Strictly Extracurricular (Lessons in Love #3)

1. Lina

ONE

Lina

“The Missing Sock conspiracy theory,” I tell Oliver, my ex-boss and dear friend, with a full body cringe.

He blinks at me. “ That was the last straw?”

Behind me, Emmanuel is cackling like one of those animatronic witches people have in their front yards for Halloween. I don’t tell him he sounds like this because he would consider it a compliment.

“He streamed about it for a full forty-five minutes,” I say impatiently, raising my voice to be heard above Emmanuel’s howling. “I only meant to walk past his office, but I heard enough to get sucked in. Then I watched the whole damn thing.”

“His office ?” Georgia, Oliver’s girlfriend and one of my teachers, protests.

I poke my toe into the dirt because her outrage is understandable. “Second bedroom,” I amend. Though, if you really squint, maybe the ‘Do Not Disturb—Creating Content’ sign he taped to the door gave it a certain... prestige? Enough to qualify as an office? Or at least something fancier than the spare room in my apartment he used to livestream his video gaming to his five die-hard followers ?

We’re at Georgia and Oliver’s housewarming, sweating in the hot August sun in the backyard of the new apartment they just bought in Sunset Park. The yard is packed with their family (of whom there are approximately one hundred) and friends (some of whom happen to be PS 2 teachers). Strips of pork belly sizzle on the grill, the scent of soy sauce and garlic and vinegar and meat filling air hazy with smoke. Emmanuel’s shrieks of laughter are drawing more people over to our little circle.

“I must know more about this conspiracy theory,” Tamika begs.

“Please, yes,” Emmanuel manages in between gulps of air. “Share with the class.”

I pause for a moment, considering how much I would be able to share before Emmanuel absolutely shat on me. “I was always losing a sock of his doing our laundry,” I start. My body starts to fill with heat and adrenaline. What is this feeling? Shame? “He said there’s a global conspiracy involving washing machine manufacturers and sock companies. The washing machine manufacturers install a special compartment that sucks up socks. The socks build up in the machine, eventually breaking it, so that consumers are forced to buy new washing machines and new socks.”

Shame. It’s definitely shame.

Emmanuel is now rolling around in the sparse Brooklyn backyard grass.

“So let me get this straight,” starts Oliver, who has always hated Mike. “It wasn’t the colonizing of your second bedroom. It wasn’t the full-day video game streaming for all five of his followers. It wasn’t the lack of job, cooking, cleaning, chores, paying rent, utilities, or doing much of anything to contribute to a partnership or a household.” He pauses dramatically. Some of Georgia’s theatrics have clearly rubbed off on him. “It was the Missing Sock conspiracy theory that made you dump your partner of two years and kick him out of your apartment?”

I rub my eyes, seriously wondering how I ended up here.

Mike was hot. He is hot—tall, dark, handsome, and tattooed. We met at a Lower East Side bar that he and his band were playing at. Two circumstances should have served as warnings. One: their show was on a school night. Two: there were no more than ten people in the audience.

But I was there randomly catching up with an old friend who lived in the neighborhood, I was horny as hell, and Mike was singing and writhing his body on stage in ways I know now an almost forty-year-old man with no real job and four roommates should decidedly not be writhing his body on a stage. Like he was Freddie Mercury performing for tens of thousands of people at Wembley Stadium, not a sad man performing for ten people at a Sad Sticky Bar in the Lower East Side on a Tuesday. But he was singing directly to me, blue eyes bypassing all ten audience members and boring directly into mine and peering deep into my soul while thrusting his hips. I suppose horny Old Lina thought all this was sexy as hell. New and Improved Lina has grown to understand it was tragic and seriously distressing.

He was likely searching for my weaknesses and figuring out how best to exploit them. This woman is a sucker for taking care of tall, dark, handsome, tattooed men , he probably thought . I must have her . On second thought, he probably did not think this, because he had the IQ of a naked mole rat.

