Teach Me a Lesson (Lessons in Love #2)

Prologue

MIA

August

Summer break is supposed to be a time for teachers to sit back, relax, disassociate a bit, and simply not think about work at all.

This is a task that I am currently failing at for two reasons.

The first is that I have been trying to approach the hot dude on the other side of the bar for approximately twenty-seven minutes.

The second is because Elias is currently telling the entire bar a really great and really fun work story about me.

So instead of sitting back, relaxing, and not thinking about school, I’m auditioning for the role of a human stress ball and having embarrassing school stories shoved down my throat.

“So one time, I was in the cafeteria grabbing a bean burrito?—”

“How the hell did you get a bean burrito?” I can’t help but cut in. “I get yelled at if I come within twenty feet of the kitchen.”

Elias’s bright green eyes look at me with disbelief, as if I’ve just announced a tsunami was hitting the Jersey Shore. “Ms. Barbara knows bean burritos are my favorite. She saves them for me when it’s bean burrito day.”

“Unbelievable,” I mutter.

He frowns at me. “Do you want me to save you one next time?”

“It would be nice, considering I’m the reason you have your job in the first place.”

My brother Leo chimes in. “I don’t want to hear about your depressing cafeteria lunches anymore?—”

“Fuck you, FAANG Overlord, most of us plebes don’t have sushi flown in from Tokyo or an in-house pastry chef in our work kitchens,” I snap at him.

“Although Ms. Barbara does make a mean beef patty,” Elias adds on.

“Finish your story, Elias!” a drop-dead gorgeous girl to Elias’s right giggles, poking him gently in the chest with a long and pointed nail.

Elias directs the full force of his grin at her, the slightly crooked one that forces the Dimple out. He tugs on the ends of her immaculately highlighted beach waves that are inexplicably crafted with a straightening iron, and she radiates Big Swooning Energy.

I gag.

“So I grab my burrito and pass by Meems here, when a fifth grader walks up to her?—”

I groan, taking another huge swig of beer.

“—and the fifth grader is all excited, and he’s like, ‘Ms. Roberts! Ms. Roberts!’ And Meems has her cute Excited Teacher face on and is like ‘Yes, whatever-his-name-was’—”

“It was Josue,” I grumble.

“What was that?” Elias says to me.

“His name was Josue,” I grumble again, at the same volume, not bothering to raise my voice. “I had him when he was in third grade. I should’ve known.”

He barks a laugh, really ramping up his story now. “So Mia goes, ‘Yes, Josue?’ And this kid is just super excited, and when kids have that energy, you just can’t help but match it, and you could tell in Meems’s face that she expected him to tell her he won the district science fair or something. But then Josue goes?—”

The corners of Elias’s mouth go white with the effort it takes not to burst out laughing. The bar hangs on his every word.

“—Ms. Roberts, if you pretend that you’re holding a salt shaker, you can taste the salt! Stick your tongue out and try it!” Elias’s mouth trembles. “And Mia… tries it .”

Leo and the others sitting around the bar crumple into a cacophony of shrieks and laughter. A beer spills. A hand smacks the bar repeatedly. I mash my palms into my face.

“I don’t get it.” The blonde blinks at Elias with big doe eyes.

He smirks at her. “Try it, babe.”

She does, slowly, exaggerating every movement, and Elias’s eyes darken, his grin turning deadly. Wow. She’s good.

I clear my throat. “Let it be known, everyone, that Josue was TEN-YEARS-OLD?—”

“—and all of his other ten-year-old buddies are gathered around the two of them, cracking the fuck up. And Mia’s face was as red as it is right now,” Elias finishes, sending Leo into another fit of giggles.

“Meems, Elias and I were the same exact way when we were ten,” Leo tells me in between laughs. “That’s just normal ten-year-old boy behavior.”

“Well, I thought it was incredibly inappropriate then, and I think it’s incredibly inappropriate now,” I mutter.

“Honestly, it’s mostly funny because Meems is so fucking good at her job. It’s epic to see her slip up once in a while,” Elias says, eyes sparkling down at me.

I think back to the summer Leo and Elias turned ten, a little over twenty years ago, when we lived next door to one another in Princeton, New Jersey. That was around the age our little cohesive unit of three started to diverge, becoming Leo-and-Elias, with me on the outside. And to be honest, that was largely because that was the age in which they were unable, or unwilling, to share their newfound sexual-slash-potty-related humor with seven-year-old me.

That was also the summer, I believe, that we all watched The Little Rascals for the first time. Afterwards, the two of them promptly hung up a “He-Man Womun Haters Club” sign on the treehouse in the woods behind our houses. I threw a fit. In typical Leo fashion, Leo ignored me. In typical Elias fashion, Elias wrote an addendum to the sign. “Meems is allowed on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays”.

