Chapter Twenty-Four
Dustin
It turned out he couldn’t even have brought the codeine back from Canada: bringing it into the US without a prescription would have been drug smuggling, and if agents had gone through his bag at customs he would have been, as Jordan so delicately put it, “Fucked. Federally fucked. Fucked so incredibly fucking hard, you little fucking moron.”
That was the only mean thing Jordan said that night. Apart from that, he was very kind.
He sat in the chair at the desk in Dustin’s hotel room in a Canucks hoodie and his New Balance dad shoes, which Dustin would normally have made fun of, but which that night felt like a reassuring presence.
“You should come and stay with us for a few days,” he said.
Dustin winced and shook his head. “Fine. Then you go back to Portland and call Dr. Wu. I’ll fly in, but I need to take care of a few things first, so it won’t be for a couple of days.
Do you have anyone in Portland you can call to come stay til I get there? ”
Dustin did. But he didn’t want to put that on him.
He flew home the next morning feeling worse than he ever had in his life. Whoever had called this a ‘bad flu’ had lied. It was a brutal flu. When he arrived in Portland and turned on his phone, he found four Good morning texts from Elliot. He couldn’t look at them.
He picked up his car from short-term parking, drove back to the loft, and went to bed. He didn’t sleep. He just thrashed around all day feeling like a little fucking moron with a brutal, brutal flu.
He got up around noon to be sick and tried not to think about where he might get his hands on some more.
He must have fallen asleep, because he woke to a knock on the front door. He swam out of darkness into more darkness and determined that the sun must have gone down. Digging a knuckle into his eyes, he felt around for his phone to check the time. Ten PM.
Who the fuck was knocking on his door at ten PM? He had a sickening feeling he knew exactly.
More knocking as he struggled out of bed and pulled on his jeans and went groggily out to the living room. He was freezing, and his head was pounding and the knee was on fire.
He opened the door and leaned on it, rubbing his face.
“Hi,” said Elliot.
He was dressed in a blazer and nice jeans and the red Air Jordans and a Tampa ball cap. Dustin stood with his forearm on the door, scrubbing his face, trying to collect himself. “Hi.”
“Are you okay? You look…bad.” Dustin nodded, still scrubbing his face and Elliot said, “Can we talk?”
He thought about saying no. He considered doing something really abhorrent like pretending he was still angry and sending Elliot away, because honestly, that would be better for Elliot.
And it would be easier for Dustin not to have to tell him the truth.
But that would be a shitty thing to do. Or would it? He couldn’t decide.
While he was weighing all this and putting together his answer, Elliot just went ahead and started talking.
“I’m really sorry about what I said,” he said.
“It was so shitty and I didn’t even mean it.
I don’t even know why I said it. Except…
I was confused and…you know, well… because…
well…” He took a deep breath. “I’m gay. Which obviously you already knew, but apparently I didn’t.
And…yeah, so look, so there’s a thing I didn’t tell you about – a family thing, like an actual family thing – and I think it might have kind of messed me up and that probably has a lot to do with – not that it should matter, and it’s not an excuse and I’m not trying to, like, get back together – not that we were together – ah God, this is not going well…
But I just wanted you to know that I’m really sorry because I like you a lot and I respect you a lot, and I hope…
” He clasped his hands on top of his hat and blew out a long breath.
“Man, I really thought I had this better prepared.”
Dustin attempted a smile. “It’s fine.”
“Because I’m really sorry.”
“I know.”
They stood there in the door with Dustin’s brutal flu banging away inside him. It was time to say his thing now. He didn’t want to say it. It felt like a much worse thing.
“How was dinner?” said Elliot.
Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck this First Class all the way to Canada. He was just gonna have to say it, and it was gonna be whatever it was.
“I wasn’t at dinner,” he said.
Elliot frowned. “Oh. Okay.”
“I was in Vancouver.”
“O–kay…?”
“In a hotel. Doing math about prescription opioids. Which I bought by lying to a pharmacist because I ran out of the prescription opioids I took every day for the last three weeks after I said I wasn’t going to.”
God, it was just the most painful silence of his entire fucking life.
Elliot stared at him for so long Dustin thought something might have short-circuited inside him. Then he said, “What?”
Dustin started to say it again, but Elliot put up his hand. “No – stop, no, I don’t need you to say it again.” He shut his eyes and stood there with his hand up. “You said you weren’t gonna take any more.”
“I know.”
