7. Elias
SEVEN
Elias
I am more than ashamed to admit that the minute Mia stepped out of the apartment, I stomped to my bedroom and tore off my pants and boxers. Then I stopped and tried to collect myself. I paced back and forth, muttered, “don’t do this Elias” over and over again.
Then I said “fuck it”, gripped myself so hard it was almost painful, gave myself exactly three strokes, then came all over my hand. Like I was a thirteen-year-old boy and not a grown-ass thirty-two-year-old man.
I sink to the ground. I was doing okay, considering the tits and the tight nipples and the hips and the strip of skin under the crop top and the hair and the lip gloss and the way she practically moaned my name. I shoved that all down real hard. It was the feeling of the soft skin of her hip that did me in. Or maybe it was the feeling of the silky ribbon of her g-string on the pads of my fingers. Or maybe it was a combination of both.
Wrong , I think, knocking the back of my head against the door. Bad . Creepy . And now, I’m in here, covered in my own semen, while she’s out there looking like sex incarnate, ready to rub that lip gloss all over some strange dick.
And she says she needs help. She needs no fucking help while looking like that. People—man, woman, or otherwise—will gravitate towards her like moths to a flame. And she’ll fucking burn them to a crisp. The thought of this makes me die a little. I start pacing my room. I want to go make sure she’s okay. I want to see her again. I should’ve found out where she was going. Wait, I can text her. But no, no. Remember? Bad. Creepy. Give her the space she asked for. You promised Leo you’d step back. You lost all rights to her when you did that. Fuck. Fuck .
I go to the bathroom to clean myself up. There’s nothing else for me to do but to sit on the couch and wait until she gets home safely. That is, if she comes home at all.
When you’re a teacher, you have to wake up so fucking early that you get to know the general time in the morning based on the way the light shines through the window. I jolt awake on the couch, look around, and I know on a deep, cellular level that I have about thirty minutes until school starts. I try to check the time on my phone, but it’s dead.
She didn’t come home. I fell asleep on the couch all night, which is right in front of the door to our apartment, and she never came through it. I stand up to go check her bedroom, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and her door is still wide open. She didn’t come home. Fuck. Fuck .
I quickly shift into autopilot after seeing the time on the oven in our kitchen. I have to be out of the apartment in five minutes flat if I want to make it to work in time to pick up my first class. I take a piss, brush my teeth, splash water on my face. I throw on some clothes, and I’m out the door. No time for coffee today. Maybe I’ll make it to school in time to stop by Mia’s classroom.
But of course, the bus is delayed. I pull out my phone to send Mia a text, but I forgot it’s dead. By the time I walk into the school building, my first class, fourth grade, is already lined up outside the gym waiting for me. I shoot what I hope is an apologetic look to their teacher, who waves me off, and I quickly usher the class into the gym.
I dump the huge net bag of basketballs into the middle of the gym, tell the class to go for it, and go to my office to plug my phone in. I’d shoot Mia a text now, but I know for a fact that if she’s teaching right now, she won’t be looking at her phone until her first prep or her lunch, whichever comes first. I look at the schedule hanging above my desk. I have Mia’s class next period. I can talk to her then. If she’s not dead in a ditch or chopped up into tiny little pieces and scattered around a serial killer’s basement. I manage to make it to the end of the period by shooting hoops and fucking around with the kids.
Fifty minutes pass, and the fourth grade teacher comes to pick up her class. I don’t even bother to pick up the basketballs that are scattered around the gym, because I’m just going to let Mia’s class play with them anyway. I stand by the door to my gym, tapping my foot and waiting for Mia to turn the corner.
When she finally does, I see red.
Her hair is messy, the waves all over the place and looking like they’ve been combed out or slept on or tossed around. She has last night’s makeup smudged around her eyes. She’s still wearing the pants and the heels from last night, but she’s not wearing that fucking nightmare of a crop top anymore. Her tiny frame is currently swimming in a white t-shirt that is three sizes too big for her. The kind of white t-shirt that a guy would wear as an undershirt.
Mia sees me, or maybe sees my rage, and her cheeks turn pink. She turns around to her class and tells them to go inside. Then, she has the audacity to hand me a piece of paper and say, “I brought you the outline for the Olympics unit, so you know what to teach?—”
She’s interrupted by me grabbing the sheet and ripping it in half. “Do not fucking tell me you did the walk of fucking shame from some dude’s apartment straight to school this morning. Do not fucking tell me you’re wearing his shirt right now,” I growl, a deadly whisper that only she can hear.
