Closer Read online

  “That was fucking hot, baby.” Teller pulls me forward with his hands on my ass. “I thought you wanted to dance.”

  “I do.” Returning the vodka bottle back to the ice bucket, I get up and close the curtain around the cabana, shutting out the party. “I’m going to dance, and you’re going to sit there and watch.”

  Teller scrubs his hands down his face. “Who are you and what the fuck have you done with my girl?”

  “You better enjoy this, Dr. Reddy.”

  “Are you drunk? You don’t have to do this, Gabriella.”

  “I’m a little tipsy,” I reply, walking with one foot in front of the other like a runway model. “And I want to, but don’t laugh at me, okay?”

  “Never,” he says, sitting back for the show.

  Standing in front of my audience of one, I sway my hips to the beat of the DJ’s song and bend over at the waist, dragging my hands from my right ankle up to my thigh. Teller adjusts his shorts, watching the swing of my hips with a curve in his lips. I tease him by pulling the ties of my bikini bottoms, but stop before they come free.

  Turning around, I shake my bottom and laugh out loud, never taking myself too seriously. Placing my hands on his knees, I lower myself where he’s hard for me and circle my hips against his manhood, popping my bottom like the girls do in music videos.

  “Is it okay if I touch you?” Teller asks in a rough voice.

  “Not with your hands,” I say, turning to straddle his lap. Snatching the vodka bottle for the second time, I pour a shot into my mouth, grasp Teller by his face, and squeeze his cheeks until his lips part. When his mouth opens, I lower mine right above his and let the tasteless liquor pour from my mouth to his.

  “Fuck, babe,” he lets out, licking Grey Goose from his lips before sucking it from my chest.

  Stepping away from his eager mouth, I kick the table in front of him, knocking over the ice bucket and spilling water everywhere. Something I should consider when climbing onto the metal surface, but tipsy’s advanced to utterly shit-faced, and there’s no going back now.

  I don’t get both feet on the table before I fly off, slipping on an ice cube. My legs come up from underneath me, and I fall headfirst onto Teller’s lap, skinning my knees and busting my nose on his pelvis.

  “Ouch,” I groan, slowly lifting my face from Teller’s crotch. I’m not bleeding, but it’s definitely sore.

  “Holy shit, Smella. Are you okay?” He shakes from laughter, caught between helping me and doubling over.

  He doubles over, and I’m not surprised.

  Before

  “I don’t want to impose on your family for the holidays, Teller. And I can’t leave my brother. We’re fine here. Go home, Prick.”

  Christmas in Southern California is nothing like it is in the North. I’ve traded snowflakes for sunshine and sand in my sheets. Venice Beach Santa wears sunglasses and Hawaiian printed button-up shirts. He also plays drumbeats on buckets for money, and Mrs. Clause is a chain-smoker.

  As is the boy at my door.

  “You don’t even have a Christmas tree, Ella.” Teller blows white smoke into the night sky, dropping the butt of his cigarette into an empty coffee can I left by the bushes for him. “It’s fucking depressing. Pack a bag and come home with me.”

  “We have a tree,” I say, pointing toward the two-footer on the kitchen table. “I even decorated it.”

  Teller walks past me into the quiet apartment, leaving the scent of nicotine and ginger behind.

  “That’s a shrub with a star on it, Smella. It’s depressing.” He flicks the top-heavy tree topper and it falls over, flickering before it burns out.

  My home intruder looks around, scoping out the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and the cheesy Lifetime Christmas movie on the television. Besides the dim light above the stove and the glow from the TV, the rest of the apartment is dark.

  “Where are Emerson and Nicolette?” Teller opens my brother’s bedroom door to find an empty, lightless space. “Are you here alone? On Christmas fucking Eve?”

  Flopping onto the sofa, I cover myself in an old quilt my mom made before she lost her mind and disappeared and bring the popcorn back to my lap. “He’s having dinner with Nic’s family. He promised to be back sometime tonight.”

  “He didn’t invite you?”

