26. Elias
TWENTY-SIX
Elias
Well, that felt like shit.
Just when I thought that someone was finally taking me seriously. Someone who meant more to me because of it. But no, I’m just another one of those Brooklyn fuckboys who doesn’t have a real job and has a phone full of random nude photos of women and is not good enough for someone like Mia.
I’m glad as hell that I didn’t have the conversation with her.
Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe this is done. Maybe it’s time to call it.
But whatever.
My phone rings next to me. I check the ID and frown. It’s Jordan O’Neal, that guy from the Nets. I panic for a second, racking my brain to make sure I’m not currently missing a session, when I remember he’s out of town this whole weekend for away games.
I pick up. “Hello?”
“Hey, man.”
“What’s up? I thought you were traveling this weekend.”
“We just got back, actually.”
“Need a last minute cool down session?” I’m not ashamed to hustle. Besides, it’ll get me out of the house.
He laughs. “I’m good. I’m about to crawl into bed. But I’m calling for some of my teammates, actually.”
I perk up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Some of the younger ones. They usually use their off days to fuck around, but our coach got pissed about it this weekend. He wants them to tighten up. Get more serious. A handful of them know I’ve been seeing you for a while and asked if I could hook them up. I said I would ask you first. Make sure you were okay with taking on a bunch of professional athletes.”
I can no longer breathe. I feel like I’m having a stroke and a heart attack and a brain aneurism all at once.
“Hello?” Jordan makes sure I’m not dying. I might be.
I clear my throat. “How many guys?”
“Five.”
I do some quick calculations. “And you all have the same off days, obviously, so I’d have to see each of you separately for an hour on those days.”
“Yeah. Which is why I wanted to ask.”
Some of those days fall on school days. I’d have to quit teaching. Can I do that?
I don’t have to think about it too long. All I need to think about is how much I charge Jordan, how I make double my teaching salary now, and how I’m going to be able to quadruple Jordan’s fees. That, with all this business software handling most of the operations? Fuck.
The only thing holding me back right now is the fact that as soon as I say yes, I’m going to have achieved the goal I’ve been working towards for the past ten years. Which is a really big fucking deal.
Holy shit.
It’s happening.
“Elias?” Jordan is saying.
“I’m in,” I say.
“You sure? I mean, you don’t have to say yes right now…”
“No, I’m good,” I assure him. I’ll show you a real fucking job , I think pettily. “Do they wanna get started right away? Do they wanna meet me first?”
“Nah, I let them know you’re cool. They need to tell our coach some sort of plan, so they wanna start ASAP. Let me get you their email addresses, and you can send over the consent forms and shit.”
We finish up, and just like that, I’m sending over five more annual contracts. Just like that, I can finally quit my teaching job. I’ll tell Lina tomorrow. Holy fucking shit!
The next person I think of telling is obviously Mia, but I stop myself on the way out of my bedroom.
What are you gonna do right now? You gonna rub it in her face? Why are you telling her, anyway? You’re just a fuckboy with thousands of photos of nude women on your phone. But she helped you get here, you fuckhead. She thinks you’re nothing. That’s not true at all. She doesn’t think you have a real job. Well, you can show her a real fucking job now. She’s too good for you. You don’t deserve her at all. But you probably love her. You’re scared. Of what, exactly?
Sighing, I sit back on my bed.
Now is not the time to be talking to Mia.
“How do you want it?” I ask her instead, in between licks into her mouth and her sucking on my tongue.
This is easier for me. This is what I’m good at. Fucking instead of feelings.
“Rough,” she pants, naked and straddling me on the couch in the living room, grinding down on my fingers. “A little mean.”
I grab her hair next to her scalp, yanking her head back so I can bite her neck. “Fuck yes,” I tell her, with a rough pinch to her nipple and a slap to her ass.
I grip myself at my base to orient myself, and when it’s in position, when my tip is surrounded by her delicious wet warmth, I slam her down.
She screams.
“Take it,” I hiss in her ear, thrusting up and pulling down, working her hard on my dick, my hands so tight on her hips I know they’ll leave bruises. Her tits bounce in my face, and I suck one into my mouth, working the nipple between my teeth.
Her entire body freezes.
“What?” I stop, alarmed, afraid I’ve hurt her. “Wh?—”
It’s then that I hear the knock on our front door. “Elias? Meems? Are either of you in there?”
It’s Leo.
“I’m coming in,” he yells. His spare key jiggles in the lock.