Her eyes widen in shock. I think I’m even more shocked than she is. I don’t think I’ve ever been this enraged in my life. I think I now know what a caveman feels like.
“Excuse you?!” she whisper-screams back at me.
That snaps me out of it. I take a deep breath, several in a row, rubbing my face with my hands. Jesus, Elias . “I waited up for you,” I manage instead, my voice more or less under control. I still search her neck, the bits of her collarbone that peek out through the shirt, for evidence, for marks, anything.
“I told you not to do that,” she hisses.
“I just wanted to make sure you were safe,” I plead, feeling desperate now, and also confused at all the emotions I cannot possibly be feeling at one time.
Her eyes soften a bit at that. “I’m fine. Please take a look at the unit outline that you just ripped in half like a psychopath. We can figure out how to incorporate P.E. into it… another time.” She turns to go.
“Mia, wait,” I want to stop her but don’t want to touch her. Something in my voice makes her turn around. “Did you…” I try. “What happened last night?” I whisper instead.
She looks at me, blue eyes fierce. “None of your business,” she tells me, and turns and walks away.
I’ll admit that I feel something crack inside me. More like a teeny weeny fissure, I tell myself, but still.
It’s almost eight when I finally get home. I had three back-to-back sessions after school, and I’m drained, exhausted, and starving, not to mention pissed, frustrated, and annoyed. I’m about to raid the fridge when I hear voices from Mia’s bedroom.
I walk up to her door, and I realize she’s talking to her parents on speakerphone. I am suddenly grateful for the cheap construction of our apartment building.
“—that’s nice to hear about your class,” her mom, Molly, is saying. It sounds facetious. “But how do you sound exhausted already? You’ve only been in school for how many days?”
“Three,” Mia answers, and she does sound tired. I get pissed all over again thinking about why. “But of course I’m exhausted. It’s hard, guys. Teaching is hard.”
I hear her dad Joe’s booming laugh. “It’s nothing compared to the hours your brother puts in. Or Elias.” I get pissed all over again over this comment.
Mia’s parents have always been like this. They’ve always kind of put Mia in our shadow, from sports to grades to jobs after graduation.
“Your brother scored three goals at his game today, Mia, isn’t that amazing?” they said, while she was peacefully reading Brave New World . At eleven-years-old .
“We’re so incredibly proud of you, Leo, making valedictorian,” saying nothing to Mia after she was made salutatorian.
“We paid how much for you to go to college, Mia? Just so you could become an elementary school teacher ? Your brother made six figures straight out of school.”
It’s always been pretty uncomfortable, but Leo’s always just tried to smooth it over, while I… kind of was just annoyed about it. Tried to give Mia my own compliments, hair ruffles, noogies, whatever. But tonight, for whatever reason, I’m pissed .
“There’s a lot going on at school already. Our new principal is a nightmare. But I also probably sound tired because I went out last night.”
“Well, that’s good, at least. Cozy up to your superiors.”
“It’s not like that, Dad. I’m not trying to climb the ladder or anything. PS 2 isn’t a Fortune 500,” Mia sighs.
“Tell me about it,” I think I hear him mutter.
“What did you do, then, Mia?” Molly asks absentmindedly, as if she’s in the middle of doing something else.
“Andrea and I went to happy hour, but we ended up hanging out with a bachelorette party for this guy and all of his friends. It was their last night in New York, and they convinced us to go out with them to this gay club in Bushwick. It was a blast, honestly, but we were out late and I was too messed up to take the train home alone, so Andrea and I just split a cab to her place. I went straight to school this morning.”
The blood rushes from my face, and I am filled with relief. Pure relief.
Molly hums. Like she’s no longer listening, or no longer cares. Meanwhile, I am torn between wanting to melt into a puddle and wanting to set off a confetti cannon.
Mia barrels on, trying not to notice. “Andrea and I were originally just going out to… hang out. Andrea’s… looking for a boyfriend,” she says delicately.
“What does Andrea do for work?” Joe cuts in. “Have you considered Leo?”
I cringe.
“She’s also a teacher,” she answers.
“Never mind,” Joe retorts.
My heart drops, my elation completely erased after those two comments. My feelings are… hurt? I frown, and I walk away from Mia’s door to pace in the living room. Is this what Mia’s always felt like, talking to her parents?
I’m slumped back on the couch, rubbing my eyes, feeling a headache coming on, when I hear Mia calling my name from behind her closed door. I sigh, pick myself up, and trudge over.
“Elias, I know you heard all that. I saw your feet pacing under my door crack. Get in here,” she’s saying.
