Before
“You need to see this.”
I roll onto my back and sweep the palm of my hand across my forehead. Squinting against the soul-sucking Venice Beach sunlight beaming through the window, I’m allowed one easy lungful of air before the memories from the day paralyze all my motor functions. The walls close in on me as my brother Emerson pulls the covers from my unslept, overemotional body, and I wish the bed would swallow me whole.
“Gabriella, get up. Teller—”
The mere mention of his name forces the air from between my lips, and I wish the world would swallow me whole instead. Emerson gathers the sheet into a ball, ready to toss it in the corner of the room when he notices my current state of dysfunction.
“Of course,” he snaps in a patronizing tone. “Reddy’s passed out at the front door, and you look like he chewed you up and spit you out.”
“Do I have teeth marks?” I ask.
“What happened now?” he asks, offering me a hand out of bed. “Did you break up?”
Lack of sleep wreaks havoc on my nervous system, misfiring commands from my brain to my body, trapping me in a disconnected purgatory. “We’d have to be in a relationship to break up.”
He doesn’t bother to argue semantics with me, stepping over the balled-up sheet toward the door. Dragging my bare feet on the carpet, I follow behind him through the apartment we share with Emerson’s girlfriend, Nicolette, to the kitchen. We’re outgrowing this place we made a home after we moved from St. Helena, and we should look for something bigger soon.
But not right now.
Right now, Teller needs reckoning.
Even if it’s the last thing I want to do.
“Why didn’t you just wake him up? Leave me out of it,” I ask, pouring myself yesterday’s cold coffee in yesterday’s dirty mug. My eyes burn when I blink, bitter caffeine stings my scratchy throat, and my stomach growls loud enough to earn another disappointing gaze from my brother.
“Because you and I both know he’s not leaving until he sees you.” Emerson waits at the front door with his hand on the handle. “For a guy who just got out of jail, he probably shouldn’t sleep on sidewalks, Ella.”
Registering the concern in his voice, I set my mug on the counter and drop my head back and shout, “Fine!”
Bombs of anxiousness drop on my chest, blasting holes through my heart and ripping my lungs to shreds. I hold my hand over my sternum to check for signs of life, not at all consoled by the quick beat that flurries beneath my fingertips. Heat tickles the back of my neck, and my broken spirit triggers the urge to run the fuck away as Emerson opens the door, revealing my soul’s destroyer.
I don’t know how he managed to fall asleep. And not because he’s lying on gum-stained cement with the ants, but if this son of a bitch feels a fraction of the misery I do, sleep should be impossible.
His ability to dream offends me.
“This explains it,” my brother says, reaching over future Dr. Reddy for an empty bottle of whiskey. He sloshes the last sip around before walking past me to throw it into the trash and coming back.
“Did you put the blanket on him?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
Emerson chuckles, leaning against the doorjamb. The afternoon light does nothing to hide the worry behind his forced smile. “I felt bad for the sorry fucker. Even if he cost me my job.”
With an unlit cigarette between his fingers, dressed in the same clothes I left him in yesterday, Teller’s sprawled across the small pathway in front of my apartment. Girls on longboards and boys with their surfboards tucked under their arms walk by without giving drunk and disorderly a second glance, assuming he’s another beach bum—a normality in these parts.
“Teller.” I nudge him on the shoulder with my bare foot. He rocks from side-to-side, dead to the universe. “Wake up.”
Green irises move beneath blue-veined eyelids, but they stay closed. The steady rise and fall of his chest deepens the thick anxiety residing inside my own, and I resent him for this. It would be natural to kneel beside him to brush away the black ant crawling across his forearm before caressing his face until he realizes I’m here. This isn’t the first, second, or third time he’s fallen asleep on the sidewalk in resistance to my stubbornness. Normal people don’t behave the way we do.
Not one thing about us is normal.
And I wish the ant would bite him.
“I tried. Can I go back inside now?” I ask, turning my head to look at Emerson.
He doesn’t waste his breath by answering, mimicking my stance and crossing his massive arms over his broad chest. Nicolette appears behind him, lifting onto her toes to see the commotion for herself. Her gaze sweeps across Teller and me, and she rolls her eyes and shakes her head, patting my brother’s shoulder before walking away.
Stacking embarrassment on top of emotional genocide makes room for burning anger. I bend down beside Tell, but I don’t caress anything. Instead, I smack his face over and over, demanding, “Wake the fuck up, you son of a bitch,” between gritted teeth.
Thick stubble pokes the palm of my hand, and I’m ready to tighten my grip on his throat when my personal nuisance inhales a sharp breath. Before he has a chance to turn his emerald green eyes on me, I reach my arm back and smack him hard enough to leave a red imprint on his unshaven face.
