Page 35 of Wingmen

Elliot sat with the phone in his hand, trying to put feelings into places he didn't know how to fit them. Then he closed messages and did something he hadn’t done in a long,longtime.

He opened Instagram and looked at the picture of Bennet.

It was from six years ago, right after Dustin’s team won the playoffs. He was in a locker room, holding the Stanley Cup, grinning and soaked in sweat, with his jersey off. His hair had been a little longer back then, and he didn’t have the beard. He had hair on his chest, though, and that was maybe what did it for Elliot.

As soon as his eyes landed on it, all the old feelings came back. His whole body went on fire, and as he let his eyes trail down the ridges of abs, ribs, and the steep angles that disappeared into his hockey pants, he felt a big, scary shift behind his naval.

He locked the phone and threw it onto the bed. He got up and went to the window, opened the curtains and put his forehead to the dark glass.

He didn’t respond to Bennet.

CHAPTER NINE

Dustin

The kid was funny, Dustin had to give him that. It wasn’t alwaysintentional, but Dustin got a kick out of it.

It was eight AM and he was at Force, doing sled drags with Tom. The knee felt weird. He’d had to take an ibuprofen this morning for the first time in a few months. It wasn’t too bad though. Probably just went a little hard at that ladder.

After the gym, he went to Elaine’s for his smoothie, and then drove across the river to the farmer’s market. He’d been doing gym, Elaine’s, farmer’s market on Sunday every summer since he started coming to Portland, and it was basically his church at this point.

Not that he knew what church was like. He’d never been inside one.

He went to the bench under the big oak tree he liked, and pulled out his phone as he sat to watch kids in the park. The Body Countapp had a red notification dot on it. Rodriguez hadput up his takedown last night, and Dustin still hadn’t looked at it.

He’d intended to, but when the phone had pinged, he got a weird feeling. Suddenly, it felt like he didn’t want to know that. He hadn’t figured the nitty-gritty into all this. Typing Fatima’s age into that app last night made him feel like a pig. How many details was he supposed to supply? They hadn’t talked about it, so he just had to make a call. Using protection – that seemed like a good thing to model. Butsession length?That was too much.

What was heteachingthe kid by doing that? Nothing healthy, that was for sure.

He silenced notifications on Body Count, then texted Fatima a quick thank you, and put the phone away.

Hopefully, Rodriguez went for the basketball thing he’d proposed. That was fun, and outdoors, and neither of them played, so ideally, it wouldn’t get too competitive. Maybe they could slowly transition to that and eventually wind the wingmen thing down. Basketball was like a classic mentoring thing, anyway, right? Dr. Wu hadn’ttechnicallycleared him for it, but he wasn’t planning to go full-out.

He linked his fingers and stretched, feeling the sun. Then he got up and walked back to the loft.

By the timehe got back, showered, and had lunch at the cafe down the street, it was two PM, and Rodriguez still hadn’t texted him back to let him know if he was coming. He stood at the big window with his phone and thought about texting again. Was that needy? Why did he feel like it was needy? This new mentoring responsibility was starting to stress him out.

He put the phone away and went to the couch with his laptop and put his feet on the coffee table as he pulled up thekid’s Wikipedia page. He didn’t know a lot about him, apart from what he had to know for hockey. He scrolled past statistics and performance highlights and looked at the ‘Personal Life’ section.

It was pretty thin. Most sophomore players’ personal sections were. He was the only child of Juan Rodriguez Morales and Camila Sánchez Rivera, born in Tampa, started out in the Lightning Foundation, got flagged early for triple-A and the USHL, drafted by Tampa during his second NHL Entry Draft. It was a pretty standard pipeline. He’d just done it fast.

He opened a browser and GoogledElliot Rodriguez, and was presented with a link to his Instagram. He opened it and scrolled through the pictures: shots on the ice, staged promotional stuff, some candid things with friends. His gaze snagged on a shirtless picture with some other guys in front of a pool, and he flicked it away and kept scrolling. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He opened a few of the shots with family, but those didn’t tell him much.

He went back and clicked open the shirtless pool shot.

It was…borderline acceptable for the NHL. Technically, shirtless on social media was fine. Dustin had a shirtless locker room shot with the Stanley Cup trophy on his own Instagram from years ago. Beach and vacation shots were okay, but the unspoken rule was that the context was:we’re all having a good time here, and this is very wholesome. Volleyball. That kind of thing.

This picture was not that. This was a guy who knew exactly what he was working with, and how to pose it. It was smooth, and oiled, and even though he was with two other guys – Reef and someone Dustin didn’t recognize – Rodriguez stood out like a peacock in a chicken coop. He was lean and tapered. He had a catholic cross and a pair of wings tattooed across the whole breadth of his chest, and a word on his ribs that Dustin couldn’t read. The way he was eye-fucking the camera over hissunglassescouldhave been accidental. The outline of his junkcouldhave just been a shadow. But this was clearly a thirst trap.

And it was probably working.

Dustin felt weirdly hot, and he snapped the laptop shut and went back to the window. Still no reply from Rodriguez. He typed out a message, deleted, re-typed it, and stood with his thumb overSend.

Why was he nervous?He felt like a teenager, waiting for his crush to call back.

“Christ, Bennet, just send the message,” he said out loud, and did.

Rodriguez rockedup to basketball ten minutes late, with no prior warning he was coming.