Annoyed now, I harness the energy of all He-Man Womun Haters around the world, eating their hatred for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks, and march my little butt over to Hot Guy on the Other Side of the Bar That I’ve Been Trying to Approach for Now Thirty-Five Minutes.

However, because this is the worst day of my life, he is even more beautiful up close. He smiles on my walk over, and in the back of my mind I wonder what the fuck this gorgeous hunk of angsty emo deliciousness in a t-shirt is doing in a bar in the middle of the Jersey Shore. Naturally, I trip over the corner of a mat on the way over.

“H-hi,” I stutter at him, a question rather than a statement, allergic to eye contact and staring at the bar in front of him as if the wood grain is a Rorschach that holds all the secrets of the universe. Like perhaps, the secret to talking to hot men without wanting to curl up into a ball and perish quietly and peacefully under the shadows of said bar. My face gets hot. I wish at this moment that my straight blonde hair also held expertly crafted waves, and that maybe my shirt was a little more low cut.

Our eyes finally meet, but he gives me nothing. Men with blue eyes don’t deserve to have long, thick, dark lashes framing them, and yet here we are. “Hey. What’s up?”

I was wondering if we could please have sex , is what I think . I grunt at him instead, flailing to come up with an appropriate response. I should’ve had a game plan before coming over here. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s already lost interest, already looking at the Beach Wave Blonde across the bar—the one with Elias.

Gritting my teeth, I finally come up with a really sexy question. “Can I get you a drink?” I mumble brilliantly.

He doesn’t answer.

Whatever, fucker. I start to turn away. I’ve only dedicated thirty-eight minutes of my summer to you.

“Hey,” he says, from behind me.

My heart jumps, hopeful. I turn back.

“Do you know that woman over there?”

She has one muscular Pilates arm wrapped around Elias’s waist, a finger looped in his belt loop. I look back over at Unfortunately Hot Emo Man and raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

He doesn’t blink. “Do you know her name?”

“No.” I cross my arms.

He cut his eyes back to me, looks me up and down, and I can see the moment he registers that I, too, am a blonde with reasonably large boobs. He smiles, my panties light on fire, and it’s suddenly totally fine that I was initially dismissed for Better Looking Blonde.

“Could I have your name instead?” he grins at me.

“Mia,” I hope I say. Second best blonde in the bar .

“Mia, will you take a shot with me?” the hot stranger asks me now.

Vaguely, I wonder when the last time I had sex was and if it matters more than my dignity.

“I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to have shots right now,” I murmur. It’s been two years , my outraged vagina screams for mercy, but luckily the man gives me a second chance.

“Will you make an exception this one time? For me?” His smile is something filthy. “I’ll buy both shots.”

I can hear my vagina screaming at me. “Fine,” I say to him. Shhh , I say to my vagina. He orders us shots of what looks like the nicest tequila behind the bar. Rich, too?!

He looks deep into my eyes, well, as best he can, since a perfect curl falls in front of one of his. It’s a million dollar shot that has me looking around for movie cameras. “Cheers, Mia,” he says, downing his shot, and I take the opportunity to look at his sharp jaw covered with the perfect amount of dark stubble, watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.

My nipples get hard when I see his tongue dart out to lick the salt on his elegant, deeply veined hand, likely tanned from a day on the beach.

“Are you going to take yours?” he asks me, smiling at me knowingly, and I snap out of it. I down my shot, forgo the salt, and slam the glass down onto the bar.

“So, are you from around here?” Mystery Emo Man tells me.

“What?” I snap, like a turtle.

“Are you from?—”

I’m grateful for the warmth of the tequila as it moves into my stomach. “I mean, I was, originally. Well, actually, no. I grew up in Princeton, but I live in Brooklyn now. I spend summers in Wildwood. My parents and their friends have had a vacation house here since we were kids. I’m staying here with them. And my brother Leo. And their son Elias. Who’s also my roommate. That guy over there.” I’m rambling through the domiciliary journey of my youth, the tequila making me a little too loose. Can’t fucking win.

He raises a perfect eyebrow. “I live in the city, too. West Village. Born and raised.”

Yessss , celebrates my vagina. I stop the frenetic rehashing of my verbal diarrhea and look at him. I’m in the middle of harvesting and gathering and mustering all of my womanly willpower to say something flirty, witty, sexy, or all of the above, when I am interrupted.

“I know you!” my brother Leo half-shouts, smacking the mystery man on the back, Elias following right behind him. They flank him on either side, and I remind myself to poison their next drinks. “I’ve seen you in my office building. What are you doing here?”

