Chapter Nineteen
Dustin
He didn’t hear from Roddy for two days, and then a text came that said, Hey bro. Dealing with some family stuff. Sorry I didn’t hit you back.
He replied, Okay. Sorry to hear that. Let me know if I can do anything.
Nothing came back for nearly a day. Then a thumbs up.
He stopped texting Roddy and waited. A couple more days went by with nothing. He checked in with, How are you doing?
Nothing.
Dustin suspected there was no family stuff – he suspected this was about Roddy walking out after breakfast that day, which seemed to be about the bottle he’d found on the sink.
Did he think Dustin had lied about what they were doing there?
He hadn’t. He’d taken one, and then stocked up on ibuprofen that day after Roddy left.
He thought about texting Roddy this, but that would’ve meant calling out that his ‘family stuff’ was bullshit, and he didn’t want to assume Roddy was lying about that. Maybe he went back to Tampa; maybe he was helping his mom.
So he waited. Another three days went by with nothing. He told himself to keep waiting.
Elliot
He hated lying. But he couldn’t go back there again.
It wasn’t just the pills. It was the weird bubble in his chest, and the way Uncle Sal would have looked at him if he knew what he’d been getting up to in Dustin’s shower that morning.
And what would his mom say? And was he gonna just keep lying to Diego?
And what was gonna happen when he went back on the roster with Reef?
But the pills were the thing that clinched it. Or at least, they gave him something to hang it all on.
He went to Force only at his scheduled times, and avoided the other spots where he knew Dustin might be. It wasn’t long before he realized he didn’t know anyone else in the city: he’d been so preoccupied with Dustin he hadn’t bothered to make any friends.
He sent Drew a DM on Saturday morning.
Her reply came back after lunch: The king lives! Long live the king!
Elliot was at Force, doing sprint intervals on the treadmill. He had thirty seconds to read her message and send, Sorry. Didn’t mean to ghost you
No worries bud, she replied. We’re all busy. Internship has been craaaaazy i haven’t even checked my dms tbh. Whats up?
He sprinted for thirty seconds, then texted back, gasping. wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight
Her reply didn’t come back for a while. He sprinted and rested and sprinted again.
Sure! sounds great. What did you have in mind?
They met at a bowling alley. Drew turned up with her own shoes and Elliot immediately knew he was in trouble.
She looked cute. Kind of a tomboy thing going on, which was oddly working for her.
She had her Patagonia on when she arrived, and as they sat to put on shoes she took it off to reveal an old t-shirt with cutoff sleeves and a faded word on the front.
Elliot glanced at it as he bent to lace up his shoes.
His heart jolted.
“You like that band?” he said, making his voice what he hoped was the right amount of casual.
She looked down at the t-shirt. “Rush? My mom got me into them. Have you heard them?”
Elliot looked down at his shoes. He hadn’t. He repeated what Dustin had told him at basketball verbatim: “They’re the greatest of all time.”
At the end of the night he walked her home and said goodnight at the door, and asked if they could hang out again. She said yes.
He didn’t feel as nervous about hanging out with her as about hanging out with Dustin. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
Dustin
He hadn’t heard from Elliot in almost a week by the time he ran into him at Force.
It wasn’t Dustin’s usual day; Tom had a scheduling conflict and needed to shift things around. They spotted each other across the gym as Dustin walked in. Elliot looked away without acknowledging him, and his heart sank as he went to the locker room to change.
Tom had him in an excruciating purgatory of balance tests, upper body cardio, and core work while they continued to try and figure out what was up with his knee.
Roddy was doing a circuit with Marisol, so they didn’t have a chance to talk until they were wrapping up and came to stretch.
Roddy sat by Dustin on a blue mat by the mirror – close enough to talk; far enough away that it wasn’t clear if he wanted to.
Dustin waited, watching him in the mirror.
Eventually, he said, “How’s it going?”
Roddy nodded, stretching his legs in front of him. “Good.”
“Your family thing worked out?” Another nod. Dustin watched him reach for his toes. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Not much.” Roddy shrugged. “This. Hanging out.”
“Cool.”
