Closer Read online

  As I give in to oblivion, Ella whispers, “Quit acting like a little bitch.”

  An hour hasn’t gone by when my father wakes me up, shaking me by the shoulder. My body’s stiff, and in spite of the stupid fucking neck pillow, my head still fell forward and my neck hates me for it. I blink fatigue from my eyes until I see Dad’s mustache and grimace clearly.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, rubbing the back of my neck. My elbow pops, and my eyes want to close again.

  “Gabriella’s locked herself in the restroom and she won’t come out. She only wants you.”

  Waving him off, I yawn and say, “Tell her I’m still comatose.”

  “Teller, get her back into her seat before she scares the other passengers on this plane and the captain is alerted.” He steps back so I have room to stand. Dad holds up Ella’s half-finished bottle of whiskey. “The flight attendant already confiscated this from her. Why are you letting her drink, Teller?”

  Ella drank less than half of what she snuck onboard, but for a one hundred forty-five-pound girl, no doubt it’s enough to knock her on her ass.

  “Have I ever been able to stop her from doing anything?” I ask, stepping past my dad toward the small restroom up front. Maby’s awake, watching a movie on her tablet. She gazes at me as I pass, her face illuminated in color from the small screen.

  “Need some help?” she asks.

  “No,” I reply. “I got it.”

  “I should have listened to you,” Ella cries after I knock on the door to let her know I’m here. “But, I’m just so sick of being sad, you know.”

  “It’s okay, baby. Open the door and come back to your seat.” It would be easier to break the motherfucking door down and drag her out by the back of her shirt, but we’re on an airplane, and there are rules about that kind of thing.

  “Are you mad at me?” Ella asks in a small voice. She hiccups.

  Scanning the cabin over my shoulder, I confront my father, two flight attendants, and a blonde woman with an impatient expression, obviously waiting to use the restroom. Mom stands from her seat, stretching to look over heads, and Nicolette shakes Emerson awake.

  “I’m not mad, but you need to come out now.”

  The latch switches from red to green—Occupied to Vacant—and my pale-faced lush peeks at me from under her long eyelashes, unsteady on her feet. I open my arms, and she throws up on my shirt. The line of people behind me scatters, and I’m glad my mouth wasn’t open.

  Eight hours later, Ella sits on the edge of the hotel bed, wet hair dripping down her back and towel covered chest. She falls to the mattress and groans; her bare feet drift right above the carpet. I tuck my shirt into my black slacks and walk past suffering toward the window with the view of Central Park.

  “Tell me it’s going to be okay, Tell.”

  “It’s a hangover, Ella, not Ebola. You’re going to be fine,” I answer, knowing it’s not what she meant.

  Heaviness fell on our shoulders when we landed in Alaska two days ago, but it’s unbearable here, where we should be untouchable fifty stories high. There were no signs of Kristi in Anchorage, but even I can see Joseph in the New York City swagger—an untouchable momentum that only New Yorkers own.

  The person who checked us into the hotel spoke with the same accent as Joe, and I watched Ella’s poise capsize. It happened again with the man who handled our luggage, and again with a couple in the elevator. He’s in the way the locals dress, and stand, and walk—seamless, to the point, and in a hurry. It’s never been more obvious to me that Joe was out of place in LA, and I’ve never felt more envious of him than I am today.

  “The hangover’s going to be a problem,” Ella says with a small smile. She stands and walks toward the bathroom. “But David made it more than apparent that I’m not welcome. I don’t think he ever liked me.”

  A flash of anger blasts through me, filling my chest with heat and tightening my jaw, but I swallow resentment for her sake. Unwilling to make this day any harder than it needs to be, I put on my watch, burying what I really feel about David West and say, “We’re not here for him, Ella. This is about Joe.”

  My truth: I’ll kill that motherfucker if he so much as dares to look at her wrong.

  “You missed the viewing.” Mr. West pulls on the lapels of his black sports jacket, straightening it over his shirt. Hair as dark as his clothes is slicked back, and he has rings on every finger.

  Gabriella’s speechless, her damp hair frizzes in the humid air and her makeup-free complexion whitens. I smirk and knuckle up, stepping forward between innocence and arrogance.

