20. Elias
TWENTY
Elias
“How were your sessions today?” Mia asks me, her head on my leg on our kitchen floor, the two of us in varying levels of undress.
She was cooking dinner for us when I got home. I took one look at her ponytail and got all sorts of ideas. Ten minutes later, she noticed and dared me to pull on it. Who am I to say no to Mia? I wrapped it around my hand and bent her over our tiny dining table.
Is this why people are lifelong sex friends? For the cooking, and the sex all the time, with someone you think might be the hottest and best person alive?
“They were good,” I murmur, sliding the elastic holding her ponytail out so I can run my fingers through her hair. “I saw Jordan O’Neal today. That NBA guy.”
She shifts, so she’s laying on her back, so she can look me in the eye, giving me a full view of her gorgeous tits. She let me come on them. She begged me to. I really like the way it looks painted on her rosy little nipples right now. “Has anyone told you how cool that is?”
I rub small circles around the birthmark on her chest, the only spot on the otherwise creamy expanse, outside of the mole next to her nipple.
“Elias,” she says again.
“Hmm…”
She smacks my hand away. “This is actually a compliment, so listen.”
“What compliment?”
“I think it’s really, really cool that a professional athlete found or heard of your services, tried them, and decided they were good enough to keep doing it.” She smiles at me, and I rub my thumb across her top lip.
“Pretty cool.”
“Don’t professional athletes have, like, an entire team of trainers they use? That come with their team, or whatever? He circumvents them and comes to you .”
What is this warmth? This is not just sex warmth. “I guess it is pretty cool. He also said something cooler to me today.”
“What?”
“Some of his teammates might be interested in joining my gym, too. On their off days.”
“That’s fucking incredible,” she says, and I look down at her, perplexed. She really does think it’s incredible. “What days are their off days?”
A strange feeling runs through me. “I think they’re school days. I’m not sure yet.”
“Like, during school, or after school?”
“I mean, the whole day, so presumably during school and after school,” I tell her.
“Hmmm…” She purses her lips in thought. “So you’ll have to make a decision when it actually happens.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty exciting,” I say lamely.
She sits up, familiar with my tells. “Why don’t you look like it’s exciting?”
“It is,” I mutter.
She X-rays me with her crazy blue eyes. “You look like how you looked when you got into state school after knowing Leo got into Ivy League Light.”
“That was exciting, too,” I say, suddenly very uncomfortable.
Mia looks at me silently, patiently waiting.
“I don’t know,” I finally burst out, or she finally rips out of me. The dam breaks, flooding the valley of this kitchen floor. “I guess I feel weird because this was just a small hobby. Not a real job. Just to supplement my salary. It’s just helping people work out, lift weights. Being a glorified weight spotter.” I parrot what basically everyone in my life has been telling me about my “personal training thing.”
“This is a very real thing, Elias. Not just a hobby,” she scoffs. “How much are you taking in from the gym compared to your teaching salary right now?”
“I think it’s more than my teaching salary,” I mumble.
She smacks me. Hard. “Then how dare you call it a hobby? This is a real fucking job. You did it and built it and kept it up all by yourself. All while working another full-time job.” She kisses me on the cheek. “You’re annoyingly competent at everything you do, remember? I’m proud of you.”
Memories of Mia at every single one of Leo and my soccer games, baseball games, basketball games, cheering us on. Sometimes she had signs. For both of us. Sometimes she brought a book. But she was always there. I remember the ear-piercing whistle she perfected by high school.
“I’m going to need some help, soon, I think,” I admit quietly.
“With what?”
“It’s getting a little too big for me. Too many clients, too many things to keep track of. So many numbers. And forget about taxes. I’m dreading April.”
She hums, thinking for a moment. “Sounds to me like you need to delegate. Maybe there’s a bookkeeping or accounting software you can get. Or maybe you can hire someone part time.”
I nod, agreeing. “But I don’t know where to start.”
“I have a friend who owns a little shop in Cobble Hill. I’ll ask her what she does,” Mia tells me. “We can start there.”
It took us only a few weeks to become a ‘we’. Or maybe it took us twenty-nine years.
