Chapter Fifteen
Dustin
He deleted all the dick pics. Having them on his phone made him feel like Jeffrey Epstein – he really needed a nickname in his head for Elliot that wasn’t ‘the kid’. Something that didn’t make him feel like the FBI might burst in at any moment and confiscate his laptop.
He told Elliot to do the same: delete everything. Because even if the FBI didn’t care about them, the NHL certainly would.
They hooked up by accident three times the following week.
On Wednesday, Dustin suggested another wingmen night. They completely failed the objective and ended up in his car.
The next day, he was pulling into the parking lot at Force when Elliot walked out. Neither of them said anything as Elliot got in the passenger seat and they put their hands in each other’s shorts.
On Sunday, he ran into Elliot at Elaine’s after the gym, and invited him to the farmer’s market because the kid was complaining about living on hotel food. They ended up parked by the river making out in the backseat and never made it to the farmer’s market.
He was having to clean the car a lot.
Dustin couldn’t get his head around what was going on. Was this something that had always been inside him, or was it just a fluke? Did it only apply to Elliot, or would he also enjoy looking at photos of other dudes’ dicks?
He went to Reddit to find out.
It turned out, he did. He found a lot on Reddit that was pretty intriguing, actually. It got him thinking about what else they could do.
He thought about bringing this up to Rodriguez, but it was obvious Elliot was pretty shy under all the dumb machismo.
Which was honestly adorable, but it made Dustin feel like he was walking a fine line between initiating communication and harassing the kid.
So after the farmer’s market he waited for him to make the next move.
It happened the following Wednesday while Dustin was at the gym.
He wasn’t in a great mood: The knee hadn’t improved and he’d finally been forced to tell Tom about basketball, and that it had felt ‘off’ ever since.
Dustin’s nuts had been swiftly and deservedly kicked, and Dr. Wu had been called immediately, triggering a frantic twenty-four hour blitz of X-Rays, MRIs and CT scans.
It all came back normal – which was honestly more frustrating than if it hadn’t, because now all he was allowed to do that week was agonizing force-plate tests and ride the stationary bike with electrodes strapped to his quads while they tried to figure it out.
So the text was exactly what he needed.
what are you doing?
Dustin had the phone on the bike in front of him, and sat back in the seat as he picked it up, smiling. Gym. You?
The shrug emoji. Still not quite putting anything out there. Still shy. Still cute.
Dustin sent, Why?
He waited a long time for the reply to come: Maybe we could meet up
Dustin looked around to see how busy the gym was. Can I call you?
Elliot told him to wait five minutes and he would call. When the phone lit up Dustin smiled and put it to his ear. “Hey.”
A long silence. “What’s up?”
“Not much.” Dustin shrugged, pedaling. “Nice to hear your voice.”
Elliot said nothing, and Dustin imagined him blushing. Or hoped he was, maybe. “You want to hang out? What did you have in mind?” he said.
“I dunno,” Elliot mumbled. “Maybe just like…not in the car.”
Something about that went straight to the middle of Dustin’s chest. “Okay. We could get dinner. My place?”
He surprised himself with that. Elliot had never been to his apartment and ‘dinner at my place’ sounded uncomfortably close to something like a date. Or was it uncomfortable? They’d been weirdly orbiting each other for a month now. It made him pretty nervous; he wondered if Elliot would go for it.
He was surprised again when he did.
Elliot seemed impressed with Dustin’s apartment.
What he was not impressed by was his kitchen.
Dustin had one pan, and even that had never been used.
His cooking prowess extended to prepping and freezing produce from the farmer’s market on Sunday for smoothies all week.
Force had an amazing nutrition bar, and Portland had plenty of healthy takeout.
To his surprise, Elliot cared about this. When Dustin had poured wine and asked what he wanted to order for dinner, he said, “Wait, you’re not gonna cook?”
“Oh.” Dustin frowned. “No? Sorry. I don’t really do that.”
Elliot’s eyebrows jumped. “But you know how, right?”
“Honestly? Not really.” He studied Elliot’s reaction. “Do you?”
“Of course.”
“I guess I wouldn’t’ve thought that was something you did. Where’d you learn that?”
Elliot’s eyes moved away, and he went to the kitchen island and pulled out a stool. “My mom got really busy for a while last year. So I was just trying to help her out.”
Dustin watched him set his wine glass on the counter, and weighed how he might get more out of him about that. “What do you like to cook?” he said.
