Ella groans loudly and turns to meet me. If we weren’t at our workplace surrounded by colleagues, pregnant women, and other innocent bystanders, she’d knock my head from my shoulders. She’d have no problem pulling on my shirt until it ripped, scratching the smug look from my face, or shoving her hands into my chest until I wrapped my arms around her and held her so tightly we both calmed down.
“Can you at least do me a favor and not sleep with the people I work with every single day, Teller?”
Amusement drains from the bottom of my feet, and this isn’t funny anymore. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding. How can you say that when I’ve had Joe following me around for the last motherfucking year?”
Her nostrils flare, and Ella inhales a deep breath. “It’s not the same thing. Joe and I are in a committed—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” I wave her off and walk away.
For the sake of our positions at the hospital, Ella and I manage to leave without putting any holes in the walls or breaking furniture. I don’t bother asking if her shift is over, and I’ll deal with my senior resident tomorrow if he notices I’ve taken off early. I can’t spend another minute between those walls.
“Dammit.” Ella throws her arms up. “I didn’t grab my phone when I dropped it.”
“You don’t need it,” I say. “You’re with me.”
My car will be safe here overnight, and there’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight anytime soon. Without discussing intentions or caring if the other has prior obligations, Ella and I walk to her vehicle together. There’s a note taped to the driver side window.
Believe in yourself, the note says.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask, crumbling the yellow piece of paper in my hand.
“Nothing,” Ella mumbles. She slides onto the passenger seat.
Mindset is everything.
“Seriously,” I ask, holding up a second note that was sticking to the steering wheel. “What is this?”
Ella exhales heavily and admits, “Joe leaves me notes of encouragement and letters for me to find.”
I laugh out loud, turning the engine. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It’s sweet. Don’t laugh.”
“Brand-new fucking car and the gas light is on,” I say, instead of acknowledging what she’s said. She’s called me a lot of things over the years, but I don’t think sweet has ever been one of them.
“I didn’t have time to stop this morning.” She shrugs, like letting her brand-new Mercedes run empty isn’t an expensive mistake.
“Ella,” I start.
“Save the lecture and take me home, Teller.”
Reversing out of the parking spot, I say, “You’re coming home with me.”
“Obviously,” she mutters.
We’re not going anywhere if we run out of fuel, so I pull into the nearest gas station. While the G-Wagen fills up, I run inside for a pack of cigarettes and a candy bar for Ella as a pathetic peace offering. When I come back out, a girl at the pump next to ours is having trouble with her gas cap. She’s typical L.A., tall, blonde, and helpless in oversized sunglasses and impractical shoes. She’s beautiful.
“Need some help?” I ask, breaking the plastic seal around my pack of Marlboros.
The damsel in distress pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing a glowing set of hazel eyes, and she blows out a breath in relief. “I would love some help. Thank you.”
Sticking a cigarette between my teeth, I take the gas cap from the girl’s hand and show her how to screw it back on. “I’m Teller.”
“Kristi,” she replies with a smile. “Kristi Reinhart.”
Now
“You people are psychotic.” Maby taps the pregnancy test against her palm, leaning against the doorframe. “You’re psychopaths.”
Her bedroom door is wide open while Husher sits on the couch one room over pretending not to eavesdrop. He only needs to saunter by to see me on the toilet with my underwear around my ankles, my elbows resting on my knees, and my face buried in my hands.
If you asked me this morning if I’d be half-naked in Maby’s master bathroom while being called a psychopath by the end of the night, I might have laughed. But here we are, and I only want to cry.
“This isn’t helping,” I groan.
“Let’s take another one.” Maby steps back into the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet.
“For someone who never wants kids, you sure do have a lot of pregnancy tests on hand,” I say.
She laughs. “It’s a manic thing. I’m so afraid of getting knocked up, I literally take a pregnancy test every week just to make sure I’m not. It sets my mind at ease.”
“That’s what birth control is for.”
“Funny you should say that.” Maby winks and passes me a fresh stick. “And I am on birth control, but I’m psycho, too. Do you need more water?”
If she forces me to drink another bottle of water, I’ll flood from the inside out. Besides, this stick isn’t going to give a different answer than the previous three pregnancy tests I’ve taken already. I can’t feel my feet anymore, and I’m going to have a ring around my ass for a week if I don’t get up.
“There’s no point in wasting it. The result isn’t going to magically change at this point.” I wrap toilet paper around my hand to clean myself before standing from the toilet. And because this day can’t get any worse, Husher chooses now to walk in to see how things are going.
The funny thing about being knocked upside the head with life-changing news is that nothing else matters, like the fact that my best friend’s husband can see my vagina. Or that my best friend’s only reaction to her husband seeing my vagina is to hug me and shout, “We’re going to have a baby!”
Not since the first pregnancy test came up positive an hour ago have we used the word baby. We’ve said things like, “Holy shit” and “What does the plus sign mean again?”
But baby is real.
This baby is real.
Baby. Baby. Baby.
“That’s nice, Ella,” Husher says with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Congratulations.”