So sweet , I remember thinking , he just needs some love and care and support and attention. Someone just needs to remind him to change his toothbrush every few months and clean his hair out of the shower drain and not to use a fork to get toast out of the toaster. This someone somehow ended up paying for his entire livelihood with a city employee salary and vacuuming up the ash ground into the rug from all his spliff smoking in the second bedroom.

I was thirty-three—I was horny, but I also wanted to settle down, get married, maybe have some kids. I was looking for a partner. He was looking for a mother.

“Yes,” I sigh. “I guess it was,” I begrudgingly answer Oliver’s rhetorical question.

Emmanuel’s partner Nick finally picks him up off the ground and brushes him off.

“You were always defending him when we were shitting on him. Can we officially designate this time as Shit On Mike time?” Emmanuel asks eagerly.

“We’ve all been dying to participate without Lina interference,” Georgia adds.

Something else I’ve realized over the course of this two-year relationship is that my friends have escalated various Mike musings from gentle noticings to full on shit-talking. Towards the end, Oliver refused to even hear Mike’s name. “Fuck that guy, Lina. He’s a waste of space. You’re too good for him.”

I realize my defense had also escalated. I had doubled down on trying to explain and prove the merits of his sensitivity, creativity, and… vivacity. I’ve now come to understand that those merits were actually deficiencies. He was overly sensitive, and like a toddler would throw a tantrum if things didn’t go his way. He thought he was creative but was really just a subpar, lazy musician, song writer, and content creator. ‘Vivacious’ was just a nicer way of saying he was far too loud and extremely annoying.

“Let’s all share the thing we hated the most about Mike,” Mia, another third-grade teacher of mine, offers. Her fiancé Elias, currently standing with an arm slung around her shoulder, enthusiastically agrees.

“Me first!” yells Emmanuel. “I personally hated that Mike would mansplain everything . Ev. Ree. Thing. He tried to mansplain Lip Sync For Your Life to me.”

No one knows what he is talking about, which even further proves his point regarding Mike, I guess.

“He tried to mansplain Asian food to me,” Oliver contributes.

“He tried to mansplain golf to me,” says Tamika. “Golf. To me. I, Tamika, who thinks golf is a walk through the park for white people with expensive sticks.”

“Oooh, I remember that one,” Emmanuel says. “He cornered you. He wouldn’t let you leave.”

“He tried to mansplain what a hedge fund was to me,” adds Nick, who works in finance. “He was wrong.” He thinks about it. “But actually, most people are never right.”

“Okay, my turn again. I thought it was insane how defensive he got if anyone showed any inkling of disagreeing with him,” Oliver shares.

“Oh my god ,” Georgia groans. “He couldn’t let things go! He had to be the last word, all the time!”

All this shit talking is somehow making me feel both energized yet depressed as hell, especially because when it’s my turn, I’m going to say something like I hate how he always made me come or that he probably has a thousand nude photos of me saved on his phone. “Can we not anymore? I get it. He was the worst. I think we’ve dedicated enough of Georgia and Oliver’s housewarming to my ex-boyfriend.”

“Sorry, henny,” Emmanuel croons. “We can stop. We’re just happy you’re free of his clutches. Mother can get you a margarita. Spicy?”

“Please,” I sigh.

Georgia steps in. “Well, Oliver has approximately fifty cousins here today if you’re looking for a rebound.”

My reaction to this comment is visceral and immediate. “Hard no,” I tell her and everyone around me.

“Why not?”

“What do you mean, why not?” I thought it was obvious. “I feel like I’ve spent the last two years of my life slowly drowning underwater, and I’ve finally just come up for air. Rebounding right now would push me back under.”

Everyone is silent, digesting.

“That’s a pretty good analogy,” Mia says.

“I disagree with your analogy,” Georgia says, “but to continue in the same spirit, I think that hot sex with a hot rebound would let you relax without swimming for a bit. Like…” she taps a finger to her chin, looking up at the sky. “More of a…”

“Life jacket.”

“Buoy.”

“Life boat.”

“ Luxury yacht , if it’s real good.”

Being around a group of elementary school educators all the time can be truly exhausting.

“How do you have so many cousins anyway, Oliver? Does Mama Flores have like ten brothers or sisters?” I ask him.

