24. Georgia

TWENTY-FOUR

Georgia

Eloise is awake and reading on the couch, so I don’t run into my room and furiously masturbate like I want to.

Sighing, I collapse on the couch next to her, throwing my bag of food on the coffee table. I lay my head in her lap. It smells like Weezy, a unique blend of weed and her Le Labo perfume. “Hi, Weezy.”

“Hi, George,” she pets my hair, a pale imitation of the way Oliver’s pulled mine. “How was your day?” She uses her toe to poke at the bag on the coffee table. “Smells good.”

“It was fucking insane. You hungry?”

“A little, now.”

I get up and take the bag to the kitchen. I make Weezy a similar plate to the one Gloria made me earlier (albeit much, much smaller), and bring it to her with a spoon and a fork.

“Ooooh, Filipino food?! What a treat,” she says, and with expert precision, peels the meat off the oxtail bone in the kare kare with her spoon and fork. She makes a perfect spoonful with rice and shovels it into her mouth .

Nothing surprises me about Eloise anymore, so I don’t even ask.

“So what happened today?” she asks after a while, with a mouthful of pancit.

I start with a quick summary of the Fall Festival, embellishing the details a bit and painting myself to be the hero who rescued the entire festival and the lives of hundreds of families.

“So, and just reading between the lines here, George, what actually happened was that you ran your mouth to that shitty dad you told me about a few weeks ago, and then someone else came and saved the day.”

I sigh. “Oliver.”

She points a lumpia at me. “That asshole?”

“That asshole saved the day. Like a half-Filipino Superman.”

“Hot.”

“Tragically so.”

“Then what?”

“Then… his mom kidnapped me and brought me to their house, where I met Oliver’s entire immediate and extended family?”

A piece of lumpia falls out of Weezy’s mouth. “PLOT TWIST, MUCH?!”

“And then… and then he walked me home and pulled my hair and shoved his thumb in my mouth?”

Eloise throws a lumpia in my face. “SHOVED?!”

“And then I sucked on it,” I mumble.

“EXCUSE ME?!” Eloise now stands on the couch.

“And I liked it,” I whisper.

Eloise full body tackles me.

After a struggle, during which Eloise bodily throws me on the floor using her ten years of MMA skills, we sit side by side on the couch, munching on floor lumpia. I go into detail about how Oliver’s mother found me and took me home. I tell her all about Oliver’s family and how much fun I had with them.

“They kinda sound like your parents, George,” she tells me.

“I don’t know,” I say, suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe.”

“Definitely the opposite of Jake’s parents.”

“That, I can wholeheartedly agree with,” I reply. “But not like it matters. They’re not like my newfound family or anything. It’s not like I’m going to date Oliver or anything.”

“No,” she agrees.

“What do you mean, no?!” I say, inexplicably offended.

“What do you mean, what do I mean, no?!” she shoots back. “You said it yourself—he’s a condescending jerk. And what else have you said? He’s all stiff and buttoned up? A consummate rule-follower? Student test scores and shit? And he labeled everything in his office with a label maker?” She wrinkles her nose. “And all the books in his bookshelf are organized in alphabetical order by author's last name?”

“Actually, I like that about him.” I actually think I’m starting to like all those other things about him, too.

“And like, you irritate the fuck out of each other?” she continues, ignoring me. “Plus, you can’t just date your boss.”

“Why not?!”

“Now you’re just being contrarian for the hell of it.”

“But he’s hot. He seems like he would do nasty things to me in bed, and I want to hate-fuck him,” I pout.

She thinks. “Well, you can probably do that.”

“Right?!”

“Yeah, just be sneaky about it. Didn’t you tell me both your jobs were on the line for something or other? No drama llamas from Ms. Baker’s classroom or some shit? Hate-fucking him is the opposite of that.”

“I can be sneaky.”

“Actually, you can’t. Remember when you tried to shoplift a Billabong hoodie from PacSun by wearing it out of the store?”

“I thought that was pretty slick, actually?—”

“You were wearing it on top of all your clothes, Georgia. With the security tag still on.”

“I was fourteen .” I am outraged. “But anyway, I bet he can be sneaky.”

“Then I guess it depends on how bad he wants it, I guess.”

He doesn’t want it that bad, apparently, as Monday comes and goes without my seeing him at all.

I focus instead on my classroom, with our ongoing study of the Lenape people indigenous to New York City, different cultural traditions, and storytelling for the entire month of November leading up to Thanksgiving. I incorporate all the feedback Oliver has given me regarding planning and prepping and teaching and grading. Because I am a star employee.

I’m counting my permission slips for field trips to notable Lenape areas in Brooklyn, when I realize that the only one I’m missing is from Max.

Max is in school today, looking refreshed. I was wary of what he would be like after this weekend’s incident, but he is looking more like the Max I hate-love. Bouncy, curious, smiling. Clean. Less angry with others. I wonder if Oliver got in touch with Mom. I pull him aside during snack time, after seeing him offer some of his Cheez Doodles to Dorothy.

“How’s it going, sir? You talking to me today?”

“I guess,” he says, hopping on his toes, forever incapable of being still.

“You look better today. I really loved seeing you share your snacks. ”

He beams. “I got to hang out with my mom all weekend. We went to Coney Island. We rode the Cyclone.”

