It was weird, waking up with the lingering smell of cherry on my skin. That’s what Crystal smells like. Cherries. She thought I called her Red because of her hair. No. It was the cherries. And it was poured all over my skin. I didn’t shower for three days. I couldn’t. It was my last piece of her.
That, and the memory of her hands over my heart, gently caressing the roses etched on my skin for her.
Always her.
I remember the day she walked into the bar for the first time. I had just finished mopping the floor from the mess the crew had made from installing the new equipment. The bar was closed, but I must have forgotten to lock the doors because in walked the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Long auburn hair and a heart-shaped face adorned with bright green eyes. She had porcelain skin, so smooth that it begged to be touched, and a mouth so full that it begged to be kissed.
No, it was me that was begging. But I held back.
For as pretty as she was, she had an air about her. Shoulders back, chin up, she walked into a room like she owned it. And, damn, did she. I told her once how she intimidated men. I was including myself.
She took a seat at the bar, and I watched as her eyes skimmed the taps. There was something sexy about the girl in a demure sundress who wanted to drink a beer. So, I gave it to her even though it’s not what she ordered.
Looking back, I can’t believe I was such an ass. First, I called her a lesbian, which would have been a saving grace, but, no, she liked men, and when she looked at me, I freaked because those eyes showed me she liked what she saw even if my personality was lacking.
I tried to push her away. Hell, it wasn’t hard. I was miserable. Had been for years. She came in here, talking about love like it was a goddamn fairy tale. I wanted to squash her fairy tale like a bug, show her what reality was really like. But I couldn’t. Because, when she spoke, it was as if all the things I used to believe were coming from her mouth.
I used to be a dreamer.
But life made me a realist.
It’d started long before Ellie got sick, long before Ed kicked me out of his life. It’d started when I was just a kid.
I was eight years old when my mom came into my room, eyes red and splotchy, her nose raw from rubbing. She said my dad had left, and he wasn’t coming back.
Instead of getting upset, as most children would, I asked her, “Why?”
She told me he was a selfish bastard who didn’t like the responsibility of being a father. I couldn’t believe that he’d left us just like that.
This was the part where I should have been sad. But I wasn’t.
The next day, I woke up, expecting my dad to be in the kitchen, yelling at my mom, like he usually was, but he wasn’t there. I sat on the front steps and waited until he came home.
You know how that turned out.
The next week, I came home from school. My mom was having a yard sale. Everything my dad had left behind was up for sale. A man asked her how much she wanted for a set of golf clubs. She told him a dollar. So, he gave it to her.
“Give them back! Those are my dad’s!” I leaped as the man put the clubs in the back of his car.
Pulling at the bag, the man kicked me with his foot. “Get the hell off of me! Whose kid is this?” he yelled into the crowd.
My mother came over and pulled me by the ear. “Nathaniel, get your ass inside now.”
“But those are Daddy’s! He’s going to be so mad when he comes home. He’s going to think we gave up on him!”
She looked down at me with stern eyes, her mouth pinched. “He is never coming back. Go to your room, and don’t you ever say his name in this house again.”
I sulked through the front yard. Before I made it to the house, I saw a baseball cap on one of the tables. It was a San Francisco Giants hat. My dad never wore it, but I remembered he grew up there.
Every day after school, I’d sit on the front steps and wait for my dad to come home. And every night before I went to bed, I’d put on his hat and think of all the things we’d do when he returned.
One afternoon, I turned on the TV, and the San Francisco Giants were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks. I looked in the crowd for my dad. I knew he was there. He was back in San Francisco, and when I was old enough, I was going to find him.
I was ten when my mom kicked me out for the first time. I had forgotten to take the trash out. She told me I was worthless and sent me and my bags packing. When the cops brought me home a few hours later, she told the officer I had run away, and she grounded me for a month. I held out hope that she would feel bad for kicking me out.
When I was fifteen, she got a boyfriend, her first in years. He didn’t like having me around. I made myself scarce whenever I could. He was a grade-A douche bag. Always smoking cigarettes in the house and touching my mom in ways men shouldn’t in front of children. She was happy for the first time in years, so I didn’t say anything.
My mom demanded I be home by six o’clock every night, so I was only able to work a few hours after school as a box boy at a local hardware store. It didn’t pay a lot, but the owner was old and needed a strong hand to move supplies around. If my mom or the douche knew I had a job, they’d take my money, so I hid it.
When I was eighteen, I had finally saved enough to get to San Francisco. I was finally going to find my dad. Three thousand dollars was rolled up in a sock in my top drawer. There was only two weeks until graduation, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I came home from school one day, itching to pack. When I got to my room, the douche was standing by the dresser, a rolled up wad of cash in his hand.
“Where did you get this, boy?” His upper lip was sweaty, his wifebeater reeking of stale cigarettes and body odor.
“Give that back.” I swiped at the cash, but he pulled his arm away.
