Page 73 of Wingmen

“So are we getting wasted?”

Drew was lacing up her bowling shoes in a plastic chair at the top of the lane and watching Elliot pour two beers from a pitcher. They hadn’t hooked up since the wingmen night, and Elliot wasn’t even sure he knew how to do it with a girl anymore. Everything he’d done recently was–

“We don’t need to get wasted,” he said, sliding her glass across the table. “Tipsy is fine.”

She scooped up the beer and held it up to cheers. “And then what?”

“Then we see where the night takes us, Mami.”

She clinked his glass, giving him the ‘playing along’ look. “Well alright, Your Highness.”

Elliot couldn’t bowl for shit, and tonight he was worse than ever. Drew teased him mercilessly as he rolled gutter ball after gutter ball, and he retaliated by yelling “Brick!” at every opportunity. It wasfun. By the time they’d finished three games and two pitchers, they were reasonably drunk and Elliot was only thinking about Dustin every ten minutes or so.

Drew linked her arm through his as they stepped out onto the street into surprisingly chilly fog. She zipped up her jacket, grabbed Elliot’s hands, and stuffed them into her pockets, along with her own. They stood chest to chest on the sidewalk with her chin tilting up and his tilting down and their breath just visible between them.

“Are you trying to seduce me?” said Elliot.

She nodded. “Is it working? I’m not usually very good at it.”

He removed one hand and dug into his back pocket for the cigarettes Dustin never let him smoke. When he produced them, Drew’s mouth fell open.

“Naughty boy.”

He flipped open the top and offered her the pack, and she took one, looking scandalized. “We’re not going to be kissing after this, are we?” she said, with the cigarette between her lips as he lit it for her.

“Hopefully. Don’t worry, I brought gum.”

She dragged on it, and he took it out of her mouth for her so she could blow the smoke into the sky while putting her hand back in her pockets. “Wow,” she said. “Gum. So prepared.”

“Is that good? Or lame?” He hung it in his mouth like atoothpick, and looked down, slipping his hand back into her pocket as well.

“I think good,” she said. “And I have a toothbrush at my place, so…”

“Ah, we’re going to your place.”

She began walking backward, and he went with her, attached by the pockets. “Yes? Although, to be clear…” She removed a hand from a pocket and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, giving him a look so serious it had to be a joke. “I’m not inviting you over to use my toothbrush, Mr. Rodriguez. We’re talking about having sex with each other, correct?”

“Correct.”

His stomach did a weird thing that he ignored.

“Great.” She put the cigarette back in his mouth and held it for him while he dragged on it. As he tipped his head back to blow up the smoke, he felt her lips touch his neck and was so startled he started coughing. He wrenched his hands out of her pockets as he stumbled sideways, and when he pulled himself together and straightened up, she was watching him with an amused expression.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or concerned that that was your response to me kissing your neck.”

“Flattered.” He was still coughing. “I just wasn’t ready for it.”

She stuck the cigarette back in her mouth and put her hands on her hips and gave him one of her saucy up and downs. “Well you better get ready, Papi, because these lips are about to goallkinds of other places.”

Elliot laughed. But inside, he felt a little queasy.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dustin

Three weeks after he ran into Roddy at the gym, Dr. Wu called to check in. Dustin was doing the riverfront walk. She took him through the usual checks – pain, swelling, mobility.

Everything felt fine. Three weeks of digging after the basketball flare-up had turned up nothing, the pain had resolved itself, the scans were clean, and Tom and the rest of the Force team had chalked it up to a temporary neurological glitch. Which was a massive relief.