Chapter Eleven
Dustin
You alive?
Hello?
Earth to Little Man
Seriously kid. Text me back.
Dustin sat on his couch in a pair of sweats and a sleep shirt with his phone in his hands.
It was Tuesday morning and the sun was already warm through the window.
He was halfway through his coffee and another text to Rodriguez, but reading back the one-sided conversation he’d been having with himself since Thursday was making him feel pathetic.
It had been five days and he hadn’t heard from Elliot.
Which made sense. What happened on Thursday was totally insane.
Elliot was probably freaking out. Dustin was freaking out.
On top of the fact that he’d sucked someone’s cock for the first time in his life, he hadn’t even asked if Rodriguez wanted his cock sucked.
Was that assault? Was it statutory something? Was Dustin a statutory cocksucker now?
No. Calm down, Bennet.
It was borderline. He didn’t know for sure that Rodriguez had wanted him to blow on his cue. But Elliot was twenty-one. Dustin wasn’t a statutory anything.
He was a cocksucker, though.
He checked the phone again, and his heart nearly stopped as three dots appeared. They bubbled for a moment, then disappeared. Dustin waited.
They didn’t come back.
Sighing, he locked the phone and put it on the coffee table.
He was absolutely shitting the bed on this mentoring thing.
He wasn’t sure exactly what a mentor was supposed to do, but he was almost certain it wasn’t, “Get your mentee drunk at a dive bar, then suck him off in the parking lot in the back of your rented Lexus.”
He checked his watch. He’d been keeping himself busy for the last few days: his buddy Nate had been in town for the weekend from Denver, which kept him from thinking about Elliot, and yesterday getting all the come out of the carpet in the rental car had taken him all evening – but today he had a rest day and nothing planned to fill it.
He thought about going for a hike, but his knee hurt and he was worried he may have overdone it with Rodriguez at basketball, and felt like he should stay off it.
So what the fuck was he gonna do with himself? Because worrying about Rodriguez all day was just going to make him crazy.
He got up and went to the pull-up bar that hung in the doorway to his bedroom and did five.
Then he went to the marble kitchen island to make another cup of coffee.
He went back to the pull-up bar, then back to the kitchen to sip coffee, then back to the pull-up bar, back to the coffee, until the coffee was gone and he’d done twenty-five pull-ups. He checked his watch.
He’d killed thirty whole minutes.
His laptop was on the couch, and he eyed it across the room.
He’d been avoiding it, because he knew if he opened it, he’d end up Googling things like, ‘did gay thing but I’m not gay help’, and ‘nearly thirty suddenly gay why’, and he wasn’t sure if that would be helpful or just send him down a weird rabbit hole.
He was also afraid he might wind up back on Rodriguez’s Instagram.
But he needed answers. Something had happened to him at that basketball game.
Maybe it had already been happening. Getting pulled into dumb games with Elliot at that charity thing.
Telling him about Pineapple. Giving him the name of his gym.
He’d invited Elliot to Bernie’s the first time.
Texted him afterward. Suggested the bet, basketball…
When you laid it all out like that, it didn’t look so much like a guy innocently deciding to mentor his protégé, as a predator grooming a victim.
But that wasn’t what he was doing!
He scooped up the laptop and flipped it open as he sat with his feet on the coffee table. Not knowing where to begin, he went with Is it gay for a guy to suck someone’s dick.
Jesus fucking Christ, Bennet. Yes, obviously.
The AI summary told him, Actually no. Not necessarily. Sexuality was fluid, it said: a single act didn’t define it. It told him it was normal to be confused, to focus on how he felt before, during, and after the moment, and to remember that he was in control of his identity.
Which was actually helpful.
Next to the summary were some links, which took him to a subreddit called Ask Gay Men.
As the page opened, his face went red with embarrassment, and he glanced around like there might be someone reading over his shoulder.
There wasn’t – he was in his own fucking apartment for Christ’s sake – so he opened the first post.
Forty-five minutes later, he’d read nearly every “Am I gay?” post in the subreddit, and rather than putting his mind at ease, they’d only made him more confused.
There were plenty of posts from guys who’d come out after thirty, but most of them went something like, “I knew I was gay when I was eight but…” or, “Repressed it for years and…”
As far as Dustin knew, he hadn’t been repressing anything.
As far as he knew, he’d spent his whole life having great, if brief, relationships with women, and then some salty teenager had slouched into a charity event with a fishbowl full of Windex and called him an old man, and that was the cock Dustin had decided to put in his mouth.
He liked women. He was into women. He’d never had the impulse to put anyone’s cock in his mouth before, ever.
So maybe he was bi? Or just…gay for Elliot Rodriguez?
He pressed his eyes under the heels of his hands and took a breath and looked out the window. Then he went back to Rodriguez’s Instagram.
