Page 23 of Wingmen

Dustin tipped his face to the ceiling. Jordan was right: he didn’t want to hear it.

Fine, he sent,message received

Jordan wasn’t done:And not to harp on it, but

More dots.

you are the adult. You can’t really stay butt hurt about a kid beating your guys in the little game you get to play for money

Uh huh. Okay. Good chat

Love you

Love you too. Say hi to May and Sarah

Dustin put the phone face down on the island and braced on the counter with his head down. So now he was supposed to be what? Amentor?

He had no desire to be that. You did events, yeah, with kids, and you showed up to say some words and take a few shots and let them chase the puck around, and then you took your check and you left. You didn’t see those kids again. You weren’tresponsiblefor them.

How the hell did youteachthem things? And what the hell did you teacha kid like Elliot Rodriguez?

Well, manners, for one thing.

Okay, and how the fuck did you do that? Dustin wasn’t interested in becoming Rodriguez’s punching bag. He didn’t care how thepoor guy’slegendary breakout year was going. Nine years ago, Dustin had that same year. And yeah, it was tough. Partly because Jordan had just burned out and quit the league, which Dustin hadn’t supported, because Dad didn’t believe in ‘burnout’ and therefore, neither did he.

So…yeah. Okay. There was always something going on apart from the game. Rodriguez was probably dealing with life shit of his own.

Dustin understood that…it just hadn’t been that way forhimfor a while, because there wasn’t much shit in Dustin’s lifebuthockey anymore. You didn’t get where he was any other way. You chose hockey. Over everything.

But maybe Jordan was right. He could be a grown up. He could figure out how to –ugh, he hated it –connectwith Rodriguez. He’d have to be wily about it, because he suspected Rodriguez would hate being mentored as much as he hated the idea of mentoring. Could be fun to come up with a way to trick him into hanging out, though. Lure him in with a bet, or something. Rodriguez seemed to like those.

Maybe he did need something like that. Something new. Something to take his mind off his own career, and the knee, and the looming fear that all this would be coming to an end for him soon and he didn’t know how to deal with that.

Jordan hadn’t said the word ‘retire’ today. But he’d been slipping it into conversations here and there since the injury. Like the thing with Rodriguez, it was something Dustin didn’t want to hear.

Because deep down, it wasn’t Rodriguez that Dustin was worried about. Dustin wasn’t butt hurt about Rodriguez winning the little game they played for money. He didn’t blame him for being good. It wasn’t his fault people called himThe New Dustin Bennet.Dustin knew he was: he could see it, same as Jordan.

It wasn’t that Elliot Rodriguez was the new Dustin Bennet.

It was that ol’ Dustin Bennet didn’t have anywhere else to go.

CHAPTER SIX

Elliot

He woke to a notification from Bennet and didn’t open it. There was no way he could look at anything from Dustin Bennet right now. Or maybe ever again. Not after what happened at pool.

He left the phone on the nightstand and went down to the coffee stand to get a flat white from the guy with the topiary mustache. He took it out the street and walked.

He wasn’t going anywhere. He was running away from his phone, which he’d left on the nightstand with Bennet’s message unread. He looked in the window of the bookshop, and the place he’d bought his mom the soap. He wasn’t looking for anything. He was just keeping his eyes off what was inside him:

I’ll even blow on your cue if you want.

A guy had whispered a dirty joke in his ear, and it was like his whole world had collapsed. He really needed to pull it the fuck together.

When he got back to the hotel he showered and brushed his teeth. When he came out of the bathroom he still didn’t knowwhat to do with himself. He couldn’t go the gym, because Bennet would be there. He didn’t want to go to Pineapple, because Bennet might go there. Ditto the pool place. He didn’t know a lot of other spots in the city yet.

He got another coffee and went back to the room.