I waver, unsteady on my own two feet. There’s no point in asking myself how I got here, because it was the night spent in the tent with Teller that’s landed me back in Los Angeles with my pants around my ankles, and according to three pee sticks, pregnant.
“I’m going to be sick.” For Husher’s sake, I pull up my underwear before turning to hug the toilet. As I dry heave into the bowl, it all makes so much sense—the nausea, sleepiness, and tenderness in my breasts.
After spending four years in college earning a science degree, another two years in nursing school, and then Labor and Delivery, I should have recognized the symptoms and known I’m carrying an actual human being inside of my body.
Floundering in self-pity was more important. Meanwhile, my fetus has survived thus far on ramen and depression.
This kid doesn’t have fingernails yet and I’m already ruining its life.
“See, now this is exactly why I never want to get pregnant.” Maby sits behind me and rubs my lower back. “But I’m going to be the best auntie.”
I rest my face on the toilet seat and cry. Teller and I can’t take care of ourselves. How are we supposed to raise a person? It’s inevitable—our kid is going to be an asshole, because we’re assholes. Our kid is going to cuss and smoke and run from their problems, because that’s what Teller and I do.
“I can’t do this, Maby,” I say miserably.
“Of course, you can,” Husher answers. He dampens a washcloth in the sink before handing it to me to cool my face.
“Yeah,” Maby says. She tugs me against her chest and wraps her arms around me tightly on the bathroom floor. It’s a beautiful bathroom with expensive rugs, so I don’t feel too bad about it. “And we’ll help raise your baby. It can be a community baby if you and Tell don’t work out.”
I cry harder, and Maby laughs at my misery. Husher
hovers in the doorway, no doubt mapping his getaway.
“I need to tell him.” I inhale a shaky breath. “Teller should know.”
“That’s the perfect first step on your journey to responsible parenting, Ella,” Maby agrees.
“Where’s my phone?” I ask, motioning to sit up.
Using her arms and legs, Maby ties me up to keep me from standing, and Husher blocks the doorway in case I escape.
“Everyone knows you’re not on the best terms with my brother right now, but he shouldn’t hear something like this over the phone,” Maby says.
“No kidding,” I reply, wrestling free from her hold and scrambling to my feet. Husher squeezes his eyes closed again until my jeans are buttoned and zipped around my waist. “I’m only going to make sure he’ll be home sometime tomorrow.”
“Because that won’t be suspicious at all, Ella.” Maby follows me out of the bathroom with Husher not far behind. “He’ll know something is up if you ask to come over out of the blue. Do it here. I’ll make dinner for everyone, and we can tell them the good news at the same time.”
I grab my purse from the couch and hook the strap over my shoulder. “Maby, no. Neither one of you will say a word to Emerson or Nic, or your parents. Just pretend that you don’t know, okay? I need to handle this on my own.”
Maby holds her hands up in surrender, like her brother does when he’s scolded, and she half-heartedly accepts. I can only hope that Teller handles the news about my pregnancy as well as she has. Before the wedding, I wouldn’t question his willingness to co-parent with me. We’ve screwed up a lot of things in the years we spent walking the line between affection and hostility, but Teller and I have always fulfilled our greater responsibilities.
On paper, we exceed expectations. We’re educated, financially sound, and we have our health. Beyond external pretenses, we’re a wreck. We wreck each other, and we wreck everyone around us.
Not once in the last seven years have I truly stopped to consider what our relationship does to our families, whom we force to stand by and watch as we make the same mistakes repeatedly. I didn’t contemplate Teller’s feelings after I left him in the tent to wake up alone after we spent the night in each other’s arms.
Had our roles been reversed and I was the one left alone, I would have flattened mountains to find him. All Teller did was agree to finally give me what I thought I wanted.
Now I have to tell him that’s the night he got me pregnant.
“This is a blessing, Ella,” Maby says before I go. “No matter what happens, your baby will be loved.”
My mind won’t stop reeling.
A million and one ways this can go wrong—how I will destroy this spawn’s life—leaves me wide awake, staring at the ceiling in the dead of night. While the rest of the world slumbers, I question my ability to raise a child who won’t grow up to be a serial killer. I don’t think the odds are in my favor, or my unborn offspring’s.
What if I don’t love it like it should be loved? Is there enough affection, compassion, or basic motherly intuition inside of me to successfully nurture and guide another human through life successfully? The only example I had abandoned our family, but she checked out way before she sped out of the driveway and never came back. There are tons of lessons I didn’t learn because the woman who gave birth to me couldn’t care less. I don’t want to be that mother.
But I do want to be this baby’s mom.
I do.
I can’t explain this soul-deep impulse that flickered then flourished inside of me when the pregnancy test revealed a positive result. As scared as I am, as clueless and lost as I feel, something clicked into place with the knowledge of the life that lives inside of me. This might be a disaster, and my kid might grow up to be a cussing, smoking, emotional disaster, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. And unlike my mom, I won’t abandon my child.
“You’ve really done it this time, Ella,” I whisper to myself. I sit up and check my phone for the time, ready to get an immediate start on harming my baby’s chance at a normal existence.