“What’s your name?” Elias chimes in dangerously from his other side. I notice he’s doing the thing where he makes himself look bigger. It’s an impressive task, since he’s already like six foot two, and his side gig outside of teaching is being a personal trainer, so he’s already ripped, working out after every session he has ( “I have to be a walking billboard for my own business, Meems,” he explained once, while I poked at his biceps, disgusted. ). It makes Hot Emo Man, who has more of a slender, elegant strength, look a teenage boy, especially standing between him and my over-six-feet-tall brother.

Mystery Emo Man looks at me when he answers. “My name’s Adam,” he tells me, and of course he has a hot, biblical name and not something like Larry or Doug.

“Well, Adam,” Leo says, placing an arm around Adam’s shoulders, and not in a friendly way. “This is my baby sister, Mia?—”

“—who is a consenting, twenty-nine-year-old woman and very available for a good fucking,” both my vagina and I tell Adam, his initial snub now entirely forgotten, my dignity gracefully dancing away.

Elias looks at me like I’ve sprouted a second head.

Leo, as usual, pretends I haven’t spoken at all. “So just in case you’re a serial killer or something,” he tells Adam warmly, as if he is thanking him for donating a kidney, “we’re all sleeping in the same house, and we will come find her if she doesn’t come home,” he winks. “Right, Elias?”

Elias is staring at my mouth like he’s never seen it before.

“Elias?” Leo tries again.

Elias exits his coma. He blinks, clearing his throat. “Right.” He pats Adam gently on the cheek. “Nice to meet you,” he says. “Hope to never see you again.”

They both wander away, and Adam and I look at one another.

“I’m so sorr?—”

“It’s okay,” he says gracefully. “I have a little sister. I get it.”

“I’m sure you don’t disrespect her by treating her like a child,” I grumble.

He thinks for a moment. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Wow, look, it’s my soulmate.

He sighs. “I’m leaving tonight, anyway. I’m headed back to the city.”

My vagina wails, not caring if it’s true or not.

“But…” he grabs a napkin and a pen that’s laying on the bar. “Here’s my number. Text me when you’re back. When you’re available,” he says, and my face heats at the reference. “This way we can avoid the serial killing,” he tacks on, standing up and getting ready to go.

I take the napkin and shove it into my pocket, feeling awkward now.

“I’ll text you,” I say to him.

“Cool,” he tells me, already on his way out.

I get back to the house late that night. The lights are all off, and everyone already seems to be in bed. Which is great for me, because I’m exhausted and pretty drunk, my social battery running dangerously low after talking to people all day and night. Some old high school friends came to meet me at the bar, and we ended up staying way too late and drinking way too much. I cannot talk to anyone else for the rest of the night, and I’m not in the mood for a “how was your day today” from my or Elias’s parents.

I open the freezer. Please , I beg the universe, let Elias have left me some ice cream . I spot a carton of mint chocolate chip, a permanent fixture in Elias’s and my apartment, and I’m ecstatic when I find out that he’s left me half . Thank you, universe. I grab it, pull out a spoon from the drawer, and head upstairs to where all our bedrooms are. All I want to do is put the sexy regency series on my laptop and pass out. And maybe stalk Hot Adam and see if I can find any of his social media profiles. But pee first.

The ‘kid’ bedrooms, the ones we’ve all had since… well, since we were kids, are all in a row on one side of the hallway. I throw the ice cream on the dresser in my room while I move towards the bathroom next door, the one sandwiched between Elias’s and my bedrooms.

I sense something is off a split second before I open the door. Like the still, eerie calm, the slight tug at the eardrums that comes with the change in air pressure right before a big storm.

Why is the light on? my drunk, slow brain is thinking, then what is that noise? These are the last two things I should really be thinking.

Time slows as the door swings open to reveal my oldest friend in the world.

Naked.

His carved body, deeply tanned from a week at the beach. Feet spread slightly. Shoulders hunched. The shadows cast from the overhead light carving out and exaggerating the strong lines and planes of his thighs, abs, chest.

His well-muscled arm, tendons shifting over muscle over bone as it moves back and forth, wrist twisting.

His dick.

His enormous dick.

Standing there naked, jerking off under the unnatural florescence of the bathroom lights, Elias, my oldest friend in the world, is X-rated Accidental Renaissance art.

Before I can stop it, a noise escapes my mouth.

Our eyes connect for the billionth time in our lifetimes, my blue meeting his green.

He doesn’t stop.

In fact, with a noise I’ve never heard him make before, somewhere between a grunt and a growl, he comes all over the sink.

Inexplicably, I turn the lights off.

I sprint back to my room.

Where I lock the door, throw myself under the covers, tear off my jeans and my underwear, and furiously touch myself, not to Hot Stranger Adam, but to the image of my brother’s best friend.