“She actually only has one brother,” he explains. “But Filipinos have a very loose definition of cousin. Family friends are cousins.”

Mia and Elias glance at one another.

“School and classmates are cousins. The guy who owns the Filipino market in Jackson Heights is a cousin. Actually, no,” he tilts his head, thinking. “He’s more of a tito. To me, at least. He’d be my mom’s cousin, I guess. There are also age restrictions to this arbitrary labeling system.”

“You’ll catch on eventually,” Georgia says, patting me on the back.

Emmanuel comes back with my spicy margarita, and I take several large gulps, wincing and fighting through the initial surge of acid reflux.

The conversation moves on, and after a few minutes of disassociating, I realize I need to pee.

I hand my margarita back to Emmanuel, who is now mansplaining Lip Sync For Your Life (but rightfully so) and wind my way through the sea of family friends and/or cousins and/or titos into the house.

The bathroom is occupied, so I let my mind wander while leaning on the wall opposite the door.

Pathetically, I immediately wonder if Mike is doing okay. That’s my first fucking thought, a learned behavior with two years of reinforcement. Where is he going to live? How is he going to afford rent? Will he remember the doctor’s appointment I made for him next month? He needs his flu shot— stop Lina, he’s a fucking grown-ass man , for fuck’s sake?—

However.

The bathroom occupant opens the door, and any thought of Mike, really any coherent thought at all, entirely ceases.

Because this? Now this is a fucking grown-ass man.

He shuts off the lights and the fan, leaving us in complete silence, his body illuminated from the ambient daylight streaming in from the windows. I’m unsure, but I believe to be having what is known as an out-of-body experience while taking in this grown-ass, fine-ass specimen of a man—tall, long, masculine torso lean with muscle under a fitted black t-shirt, skin glowing a gorgeous golden brown. Thick, dark, floppy hair pushed back from his face. Dark eyes surrounded by thick eyelashes, pillowy lips in direct contrast with the sharp angles of his clean-shaven face, his cheekbones, his jaw.

Both arms are corded and ropy and completely covered in full sleeves of tattoos—beautiful, consistent, intricate tribal looking patterns that bring cultural significance to mind rather than bad nineties trends.

Gravity is the first word that pops unbidden into my static-filled brain. He has a gravity about him, dense and all-consuming, like a black hole.

Delicious , is the next thought my sex-deprived ass has about this manna sent from heaven and/or hell.

He smiles at me inquisitively, likely wondering why I’m about to drop to my knees or why my mouth is hanging open and my tongue is all but dangling out of my mouth, ready to receive him. His face is meant for smiling, like it’s his natural state, the corners of his mouth and eyes settling into well-worn lines.

Damn . This warmth, it’s a delicious addition to the whole tall, dark, handsome, tattooed thing he has going on?—

Oh, hell no.

Nope.

He steps out into the hallway and towards me. “Hey?” he asks, half greeting, half question, and I really wish he didn’t open his mouth and give me his hot-ass voice, tranquil and strong, or step so close to me that I could smell his body wash and laundry detergent, but it’s the scent of that detergent that snaps me out of it. There’s no way this man does his own laundry, Lina; run.

“Excuse me,” I murmur, swerving around him, barreling into the bathroom and slamming the door on his tall, dark, handsome, tattooed self.

* * *

“Everything okay?” Oliver asks, when I finally stop hiding in the bathroom and rejoin the group outside.

“Everything is terrible,” I assure him. It’s a struggle not to ask him who the man from the bathroom was, even if the luxury yacht analogy is starting to sound real good right now.

I catch his movement in the yard—it’s impossible not to, because he stands a head taller than most of the people around him—and I make sure to move so that the bodies of at least twenty family friends/cousins/titos block my vision. We make eye contact anyway, somehow. Once, for several seconds, putting the ‘fuck’ in ‘eye-fuck,’ before the beginning of that damn smile builds on his face, before I shift my eyes away and angle my body so that my back is to him.