The last thing I need is for my brother or Nicolette to wake up and ask why I’m awake at four in the morning, fully clothed with my keys in hand. I slowly open my bedroom door and tiptoe down the hallway past their bedroom door, holding my breath until I pass through the living room.
Has this door always weighed a million pounds? It opens with a crack like a bottle of soda, and icy early morning air disrupts the sleepy warmth of our apartment like an intruder. A lungful of fresh oxygen feeds me a seed of doubt, but it doesn’t stop me from closing the door and locking it behind me.
I clutch my keys in the palm of my hand to keep them from rattling, as if they’d wake up the entire complex. Sounds are intensified in the dark, and every step I take seems to echo off the walls. I feel like the only person in the world as I head toward the parking garage, and I remind myself that I’m an adult, and I’m not sneaking out of the house while my parents sleep.
When I unlock the car door and the headlights turn on, illuminating the parking garage like it’s daytime, I contemplate turning around and going back to bed. It would be the sane thing to do.
I cringe when I turn on the engine and it roars to life.
After locking the doors and putting my seat belt on, I sit with my hands on the steering wheel and chant, “You can do this. You have to do this.”
Signs of life show themselves on the drive to Echo Park. The occasional car joins me on the road. A cop car speeds by on the opposite side of the street with its lights on—no siren. A gas station, fast food restaurants, and a grocery store stay open twenty-four hours, helping me feel a little less alone.
By the time I park my Wagen in front of Teller’s house, the black sky is inky blue with the teasing sun below the horizon. Stars fade away, and the temperature drops five degrees. My heartbeat feels like a drum in my throat, and I’m full of anxiety.
I take courage from my defenseless unborn baby, because I’m a taker and I may as well start now.
The security light above the garage blinds me as soon as it senses my presence. I contemplate throwing a rock at it, but I better get this madness over with before my nerves run dry. This isn’t exactly a now or never situation, because I could easily drop this ball tomorrow. But this matter is half Teller’s responsibility, too, so if I can’t rest, he shouldn’t either.
I also might be curious if he’s alone or not.
I pick a rose from the bush before marching to the front of the door, and I pull petals, whispering, “He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He better.”
With red petals scattered around my feet, I toss the stem over my shoulder and ring the doorbell. No lights inside the house come on, and there’s no indication that Teller’s woken up.
I try knocking instead, but to no avail.
Trying the doorknob seems intrusive, but I do it anyway just to make sure it’s actually locked. I still have the key to the house, but I’m not that desperate, so I ring the doorbell again once, twice, four times before I rethink my stance on throwing rocks.
I’m ready to send a boulder through his bedroom window when the chandelier above the stairs turns on.
“Oh crap.” My drum-like heartbeat stops cold, but it’s too late to run.
“Who the fuck is it?” Teller asks groggily, releasing the deadbolt.
My voice is nowhere to be found, hiding from the aggression in Teller’s tone. When he opens the door to find me standing in front of him with a rock in my hand, I turn right around to make a run for it. I make it as far as the sidewalk before guilt stops me in my tracks.
“Ella, stop.” Teller is sleep-lined and cozy, messy-haired and barefoot. He is warmness in person.
I turn around and say, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
He steps out onto the doormat, crossing his arms over his chest. “What did you think I’d be doing at this time?”
“I didn’t do much thinking before I drove over here,” I ad
mit.
The night is when I miss Teller the most—when I’m in my bedroom alone, knowing he’s only a short drive away. When the stars are out, and moonlight illuminates my misery. When I’m utterly alone with regret. How many nights have I spent looking for the nerve to pull myself out of bed to come over here? And now that I finally have, words forsake me.
“Do you want to come inside?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, taking a step forward. Then I stop. “No.”
Teller looks around, like he’s making sure this isn’t a dream. He rubs his hands up and down his arms and says, “Then I’m going to grab a sweater.”
“Okay,” I reply.
He doesn’t move, instead asking, “What are you doing here, Gabriella?”
My eyes fill with tears, burning with cold. There is not one single thing in the entire universe I want more than to fall into his arms. There are no secrets or misconceptions at nearly five in the morning. It’s too early, too quiet, too brand-new for anything but honesty. As the sky fades from oxford to cobalt, and the stars dim to mere suggestions, I’m swayed by the promise of a new day and a fresh start.
And there is one thing in this universe I want more than to fall in his arms.
Just one.
“Are you okay, baby?” he asks, walking closer.
“Stay there.” I hold my hand out, stopping him. “I need to tell you something, but I need you to be away from me, okay?”
Teller runs his fingers through his hair before scratching the stubble across his jaw, exhaling a large breath. “I’m so fucking confused. I am sick of being this fucking confused all of the time.”
The sprinklers next door turn on, spaying umbrella-shaped streams of water onto the neighbor’s lawn. We don’t have much time before the rest of the city wakes up, crowding this space with responsibilities, car horns, and smog. It’s now or never. Or I can come back and try again tomorrow at four in the morning. Judging by the look on Tell’s face, he won’t appreciate being woken up at an indecent hour two nights in a row.
Sever (Closer Book 2) Page 12