  “Yes, he invited me. But I didn’t want to impose,” I repeat, shoving a handful of extra butter movie theater popcorn into my mouth. “Teller, honestly, I’m fine. Christmas hasn’t been a big deal for me in a long time. Go home and spend some time with your people.”

  “You are my people. I’m not leaving, Gabriella.” He shuffles out of his zip up sweater and hangs it on the back of a chair at the Christmas tree table. “Scoot over.”

  “No,” I say, unwilling to budge. “This is normal for me, Tell. I promise. But you have a family to spend the night with. You need to be with them.”

  Diligence squeezes himself between the arm of the couch and me, dipping his hand into my buttery dinner. “If you don’t want to leave, I’m staying. There’s not a chance in hell I’m leaving you alone tonight.”

  Confiscating the large plastic bowl, I turn my gaze toward the made-for-TV movie before Teller can see my eyes gloss over. Since my dad died, nothing has been easy, but the holidays are excruciating. An invitation to Thanksgiving dinner is simple enough to accept or plan with friends, but there’s something intimate about Christmas. Something special and private and gut-wrenching. It’s the magic in the air and the scent of peppermint and chocolate that resurrects memories I’d rather forget than relive at the sound of sleigh bells.

  Memories of a family that no longer exists.

  A reminder of how alone I truly am.

  “Thank you,” I whisper a few minutes later, falling against his side. My Christmas miracle rests his arm around my body, holding me tight, and I absorb the affection, not realizing until this very moment how badly I need human contact from someone other than Emerson.

  I blame my tears on the movie about faith and recognizing devotion when it’s right in front of our faces. In this case, it’s Tori Spelling’s secret Santa from work, a man who stalks her until he realizes she returns his feelings and then changes his psychotic ways. They confess their adoration under the Rockefeller Christmas tree in New York City and live happily ever after until the sequel, when she dies from a rare disease, leaving the ex-stalker turned lover with the kids and farm.

  He finds love again.

  “Don’t tell me you actually like this shit?” Teller asks, looking down on me with judgy eyes. “She falls in love with the man who used to break into her apartment and steal her underwear? He wrote creepy messages on her mirror in lipstick, and she’s okay with it because he kisses her under the mistletoe?”

  “He did buy her an excellent Secret Santa gift,” I remind him, wiping away sadness from my cheeks.

  “You’re joking, right? That shit isn’t romantic, Ella. It’s insane.”

  “They’re unconventional,” I defend women’s television. “I appreciate it.”

  “We’re not doing this all night.” Teller uses the remote to turn off the TV and stands up. Popcorn falls from his lap to the carpet, and I laugh, shoving another handful into my mouth when he looks at me with straight lips, unamused. “Where’s the booze?”

  “In the cabinet above the stove. I think there’s scotch.”

  “Put the fucking popcorn down and get your ass in here.”

  He pours Johnnie Walker over ice and holds a glass out for me as I saunter toward his direction, barefoot and braless under an oversized band tee. Watching him over the rim of my glass as I sip dark liquid that warms me from the inside out, it dawns on me that this is the ninth Christmas without my mom and the fourth Christmas without my dad.

  But it’s also the second Christmas spent with Teller.

  Over the last year and a half, the Reddys have become family to my brother and me. Theo’s fatherly advice and Mili’s motherly touch help fil
l a hole Emerson and I have in our hearts. They’ve made it apparent that we’re welcome in their home and their lives, and more times than not we accept their dinner invitations and generous support in everything from school to birthdays. I answered Mili’s multiple phone calls about spending Christmas with them this week, but I politely declined, knowing I needed to grieve my family on my own for one night.

  I’m not surprised Teller showed up at my door.

  He’s never been the type to accept a no from me.

  “What’s going on with you?” he asks, filling my empty glass. Liquor goes straight to his eyes—or mine—scotch-heavy lids open and close slowly, and his lashes look longer than they ever have. Teller’s green irises change from light to dark right in front of me, speckled with flakes of blue and gold.

  I can’t look away, but he wouldn’t want me to, anyway.

