Chapter Seven #3
The street was still busy when they walked out at eleven. They passed Dustin and Fatima canoodling in the booth on the way out, and Elliot glanced over, preparing a triumphant look. But Dustin didn’t look up. Elliot told himself he was only mad because he wanted to gloat.
“Do you do this often?” Drew asked, bending to pick up a styrofoam takeout box and toss it into a trash can. They were walking close, but not touching, and she put her hands back in the pockets of her Patagonia.
“Do what often?”
“Come to Portland.”
“Mm. No, it’s my first time here.” He frowned. “Did we not talk about this?”
She shook her head, smiling and watching her feet. “We did a lot of dumb shit about sea creatures.”
“Right.” He smiled. “I’m here til September.”
“And then?”
“Back to Tampa. Start of the season.”
She shook her head, looking up the street. “It’s so wild that you’re a hockey player. Like…what is your life?”
“It’s a weird life. Wait…did I even ask where you’re from? Or was it all sea creature chat?”
“Cape Fear,” she said. “North Carolina.”
“What’s there?”
“My school. A hike I like. Beaches.”
“I’ve been to Raleigh. We played there.”
“Raleighwood?” She made a face. “Not the same.”
Her apartment was off the main drag, on a side street with food carts shut for the night. She stopped in front of a door. “This is me.”
He nodded and looked up at a window on the second floor. As she went to her pocket for her keys she said, “Are you…coming in for a nightcap?” and gave him the universal Because you definitely should look.
Of course he was.
The sex they had was good. Elliot did all the moves and Drew seemed happy with his performance. Seconds before he finished, Bennet’s voice popped back into his head, but he managed to shut it down before it got to, “cue,” and he wasn’t thinking about Bennet when he came, gracias a Dios.
Afterwards, she walked him down to the street. Which was unexpected – he’d been preparing his usual script to get out of there without having to spend the night. She didn’t seem to care at all that he was leaving, and it bothered him. He wasn’t mad about it, exactly, he was…kind of sad.
He liked her.
In a way he hadn’t liked other girls. He’d talked to her for way longer than he’d intended to tonight.
He figured it would be a get-in-get-out deal.
But she’d turned out to be pretty cool. Which was weird because she dressed like a dude and was not his usual type… but maybe that’s why it was different?
It was a huge relief, honestly, after the week he’d had worrying about Bennet.
This was a girl. The sex was good. He wasn’t sure it was ‘religious experience’ good, like Sal said it should be, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever had any other kind of religious experience either, so he had nothing to compare it to.
He liked her enough to be sad he was leaving…
that seemed like the right thing to be feeling.
More right than what he was feeling about Bennet, anyway.
So as she said goodbye at the door and turned to go back inside, he grabbed her arm.
“Maybe you could – or I could – give you my info? And if you wanted to hang out again, you could…” –ay, fuck, why was he nervous– “...use it?”
She got a saucy look and made a show of very obviously sizing him up. Her eyes returned to his, and she shrugged, poking her tongue into her cheek. “Okay.”
Elliot pulled out his phone. “Instagram?”
“That’s fine. What’s your handle?”
Ah, fuck. That handle was so fucking stupid, he really needed to change it. “It’s, uh,” –he cleared his throat– “Elliot the King of Hockey.”
Her lips immediately pinched together and she looked down at the phone to hide her smile. She typed it into the search bar, and he braced for the thing that always happened the first time a girl saw his Instagram. Usually, he couldn’t wait to do that flex. Tonight, he felt mildly embarrassed.
“Oh,” she said, and looked at him. “You have a lot of followers.”
He sighed. “Yah.”
“Like…” She looked down. “A lot.”
He watched her scroll through his profile and waited for the next thing that always happened.
Sure enough, her thumb stopped in the same place all the girl’s thumbs did – over the shot with Reef and Diego by the pool in Miami.
She tapped to enlarge it. He watched her absorb it – the three of them shirtless, Elliot in the middle with his tattoos on full display – and when her eyes came back up, she said, “Do you wanna call them up and you guys can all come up for a nightcap?”
He laughed and looked down at his phone. “What’s yours?”
She told him – Cape Fear Sea Witch – and he found a profile with about four hundred followers and a lot of pictures of fish. He frowned at one of her grinning in a river with one in her hands, and tapped it.
“You know how to fish?”
“No, not really. We were tagging them. Catch and release.”
He nodded, looking down. “Cool picture.”
“Thanks.”
He followed the profile and looked up. The air went still. She lifted her eyebrows. They stood there.
“Okay!” She stepped back and presented her hand. “Until next time, good buddy.”
He chuckled and shook it.
And she pulled him in, went up on her toes, and kissed him on the cheek. The side of his face lit up, and before he could say anything, she kissed the other cheek as well. She stepped back, scrunching her face, and said, “Those were for the other two guys in the picture.”
Elliot felt completely thrown off his game, but managed to return her cheeky look with an equally cheeky one. “I’ll be sure to pass them along.”
“Ooh!” She did a little curtsy. “Well alright, Your Highness. Please do let me know what they say.”
And then she went inside and left him standing there, realizing he’d forgotten to do the Puerto Rican accent.
Dustin
Fatima unlocked her car with the clicker, then turned around and leaned on it.
She’d thrown the dupatta over her head when they came outside – because it was chilly, Dustin figured – and the hair curling out from under it looked soft and warm.
Up close, Dustin could smell her perfume, and he became aware, as he folded his arms and put his shoulder on the car beside her, that he was drunk.
“Are you okay to drive?” he said, and then immediately remembered she was stone cold sober because she didn’t drink.
She pursed her lips, smiling, and watched him remember that, then said, “What about you?”
“I’ll call an Uber.”
“Mmm…” Her brow knit. “I don’t know if you’re gonna get one right now.”
He looked up the street. “Oh, really? I don’t usually have a problem when I come here.” He pulled out his phone. “Because of the time?”
“No, because it’s gonna be pretty hard for you to get an Uber when you’re already in my car going to my place.”
His eyebrows lifted, but his eyes stayed on the phone. He stood very still for a moment, then looked at her.
A smile crept into the space between them.
“That does sound like it would be difficult,” he said.
“It would defy all laws of space and time.”
He glanced at the phone, then the car. “I…listen, I’m not looking for anything long-term. Or…casual, even. Or…at all.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Okay.”
“Are you sure?”
She gently removed the phone from his hand, slid her arm around his waist, and tucked it into his back pocket. Dustin felt her hips meet his, and he gripped them and pulled her in. She pressed him against the car as her mouth found his, soft and warm, with the sweetness of lime on her breath.
And Rodriguez came into his head?
Dustin’s brows drew together as he kissed Fatima with his eyes closed. Something about her perfume? Did it remind him of Elliot’s cologne? Or was he just feeling guilty that the mentoring thing had gone completely out the window tonight. He’d barely seen Elliot all evening.
He pushed all that away and lifted his hands to Fatima’s face, smoothing her cheeks with his thumbs. She leaned in closer, pressing her hips into him until his cock began to press back, and he sighed as she pulled away. She hooked her fingers into his belt loops.
“How does it feel to be kissing above your paygrade?” he asked.
Her lips quirked. “Stubbly. How does it feel to be kissing below yours?”
“Honestly?” Dustin turned the edge of her scarf between two fingers. “It’s making my dick pretty hard.”
“Mm!” Her eyes sparked. “Then it sounds like we’d better get your dick in the car, before it winds up in an Uber or something.”
And she leaned in and put her lips to his cheek as she reached behind him to open the door.