Page 45 of Closer

CHAPTER TWENTY

IS THIS A SEX THING?

LEVI

Iwake late to thesound of her cello. I don’t know the piece, whether it belongs to her or some other great composer, but it doesn’t matter. Those rich tones seep into my bones, deep, wrapping themselves around me, inside me. They suffocate me from the inside out, choke me, cut off my air until all I can see, breathe, hear, feel is her music. It rips me apart, not all at once, but slowly, piece by piece, stretching, drawing apart sinew, and fibre, and bone, and I break.

I crawl out of bed and snag the bottle off the nightstand. I’m still half-drunk from the night before, but I don’t care. I take a huge swig of whisky and swish it around my mouth. I don’t need the liquor to get through, but it sure fucking helps. I stumble up the stairs, and down the hall toward the ballroom dressed only in a pair of silk sleep pants. Brie faces the mirror, her eyes are closed, her cello resting between slender thighs, and her head thrown back as the bow saws across the strings, wrenching my heart open a little more with every stroke.

Tears sting my eyes. I don’t even know why. What I do know is that it has nothing to do with Ali. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I’ve been carrying this weight, this wound for so long that I’m not even sure it’s about her anymore. Maybe I don’t hate myself because I had Ali and failed to keep her, but because deep down, I know I didn’t deserve her. I resent Coop because I know he does. I’d fuck Brie in a heartbeat, but I wouldn’t respect her or even want her afterward because I’m rotten on the inside—dark, depraved.

The longer she keeps her legs closed, the more I want her, but the second she gives in, I’ll destroy her because I love too freely. I’m quick to ruin any possibility I have of being loved in return, and even worse, I’m one of those arseholes who pushes everyone away and in the end is still surprised to find himself alone.

I lean against the door frame and watch. Her long hair falls over her shoulders, and her eyes are closed, but it’s the heartbreak on her face that stops me dead in my tracks. Seems the Angry French Girl has a heart after all, and I have to wonder who broke it, and where I can find him so I can beat his head in.

She opens her eyes and her gaze meets mine in the mirror. Her bow slips, she lowers her hand and her wide-eyed expression gives away her vulnerability before she schools her features into the hard mask she usually wears around me.

“How long have you been standing—”

“Don’t stop,” I whisper. “Please don’t stop.”

She frowns, but raises her bow again and I stagger through the room and stop just a few feet from her. I mean to sit, but instead, I go down like a sack of shit. And that’s where I stay, curled at her feet like a fucking trained submissive, clutching a bottle I no longer have any desire to drink from, with my tears pooling on the floor like a little bitch. Brie is slow to start up again. She’s no doubt watching me and trying to figure out when the hell I turned into such a pussy, but I don’t look at her.

I can’t meet her eyes and see pity in them, or worse, disgust. So I stare at the bottle clutched in my hands, and I hold onto it for dear life as she plays the first few bars of Nine Inch Nails’s “Hurt”, because it’s the only thing I can hold on to. Because if I don’t, I may just cease to exist. I hold to it so tightly I don’t know how the glass doesn’t shatter, or how my bones don’t break.

I don’t know how long she plays, but it’s a long time. I recognise Elgar'sCello Concerto, andAdagio in G minor, then she plays “Heart Shaped Box”, “Losing My Religion”, “Numb”, and “In the End” by Linkin Park. After what seems like an eternity, but what could never be long enough, she sets her cello in its stand, and her bow back in its box, and lays down on the floor beside me. She doesn’t say anything; she just lies there. I don’t know if she’s feeling her own pain or getting high off mine. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

I reach out across the space between us and take her hand. She’s startled at first, and tries to pull away, but I yank it closer and eventually she interlocks her fingers with mine, and squeezes. We stay like that until the sun slips behind the house, and shadows crawl across the floor to greet us. Downstairs, Margaux prepares dinner, and the clanging of pots and pans echo through the empty halls.

“When I was a child, my father used to rap my knuckles with a stick as I played.”

“Jesus.” I roll onto my side to see her face, but she doesn’t look at me; she stares at the ceiling. “That’s fucked up.”

“I would play, and every time I faltered, I would get a hard slap across the hands. I would play until the pads of my fingers were so swollen I could no longer feel anything. And afterward, when the blood and feeling would return, that dull throb of pain made it seem as if I had done something worthwhile.” She laughs, but it comes out more like a sigh. “I would play until my back and neck ached, my fingers bled, and my knuckles were raw from the stick, but it was never good enough. I never pleased him.”

“Then he’s an idiot.”

“The first time I saw my father smile was when I made it into the Orchestre de Paris. He turned to me, his eyes welled with tears, and the ghost of a smile on his lips. He said, ‘You have brought great honour to our family, my daughter’.” She smiles, but it’s tinged with sadness. “When I play, I still imagine him there beside me, with his stick, ready to rap my knuckles. Even though he is bedridden now, and he can no longer use his mouth to form words, or tell me to play faster, to work harder, I still see him with his stick, and hear him in my head telling me I’m not good enough. I will never be good enough.”

“You’re fucking crazy, you’re the best damn cellist—possibly even the best musician—I’ve ever heard.”

“If I am good, it’s because he made me that way. Pain made me that way.”

“What are you saying, that I need your dad to come beat the shit out of me while I play?”

“No, I’m telling you to use it. This pain.” She startles me by placing her palm on my chest. “Whatever this is, whatever it is that causes you to drink, and bleed, use it to make you better.”

“I don’t know how to be better. I don’t know that I can be. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”There. I said it. I’m losing myself, and I don’t even know what to.

“Why do you never show the world this side of you?” Brie asks quietly.

“You mean broken and lying on the floor?” I laugh, but it’s devoid of humour. I’m a fucking rock star who plays to sell-out tours. Hundreds of thousands of women proposition me every day via social media. I can’t walk down the street in most cities around the world without causing a fucking frenzy. I’ve got a fat bank account, and a monster cock, and I’m lying on the floor of my chateau with a beautiful French woman who I’d give my left nut to fuck, but I’ve never felt so alone. I’ve never wanted to disappear so much in all my life. “I’m sure the fans would love that. The media would certainly have a field day.”

“I mean this vulnerability, this side of you that isn’t a cocky rock star.”

“Because I don’t let him out to play very often.”

“Why?”

---