16. Elias
SIXTEEN
Elias
She’s out of the apartment when I wake up in the morning. I am both annoyed and relieved.
I catch a glimpse of her in the hallway of the Penthouse, what the teachers call the third floor of our school, between second and third period. She’s wearing a dress, smiling in front of her students, glowing, relaxed. I look at her neck, but she’s covered all my marks with makeup. This also makes me feel annoyed and relieved.
We have the same lunch period on Mondays, so through force of habit, or maybe because of an inexplicable need to be near Mia, I make my way down to Ms. Barbara to grab us two bean burritos. I take both up to her classroom, where she and Lina are talking over those Witty Words or whatever curriculum books.
Mia stops in the middle of whatever she was saying, her eyes zeroing in on my neck. What? I don’t have any makeup, and Mia’s is totally not my shade.
I grin at her, unable to resist. I’m sick. She blushes, and I toss the burrito on the desk in front of her.
“Hey, Elias,” Lina says. “Did you enjoy your trip?”
“Yep,” I say, watching the flush climb up Mia’s neck. “It was great. It was the best, actually. Did you see my notes?”
“Yeah,” Lina says, scratching her scalp through her topknot. “They were actually pretty thorough. I’m impressed.”
“I had a great teacher,” I say, winking at Mia, who looks like she wants to throw herself out the window. “She told me all about the Principal Thomas conundrum over this shit,” I say, gesturing at the curriculum guides in front of them.
Lina sighs. “Yeah. But I think that with all the resources and notes you guys collected over the weekend, we have a pretty strong case to present to Thomas.” She stands up. “I’m going to gather a little focus group, and we can all share our findings with Thomas together. Elias, do you want to be a part of it?”
“Sure,” I say absentmindedly, but I don’t really know what I’m agreeing to, because my entire focus has been diverted to the front of Mia’s shirt, where I can see the outline of her nipples.
“Great. Thanks again, guys. I really appreciate you going,” Lina says, walking out of the classroom. She stops next to me, though. She’s staring at my neck.
I raise an eyebrow at her.
She looks at Mia, then looks back at me. “Christ,” Lina says, shaking her head. We hear her mumbling on her way out. “Does it ever fucking end? First Oliver and Georgia, now you two? What the hell are they serving in our staff room?”
The door shuts, and the room shrinks into a tiny box.
“Are you wearing a bra?” is what comes out of my mouth.
Mia flushes even redder, but she doesn’t shy away from meeting my gaze head on, with that man-eating look on her face. Fuck, was that only a day ago that I last saw that? She licks her lips. I track the movement. “Yes,” she says.
“Then why?—”
“They’re just that hard right now.”
My mouth goes dry. I clear my throat. “I told you, Mia?—”
“Then stop looking at me like that.” Her pupils are huge.
“Like what?”
“Like you want me on all fours.”
I walk out of the room.
I stay at the gym as long as fucking possible, almost until I know for sure Mia’s finished up her nightly bathroom routine. I’ve been hard all night, and lifting didn’t help to get the excess energy out. Thinking about Mia on all fours. And how I only had her that way once. And it was only… forty-eight hours ago?! The shortest and longest amount of time, ever?!
I have to say that eating takeout by myself in my windowless little office is the most pathetic I’ve ever been.
When I finally make it home, all the lights are off in the common areas. There’s a strip of light showing under her door. I shut the front door as quietly as possible. It doesn’t help.
“I left some dinner for you, Elias,” Mia shouts from behind her closed door. “It’s in a container in the fridge.”
I scrub my face. “Thanks, Meems,” I yell back, reverting to her childhood nickname, hoping it would take me back and remove any ideas I have of her as a sexual being. One of the sexiest, if I’m being honest. This strategy clearly doesn’t work.
Because I’m a sad, sick, pathetic sack of shit, I find myself gravitating towards her room. I lean my head on her doorframe.
“Yes, Elias?” she asks condescendingly, her voice muffled by her closed door. “I’m very familiar with the creaks of our floorboards. Also, I can see your toes.”
“I ate dinner,” I say lamely.
“You can bring it for lunch tomorrow, then,” she says.
“What if it’s bean burrito day?”
“Today was bean burrito day. There are never two bean burrito days in a row.”
I run a finger down the wood of her door, pretending it’s the crevice between her breasts, because I’m a fucking maniac. “Okay. Night, Meems.”
“Night, Elias.”
I go to my room and jack off.
The rest of the week passes in much of the same way, the two of us circling around one another, avoiding each other at home and at work, and it’s hell. I don’t go to her classroom for lunch anymore, and I find ways to keep busy instead. I eat lunch with random coworkers I find in the staff room. I give Ethel a bathroom break and man the security desk for a little. I wander around the neighborhood.