Teller sits up, clearing his throat and running his fingers through his dark brown hair, blinking against the devil sun as I did ten minutes ago. I want to murder him, but more than that, I want to wrap my arms around his shoulders and apologize for the night he was arrested and for the role I played in it.
“Go home,” I say, wishing I could grab the words back before they reach his ears.
Emerson sighs. “He can’t drive, Ella.”
“The fuck I can’t,” Teller says, standing upright. He stumbles for his footing, patting his pockets for his pack of Marlboros. Pebbles embed in his elbows, and he has grass in his hair.
Our eyes meet—his bloodshot and glowing—and I’m bombarded by empathy that cools anger’s burn, heartbreak’s sting, and embarrassment’s prickle. This poor boy hurts like I do, and he’s my best friend … my first friend. Our relationship can’t stay the same—volatile, consuming, wrecked—but I don’t want to lose him, and I know he isn’t ready to let me go.
Tightening my arms across my chest to keep from reaching out to him, I give in a little and soften my expression. “He’s right, Tell. You can’t drive.”
With the broken cigarette between his lips, he says, “I’ll be fine.”
It feels like a dare, and my heartbeat loves it.
“Can you at least try to use your head? The last thing you need is a DUI, and there’s no reason to have Maby drive all the way here if you can sleep it off inside.” As I gear up for a fight, warmth swells beneath my skin, reddening my cheeks and numbing the tips of my fingers. My palm still stings from smacking him awake, and I regret not doing it harder when I had the chance.
I also regret not scratching away the self-satisfied look that appears on his face after my invitation to stay, knowing I wouldn’t mind his skin under my fingernails.
Teller looks past me. “Where’s my whiskey?”
“In the trash,” Emerson answers.
“Give it back so I can leave.” Tobacco sprinkles from the tip of his smoke, blowing away in the salt-scented breeze.
I thoughtlessly fall back into patterns I swore off while I cried myself to sleep last night. Before I realize I’ve retrieved the empty liquor bottle from the trash can, I’m back outside, smashing it at Teller’s feet. Glass shatters, skidding across the pavement, and the last few ounces of liquid spill into the cracks in the cement. Now we have all the attention of the surfer boys and skater girls.
My brother grabs my arms from behind and pulls me back before I step into the mess I’ve made, and Teller laughs, not making a move.
“Good ol’ trusty Gabriella.” He chuckles, kicking shards of glass from his shoe. “I’ll stay if you insist.”
Nicolette makes a fresh pot of coffee while I’m in the shower, and by the time I get out, purposely using every drop of hot water, Em’s cleaned the walkway. We don’t mention Teller’s earlier sleeping arrangements or my damaging outburst, but the side-eyed looks my brother and his girlfriend give us are impossible to ignore.
The smell of alcohol stuck to Teller’s skin makes me sick as he walks past me to the bathroom. He winks, and Emerson pushes him forward before I can lash out.
“That’s enough, children,” he chastises.
“Sit and eat. You look terrible.” Nic hands me a plate of scrambled eggs and a steaming cup of joe. “You need sun. Come to the beach with us today.”
Sitting at our small table, I dig into my food and respond with a mouthful of protein, “I’d rather stick pins under my nails.”
She leans against the counter, cupping her mug of coffee between her manicured hands. “Don’t be dramatic, Ella. You might not survive a day cooped up in this apartment with that atrocity.”
“He can sleep on the couch,” I say, not trusting the words as they come out of my mouth. “And I’ll stay in my room with the dresser pushed in front of the door.”
She rolls her eyes. “That won’t keep Teller away.”
“Then drive him home. Problem solved.” I slide the last bite of breakfast between my lips.
“Don’t wreck the place, okay?” she asks, following my brother into their room and shutting the door.
Despite the caffeine sloshing around in my stomach, sustenance makes me drowsy. I drag my feet back to my bedroom after I’ve turned the air conditioner to arctic. My bed and the comfort it offers seems divine, but the outside light burglarizing my space through the window is a no-go, so I stick a blanket over it, draping me in total darkness.
As I’m sliding under my sheets, my bedroom door cracks open, and I hiss at the brilliance Teller lets inside. “Get out.”
“Fuck you for taking the hot water,” he says. Teller’s a silhouette in the doorway.
I can smell soap on his skin from where I’m lying, and I wish hurt were as easy to wash away as a hangover is. A week ago, I’d scoot over and lift the sheet to welcome his still-warm-from-the-shower body next to mine to lull me to sleep. There’s nothing I want more than to hide my nose in the crook of his neck, feeling his pulse on my lips.
But fuck that.
Teller Reddy is one hell of a drug, but I’m rehabilitating.
“Shut the door,” I say, pulling the sheet over my head.
“Close your own fucking door.” He retreats, leaving it wide open. I hear the living room television turn on, and he turns the volume on high.