I stare at her hands, picking one up and lacing my fingers through hers. I’ve known these hands like the back of mine, but I really like making new memories of them. Their slender elegance. Their strength.
I take her by said hand and pick her up off the floor. I drag her to my room.
She groans. “Elias. I have to finish cooking dinner.”
“I already ordered us Mexican. I got you your burrito.”
“I haven’t seen you touch your phone since you walked in,” she says with an oof , as I toss her onto my bed.
“I ordered on the way home. Because I knew a lesson was coming up.”
“What lesson?”
“The right way someone should go down on you… with a giant plug in your ass,” I answer, before burying my face in my favorite place.
Now, I manage to wake up every morning wrapped around Mia in her bed.
Well, not every morning.
Some mornings, I’m wrapped around her in my bed.
It’s fine, I tell myself. It’s too hard not to. Or too easy.
I’m hard every morning, anyway, so this is easy.
She rolls over to check her phone, and immediately my skin gets cold from the loss. I count the little moles dotted across her back and her sides. Seventeen . “Fuck,” she says, after a minute, rolling back into my arms.
“What’s up?” I say, unable to stop rubbing my nose in her hair or gripping onto her waist for dear life.
“My parents are coming to town for a week. Tonight. My dad had a bunch of last-minute meetings called in the city. My mom’s coming with him.”
I stop nuzzling.
“They want to have dinner with us tonight.”
“Who’s us?”
“Leo and I.”
“‘Kay…”
“And you,” she whispers.
I feel my blood pressure rise.
“Stop freaking out,” she says, semi-hysterically.
“It’s fine,” I half-shout, sitting up.
She sits up, too. “We’re not telling them about this, so it’ll be totally fine.”
“This isn’t anything. We’re not like lifelong sex friends, or anything,” I say, inexplicably gripping her hand.
“Nope,” she says, squeezing back.
“Nope,” I say, the same way.
Twelve hours later, I’m seated at a round table at some fancy as fuck place in Midtown. Between Leo and Mia. Directly across from Molly and Joe, like they’re conducting a grueling interview. Mia’s neck has pounds of makeup on it. If you look close enough, you can see the slight discoloration, a shade lighter than her skin tone. And she’s wearing the same exact sexy-as-fuck outfit that started this whole mess, with the soft crop top and no bra and silk pants. I know what kind of panties she has to wear with those pants. And it’s totally fine.
I grip my own knee so I don’t do something ridiculous like hold hers. She steps on my foot under the white tablecloth. My leg is bouncing. We simultaneously reach towards our wine and take huge swigs, like we’re chugging beer flavored water out of a pitcher in college, and not twenty-five dollar glasses of Pouilly-Fumé.
“What meetings do you have in town, Dad?” Leo asks, oblivious.
“Eh, a few non-important things here and there,” Joe says nonchalantly, with an undercurrent of bloated ego thrown in there for good measure, implying that he and his meetings are actually very important, thank you very much. Did I always dislike Joe, or is this a new development that’s come with Mia? I’m starting to question why our dads are best friends, and I think it probably has to do with the self-importance that comes with finance careers. “Board meetings, due diligence meetings, deal sourcing, strategy,” he throws in, waving a hand, as if we should all know what the hell he’s talking about.
“Why’d you need to come to the city to do it?” Mia asks. “Isn’t video conferencing a thing now? Wouldn’t that save thousands on hotel and business class flights?”
This sees like a reasonable question to me, but Joe and Molly look at Mia as if she’s insane.
“It’s a venture capitalist firm, dear,” Molly tells Mia slowly, in the way one would tell a toddler that they cannot eat glue. “They aren’t pinching pennies.” The fuck?
Mia looks at the table, and before I can say anything, Molly turns to Leo.
“How’s the project you’re leading, Leo?”
“It’s actually going okay. I was having some logistical issues with my team, but it’s a little better now,” Leo says, smiling over at me.
“What sort of logistical issues?”
“Scheduling, mostly. Meeting deadlines. Planning. Clearly delineated requirements. The team wasn’t doing their job.”
“But isn’t that your job, Leo? Isn’t that what leading a team means?” asks Mia, at the same time, parroting my comment from a few weeks ago.