  “Allow me to introduce myself.” Dad pushes me back a pace and offers his hand. “Dr. Theodore Reddy. I knew your son personally. We’ve all suffered a great loss with his passing.”

  David glances at his outstretched hand, unimpressed with my father’s title or condolences. His wife, a short woman with thin blonde hair is gracious, thanking us for our attendance with tears in her eyes and the massive stone cathedral behind her.

  The service proceeds like Kristi’s, with the crucifix, holy water, and the affirmation that Joseph West is in the Kingdom of Heaven. With only standing room available, the temperature quickly rises and anguish is tangible and brash. Moments pass when mass is inaudible over the volume of sadness, and the outpouring of emotion is downright overwhelming.

  These people—hundreds of them—some with the same mouth, eye color, and head of hair as Joe, fall over each other and open their arms to the sky, praying for mercy, praying for peace, praying to bring him back. It’s an honest display of affection, and I feel proud because I knew him, too.

  “I didn’t love him like these people do,” Ella whispers. She grasps my arm and closes her eyes, holding so tight my fingers chill.

  He wasn’t perfect.

  Understanding, I kiss the top of her head and place my cold hand on her thigh, protective and insecure all at once. Toward the end of the service, I notice people whispering and glancing in our direction with suspicious eyes. Apprehension is as touchable as anguish, and the two don’t mix well.

  “Stay behind me,” I say, leading Ella out of the church after Joe’s casket is wheeled to the awaiting hearse. With tear-stained cheeks, she clutches onto my hand with trembling fingers and uncertainty.

  I squint against the morning sunlight as we walk down the granite steps to the sidewalk where Joe is being lifted into the last car ride he’ll ever take. The church is in the middle of a thriving neighborhood. Kids throw water balloons from rooftops, and an old ice cream truck drives by playing scratching music from a blown speaker.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands when I notice glances shift into shameless glares and whispers rise loud enough for us to hear.

  “Did she really bring her new boyfriend to the funeral?” someone spits.

  “Joe’s not even buried yet and she’s already fucking someone else,” another says.

  “Why the fuck is she even here?” A group of girls dressed in black stands shoulder-to-shoulder as we walk by.

  Ella keeps her head down as I lead us through the crowd of people, feeding off their animosity, hoping one of them tries to touch her so I can break their neck. They don’t know shit about Ella, but she’s an outsider—the girl Joe found and fell for in California—and that’s reason enough to blame her for his choice to live and die there.

  But she isn’t the reason he left, and after being around these people for the last hour, I can see why he did.

  I was wrong. Joe’s not here.

  There’s not a trace of him in this group.

  “Where’s the car?” I ask my dad, who walks beside me.

  “I just called the driver. He’s around the block.” He holds my mother’s hand harder, seeing what I see. “Keep walking. We’ll meet him at the corner.”

  Emerson steps up front, using his large body and expertise to make a path for us to get by. We nearly clear the church when some guy shoulder checks Ella, knocking her back. I grab the son
of a bitch by the front of his shirt and shove him against the stone structure, smirking in his smug face.

  “Apologize to her,” I say.

  Gabriella puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Tell.”

  “Not until he apologizes for pushing you,” I say between gritted teeth.

  Sounds of scuffling, Emerson pushing people back, and my father trying to calm the situation before a riot ensues do nothing to deter me. I see red, redder, reddest. Joe’s cousin, or friend, or whatever-the-fuck turns his head and spits on the sidewalk beside Ella’s feet, and it’s the only excuse I need to pull him from the wall and slam him to the concrete sidewalk.

  Noise and movement detonate around me, but I see nothing outside of my fist colliding with this man’s face. Blood bursts from his nose, and the smile’s beaten from his face. It’s a week’s worth of rage, pent-up and ignored, exploding from strength and muscle.

  I spit on him once Husher manages to get his arms around my torso, pulling me from the sorry piece of shit. He doesn’t get up right away.

  “Come on, motherfuckers,” I say, urging the rest of them to step to me, bloodied knuckled and mindless.