“Prick!” I shout, kicking my legs out of bed. The last image I see of him before I slam the door closed is his middle finger in the air.
I contemplate pushing my dresser in front of the door like I told Nicolette I would, but exhaustion has my bones feeling too big for my body, and there’s no way in hell I can move it by myself. If I get someone to help me, they’ll be stuck in here, too, and I’m not about that socializing life right now. So, I settle for my too-full laundry basket, hoping Teller can’t be bothered to shove through six weeks of dirty socks in his inebriated condition.
My pillow’s icy under my head, and I slide my legs back and forth against the cold sheets as I settle in. I can’t predict where my relationship with Teller is going, but there’s no doubt his proximity brings me some rundown peace. It’s what I hold on to as I submit to exhaustion and fall asleep.
There’s no telling how much time has passed when my eyes open because the room is as dark as it was when they closed. Rolling over to stretch my muscles, I collide with a body that isn’t supposed to be in my bed. Tell doesn’t stir with contact, open-mouthed sleeping and oblivious to anything but his dreams. I sit up, only now realizing my bedroom door is wide open, and the entire apartment is dark.
My laundry basket is a traitor.
And Teller Reddy is a habitual line crosser.
The fight in me disappeared in my sleep, so I don’t kick him off the mattress and banish him from the room like I should. Instead, I get out of bed and tiptoe to the kitchen, closing my bedroom door so he can rest longer. The digital clock on the stove reads sometime after eight o’clock, and my brother and Nic aren’t home yet.
I make a bag of popcorn and grab a can of soda from the fridge and burrow myself on the couch in front of the TV to watch QVC. Thirty minutes later, Teller emerges from the room to find me with an empty bowl of popcorn and the phone in my hand, ready to order a year’s supply of anti-wrinkle cream made by doctors in Scotland who’ve unlocked the key to eternal youth.
“Do you really think if that shit worked, a fake dermatologist would be selling it on television?” Teller sits beside me, against the arm of the couch. He’s shirtless, covered in sleep lines, topped with bedhead.
“I don’t know,” I counter. “QVC is legit. Paula Abdul sold her jewelry on this channel.”
“Exactly,” he mumbles, raking his fingers through his mop of curly hair.
We drop into tense silence, pretending we’re entranced by embellished dresses sold by an older woman wearing too many rings on her fingers and too much makeup on her face. We watch three more segments before Teller turns off the TV, forcing us to confront the uncomfortable stillness between us.
“I don’t know how to be without you, Ella.” He inhales a deep breath before turning his eyes on me, bright green and remorseful.
Shaking my head, I ask, “Did you not listen to a word I said to you at the park yesterday? I want to be friends, Tell. Just friends.”
The brittle remorse in his eyes turns defiant, sparking the same reaction in myself. Only this time I take a second to recognize what this conversation has the potential to be: explosive. The point of setting boundaries is to avoid these tired games and find neutral territory where we can exist peacefully. That’s what I want, and it’s what we need.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“It means you can’t sleep in my bed anymore,” I start. “It means you can’t touch me, Teller. It means we have to stop torturing the people around us because we’re too hardheaded to get our crap together.”
He sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his palms. I watch his lungs expand with the rise and fall of his back as he breathes.
“That’s not what I want. Do I get a say in this at all?”
“You hooked up with someone else, so you didn’t want me enough.” I’m reaching for logic, and I know it. The last four years and everything we’ve been through prove he wants me in some capacity, but the last four years and everything we’ve been through also show that we’re not good for each other. Setting boundaries is the right decision for ourselves and those important to us.
“You don’t get to do that,” he says, standing to his feet. My heartbeat quickens, but I stay sitting. “You don’t get to reduce us to one fucking mistake.”
Rolling my eyes, I scoff and say, “Teller, you’re one of the smartest people I know, so please don’t act dumb. What you and I are is nothing more than constant foolishness; we’re mostly bad times with a few good times between.”
He stares at me for a moment before dropping his head back and laughing out loud, flooding the living room with his cynicism. “That’s utter bullshit, Smella, and you fucking know it. What about the vacations we’ve been on, the shows we go to, or the nights we’ve sat here and watched fucking movies all night? There have been a lot of good times.”
“And we can have more,” I argue. Teller walks over to the kitchen table for his cigarettes and lights one after opening the front door. “I still want those things, Tell. What I don’t want is the fighting, the jealousy, or you asleep on my doorstep every time we have a disagreement. We keep going back on this just friends stuff, but we need to stick to it this time.”
Exhaling smoke between his curved lips, Teller holds his arm outside the apartment, but it doesn’t help to keep the dank tobacco smell from coming in. Nic’s going to be pissed.
“So, what? Are you going to date other people?” he asks.
I sit back and turn the TV back on. “Hell no.”