A deep scowl on his face, he looked at me like I was the scum you would find at the bottom of your shoe. “You stealing from me? Is that where you got this? I come here and give you my time, treat your mother right, and this is how you repay me? I should have let her throw you out a long time ago. But this”—he held up my money—“this is unforgivable.”
“You know it’s not yours.” I reached for him, pulling on his forearm, but he backhanded me in the face with his free hand. I fell against the wall, the sound of my back hitting the wall, startling my mother.
“What is going on in here?” she demanded to know as soon as she came up the stairs.
The sight of her son on the floor, clutching his cheek, was not a concern for her.
“The boy’s been stealing from us,” the douche said.
My mother’s face fell in a look of utter shock and disgust. She turned to me, seething. “How dare you!”
“That’s mine. I worked for it. That’s my money to get the hell out of here!”
“You want to get out of here so bad?” she asked, screaming, “Fine! Go.” She yanked my duffel bag out of the closet and started shoving clothes into it. “You want to leave so bad? Get the hell out!”
Jeans, T-shirts, boxers—it all went in the bag. When it was filled, only a quarter of my stuff was in the bag.
“You’re almost eighteen and no longer my problem. Get out, and never come back.”
I grabbed the bag from her, my anger too intense to be upset. I turned and started to walk out the door. I didn’t need her—scratch that. I’d always needed her, but she was never there for me. For the second time, she was turning another man in her life away. I was almost down the hall when I remembered my hat. I walked back to my room and looked at the dresser where I thought I’d left it last. It wasn’t there.
When I looked up, the douche had it in his hand, a lighter in the other. He’d already lit the hat on fire.
“Looking for this?”
“No!” I cried. I literally cried as I watched the hat burning before being thrown out the window.
Duffel bag in hand, I ran down the stairs and out to the front yard. The flame was still on the h
at as it lay in the grass. I picked it up and start beating it against the ground, dousing the flame. When the hat was nothing but singed fabric and an awful smell of ash, I put the hat in my pocket, looked back at the house, and walked away for the last time.
I never made it to graduation. I was already on the East Coast by then. Nowhere to go, I started hitchhiking, which was much harder than they showed in the movies. I quickly found myself going in the opposite direction of where I wanted to, but I didn’t care. I just needed to be moving. If you were giving me a ride, I was willing to take it.
I was lucky. For the most part, I rode with truck drivers, making cross-country trips. They were nice and happy to have company. We’d listen to Howard Stern a lot. If I thought the guy was a little sketchy, I’d hop off the truck at the next stop and stay in the most well-lit areas possible until I could find someone who looked okay enough to travel with. One guy tried to get me into his truck at a rest stop, and it was not to go for a drive. He wanted a different kind of ride. I was eighteen and being on the road made me pretty strong. I was able to make sure he didn’t try to touch me again.
For two years, I traveled aimlessly. I’d sleep in homeless shelters sometimes or cheap motels when I could afford it. The key to getting a job was to always keep your clothes clean and your ears washed. If I had four quarters, I would be at a Laundromat. If there was a coffee shop, I would be cleaning myself up in the back restroom. I lived in a few cities, staying just long enough to make a few dollars so that I could get to the next city. Sometimes, I’d meet someone who was headed somewhere, and I’d pick my destination based on where they were going.
I saw the ocean for the first time when I got to Miami. Then, I went to a rodeo in Texas. I saw cotton fields in Virginia and the flat plains of the Midwest. I got a job at a bar just outside Boston when I almost lost all hope.
“What’s up with the chewed up hat?” the bar owner asked.
“It’s, uh…it was my dad’s.”
“He dead or something?”
“No.” I put the box I was carrying down and started unpacking the bottles into the cooler. “He lives in San Francisco. I’m saving up, so I can see him.”
“Why isn’t he sending you a plane ticket to go out there himself?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“You try looking for him on the Internet?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let’s see what we can find.”
We found nothing. Just a couple of white pages listings for a Nathaniel Teller Sr. A few calls proved they were not my father. I couldn’t comprehend it. If he wasn’t in San Francisco, then where the hell was he?
“Sorry, kid. Looks like you’re sticking around for good.”
I was in Boston, the complete opposite end of the country from where I needed to be. I couldn’t stay. I’d spent twelve years planning the perfect escape, and I messed it up. I needed to get to San Francisco as fast as I could. Whether my dad was there or not, San Francisco was the dream.
When the bar owner walked out, I stole five hundred bucks from the register and ran out the door.
I’m not proud of what I did.
I took that money to the airport and bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. It took two layovers to get there, but I made it. And it was cold.
I was twenty years old, and the homeless population was out of control. There wasn’t room at a shelter for me, and there certainly wasn’t a safe place for me to crash. I took a job at the first Help Wanted sign I saw—a diner. I washed dishes.
Soon after, I had another job at a construction site. I always made sure I was working and had money in my pocket because living on the streets of San Francisco was not an option. I rented a room for cheap, and within a month, I was working at a bar, stocking shelves and wiping down tables, where I made my first friends in over a year.