I feel extraordinarily relieved. “Are you with her all week?”

He nods his head vigorously.

“Can you get her to sign this permission slip, then? We’re going on a field trip,” I tell him, handing him the paper. “You can even invite her to be a chaperone.”

“What’s a chaperone?” he asks, folding the paper I give him into a tiny square and shoving it into his pants pocket. I make a mental note to email mom a permission slip, knowing we will never see that paper again.

“It means she can come with us on the field trip to help supervise you and some other kids.”

He claps his hands. “I want her to come.”

“Great. Then don’t lose that paper and make sure you give it to her tonight.”

“What paper?”

Tuesday comes and goes, but Oliver is out for his monthly district principal’s conference, so I don’t see him all day. I fall asleep that night with my vibrator still buzzing on the pillow next to my head.

On Wednesday, I’m out of the building all day for a field trip with my class. I meet Max’s mom, who is a lovely woman. She mentions nothing about Max’s dad. I get home by four o’clock and immediately pass out on the couch for the night. Field trips will do that to you. Have you ever tried wrangling thirty feral kittens down a few city blocks, down into a subway station, through the turnstiles, onto the same train, off of the train, making sure you have all thirty—? No?

By Thursday, I am ready to beg for it.

Thursdays are our staff professional development days, after school, when administrators typically lead a session on how to… I don’t know, develop our professional skills, or something. I never really pay attention, never have in all my years of teaching. It’s a contractual obligation for us to be there, but not a contractual obligation for me to participate. Don’t get paid enough for that shit, and all that. Most of the time, my admin hadn’t known what they were talking about, anyway, giving us entirely useless trainings that clearly showed they hadn’t stepped foot in a classroom in several years.

Oliver and Lina’s style of facilitation, however, is particularly annoying in that they require a lot of collaboration and group work, often with other teachers not on your grade team, building shared definitions of “rigor” together or forcing productive conversation on homework policy. Not wanting to be rude, especially to my new coworkers, I always participate. Even more irritating is when I actually learn something from a veteran teacher. I hate when Oliver is right about something.

Today isn’t one of those collaborative PD days, though, since Oliver has just returned from his district meeting. It’s an info dump day, one of new, somewhat arbitrary directives and initiatives and expectations from District 13. Normally, it would be the perfect time to grade papers, or plan for the following week, or simply disassociate, but today, I watch Oliver like a hawk.

He’s taken off his jacket and tie, and I can see how well his torso fills out his white button down, can almost see the divots of his chest through the fabric. He’s pushed the sleeves of the shirt up, exposing the ropy veins of his forearms. I watch his hands as they point out data points on graphs, watch his pillowy lips explain those data points, imagine what they would look like wrapped around my nipple. His strong thighs seem to take up most of the room in his pants. I try to zero in on a dick outline, but it’s impossible from where I’m sitting.

I try like hell to make eye contact with him, wanting those honey eyes on me, but he is Oliver in the Zone, and he is fully immersed by his slide deck.

I feel an elbow in my side.

“You have horny eyes,” Emmanuel whispers to my left.

“Everyone in this room has horny eyes,” Chaya whispers from his other side, her poor, swollen feet propped up on a chair in front of her. She’s now about one hundred months pregnant.

“It’s impossible not to,” a kindergarten teacher in front of me whispers backwards.

Tamika hums from my right side. “Nothing hotter than someone talking about benchmarks.”

“Our state test scores from the spring show that eighty-four percent of our students met or exceeded expectations—-” Oliver is saying with a sexy little grimace, and there is a collective swoon across the auditorium.

He doesn’t look at me once that entire hour, so afterwards, I sprint up to my classroom and throw on a deep red lipstick and some mascara. I fluff my hair, re-tuck my boobs into my bra so that they are at peak perkiness through the “v” of my sweater. I look at myself in the small mirror I have in the closet. I am sexy as fuck . Throwing my belongings into my backpack, I run downstairs.

The running requires another re-tuck of the girls, so I do so right outside his office. I knock on his door and walk inside.

To my dismay, Lina is there, seated in the chair across from his desk.

“Hey, Georgia! How’s it going?” she asks warmly.

“Hey, Lina,” I say faintly, not looking at her, looking at Oliver instead. “Hey, Oliver.”

He meets my eyes for a second, then his eyes travel down. They linger a few seconds on my mouth, darkening, then move down to my chest. He licks his lips almost imperceptibly. He fidgets with a cheap plastic pen in his hand. “Georgia,” he greets me, voice hoarse.

“You look hot ,” Lina grins, oblivious. “Where are you off to?”

“I… um… I’m, ah… I have…” I stammer, meeting Oliver’s eyes. He raises an eyebrow. “I have a date.”

Oliver becomes preternaturally still.

“Oh, that new boyfriend your team was talking about?” asks Lina.

“Yeah… yeah, him,” I tell her.

There is a noise, as the pen Oliver is holding cracks under the force of his grip.

“What’s his name? Where are you guys going?” Lina pushes.

“We…” I truly don’t know what to say. Then, an idea comes to me. “We’re going to Tim’s,” I say, making direct eye contact with Oliver. “We’re meeting there in half an hour. His name is Reggie. Reggie Kensington.”