I open the door to her room, and she’s back to my Mia again, freshly showered and clean, hair damp and straight and freshly brushed and face makeup free. She’s sitting up on her bed, her legs covered by her comforter. She folds back the corner of the blanket opposite from her, then pats the empty side of her bed. “Come here,” she says sadly, clearly affected by the conversation, too, and I can’t stop my feet from moving.
I climb in next to her, and it smells like her shampoo and her body wash and Mia. She tucks the covers over me, and we both snuggle into her pillows, separated by inches of space and staring at the ceiling.
“I failed at man-eating last night,” she finally says.
“I heard,” I answer.
She turns her body so that she’s on her side, looking at me. I feel the ice blue of her eyes boring into the side of my face. I don’t move. “I don’t like how you spoke to me at school this morning.”
“Mia—” I start.
“I know you were acting like that because you were in protective big brother mode, but it wasn’t cool.” Oh, is that why I was acting like that? It had nothing to do with seeing you in what I thought was another guy’s shirt?
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry. That was really uncalled for,” I say to the ceiling. It takes all of my strength to turn on my side and face her. “I really was… worried.” About your safety and also that you were sucking strange dick that wasn’t mine. Fuck. “Especially when you didn’t come home,” I finish instead.
She hums. I have the sudden urge to trace the skin on her cheek, wondering if it’s as soft as it looks smooth. “I tried to talk to a guy but then I got really nervous and stuttered and then took a bunch of shots,” she says.
“Not quite man-eating behavior,” I say to her pillowy mouth.
“I need your help,” she whispers.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s not a good idea,” I force out. “Leo will kill me. He doesn’t think I’m the… best with women?—”
“Fuck that,” she says. “You’re hot, charming, and irresistible, which makes you the perfect person to help me.”
“Sorry, can you say that again? I didn’t hear you the first time,” I can’t help but cut in, grinning ear to ear.
She pokes my Dimple. “Based on the Blonde Parade you’ve had in and out of your room since high school, yes. I’d say most, if not all women think you are hot, charming, and irresistible.”
My grin drops.
“What, am I wrong?” Mia scoffs.
“I guess not,” I mutter.
“So will you help me?” she asks earnestly.
“Mia—” I close my eyes, hoping I disappear or that she goes away.
“I can still see you, Elias. Please.” I feel her delicate fingers lock with mine. “We don’t have to tell Leo.”
My eyes fly open, and I rip my hand away. “You were the one who spilled the fucking beans to him, Mia! With barely any prompting at all!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I swear on my life it won’t happen again. Last night made me realize how desperately I need you. I can’t do this on my own.”
I feel like she’s staring into my fucking soul, and for the second or maybe third time this week, I realize I will never say no to her. What the hell is your fucking problem? After jacking off to the feeling of her thong , for fuck’s sake, you’re going to do this?! “Fine. But just through this weekend, Mia. I’ll help you or give you pointers or help you practice or whatever in New Orleans, but it ends when we get back to New York.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts’. Those are my terms. I’m not having that shit spill over to Leo again. We’re not taking it home. Take it or leave it.”
She huffs. “Fine.” She turns onto her back, and I do the same.
This is a familiar feeling, a safe one, sitting or lying around on couches, or beds, or basement or living room or forest floors. Staring at the ceiling, at the sky, thinking about everything and nothing all at once.
“How much does it bother you when your parents talk to you like that?” I finally ask, unable to ignore that cringy feeling from their earlier conversation.
She laughs without humor. “I’m used to it. I’ve been getting it my whole life.”
“From Leo, too?”
“Yep. Why do you think I was so pissed off after breakfast this weekend? I’m always being dismissed. Fucking always second best. Nothing I do matters enough.”
I think about this. “Were you pissed that I was putting you second to Leo?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, but you’re his best friend.” The nonchalance in her voice doesn’t match her body language. This makes me want to take her hand. I reach over, and I do. “I love you just as much as I love Leo,” I make sure to tell her.
Mia shifts her head to look at me, smiling and squeezing my hand. She doesn’t need to say anything.
“We leave tomorrow after school,” she reminds me, after a while.
“Oh shit. I need to pack before school tomorrow.”
“Me too,” she says, but neither of us moves to do it.
“Did you eat dinner?” I ask her.
“No.”
“Wanna order Mexican and eat it in bed while watching trashy TV on your laptop?”
She smiles. “Can we practice crafting sexts to Adam, too?”
I groan. “Can we please start that tomorrow?”
“How about just one?”
“Tomorrow, Mia.”
“Fine. Then I want a carnitas burrito.”