Page 27 of Wingmen

Elliot

He put his fist to his sternum and muscled the last sip of his beer down, then set the glass on the bar and looked around for Dustin. He was putting a coin in the popcorn machine. Elliot hadn’t wanted to come back here, but one of the rules was that they got to take turns picking spots. Dustin went first, because he had the home advantage.

Drew touched Elliot’s arm, and when he turned around, she said, “So what are you in town for?”

He frowned, smiling. “How do you know I’m in town? Maybe I live here.”

“You don’t.” She tipped her glass at his hat. “Unless you’re wearing that because youwantto get hit by a Krakens fan.”

Elliot put a hand to his baseball cap. He’d forgotten he had it on. It was on backwards, but she must’ve seen the Tampa Lightning logo when he’d turned around to find Dustin. He smiled and turned the hat around. “I’m a hockey player. This is my team.”

That seemed to impress her. She picked up her beer with the ‘playing along’ look twinkling in her eye. “Like professionally?”

“Yep.”

“Are you good?”

“Oh, I’m good, Mami.”

“Yeah? How good?”

“The best.”

“Uhhuh.” She lifted her eyebrows and sipped. Her lips came away foamy, and she tucked them together and tipped her head toward Dustin, who was on his way back. “Is he your teammate?”

Elliot laughed. “No.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s the second best.”

She sipped again. “But you’re thebestbest.”

Dustin slid onto the stool on the other side of Fatima, and caught Elliot’s eye and winked. Elliot felt his insides tilt, and covered with, “Pretty much.”

Drew lifted her glass and clinked his. “That better be true, Mr. Rodriguez. Or I’m not gonna let you come clam diving.”

Dustin

So far, he’d learned Fatima didn’t drink, but she sometimes smoked weed, and that the best time she’d ever had was at a Desi warehouse party, which sounded like the kind of thing ten-years-ago-Dustin would havecrushed, but which now sounded pretty exhausting.

They’d moved from the bar to a booth in the corner, because sitting so close to Rodriguez was throwing Dustin off his game. He kept trying to check in and Elliot kept refusing to let him, and this was supremely bumming him out. He’d been more excited to hang out with Elliot tonight than he’d realized. Which was a little weird.

The booth was quieter, anyway.

Fatima took off the scarf, saying, “Fuck mylife,it’s hot in here,” and threw it across the table at him, which he found very charming. Underneath, she was wearing a slinky top that blended seamlessly into the elephant pants, and revealed a lot of what was going on underneath, which was very, very nice. Dustin did his best to let her know he’d noticed this as he handed back the scarf, but not to notice it too obviously.

He’d never hooked up with anyone so young before, and he wasn’t totally sure he was allowed to…? But he was making progress, and she was interesting, so it was easy to divert questions back around to her; he liked to talk about himself as little as possible in these situations.

She seemed to be catching onto this trick, because when he asked where her favorite Pakistani street food cart was in LA, she eyed him across the table and said, “There is a limit, you know.”

He blinked. “To what?”

“To the number of questions I’ll answer for you.”

“Oh!” He put down his beer. “Sorry–”

“It’s fine.” She smiled and reached for the popcorn he’d got from the machine. “It’s cute that you’re interested. But some guys are, like,really, superinterested. If you know what I mean.”