  “That’s enough, Teller. It would be helpful if you didn’t get yourself arrested today.” My dad hurries me along when I break free from Husher’s grip, mumbling, “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. Who gets into a fight at a funeral?”

  Shaking my arm free from his hold, I search for Ella and find her staring at the hearse. Her black heels hang from the tips of her fingers. No one so much as speaks to her.

  “Let’s get out of here, baby,” I whisper, pressing my lips to the top of her head. “It’s over.”

  Now

  “Hear me out, okay. I’m serious.” Maby refills her wine glass and takes a seat at the dinner table with the rest of us. “I have an idea. A really, really good idea, and we need this, so just listen to me.”

  We’ve been back from New York for a week, and with the help of my brother, I officially moved the rest of my things into Teller’s guest bedroom today. The sun’s setting, the temperature’s falling, and now that the heavy lifting’s done, we’re picking right back up where we left off before the car accident turned our lives upside down: Friday night at Teller’s.

  Well, it’s my house now, too.

  Overworked, a little bit drunk, and with a stomach full of pizza, this is the closest to normal I’ve felt since Joe died. I smile. I can’t help it.

  “If this is about those stupid leggings you were trying to get me to buy, the answer is no. Ella,” Nicolette looks to me, “tell Maby she can’t have a leggings party here either. I refuse to buy a pair. They’re hideous.”

  I laugh into the neck of my beer bottle before taking a sip. My bare feet lounge on Teller’s lap, and he’s rubbing his hand up and down my shin. The look I’m given when he realizes I haven’t shaved in a couple of days is great. He’s beautiful in low sunlight, unshaven and dressed in paint-speckled clothes and unlaced work boots. His hair is overgrown, and the top is long and curly.

  Maby shakes her head. “No, this is better than leggings.”

  “Did you hear that?” Emerson says sarcastically. “This is better than leggings!”

  “I don’t want to buy candles, or costume jewelry, or oils either,” Nic clarifies in a teasing tone. “I always get conned into buying shit I’ll never use. I’m over it.”

  “Don’t worry, babe. She’ll buy whatever you sell,” Husher says, resting his arm across Maby’s chair.

  “This is why I said to listen.” Teller’s sister swallows the contents of her glass and continues. “We’re out of work for the next couple of weeks. Let’s take a road trip.”

  “That sounds awful.” Nicolette rolls her eyes. Maby’s excitement is contagious, but the idea goes in one ear and out the other.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere far. Vegas is five hours away, and from there we can go to the Grand Canyon…”

  “Can we fly?” I ask, entertaining her since no one else will.

  “You heard me say road trip, right? No, we can’t fly, because then it won’t be a road trip. We’re going to drive. In a car. On the road.” Maby tilts her wine glass upside down above her open mouth and wine drops onto her tongue.

  “Sitting in the back seat with these two—” Emerson jabs his thumb in my and Teller’s direction. “Doesn’t sound like a good time. No offense, sissy.”

  I stick my tongue out at him.

  “We’ll take separate cars,” Maby replies, exasperated. “Come on, guys. Think about how amazing it will be to drive to San Francisco for a few days.”

  “They do have stellar clam chowder,” Nic ponders. “Are you sure we can’t fly?”

  Emerson’s tone softens when he says, “We haven’t been by the house in a while, Ella. San Francisco is only an hour away…”

  “I know how far it is, Em.” After we moved from St. Helena, I’d take the trip home a few times a year with my brother to check on the house we grew up in and inherited after our father passed. The windows are boarded up and the door padlocked, but we haven’t come to a point where we can sell it yet. Not even after all this time.

  My mom is there, somewhere. Keeping the house makes me feel like I haven’t given up on her.

  “Sounds like a good time, babe,” Husher says, forcing regret into his tone. He stretches his arms over his head. “Maybe another time.”

  “No.” Maby elbows his side, narrowing her eyes at him. “We won’t go another time, because we’re going this time. I already booked our rooms, so everyone should probably pack, because the Skylofts don’t offer refunds.

  Teller chuckles. “You booked the fucking Skylofts without asking if we even wanted to go first? Those rooms run a grand a night.”