She drops her class off twice this week without a word about our new Olympics unit, and honestly, my heart isn’t into it without her, so basketballs in the middle of the gym it is.
I text Leo to grab a drink on Saturday, but he cancels last minute, which is probably for the best, because I’m honestly not sure I can look at him right now. I text some of the other friends from school, Grant and Mike and some others, and we meet up at some trashy bar downtown.
I just can’t find anyone I want.
I go home. All the lights are off. I go into my room and look through the text message thread from just a week ago. With Mia. And I jerk off again.
The next day, I leave early for my gym and have back-to-back sessions until the late afternoon. I lift until my muscles are aching again, but it doesn’t help, and I end up even more amped than before.
Dinner by myself in my tiny little office is getting old, so I decide to be a real mature person and go home, to my own house, for dinner.
I throw my bag on the floor. Mia’s laptop is open on the couch, connected to our television, and it looks like she’s been streaming episodes of one of those rich housewives shows.
I walk into the kitchen, where she’s bouncing around and cooking in the fucking tank top and shorts she always wears around the house. Have they always been that tiny? Her hair is in that high ponytail, so I shove my hands in my pockets to avoid wrapping it around my hand. Stay strong, man. It’s been a week, you sad sack of sorry shit. A week too long. I actually miss her. Not even the exposed skin above her shorts, but just… Mia. I miss Mia.
“Hey,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“Hi,” she says brightly. “How were your sessions?”
“Fine. I saw Ethel. She brought me a huge thing of macaroni pie. Wanna split it?”
The fake smile on her face makes way for a genuine one, full of warmth, for me or for Ethel, I’m not sure. All I know is that I want to cut it off and put it in my pocket like a fucking serial killer. I’m losing my mind. “Sure,” she says. “We can have it with the chicken and veggies I just made.”
I shove the whole Tupperware into the microwave, not really thinking about anything but her tits. She takes two plates from the cabinet and loads them with food.
We sit in silence, eating our food, watching each other’s mouths as we pull our forks through. Or at least, that’s what I’m doing.
“I have your class Tuesday,” I try. “I’m gonna do that project-y thing that we talked about. But I’m not gonna start with the long jump idea. I wanna start with basketball.”
She beams. “I can help you organize it. Wanna talk through it now?”
“Yes,” I half-shout, desperate to talk about literally anything, as long as it doesn’t involve her beautiful body or how close my bed is or how hard I am or have been.
We spend the rest of our dinner outlining the week. If I thought it would distract me, I was wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever been harder in my life. I can’t concentrate on anything else but her hands, of all things, typing on her stupid slow-ass, school-issued laptop, thinking of her fingers wrapped around me. A week ago, which now seems like centuries ago. Her mouth forms words that I don’t hear. Instead, I think of the shape her lips take when she comes.
By the time we finish, it’s not a good look for me. I tuck my dick into the waistband of my pants while she starts to load the dishwasher.
“Leave it,” I tell her, voice ragged. “I’ll do it.”
She looks at me, clearly affected, too, her pupils blown and her nipples rock hard and poking through that fucking tank top, which she must have had for decades based on how thin the material is. Fuck . “Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna go.”
I stand like some sort of gentleman seeing her off.
“Good luck with that,” she says, walking towards me to leave the kitchen, ponytail swishing across her back.
“With the dishes?” My mind has scrambled.
“No,” she says. She drags her middle finger up my erection, from base to tip. “With this.” She sways out of the kitchen with a confidence that did not exist before last week.
I go over to the sink and put my hands on the edge, knuckles turning white from gripping it. I’m surprised it doesn’t crack.
I know what I’d normally do under these circumstances. I’d go into Manhattan or hit up a random number on my phone, but I tried that, and something about it seemed incredibly wrong.
Maybe we can come to some sort of agreement… NO. Shut that shit down.
Fuck the dishes. I walk over to the living room, trying to collect myself. I’ll do the dishes later. Mia’s grabbed her laptop and hidden in her room, and I’m happy for the space.
I’ve just resigned myself to jerking off in my bedroom once again, when something flickers on the television for maybe two or three seconds.
It’s a porn website. The video hasn’t started playing yet—it’s just the beginning of that annoying ad about finding hot older women in your neighborhood. But my eyes flick down to the title of the video.
Hot blonde creampied by brother’s BFF huge cock
“Fuck,” I hear Mia shriek from inside her bedroom, a split second before the screen disappears from the television.
Forget Captain America. I become the Hulk.