“—anyway, moral of the story is that Shangela ate and then shat on her corpse, and that’s my personal favorite Lip Sync For Your Life,” Emmanuel finishes.

Nick nods solemnly.

“Wow,” Elias says, with absolute sincerity. He looks down at Mia, who is still glued to his side. “Can we start watching when we get home?”

“Please live-text me your reactions,” Emmanuel asks.

“How was your school year this year?” Oliver changes the subject. “Georgia’s told me some stuff, but how was it for you all?”

“It was awesome ,” Elias says, because he’s escaped the clutches of the New York City Department of Education.

“We’d be annoyed with you if your Sherlock Holmes bit didn’t lead to Courtney Thomas being fired,” Georgia tells him, referring to Courtney Thomas, the principal hired at PS 2 after Oliver left and the absolute worst principal PS 2 had ever had.

I shrug. “It was fine.”

Everyone except Oliver whirls around and glares at me.

“What?” I demand to know.

“You had the worst year out of all of us,” Emmanuel points out.

“No—”

“In fact, you’ve had the worst time out of all of us ever since Oliver left,” Georgia chimes in. “That’s two whole years of the worst time.”

“But—”

“Lina.” Mia blinks patiently at me. “You have been doing the work of three administrators—a principal and two APs—ever since Oliver left.”

“I’ve been an AP—” I try.

“Courtney Thomas was useless, so you were doing her job, plus that of two APs. You were the only administrator. Then, after she was fired, you kept doing the same thing. Without getting paid the principal salary.”

“And I bet you’re still doing it right now, over the summer!”

I keep my mouth shut, because it is true.

“You’re not supposed to be working!” Emmanuel is yelling now. “APs get summers off!”

I don’t appreciate being berated by my staff. I tell them so.

“Fuck you.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, please.”

“You look like shit,” Emmanuel continues, unfazed. “You need a break. The bags under your eyes could have its own line. Your beautiful brown face is as pale as Mia’s here?—”

“ Hey —”

“Your curls are limp. Have you gone on vacation this summer? A staycation? A week of doing nothing?”

I purse my lips.

“Hey,” Oliver chimes in suddenly, giving me a reprieve from this all-out assault because he is my best friend. A title I have just bestowed upon him at this very moment. “I have an idea.” He and Georgia look at one another, communicating via couple telepathy. Georgia nods emphatically. “We’re going away this Monday for a week with my parents. My aunt has a huge beach house in Rhode Island with plenty of bedrooms. You should come with us.”

The skin at the back of my neck starts to crawl with all the work I’d be missing. “Thanks, but?—”

“She’s going,” Emmanuel tells him.

I shake my head. “I really can’t. I have to?—”

“You don’t have to do shit ?—”

“But school starts in?—”

“Not your problem?—”

“It is my problem, because no one will?—”

“Lina,” Georgia says seriously. “It’s just one week. You owe it to yourself.”

“Girl, please go and take a break. When was the last time you got eight hours of sleep?”

I try to think about how much sleep I’ve gotten this week and realize I can’t do the calculations because I am so sleep-deprived.

“Besides,” Oliver adds on, “there’s Wi-Fi. If you feel like you really need to do something, you can do it remotely.”

I scrub my face. “Oliver, you know better than anyone the amount of work that needs to get done before the year starts.”

He nods sympathetically. “I do know. But I still don’t think it’s fair for you to pick up the slack. Just come with us. Anything pressing that needs to be done can be done from there. I can even help you with some stuff.”

Emmanuel squeezes my hand in a rare show of affection.

I look at my team.

My summer flashes through my head. Breaking up with Mike. Working… all the fucking time. My mom. The small box of my apartment, recently aired out of old weed smell. I catch a glimpse of a tattooed forearm across the yard. No, Lina . Everyone is right. I need to get out of here. Out of Brooklyn.

“Fine,” I concede.

Cheers from around the yard. I glance around at Oliver’s apparently very nosy family members. Someone starts playing the guitar?

“Don’t mind them,” Oliver says, chuckling.

A flash of perfect teeth, a smile, from someone who stands far taller than his relatives.

I find that I don’t mind them at all.