  “I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot,” I admit, unable to recapture the words the liquor uncages and lets past my lips. Once the truth escapes, it hangs between Teller and me, clouding judgment and ruining vibes. Not that we haven’t spent dozens of nights drinking until lies are impossible—not that future Dr. Reddy and I have never been anything less than disturbingly transparent.

  “She doesn’t deserve your thoughts, babe,” he replies, leaning against the counter beside me.

  “The thing is,” I say, turning my body toward him. Crumbs and dust stick to the bottom of my bare feet, and the shitty florescent kitchen light hurts my eyes. “My dad didn’t choose to leave me. He died. Cancer killed him. And I’m not okay with it, but I can accept that shitty things happen to good people. But my mom … she chose drugs over her family. She made the conscious decision to be a heroin addict instead of a wife and mother. I can’t accept that.”

  “You don’t have to,” Teller offers. He moves a lock of my hair over my shoulder, sending a wave of goose bumps down my arms. “You don’t even need to understand it, Ella. She’s not your responsibility.”

  “I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Most of the memories I have of her are good ones … normal ones. One day I had a mom, and the next day I didn’t. After she left, I’d ride my board around town trying to find her. My dad told me she moved away, but I found her once, about a year after she left us.”

  Teller drops his head back and closes his eyes.

  “It would have been a lot easier to find her in the suburbs with a new husband and baby than it was to actually see my mother in the gutter of some dirty backstreet downtown. She was sleeping or passed out or dead, so I didn’t get closer. I rode home, dropped my skateboard on the front lawn, and locked myself in my room until my dad threatened to take the door down. And then he told me the truth. My mom had been addicted to pills for years, and when the doctors cut her off, she turned to something stronger, something so greedy it didn’t let her love anything else.”

  “He said that to you?” Teller asks.

  I shake my head. “No, but I was old enough to figure it out.”

  Dropping my eyes to my turquoise painted toes, I remember the rich sadness in my father’s dark brown eyes, paleness in his lips, and the quiver in his chin. He hadn’t shaved his face in a week, so black and gray stubble freckled the lower half of his face. His hair, three shades darker than my own, was overgrown, scratching the tops of his ears and the back of his neck; he looked like Em, who was going through a phase and growing his hair out.

  Abraham Mason was a simple man, proud and compelling, but in that moment, looking into the crying eyes of his only little girl, he was lost.

  “Come here, baby.” Teller grabs me by the shoulder and lures me closer, circling his strong arm around my body. He kisses the top of my head, and I turn my nose into his neck, inhaling the mixed scents of nicotine, vanilla, and dark chocolate scotch leave on his breath. “You can call me Daddy now, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  I shove him away and smack his arm, leaving the impression of four fingers across a skull tattooed across his bicep. “Idiot!”

  “Ouch.” He rubs his arm, smiling the most deliciously drunk smirk. “I was just trying to make you laugh.”

  “I’m so glad my heartbreak amuses you.” I hit him again, holding back a smile. “Jerk.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Teller reaches out for my wrists to keep me from beating him to death. “I’m sorry. Your heartbreak doesn’t amuse me, Smella. I was only trying to lighten the mood before you ruin Christmas.”

  Fighting against his hold, not able to keep the grin from my lips, I stomp on his foot, but my bare feet stand no chance against his shoes and he laughs at my struggle. And I love the way his laugh starts in his stomach and ends in his eyes, brightening everything from the color in his tattoos to the barely-there freckles on his cheeks.

  “I’ll always take care of you,” he says, kissing the inside of my wrist. “Always.”

  We drink the entire bottle of Johnnie, burn two batches of chocolate chip cookies, and spit out the dozen we manage to salvage. We don’t realize we used too much salt and not enough sugar in the batter until we have undercooked cookie in our mouths.

  We open a bottle of champagne to wash the bad taste away.