“And then you did.”
“Yes.”
“And then you ran out. And you just…bought a ticket to Canada. And booked a hotel. Like it was nothing.”
“Yes.”
“And got what? Actually never mind, I don’t wanna know.” He opened his eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I think…a lot of things.”
“You paid for an international flight. To buy drugs.”
“Legally…”
Elliot scoffed. “You could’ve died.”
“Well, no–”
“You know there are, like, people sleeping on the street at your basketball court who probably have it?” Elliot’s voice rose. “But you didn’t wanna go there, I guess? That was probably beneath you.”
Dustin stared. He didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Only scumbags buy drugs on the street. Right? You would’ve had to feel like a scumbag.
” Elliot’s voice was shaking. “But you’re a hockey player!
You make a hundred billion dollars a year!
Dustin Bennet doesn’t buy drugs on the street.
That would be dangerous. That would mean he’d have to leave the Pearl District.
And he hasn’t done that in three years! He doesn’t go down to the North Park Blocks.
No! He goes to Canada. On a plane. And stays in a hotel! And lies about it.”
“Elliot, I’m really sorry–”
“And then what? You decided it wasn’t for you and flew right home? Did you fly First Class, at least?”
“I called my brother.”
“Oh, good.” His voice cracked. “And what did he say?”
“He called me a little fucking moron.”
Elliot laughed, but it was a laugh on the edge of tears. “Well he sounds like a very smart guy.”
This was the last thing either of them said for a while. Elliot took off his hat and scrubbed his hair and put it back on.
“You should probably just go,” said Dustin.
He nodded, swallowing, and stared at Dustin for a long time with his eyes red and rimmed with tears.
“You know how I told you I used to watch you growing up?” he said.
“And when I had to do something difficult, I used to think, ‘What would Dustin Bennet do?’” Dustin flinched. “I didn’t think it would be this.”
Elliot
Elliot Rodriguez Sanchez had cried three times in the last year, which was more than he’d ever cried in his life.
Once when Uncle Sal died. Once with Dustin Bennet’s dick in his ass. And once outside Dustin Bennet’s penthouse, although gracias a Dios, he made it to the elevator first.
Anyone looking at that would say it was pretty obvious that Dustin Bennet just kept making him cry. None of those times, though, was he actually crying about Dustin. He was always crying about Uncle Sal.
He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his knees up, sobbing as the floors ticked by.
When the elevator reached the bottom, he got up and went out to the street.
He stood on the sidewalk, looking left and right, because he was so upset he couldn’t remember how to get back to the hotel. Then he called his mom.
Dustin
His phone buzzed on the coffee table an hour after Elliot left. He lifted his arm off his face and looked under it, but from the couch, he couldn’t see the screen. He thought about leaving it. But it could have been Jordan.
He sat up and picked up the phone. A text from his agent.
Dustin’s heart seized and his spine jolted into that vertical column usually reserved for Dad or Tom.
How did his agent know?
Did the league already know? Had Jordan told them? Did he call Dr. Wu? Dustin had explicitly asked him not to do that, because Dustin was going to call Dr. Wu. He hadn’t done it yet…but he was getting there.
He tapped open the message.
Hey D. Got a reachout from Camila Sánchez, who would like to get in touch with you about a matter regarding her son. Okay if I pass on your number?
Dustin stared at it. Not a word of it made sense.
I don’t know a Camila Sánchez, he sent back. What is this about?
Oh, sorry: Elliot Rodriguez. She says he’s also doing his off-season in Portland and wants to ask you a question about the facilities there.
As if his spine could possibly achieve a more rigid, terrified position. Elliot Rodriguez’s mother wanted to speak to him. And probably not about facilities. Elliot must’ve called her. At least she was discreet.
The phone buzzed again.
Oh shoot, I’m so sorry! I just realized I spaced on the timezone. It’s late for you there huh?
Mentally bracing, he sent back, It’s fine. Send her my number
The phone rang three minutes later. He picked it up with his heart in his ears. “Hello?”
“Is this Dustin Bennet?”
“It is.”
“Hello Dustin, my name is Camila. I’m Elliot’s mother.”
“Hi Camila.” One of the most awkward pauses on record for Dustin. “How can I help you?”
He expected her to read him the riot act. He’d witnessed a version of that already – when Elliot took her call in the recovery room that day. Instead, she said, “How are you feeling?”
“Bad,” he said.
