“I’ve been on dates—” I say, at the same time that Mia says, “Well, he could help with the fucking part—”, and then Leo loses his mind. Unfairly, I have to say, at me.
“You will not, under any circumstances, help Mia with any of this,” he growls at me, in a dangerous tone that I’ve only heard him take a handful of times in my life. One of those times being towards Mia’s ex-boyfriend, right before we beat the shit out of him for cheating on her. “Do you understand me, Elias?”
“Hey, this is between me and Elias,” Mia is saying somewhere in the background, but we barely hear her. “Hello?! Everyone’s always fucking brushing me off… Judgingmyfucking life… a fuckingadult…”
But I’m staring at my best friend, my brother, the man who has been my other half for thirty-two years.
“…or else that is the end of our friendship. Do you understand?” Leo continues.
I nod. “Got it.”
Mia picks up her things and storms out of the restaurant.
She isn’t at the apartment when I get back, and I have to get to my gym, anyway.
Before I left the restaurant, I tried to argue to Leo that maybe it would be good for me to keep an eye on her, that she’s an adult woman, for fuck’s sake, but he was hearing none of of it.
“Didn’t you explicitly tell me that you and Mia don’t talk about this kind of stuff? After I asked you if she was talking to that kid from the Shore?” he raged.
“I didn’t lie to you, I swear. Mia asked me for help with all the stuff literally the morning after that.”
“Just… step back, man. It makes me really fucking uncomfortable.”
“Why does it make you so uncomfortable?” I press.
“Because you’re a man-whore whose fucked half the women in New York City exactly one time each, before disposing of every single one of them?—”
“I’m not an asshole, Leo. It’s always mutually agreed upon?—”
“—and Mia isnotabout to be one of those women. Are you serious? Why do I need to explain this to you? Plus, who knows what kind of STDs you have floating around the expanse of your dick?—”
“Whoa—”I try to cut in, alarmed for many, many different reasons, ranging from outrage that he thinks I’m not regularly tested and horror that he thinks I’m going to sleep with Mia and give her an STD,for fucking fuck’s sake.
“Just, stay back, Elias. Please.”
I’m annoyed I’ve been dragged into this. I don’t know where the hell this all came from, or how it dropped into my lap. All I know is that I can’t do this to my best friend.
Leo has been right next to me for every single thing I’ve ever done in my life. Every major moment, every victory, every failure, every high, every low. We shared a nanny. We went to the same elementary, middle, and high school. Always played on the same sports teams. The only time we’ve ever technically been apart was for the four years we went to different colleges. But even then, we would visit each other at least once a month. It was easy, since I was going to state school for jocks in Connecticut, and he was at a hippy private school for kids who didn’t get into Ivies, just outside Boston. We’d go to one another’s games, we’d go to one another’s frats. We moved to the city together, and we lived together until Leo made a fuckton of money and wanted to live his own one percent life.
All I know is, I can’t get roped back into this, no matter how fucking sad and doe-eyed and needy Mia may look at me. Regardless of how much she is ‘achingfor it’. But I do have to apologize to her. It wasn’t cool of me to agree to it in the first place. I also don’t think it’s necessarily cool of Leo to be so crazy overbearing towards his twenty-nine-year-old ‘little’ sister, or to be such a dick to me and my dick, but it’s not my place. I hate hurting Mia’s feelings, but Leo will always come first.
My first session of the day is with that guy from the Brooklyn Nets, Jordan O’Neal. His season doesn’t start until October, so he sees me on the weekends he isn’t training with his team. He pays me way more than my usual rates, because I have to go above and beyond what I usually do. He shares his team trainers’ plans, both diet and training, and I have to work around them, making sure to craft something that simultaneously pushes him yet slots in nicely with his existing plans.
My next and only other session of the day is with a Park Slope stay-at-home-mom in her late forties, and I’m pretty sure she only works with me because I’ll adjust her positioning while we’re strength training, physically prompting her body into a safe arrangement. And I’m almost positive her stance is incorrect on purpose, which really rubs me the wrong fucking way after my conversation with Leo.
When I get home, I expect to find Mia in the living room, surrounded by an explosion of papers covering the couch and coffee table like every other Sunday. The lights are all off in the common spaces in the apartment, though, and I only know she’s home because of the light shining through the crack under her door.
I flip on the lights of the living room and walk down the hall to her room. I stand outside and lean my head on the doorframe, closing my eyes, gathering myself.
Then, for the first time in maybe five years of living together, I knock. And when I don’t get an answer, but hear the squeak of her moving on her bed frame, I knock again.
“Mia, can I come in?”
Some more shifting around inside.
“I know you’re in there. I hear you moving around.”
Nothing.