“No way, Mia. Sounds like something an EA should be handling,” snorts Joe.
Leo ignores this. “Elias reminded me it was part of my job, actually. I helped them get back on track.”
“Well, thank you for that, Elias,” Molly says.
Mia rolls her eyes. This time, I sneak my hand under the white tablecloth and squeeze her knee. She rests her hand on top of mine, just for a second, interlocking her slender fingers with mine and squeezing. We separate.
“Don’t forget that leading a team means delegating tasks appropriately,” Joe cuts in. “And getting rid of the ones that don’t step up to the plate.”
I see Mia take a breath to say something, but she changes her mind at the last second.
“And how about you, Elias? How’s your little side gig going?” Molly asks me, entirely forgetting about both Mia and our shared, full-time teaching jobs.
“It’s going okay,” I tell her, wincing at the side gig comment but full on cringing at her dismissal. I have a little more confidence, though, after my conversation with Mia, so I barrel on. “I have a lot of clients now. I’m busy almost every day of the week. Taking in a lot of extra cash. I’m training this guy from the Brooklyn Nets, too. He said some of his teammates might be interested in joining on their off days.”
All the Roberts look at me, clearly very impressed and borderline shocked, which is both gratifying and really fucking irritating, as if they didn’t expect this from me. I glance over at Mia, who gets it, obviously. She gives me a sympathetic look.
“I didn’t know that, man,” Leo admits.
“Look at you, small business owner,” Joe booms, and it hits different hearing it from him. “Putting in those extra hours. You’ve always been a hard worker,” he says, and to me it means you’ve never been very intelligent, but you certainly tried hard. But this isn’t about me anymore.
“Actually,” I say, turning to Mia. “Meems has been helping me out, too. For the gym, and at school.”
“Teaching Elias his letters, then, Mia?” Joe asks, laughing.
We both frown.
I get pissed.
“Mia is probably actually the most competent person sitting at this table,” I fire back to everyone and no one in particular. To Mia, definitely, though. “You don’t understand how highly regarded Mia is at work. By our coworkers. Her teammates. Our bosses. She’s one of the best teachers in our school. Our supervisor picked her to go to a conference. And Mia’s been helping me teach.”
“Elias, it’s okay,” Mia murmurs.
“And at the conference, she was up there grilling the presenters. Asking legitimate questions. Everyone wanted to talk to her afterwards. It was inspiring.”
“I think anyone with a brain cell would be able to do what teachers do—” Molly starts.
And that was the wrong fucking thing to say, because now I’m really and truly pissed. Not even for myself. For the woman sitting right next to me.
“I can confidently say that none of you would be able to get a room of thirty something eight-year-olds to sit down, much less teach them how to do anything,” I shoot at her.
Molly looks a little shocked. Good .
“Imagine trying to teach thirty different kids with all sorts of different needs to read Charlotte’s Web . And a large percentage of those kids are housing or food insecure, and they didn’t sleep last night, and you need to decide between letting them take a nap or learning how to multiply so that they score well on standardized tests, which the government decides should directly affect your performance rating as a teacher. Oh, and another significant portion of kids have severe learning disabilities. They have to take those tests, too. Imagine trying to teach them math, and how to read, but also how to be a functioning member of society. With no resources. No money for supplies, or books, or whatever it is you may need to help them learn. No business class tickets across the country or the world or five-star hotels. While dealing with unreasonable expectations from parents, admin, and society ,” I spit at them, implying they are the society we have to deal with. “Now imagine being insanely good at all of that . Because that’s Mia. Imagine?—”
I feel a small hand take mine under the table, cutting off my diatribe. I look over at Mia, because I don’t care about anyone else at this table right now.
There’s a look on her face and in her eyes that’s directed at me. It’s a mix of gratitude, affection, awe.
I blink.
She squeezes my hand again, and the moment is gone.
I finally look around at the rest of the Roberts, and they are all sitting in various levels of discomfort. Leo, especially, looks like he feels really bad. Good . “Let’s talk about something else,” I tell everyone.
We all take a swig of our overpriced white wine with the fancy name.