“Yes. I imagine so. Do you have anyone there with you?”
“No.”
A pause. “Okay. Well…I suppose I’m here.
” Another pause as she collected her thoughts.
“My son called me to tell me what happened. I’m not here to get into your business – I just need to ask you some questions.
And I want to let you know that this is difficult for Elliot because we have a personal history here that is influencing how he feels. ”
Dustin frowned. “Oh. God.”
“I won’t tell you specifics. That is for him to decide. What I need you to do is tell me if you think this situation is something you are going to come through or not. Because to be honest, Dustin…”
She paused, and he heard heartache in the silence. She sighed.
“Because to be honest, Dustin: my son doesn’t call me.
I don’t call him. We don’t talk – not for the last year, anyway.
It is a problem. But he called me tonight, to tell me what you did – and we had a real conversation for the first time in a year.
And it was a good conversation, Dustin, and I would like to keep having them with him. ”
Dustin sat frowning through the big window with no idea where this was going. “Okay…”
“He asked me what he should do about you, and honestly, Dustin, with the decisions it sounds like you’re making, as a mother, I feel like I should tell him never to see you again. But I’m afraid he won’t like that answer, and that if I tell him that, he might stop calling me. Do you see?”
Dustin nodded, closing his eyes. “Uh huh.”
“Because he cares about you.”
“Right.”
“So what I would like to do, Dustin, is tell him that he’s an adult and he should do whatever he thinks is right.
And that if he wants to see you, I will be here to support him.
But I can only do that in good conscience if you can convince me that you are going to pull yourself together.
Because I can’t support him putting himself into a situation with a person who isn’t going to do that. So can you do that?”
He shook his head, watching headlights on the hills through the window. “I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing, Dustin.”
“Okay. No, right, sorry. Yes. I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“...Yes? Yes.”
A long pause. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler. “I think so too.”
He scrubbed his face, sighing. “Yeah?”
“I do. And can I tell you why? Because you asked for help.”
They sat with the line quiet between them while Dustin absorbed this.
“I hope you understand how important that was,” she said. “It takes strength to do that. Not everybody does it. And the people who don’t are the ones who get into trouble. Those are the ones who you don’t find out how bad things are until it’s too late.”
Dustin nodded. Obviously she couldn’t see that, but he was afraid that if he tried to say anything he might break down, because he hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear that someone thought he was going to be okay.
“I knew someone who didn’t ask for help,” she said. “He thought being strong meant handling things alone. It ended badly for him. I don’t know how it is in your family, but in my family that’s how it always was. Especially for the men.”
Dustin sighed. That’s exactly how it was. Dad spent months insisting his blood pressure was fine, that he wasn’t fatigued, that there was nothing wrong with how much he smoked, or worked…the list went on. And then he dropped dead at practice one day.
“Yeah,” he said. “It was the same.”
“So you understand. But I’m worried Elliot doesn’t. If you know him, then you know he’s – he thinks being strong means…I don’t know. Not asking for help. He thinks it’s a show you have to put on.”
“He’s been…confused.”
“Yes, well, claro. And I’ve tried to teach him, but to be honest, I don’t know if I’m the best role model – I haven’t been doing it right either. Anyway, he doesn’t seem to want to listen to anything his mother has to say about what strength is. But maybe he would listen to you.”
Dustin sighed. He didn’t feel qualified to teach anyone anything about asking for help. This was the first time he’d ever done it.
“Elliot told me you called your brother?” she said.
“Yes. He’s coming here.”
“Good. Because my son will not be looking after you.”
“No. I wouldn’t want him to do that.”
More quiet. The humming of the line. “I guess you don’t want me to tell Elliot you called,” he said.
Camila sighed. “I already told him I would. He wasn’t happy about it. But we’ve been keeping things from each other for a very long time. So I think lying to him is not the way.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She paused. He sensed the conversation was ending, and weirdly didn’t want it to. “Well, I’ve said my piece. I don’t know what Elliot will do. But I wish you the best, whatever happens. You’ve had a close call. But I hope you’re going to be okay.”
“I hope so too,” said Dustin, still not wanting the conversation to end. Still not entirely convinced this was a close call and not the beginning of something much, much worse. “Hey, and you have my number, now. So…”
She laughed as firmly and deeply as she spoke. “Yes. Don’t think I won’t use it. Que te vaya bonito, Dustin.”
“Okay. Thank you, Camila. Goodbye.”