Page 44 of Wingmen

“And keep taking the ibuprofen. It’ll help with any swelling. You have some?”

“Should do.”

“If you run out, you can take it over-the-counter from the drugstore. If you need something stronger than that, call me because that means something is wrong. Donottry to get a script from a local clinic out there. Okay?”

They hung up, and he went to the cupboard over the stove to check the ibuprofen, then to the bathroom to check the medicine cabinet, where his hand found another bottle behind a jumble of other things.

He pulled it out. It wasn’t ibuprofen; it was the oxycodone he’d been prescribed the first week after surgery. He hadn’t finished them – he hadn’t needed to. He twisted off the cap and looked inside. More in there than he remembered. How many had he actually taken that first week? Not enough, it looked like. He’d probably compartmentalized and told himself he wasn’t in pain. That tracked. That sounded like something he’d do. Like something Dad would’ve done.

Sighing, he set the bottle back on the shelf and closed the door, then went to go find something to do with himself all day.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Elliot

They met on the sidewalk outside Dustin’s loft at eight. Dustin was stretching his quads and looked up as he heard Elliott coming.

‘Uncomfortable’ didn’t even comecloseto describing how Elliot felt. He couldn’t even look Bennet in the eye.

Dustin looked askance at the coffee in Elliot’s hand, mumbling something about taking training seriously, and Elliot scoffed, too loud, deflecting.

“It’s just a walk, bro.”

He immediately wished he hadn’t said that. He wished he hadn’t brought the stupid coffee. This wasn’t just a walk for Dustin: thiswastraining. This was all he could do.

Zipping up his hoodie and shoving his hands into the pockets, Dustin purposefully set off. Elliot quietly set the half-empty cup at the bottom of the stairs up to Dustin’s building before he jogged to catch up.

He fell in step beside him. The sun was already warm and bright, and the city was waking up around them. Elliot was terrifiedDustin was going to make him talk about Bernie’s, and distracted himself by looking around. He’d never been on this street before. It was nice, but he couldn’t help noticing the contrast to the East Side spots he’d been exploring.

Dustin took them to a paved path that ran beside the river. A girl had a dog on the front of her paddle board. The dog didn’t look thrilled, but Elliot figured it was probably on its way to a park, and would forget all about this when it got there.

The silence between them was getting louder with every step. Which was fine with Elliot, because he didn’t knowhowhe was going to explain what he’d done.KissingDustin Bennet? In aparking lot?After he’d had to talk himself out of stalking him all week?

Finally, Bennet said, “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened. I don’t know what – I was drunk – not that that’s an excuse – and I just…I don’t know. Why I did that. But you were also drunk, and you didn’t want that and the whole thing was totally…yeah. Weird. I don’t know. A mistake. Sorry.”

Elliot frowned at his feet and kept walking. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting.He’dkissed Dustin. It wasn’t Dustin’s fault.

“Oh. That’s okay,” he said. “It was…fine.”

‘Fine’ wasn’t what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He tried again.

“It was…yeah, fine. Fine. Totally fine. It was fine.”

Why couldn’t he stop saying ‘fine’?!

He lapsed into silence, feeling utterly defeated, and Dustin nodded and kept walking. They covered another half mile in silence.

They went under a bridge and out the other side, and Dustin stopped at a lookout with a view back down the river. He was bending and flexing his knee, and Elliot glanced sideways at it. Desperate to say something to Dustin that wasn’t ‘fine’, he tried, “That feeling okay? It’s on track?”

Dustin stopped bending and flexing it like Elliot had caught him doing something he shouldn’t be. He braced his forearms on the rail. “Yeah, I think so. I had to take a little ibuprofen last week because it was acting up after I did that agility ladder.”

Elliot shut his eyes, feeling horribly guilty. On that day, he’d felt great about the numbers he’d put up. Closing in on Bennet’s PR with Bennet sitting right there. He wanted to smash it with Dustin watching, so he would see how hard Elliot was working. He hadn’t considered what it must have been like for Dustin.

“Sorry,” he said.

Dustin frowned and looked at him. “Why?”

“For that day. It was dumb.”