  She rolls her green-like-his eyes. “I had to reserve the rooms while they were available. Don’t act like you don’t want to go to Las Vegas.”

  Nicolette holds her hand out, pausing the conversation between brother and sister. “What exactly do you mean we better pack? When are we leaving?”

  Maby’s cheeks burn and she sits straight, eyebrows up. “Tomorrow.”

  “We don’t have to go,” Teller says from my bedroom floor with pieces of my dresser in front of him. He looks at the pile of screws, second pile of unassembled wood, and frowns. “Why didn’t you buy a dresser that was already built?”

  I shake a new yellow comforter over my queen-sized mattress and say, “Because I’m obsessed with Ikea, and there are worse places to visit than Vegas. We’ll go.”

  After midnight, a shadeless lamp casts his misshapen shadow across the freshly painted walls. The smell of wet paint, the touch of new sheets, and the look of concentration on Teller’s face as he reads directions he doesn’t understand lifts the right side of my mouth into a smile.

  In less than a day, he’s managed to turn this unused space into home. Champagne we poured in celebration after everyone left fizzles and pops in plastic cups on top of an unopened moving box with my name on the side. I straighten my bedding before jumping onto it. Reaching for sparkling liberation, I cross my legs and sip bitter stars and watch the muscles and bones in Teller’s hands move as he builds my furniture.

  “We’re taking our own car,” he says.

  My heart picks up with his inclusion of me—our. “Fine.”

  “And I’m not sharing a room with those motherfuckers.”

  I smile into my cup, parting my lips when the cool liquid touches them. Carbonation pops on my tongue and warms my belly, and with each swallow, heaviness I carry on my shoulders drifts away.

  “We’ll get separate rooms, Tell.” Lightness captures me, and this feels like floating.

  My roommate—heartmate—drops the screwdriver and scowls. “You and I won’t have separate rooms, Smella. We’ll be separate from them, but not from each other. We stay together.”

  “That’s what I meant,” I say, pouring myself a second cup of champagne. “But we’ll go on Maby’
s road trip. Emerson’s right. I haven’t been home in a while, and I should go check on the place. There’s no one there to visit my dad’s grave but us.”

  Teller takes the bottle from my hands, disregarding his cup, and drinks straight from the source. I sip when he does, secretly loving that for just a moment, I know what his mouth tastes like. He licks Korbel from his lips, and I mimic the gesture, savoring the flavor of his kiss.

  “I’ve listed my demands. We’ll go as long as they’re met. But, Ella—” he replies playfully. Teller’s pout shimmers in the yellow light. “—your home is with me now.”

  An hour later, my dresser is assembled—sturdy and level despite the piece of wood my builder somehow left out—and we’ve opened our third bottle of celebration. Dancing on extra screws and crumbled instructions, Teller spins me as treble and rhythm play from his cell phone, loud enough for just the two of us. Dizzy and laughing out loud, I turn and turn and turn before he catches me in his arms, pressing his chest against my back.

  My heart beats with the bass of the song, up-tempo and heavy. Heat reddens my cheeks and softens my skin, and the feel of his form pressed against mine causes every nerve ending in my body to become hyperaware. I’m out of breath and out of a care in the world, and right where I should be.

  The song ends, tapering into a slower pulse and softer lyrics, and Teller presses his lips to the top of my shoulder and grips my hips, swaying them lazily back and forth to our melody. I reach back, holding my hand to the back of his head, and close my eyes, melting as the warmth of his kiss raises the temperature.

  “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?” he whispers. “Despite everything, having you here … this is the happiest I’ve been in a while, Ella. This is going to work. We’re going to be all right.”

  “Of course we are. You’ve always promised to take care of me.”

  “We’ll take care of each other.”

  He turns me in his arms, ending rationality with the intensity in his bright green stare. I circle my arms around his neck and tilt my neck to the side, opening myself to his assault. Crying out with the touch of his tongue on my pulse point, my skin becomes alive and thrives. Each touch feels hot and cold, electric and vivacious and killing me. Teller pushes me forward, pressing his body flush against my own as lips I don’t want to ever leave me come closer to my own.