The guys were my age, college kids. While I worked, they would go to school, and at night, we’d party. Well, they’d party. I’d work. I wasn’t like the other guys. I was always trying to keep my head above water, looking for a paycheck and a roof over my head.
One day, they asked if I wanted to go to a festival. I said no at first, but I hadn’t done anything normal in…well, ever. So, I went.
And you know how that went.
Ellie Martin was a spitfire. I couldn’t keep up with her. For a guy who was always trying to grab at the next straw, she was free and light and a breath of fresh air. I wanted to be her. So, I tried for a day.
“You’re tall,” she said, looking up at me from her tiny five-foot-two frame. Dark eyes, big and shining from the natural high she was on.
“You’re short,” I countered.
“Kiss me,” she dared.
So, I did.
I did everything that girl told me to do that day.
That included marrying her.
The festival lasted three days, and when I showed up for work at the bar, it was with a smile on my face and a wife on my arm. I was worried that, now that we were back in the real world, she would start panicking. But she didn’t. She was happy. She sat at the bar and drank while I worked. She asked me a million questions. I answered every single one of them, not used to talking about myself.
Sure, it was weird. I’d married a girl who hadn’t even known my last name until we’d signed the marriage certificate, but I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I’d met someone I just wanted to be around. She put a smile on my face and made me feel like the twenty-year-old I really was.
Someone in the bar congratulated us and then asked where our rings were. I never had a girlfriend, let alone a wife. My first day as a husband, and I couldn’t even buy her a ring.
Ellie didn’t care. She asked me how much money I had in my pocket.
Twenty-five bucks.
She had forty.
“It’s enough,” she said.
“For what?” I asked.
“To promise forever to each other.”
When the bar closed, we ran down the street to a tattoo parlor on the corner. We asked the shop owner what we could get with our money, and he laughed at us. Ellie wanted matching flowers. I hated that idea. If we were promising forever, then we needed something that meant forever.
We walked out with matching infinity symbols. Just the outline. That was all we needed.
Hand in hand, heart-to-heart, I kissed my bride on a street corner in San Francisco. I might not have found my dad like I’d planned, but I felt like I had found something better.
Ellie.
It was the next day when I met Ed and Rosemary Martin. I was petrified at what Ellie’s parents would think of our marriage. Hell, we weren’t legal to drink, yet someone had deemed us legal to wed. We were young, dumb, and in love.
When we pulled up to Russet Ranch, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The grapes were green and lush, at full capacity for harvesting. I didn’t know anything about wine then, but I knew it was harvest season. There were workers all about, heading into trucks after an evening of harvesting. Other men were carrying gray baskets over their heads to a large machine where a robust man with a full black beard was raking the grapes through, de-stemming them for the crush. There was so much going on that no one noticed we’d arrived.
Ellie took my hand, and together, we got our hands dirty. It was the coolest thing I’d ever done.
When she’d had enough, she took my hand and walked me around the winery.
The morning sun was peeking over the mountains, and for the first time in my entire life, I knew I was home. I couldn’t explain it. There was something about the red-paneled winery and the mass production around it. It was a place of hard work and love.
That was why it surprised me when, hours later, Ellie finally introduced me to her parents, and her dad chased me out of the house with a shotgun.
I ran right off the veranda and into a rose garden, realizing too late that I’d run out the back door when I should have run out the front door. I might be in
love with the man’s daughter, but I was smart enough to know a shotgun trumped love. I stood among the rose bushes as the sun started to drop, and the Napa chill poured in. I was freezing, but I wouldn’t move. I couldn’t.
One, I wasn’t going to leave Ellie. And, two, I wasn’t going to walk back into the ranch until I was invited.
I had my hands buried deep in my cargo shorts when Ellie’s mom walked onto the veranda. She was a beautiful woman with long red hair and the kindest smile I’d ever seen. So different from my own mother’s.
Rosemary took her time, walking down the stairs, her arms wrapped around herself. It wasn’t in a closed off way. It was almost as if she were giving herself a hug. As she drew closer to me, her smile became wider, kinder, and her eyes looked at me like only a mother could.
“Do you like my roses?” she asked lightly.
At first, I worried her roses were a euphemism for something else, but I quickly realized she was talking about the garden I was standing in.
“Yes, ma’am. They are very nice,” I stammered, sounding like a kid with the baritone of a man.
“They’re quite special, aren’t they?” she asked.
I nodded my head in agreement. They were beautiful. I wasn’t a flower guy, but even I could appreciate the field of vivacious red we were standing in.
“They are a delicate flower, armed with prickers. Sometimes, what we display on the outside is only to protect what we have on the inside.” She looked back at the house to where Ed and Ellie were probably fighting. “My husband is a rose. He pretends to be tough, but he’s really a ball of mush on the inside.”
“And Ellie?” I ask.
“She’s a wild flower. You can’t control that one.”
I laughed at just how well the mother knew her daughter. “I love your daughter, Mrs. Martin.”
“How do you know what love is? You’ve only known her for four days.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to square my shoulders. “I’d like to know her better. Take care of her. Be a good husband for her.”
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