Elias clears his throat. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, seemingly to the woman smooshed in front of him. She turns her head to look up at him, confused at first, then delighted to be spoken to by this towering Lax Bro Captain America. “Not you,” he tells her. “Mia,” he clarifies. She shrugs, making sure her shoulder has a chance to rub against what I know now is a rock hard egg carton of a stomach.
“What?” I whisper.
“You,” his mouth says in my general direction. “I’m sorry about this morning.”
“Oh,” I manage.
“I didn’t mean…” he continues, quietly, basically into the hair of the woman in front of him. “I passed out sometime during that Korean dating show. Then this morning… I didn’t… it wasn’t…” he stammers.
“I think I’m a little bit freaking out,” I tell him, while very much freaking out. “I guess I couldfeelexactly why you have a constant parade of women in and out of your room,” I’m rambling in an unhinged way, not making any sense and wanting for this not to happen on a public bus. “I mean, I guess Isawwhy during Bathroom Incident, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the fucking tree trunk pressing into?—”
He looks like he wants to crumble into a pile of dust and blow away in the wind. “Mia, it justhappens. It doesn’t mean?—”
“Yeah, Mia, it’s happening to me now,” the man standing between us interjects.
In just under a millisecond, Elias’s entire face switches from ashamed-boy-next-door to murderous-juiced-up-axe-wielding-psychopath. He does the thing where he seems to double in size. He swivels his head downwards, slowly, as if he’s just located his prey and is preparing to pounce and rip it to shreds or eat it chunk by chunk while it’s still alive. His eyes narrow, slightly. “Are we about to have a problem right now?”
The man takes one look up at Elias and shrinks even smaller than his current corporal body allows. “Kidding,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”
Elias isn’t finished. “Kidding about your pencil dick getting hard in the middle of public transportation? And telling a woman about it? Do you think that’s a joke? Do you think that’s funny?” Each word is punctuated with a threat to tear him limb from limb. I want to chime in that actually, we were doing just that, but now doesn’t seem like the time.
“No,” the man mumbles. “Sorry.”
He tilts his head, playing with his prey. “Why are you apologizing to me?”
The man turns to me. “Sorry,” he mutters to my feet.
“Sorry, who? You know her name now, it seems,” Elias croons.
“Sorry, Mia,” the man coughs, and he wiggles his way out of our section towards the back.
“Wow,” I think I hear the woman in front of Elias whisper. She fans herself.
The guy standing in front of me shakes his head. “Men,” he says, in a general sort of way.
“Right?!” I shriek.
We peel ourselves from the bus at our stop and begin the three block long walk of shame together. He’s shifted back to toeing-at-the-ground Elias. I try to catch his eye, but they remain fixed on the ground.
Elias clears his throat. “So, are we going to talk about it, or are we going to forget it ever happened and never bring it up again?”
“I kind of want to talk about it,” I admit.
He looks alarmed.
“It was just a natural reaction to waking up to someone in your bed,” I go on. “It’s not like it was real. If you’d known it was me, maybe that wouldn’t have happened?”
He eyes me then, squinting. He makes a noncommittal noise.
An idea pops into my head. “Besides, maybe we should add something like that to our lessons,” I add. “Like not only the flirting and the dating, but maybe physical?—”
Elias stops walking, forcing me to stop, too. Now he fully turns to look at me, blasting me with the force of his blazing green eyes. “Hard no, Mia. That’s where I draw the line. I will not be putting my hands on you ever again.” These words are tinged with a hint of something… maybe disgust?
I’m not shocked that he refuses, but something about his vehemence stings. “I… okay.” I reply. “I just thought, maybe, that after your reaction on Monday, that maybe… it wouldn’t be such a chore. What if you just thought of it as a clinical… task?”
He scrubs his face with his hands. “Is that what… A chore? Clinical? You think…” I hear him mutter. Warring emotions flit over his face. He seems to come to a decision, finally, his body and face settling into a resigned slump. “The answer is no, Mia. Fuck, this is making me feel really fucking uncomfortable?—”
“Okay, well, sorry I’m such a bridge troll then,” I mutter, taking my luggage and rolling it away myself. “Thought maybe I could qualify for the Blonde Brigade. I didn’t realize your standards were so high.”
