EIGHTEEN
Luke
I spend nearly an hour in the shower, letting the hot water beat down on my skin until it begins to run cool. I always do most of my thinking in the shower, and I always have things figured out by the time the water is cold. But not this time. I have more questions now than I did when I stepped in, and the only answers I have to any of them are the kind you can’t be sure are the right ones, or just the ones you want to believe are.
I’ve never been this drawn to a woman before. I’ve never met a woman who I want to open myself up to in every way, and who I know—I think I know—deep down would accept everything about me no matter how deeply flawed. And I’ve never met anyone, no one, who has ever made me feel this … content, just hanging out and doing the simplest of things together. She makes me want to spill my guts, to get everything out in the open so she can make it all better. But I can’t. And I can’t let her. She tried. The attempt didn’t go unnoticed, or fall on deaf ears, but it did fall on a bitter heart that isn’t ready to heal and may never be ready. When I lost my brother, I lost a part of myself. Sienna … she scares the hell out of me, and despite that, I feel like I’m only growing closer to her instead of trying to push her away. I should push her away—for so many reasons—but I can’t. I want to ignore my conscience and see where this goes. Already I feel like … I need her. Just being around her, she makes me forget. Sometimes that’s what I want to do: forget. Sienna is the only person I’ve met since China turned my life upside down who makes me see light at the end of this long, dark tunnel I’ve been walking through for eight months, while hiding from everyone around me. So I don’t have to talk about it. So I don’t have to relive it.
It’s going to be shitty when Sienna’s vacation is over and she has to go back to San Diego. I don’t want to think about it. I’d rather think about that kiss out on the lanai.
We stay up way past two a.m. watching movies in the living room until she passes out close to me on the sofa, her soft dark auburn hair like a wave tumbling over the arm of the sofa as her head lies pressed against it. Her perfect little feet with brightly painted toenails are pressed against my leg as she lies curled up with her legs on the cushion. I had hoped she’d fall asleep against me instead of the sofa arm, but close is better than nothing. And I had hoped that when I quietly got up and tried to fit my hands underneath her so I could lift her into my arms and carry her to my room she wouldn’t wake up, but she did, and she stretched and yawned and walked herself in there after telling me good night in the sweetest half-asleep voice I think I’ve ever heard.
And for the first time in eight months, I lie in bed—or rather the couch—staring up at the ceiling with feelings of serenity and stillness, instead of chaos and that merciless, unrelenting feeling of guilt that has haunted me for two hundred forty-three days.
“Ahem,” I hear somewhere above me as I lie in the realm of semi-wakefulness.
Something is pressing against my hip.
Lying on my back, I moan into the pillow suffocating my face and try to adjust it like I always do because unless it’s close to cutting off my breath, it’s uncomfortable and I can’t sleep. With my arms wrapped tightly over the pillow, I draw it closer and then exhale, feeling the heat of my breath warm my whole face. And needing a toothbrush.
Something nudges my hip again.
“Hellooo,” the voice says, and finally it dawns on me.
As I peel the pillow away from my face, my eyes barely open a slit at first as the bright sunlight has filled the living room. It’s more than what I’m used to waking up to in my room with just a single window.