Mia and I look at one another for the amount of time it takes to have a panic attack, existential crisis, and guilt trip all in one go (approximately half a second), then move into action. She leaps off my dick and throws herself down the hall into her bedroom, slamming the door. I do a last second scan of the living room, sweeping up all our clothes and sprinting into my bedroom. I manage to slam my door shut as I hear our front door open.
“Elias?” Leo calls out. I hear footsteps walking towards my room.
I throw on a pair of boxers, tucking my rapidly shrinking erection into the waistband, just in case. I pull on a pair of shorts, smooth my hands through my hair, probably making it super poofy, and open my door.
“Hey,” I say hoarsely. I clear my throat. “Hey,” I try again.
He raises an eyebrow. “Hey, man.”
“‘Sup?” I cringe at my lameness.
He chuckles. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing?” It comes out as a question.
“Okay. Well, I brought you and Meems lunch.” He lifts a plastic bag. “I texted both of you, but no one answered.”
I have no idea where my phone is. I think Mia’s is in the pile of clothing I scooped up from the living room, currently on the floor next to my bed. “Wow.” I squeeze it out, like I’m constipated. “Thanks.”
He looks at my neck, which I know has an old mark from Mia. He looks at my shoulders, which likely have deep gouges on them, from just two minutes ago. Also from Mia. He peeks around me and sees Mia’s clothes on my floor. He grins. “Big night last night?”
I thank all the powers that be that Mia was wearing a nondescript black t-shirt and not that bright red, very easily identifiable Princeton Soccer hoodie she always wears from when we were kids. “Huge,” I reply.
“Is there a new card-carrying member of the Blonde Brigade?” he grins.
This is an extremely irritating comment that I’m tired of hearing about. Seriously? “How do you know it’s not someone I’m seeing regularly?”
He barks a laugh. “Because you’re you.”
Christ . “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He rolls his eyes. “Please. Besides, even if you were seeing someone regularly, I’d know.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”
“Because I’m your best friend, idiot,” he says, slapping me on the side of the head. “You wouldn’t keep that shit from me.”
My stomach drops. Feels like it gets ripped down by the Hook of Bad Best Friends.
“Breaking blonde hearts all over the city,” he jokes.
I don’t, though. Would never. Especially not Mia’s. But… I start a bit, remembering the incident with my phone photos. Oh wait. You did. Because you’re a real asshole.
“Where’s Meems?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know?” I demand to know.
He frowns. “Because you live with her?”
“But it’s not like I spend every single second of the day with her,” I half-shout, regardless of the fact that I do.
“The fuck?—”
“Hey, Leo,” Mia says from behind him.
The second he turns around, I let myself freak out. I’m immediately hit with what a close call that was. How wrong this all is. Her neck is covered in makeup again. Her eyes darken when they see my shoulders. Fuck. This is not okay. Mayday.
“Hey, Meems,” Leo says. “I brought you guys lunch.”
She grins, going in for the hug. “Thanks.”
Leo gives her a big brother bear hug, and I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “Wanna eat this on the couch?
“No,” Mia and I shout in unison.
“We squeezed a dining table into our tiny kitchen for a reason,” Mia continues. “Let’s pretend to be real adults and eat there.”
He walks into the kitchen.
Mia shoots me a look, eyes wide and mildly horrified. I don’t know what my face looks like. A mix of food poisoning and terror, maybe.
“Put a shirt on,” she mouths at me.
I grab a random shirt from my floor and go to throw it on, but it doesn’t fit over my arms. Because it’s Mia’s shirt. Because all of our fucking clothes are scattered all around our fucking apartment and in each other’s fucking rooms. I sigh, walking to my dresser to pull out one of mine. I see one of the vibrating plugs resting on the side. I slam the drawer shut. My stomach continues its climb into my throat.
“So how’s it going?” I ask my best friend as I walk into the kitchen, as if I wasn’t just balls deep and bare in his sister two hundred and forty seconds ago.
He throws the bag on the table, digging through the plastic and taking out three sandwiches. “Not much. I was in the neighborhood?—”
“Slumming it in Brooklyn?” Mia jokes.
Leo grins, sheepish. “Yeah. I’m kind of seeing someone. I was on a date.”
“Wait a second. You were on a date at noon on a Saturday?” Mia asks with a mouthful of Italian sub.
“Well, the date was last night,” he mutters.
Mia squeals again. “That’s great, Leo. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“We’ll see. We’re taking it slow. Just getting to know one another,” he admits.
I make eye contact with Mia from across the table, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. We didn’t really have to get to know one another, because we already knew one another, so we took it fast. Super fast. Too fast? Well, at least, that’s what I’m thinking. I’m also thinking that this was all probably a really bad fucking idea.