He scrolled fast, like he could outrun his own hand already palming his cock through his sweats. He found the picture. The cross and wings inked on his chest. The word on his ribs, which Dustin now knew was Salvador. The kid looking cocky; leering over his sunglasses. The gleam of his oiled skin.
Dustin’s hand was in his boxers before he could talk himself out of it. This was wrong. He was thirty years old. He was straight. Did that weirdly make it hotter?
He zoomed in on the photo, beginning to stoke. Traced the shadow that might have been the outline of Elliot’s junk with his eyes. Remembered the amount that came out of it all over Dustin’s t-shirt.
Holy shit, it was so much.
That was the thing he kept coming back to: the volume. It was like a revelation, he’d never seen anything like it. Granted, Rodriguez was nearly ten years younger than him, but…even eight years ago, Dustin was pretty sure he’d never achieved a bucket-load like that.
His hand moved faster. Thinking about that was already going to put him over the edge. The laptop screen blurred. His hips lifted off the couch–
And the phone buzzed noisily on the coffee table.
Dustin was so startled he nearly dropped the computer. He said, “Oh no!” as come spurted out of him in three helpless pulses – onto the keyboard, the trackpad, all over the screen. It splashed onto Elliot’s sneering pout and dribbled onto the space bar.
“Fuck.”
It was everywhere. He rolled off the couch and went to the kitchen for a towel. Dried his hand and dabbed the sweats, and did his best for the laptop, hoping to God it wasn’t going under the keys.
When all that was done he stood with his dick hanging out of his sweats and looked at what had made the phone buzz. A text from Rodriguez:
alive
Dustin’s heart skipped. He quickly put himself away and closed the computer – he couldn’t have Elliot’s picture looking at him; not after what it had just seen. He sent back:
Good.
He didn’t know what else to say. He stared at the phone, waiting for Elliot to send something else. Nothing came, so eventually he sent, Everything okay?
A ridiculous question. But they had to start somewhere.
Chillin, came the reply. You?
Sighing, Dustin sat on the couch. Was Rodriguez seriously going to act like nothing had happened? He couldn’t let him do that – but he didn’t want to spook him. He sent back, I’m okay. Processing.
Elliot sent back a thumbs-up.
Had a good time at Bernies, Dustin replied.
Another thumbs-up. Dustin narrowed his eyes at it. He pursed his lips and weighed the options, and eventually sent, Thinking about a run in the morning. You up for it?
The reply took a long time to come back, and when it did, it was sassy: are YOU abuelo?
Dustin nearly sent back a middle finger, but restrained himself. He was the grownup. And the kid had a point: he needed to watch the knee. He hadn’t been cleared for running.
Okay, walk, he sent. up for that…?
He expected a shitty response and more elder-abuse. Instead, he got three dots that disappeared and came back a few times, then, walk sounds good.
Dustin felt a smile come from somewhere deep inside his chest. Time?
you choose, said Elliot.
Seven?
Seven????? Like BE OUTSIDE at seven???? Four barfing emojis and the screaming face.
Okay how about 7:30, Dustin replied.
How bout 8
Dustin smiled again. Deal.
Another thumbs-up. But this one didn’t annoy him.
The phone lit up as he set it back on the coffee table. Dr. Wu’s name on the screen.
“Dustin!” her voice was slightly harried when Dustin picked up. “I’m so sorry I missed our check-in this morning. Is now an okay time?”
Dustin checked his watch. He’d completely forgotten about it too. Had it been two weeks since they spoke? Time was going by fast this summer.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, “I missed it too. Sure, now’s good.”
They went through the usual routine: how’s physio? Fine. Mobility, swelling, any pain? Dustin hesitated before confessing, “I may have overdone it last week.”
“Okay.” Dr. Wu’s voice was careful. “Overdone it how?”
He didn’t tell her about basketball – that would have been grounds for a full-on kick in the balls. Instead, he made something up about going too hard on the agility ladder. When he’d finished, she said, “And how does it feel now?”
“Alright. Not perfect.” He flexed and stretched it. “A little stiff, but not too bad.”
He heard her rattling something into a keyboard on the other end. “Okay. Are you taking ibuprofen?”
“I have some here.”
“And resting it?”
“Today’s a scheduled rest day.”
More typing. “Okay. Well I’m not going to sound alarm bells yet. It sounds like you’re doing the right thing, but I’m texting Tom now to tell him to take you off the ladder. Just take it easy. If I find out you’ve been pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t, there will be hell to pay.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t do that.”
In the silence that followed, Dustin heard Dad and Tom and Jordan and every coach he’d ever had telling him that was a lie.
Eventually, Dr. Wu said, “I believe that, Dustin. Don’t make me regret it: you’ll only be hurting yourself in the long run.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“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. Do not try 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.