Christ, this was awful. Why was it so fucking awful?
Dustin stretched in silence and waited for Roddy to say something else. He didn’t. It went like that for what felt like a hundred years, until Roddy got up, picking up his water bottle, and mumbled, “See you around,” as he went to the locker room.
Dustin stared after him in disbelief. Then got up and followed him.
He walked in as Roddy was stripping off his shirt, and leaned in the doorway behind him. “Did something happen?”
Roddy paused with the shirt in his hands, then bundled it and tossed it on the bench. Dustin watched the mole on his shoulder move as he shrugged, not turning around. “Nah, dog, just busy. Sorry I didn’t hit you back.” He opened his locker.
“Okay.” Dustin watched him retrieve his towel. “Because it felt like we were having a nice time, and then you disappeared.”
“I had a family thing.”
“Right.”
It was so clearly not a family thing at this point that he felt legitimately insulted. And dumb: obviously this was what was happening. He’d gotten involved with a twenty-one-year-old head case, and he was getting exactly what he deserved. Why hadn’t he seen this coming?
Because you let the gay thing get in the way of your rational brain. Because it was new and exciting, and you got carried away and stopped paying attention. Just because he’s gay and confused doesn’t mean he’s a good person.
Elliot turned with the towel in his hands. He looked at Dustin, stone-faced and said, “Can I get a little privacy, bro? I was gonna get in the shower.”
Dustin’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes?”
“We’re in a locker room.”
“Okay. Well…” Roddy shut the locker behind him and slung the towel over his shoulder without removing his shorts. “Some of us aren’t fags and would like a little privacy, homes.”
Dustin was so stunned he couldn’t do anything but stand there as Roddy went into the showers. He felt like he’d heaved a boulder into his chest.
He stood there listening to the water run, and thought about confronting him when he came out. He thought about it until he heard the water shut off, and then he panicked, grabbed his stuff from the locker and left.
Elliot
All he could think about, as he showered and dressed and called an Uber and went out to the gym parking lot to wait for it, was Reef Okafor.
The text he’d sent about Nic Arsenault and the Vanity Fair article had popped into Elliot’s head a few times since that day in the restaurant. As he left the gym, he opened and re-read it.
if I’d known he was a fag I woulda hit him harder on the ice lol
Seeing that word written down was like getting hit in the stomach. Saying it, out loud, to Dustin, was like watching Dustin get hit in the stomach. It was like watching himself hit Dustin in the stomach.
He truly had no idea why he’d said it. It was the same way he’d felt kissing Dustin the first time: more out-of-body experience than decision.
He blamed Uncle Sal. It was basically something he would’ve said.
Then he felt bad about blaming him, because he didn’t like being angry with a guy who couldn’t defend himself.
It wasn’t Sal’s fault Elliot had cried like a little bitch in Dustin Bennet’s bed.
He wasn’t actually up there, looking down at him.
That made him sad. Because he’d kind of liked the idea that he was.
Fuck, this was confusing.
When he got home from the gym he put on Golden Girls and went to bed. A text from Dustin came through around seven PM. Elliot ignored it for as long as he could.
I just want to let you know that what you said today was shitty, it said, when he finally read it.
I should’ve said this in person but to be honest it really fucked me up.
You seem to have a problem understanding that a lot of the things you say are not okay, so hopefully that’s helpful to hear.
I don’t know what happened. The only thing I can think of is that you think I’m on drugs?
?? Which I assure you is not the case, but whatever.
Either that, or you’re scared. Which is fine.
I wish you would talk to me, but clearly you don’t want to do that.
Whatever it is you’re going through, I hope you figure it out.
Elliot read it three times, didn’t cry, went into the bathroom and showered again, not crying, then came back out and texted Drew, still not crying:
do they have booze at that bowling alley?
He continued not to cry as he put the Golden Girls back on and waited for her to reply.
Dustin
When he got home that night he took an oxycodone. Because his knee hurt. Not because of what Roddy said.
Elliot
“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 was fun. 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 a toothpick, 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 go all kinds of other places.”
Elliot laughed. But inside, he felt a little queasy.