“Yuca, chicken.” Elliot shrugged. “Soup, habichuelas, pasta, easy stuff.” He fidgeted with his wine glass, then put his hands in his pockets. He was nervous. Dustin was nervous. Everyone was super fucking nervous.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were expecting that,” said Dustin. “Which is stupid, now that I think about it: I invited you for dinner.”
He laughed nervously and Elliot laughed nervously and picked up the wine and sipped, then set it down and nudged it again, jiggling his foot. Then he frowned and looked up. “Actually…could we do that?”
Dustin blinked. “What?”
“Cook. Dinner.”
“Uh…I don’t really keep anything in the house…”
“Is there a market around here?”
“There’s the farmer’s market on Sunday.”
Elliot rolled his eyes. “No, like a store where people buy actual food, Viejo.”
The sass and the eyeroll were kind of a relief – felt like a return to business as usual.
An activity actually sounded great. Dustin hadn’t expected to be so fucking nervous.
It was probably because in the back of his mind was all the Reddit stuff he’d been looking at, and he wasn’t sure how to bring it up.
He watched Elliot pull out his phone to search.
“There’s a store across the river that’s still open.” Elliot looked up. “Unless you were set on takeout.”
Dustin shook his head. “No, that sounds fun. I’m gonna be hopeless, though.”
“That’s okay. I just need to eat something that didn’t come from a restaurant.”
It was twilight as they drove over the river to the East Side, to a neighborhood Dustin had never been to before, Elliot in the passenger seat with the phone out, calling out directions.
Dustin was happy to let him lead the way as they parked and went into a market: he had no idea what they needed and he was enjoying letting the kid take charge.
Not kid. He wasn’t a kid. Stop calling him a kid.
On the way back, Elliot had him go a different way so he could show Dustin a mural he’d found last time he was here. Dustin frowned in surprise. “You’ve been to this neighborhood? When did you do that?”
“Took the Light Rail out a couple weeks ago.” Elliot was leaning to peer up through the window. “Have you not?”
Dustin shook his head and put his eyes back on the road. “Never had any reason to.”
“In three years?”
“I guess I mostly stay in the Pearl District. Sometimes north of there, or south for hiking.”
Elliot was quiet, watching the street go by, and Dustin sensed he was putting something together in his head. Eventually, he said, “Where I grew up in Tampa, it was more like this.”
Dustin pursed his lips as he put on the blinker. He looked over his shoulder to change lanes. “My neighborhood was more like this, too. Well – not quite, but definitely not like the Pearl District.”
“Is it weird? Living there.”
Dustin could see what he was really asking.
Rodriguez had just had a legendary breakout year, and his salary was about to reflect that.
Dustin remembered: it was jarring, those first few of years in the league, suddenly having that salary – even before you crossed the million-dollar mark.
But that was ten years ago. He hadn’t thought about it so much since he’d been coming to Portland.
“I guess I’m used to it,” he said.
Elliot nodded and looked out the window again. “My mom still lives in a neighborhood like this.”
“You could buy her a place somewhere else. Lots of guys do that.”
He turned. “Is that what you did?”
Dustin adjusted his hands on the wheel and watched the road. In his head he played out how the rest of this conversation would go if they started down that line of inquiry. “Something like that. I’ll tell you another time.”
Elliot’s food was delicious, and watching him cook was more entertaining than anything Dustin had found on streaming since he’d been laid up with the injury.
He sat at the island with a glass of wine and grilled Elliot on power play strategy while Elliot bounced around the kitchen, throwing seasoning everywhere and spilling things all over the stove.
Cleaning didn’t seem to be part of the process.
After dinner they sat on the floor in front of the couch, watching headlights on the hills through the big window.
Dustin turned Elliot’s hand palm-up in his lap and traced the lines with his fingers.
Elliot rolled his eyes and said, “We’re holding hands now, bro?
” and Dustin just smiled because he knew the dumb macho thing was a front for his shyness.
He drew a circle on Elliot’s palm. “I have a request.”
“Okay…” Elliot sounded mildly suspicious.
“I need a better nickname for you.”
“A nickname? Do I have one? Is that where we’re at?”
Dustin sighed. “In my head I started calling you ‘kid’ at some point? And it feels…weird.”
“I don’t mind that. I’ve pretty much been calling you ‘old man’.” Elliot watched Dustin’s fingers move to his wrist and walk up the inside of his forearm. “Some of my friends call me Roddy.”
“I could try that.” Dustin brushed the inside of his elbow. It was softer than the rest of him.
Roddy sipped his wine. “Should I not call you Viejo? What would be better? Dusty?”