  After midnight, with no sign of Emerson and Nic, Teller kicks off his shoes and borrows a pair of my brother’s sweatpants and settles in, with no intentions of leaving. He turns on the stereo, and we slow dance on the linoleum floor. We suck on miniature candy canes and drop them into our flutes when the ends get pointed. Teller left my gifts at his house, so he slips me a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet instead. I decline and watch him open the concert tickets he mentioned months ago.

  He shoves two hundred dollars down my shirt after that.

  Cheap champagne makes us sleepy and we collapse onto the couch in a mix of limbs and sighs and hiccups. He lies on top of me with his ear to my heart, and I run my fingers through his hair over and over and over, thinking about nothing but the texture of his curls between my knuckles, until his eyes close and his breathing evens out.

  I’m nearly asleep when Teller’s phone chimes once, twice, three, and four times from the coffee table. It vibrates harshly against the wood surface, spinning in circles each time a new text comes in, scratching at the hint of a hangover I’m sure to wake up with.

  “Tell,” I say, shaking him awake. “It might be an emergency.”

  He groans, reaching for his phone, searching the table before his hand finally grazes the top of his cell and knocks it to the floor. Teller lifts himself onto his elbow, fishing for the nuisance and finally opening the home screen with squinted eyes. I can’t see what the messages say, but I can see who they’re from in bold black letters.

  Maddy.

  Prick sits up and angles his phone enough to make it impossible for me to see the response he types. He doesn’t wait for Maddy to respond, turns the power off, and pockets his cell.

  “Who’s Maddy?” I shuffle to an upright position before he traps me beneath him.

  Madness instantly crowds the apartment, making the space too small for the both of us, and we can’t sit far enough apart. I see the shift in Teller’s eyes, as I’m sure he sees it in mine, too drunk, too lonely, and too tired to simply let this go. My blood pressure rises, and my heartbeat can’t keep up with anger.

  “This chick from school. She had a question about an assignment,” he says defensively, sitting forward with his knees apart and his hands in his hair.

  “Really?” I reply. “She had a question about schoolwork during winter break at two in the morning on Christmas?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Teller stands up to fetch a cigarette from his sweater still hanging on the back of the chair at the kitchen table. He slips it in the corner of his mouth and heads to the front door before he lights it.

  I throw a pillow at his head.

  “What the fuck, Ella?” The broken Marlboro hangs from his lips.

  “This is why I won’t commit to you, Teller. Everything you say to me comes across as bulls
hit because of things like this. Who is she? Are you sleeping with her?” The thought of it turns my stomach, and I grab the remote, prepared to use it. “Who the hell is Maddy?”

  “You’re crazy.” Caught red-handed points his finger in my direction, continuing his walk to the door. “She’s a girl from school. I’m not fucking her. I’m not fucking anyone because you’re a prude bitch.”

  I throw the remote and it shatters against the doorjamb, spraying plastic and rubber numbers across the living room.

  “You make me this way,” I accuse, scotch-brave and blinded by my insecurities. “I was so fucking normal before I met you.”

  He smirks. “I doubt it.”

  The walls are thin, and Emerson’s not here to break this up, so the neighbors might hear and call the cops, significantly upping our chances of spending Christmas in a holding cell. These are things I should consider before knocking his teeth out, but consequence is far from my mind as Teller lights his broken cigarette in my apartment and exhales smoke in my path.

  “Go outside before I put it out in your eyes,” I growl. My hands are fisted at my sides, and my feet are ready to launch me across the room.

  Chain-smoker takes a second hit, blowing smoke over his shoulder. “I’d like to see you try.”

  A half hour later, Em and Nic come home with an armful of presents and leftovers from dinner, only to find Teller standing under my doorjamb, refusing to move.

  “Let me explain,” he insists. His shirt’s stretched out at the neck, but all his teeth are still in his mouth.

  “Move your hands before I break them,” I say, ready to swing the door shut on his fingers. “I’m not having this conversation with you. Go home like I asked you to when you showed up uninvited. Leave me alone.”

  “Ella, she has my number because we had to work on a lab together. Nothing more.” He tries to step into my room, but the look on my face sends him back. “I’m not sleeping with her. I don’t even remember what she looks like.”