbed the front of his jersey and didn’t let him.

It was the scariest moment of his life, and he held on like a man clinging to a life raft in a storm. Scarier than watching Dad go down on his knees at practice that day. Thanhisknee hitting the boards at twenty-three miles an hour and quite literally exploding – and knowing in that instant he was done. He’d tried to deny it for months. Scarier than the specialist saying the words ‘physically dependent’ and Dustin realizing how close he’d come to losing his life.