“I also wanted to come over for something else. I wanted to apologize for something, Meems,” he tells his sister.
“Wha?” she says, mouth full again.
“I feel like… My… this new person… She’s also a younger sister. She’s been telling me how she’s always been brushed off by her older brother. That he treats her like a child, like she’s still his kid sister. And she made me realize that I’ve been doing the same to you for a long time. With the… dating, and your career, and the choices. And then at dinner, with Elias pushing me… with our parents… You’re an adult. You need to make your own choices. I just want you to be happy.”
I’m pretty impressed.
She smiles at him, beaming, radiant. “Thanks, Leo. I’ve only been trying to get you to see that for twenty-nine years.”
He scratches his head, sheepish.
“Nice to know that it took one date with someone else who happens to be a little sister to get you to realize that,” she says with dripping sarcasm. “But whatever. I’m actually really happy right now. And I do feel really confident in my choices,” she says, looking at me, turning that radiance towards me.
I shrink under the force of it.
“Good,” Leo says, blowing out a breath. “I feel… weird, asking you this, but?—”
“Yes,” she tells him confidently. “Well, kind of,” she amends. “I’m all in, though,” she says, eyeing me.
“Has Elias met him?”
“Yep,” she says.
“Well, as long as he approves,” he says. “And as long as he’s nothing like Elias,” he laughs, slapping me on the back.
Mia and I both frown.
My stomach has finally reached my throat. I know this because I can no longer swallow the lump. We’ve reached the end. This is the exact moment that I make a decision.
She means too much to me, I’m fucking terrified, and he can’t be anything like me . Even if I’d be happy, fucking ecstatic, to spend the rest of my life with h… Forget it. Don’t even go there. Because I’m terrified of who I am and how I probably love her and how the force and strength and power of that will never be the same for anyone else. And because of all that… I have the potential to really break her. Because I already have, once.
I come to a conclusion.
“Actually—” she starts.
“You have nothing to worry about, man,” I reassure him.
Mia looks at me.
“How’s the gym going?” Leo asks me next.
I cringe. “It’s… fine.”
“It’s amazing,” Mia chimes in, forever my cheerleader, nude photos, man-whore, real job, bad best friend, or not. I don’t deserve it anymore. “We got him this small business software that will take some time off his hands, make everything more efficient. We… made him a bunch of social media accounts,” she says, only a flicker of pain passing behind her eyes, one that stabs me through the neck. “He’s getting a ton of followers and new clients.”
Leo swallows a mouthful of sandwich. “That’s awesome, dude. Proud of you,” he says, and it’s because of Mia. But it won’t be anymore.
“So, let’s talk about—” Mia tries, once Leo is gone and we’re back on the couch.
“Let’s go out tonight,” I cut in.
“What?”
“We haven’t practiced your man-eating skills in a while,” I tell her. “It’s time for some new lessons.”
Mia glares at me with X-ray eyes. But they won’t work this time. “Elias… I don’t want to do that.”
I’m a little angry. “Why not?”
“Because I want to hang out with you. Just you.”
“I just don’t want you to get this all twisted again, Meems.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Elias?”
“You said it yourself. We’re forgetting what this was all about and why we started this in the first place. Also, my best friend was just here. Your older brother . Mia, he came over while I was literally inside of you… Fuck, Mia. I’m lying to him. I’ve been lying to my best friend.” And he doesn’t think I’m good enough for you, either.
This does not make her happy. But I don’t know what she looks like. Pissed? Upset? Hurt? All? Does it matter at this point? “So you’re going to put Leo’s feelings ahead of mine. You’re going to put me second to him? Just like everyone else?”
“No,” I say, scrubbing my face, really losing the plot here. “I don’t?—”
“Fuck you,” she says, even while crawling over me, straddling me on the couch, so I’m forced to look into her eyes. She holds my face between her hands. “I was being… reactive before. But listen. I want to hang out with you, and only you. We can do it out at a bar, or we can do it here. But I want to be with you,” she says seriously.
I think I’m losing my mind. I’m so fucking stressed out. I pretend she means something else. I let myself be selfish. Just one more time. I close my eyes and let myself lean into her hand for just a split second. Hold her around her waist, squeezing. She tucks her face into my neck. I smell her hair. Cherishing, relishing. Selfish, for one more moment. One last time.
“Okay,” I finally say, peeling her off my body, feeling like I’m skinning myself alive. “Let’s put on a movie,” I tell her.
I pretend to fall asleep ten minutes in, instead acutely aware of her head in my lap, her hair in my fingers.
The last time.