Page 7 of Wingmen

Chewing, Elliot picked up his beer and ignored him. “So you live here,” he said, sipping and setting down the glass.

“In the off-season. Apartment? In the Pearl District?” Dustin looked sympathetically over his beer. “Remember?”

“Obviously not. And what do you do around here all summer? They got bingo and–”

“Early bird specials? You already used that one last night.”

Elliot stabbed a fry into his ketchup. “Alright, what did we do last night? Arm wrestle?”

“Funnily enough, that’s the one thing wedidn’tdo. Although, I’m sure it would’ve gone that way eventually, if I’d stuck around.”

The blonde at the high top on the other side of the room laughed. It carried all the way across the bar, and Elliot winced. There was too much exposed brickwork magnifying all the noise in this hipster hellhole. It was like drinking at the gym.

“Maybe this’ll jog your memory,” said Bennet, and pulled up his sleeve to show Elliot the inside of his forearm. Next to his watch was a smudged and nearly invisible phone number.

With a horrible jolt, Elliot remembered. The Windex. The miniskirt. Had heburpedthe alphabet? No: he’d made it as far as ‘Q’ and then the girl in the miniskirt had called him a pig because he’d been so fucking drunk. In front of Dustin Bennet.

Elliot briefly shut his eyes, and instead of letting that humiliation sink through him, he sniffed and pulled his mouth down at the corners and turned back to his food. “No onewritesa number down with a pen anymore, Abuelo. So was she any good?”

“No idea.” Bennet rolled the sleeve down. “I left, remember? Figured you would’ve gone home with her.”

“Nah. You don’t wanna take a girl like that home.”

Dustin looked sharply at him sideways. “Like what?”

Elliot lifted one shoulder, tonguing french fry out of his canine and dipping another into the ketchup. “You know. Fleje.”

He could feel Dustin watching him. Probably judging. Bennet was probably a feminist. Guys who said they were feminists liked to talk over Elliot about how enlightened they were about women. They used words like ‘regressive’, and they were always white, and always lived in places like Portland. They usually accused Elliot of being ignorant, or even MAGA, which was fucking ridiculous, because why the fuck would Elliot vote for a guy who called his abuela’s home a ‘floating island of garbage’?

Dustin said nothing, and turned his gaze back to the room. The blonde woman laughed, and Elliot looked over his shoulder at her. Her eye caught his. Nice smile. Her laugh was too loud, but that was fine – it was generous, and his uncle Sal always said a generous laugh meant a generous woman. Her friend was taller with dark hair, looked a little quiet.

He leaned toward Bennet without taking his eyes off them, finished the mouthful he was chewing, and swallowed. “Fine,” he said. “You take the tall one.”

Bennet whipped his head around. “Excuse me?”

“Thought you were giving me a chance to redeem myself.”

“I wasn’t serious.”

“Why not? What else you doing? You gotta get home to watchGolden Girls?”

Bennet scoffed. “You don’t even know whatGolden Girlsis.”

“Fuck you, my abuela learned English from theGolden Girls.You take the one on the left, I’ll take the one on the right.”

“I’m not doing that. It’s gross. I don’t know how I let you talk me into it last night; I must’ve been drunker than I thought.”

“You don’t wanna play? Why? Cause you know you’re gonna lose?”

Bennet squared his jaw and looked away. Elliot grinned. Hewas remembering something else about last night: how fun it was getting under the old man’s skin.

He dipped another fry in his ketchup, grinning. “No, no, disculpa, you’re right, Papi. You shouldn’t get into such a strenuous competition at your age.”

“I’m.Twenty. Nine. Amigo.”

“Okay. So it’s no problem.” Elliot shrugged, chewing. “So you’ll just go over there and ask for her number.”

Bennet glared across the bar. “Why do I get the tall one?”