Page 66 of The Moment of Letting Go

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.

“It’s almost noon,” Sienna says, standing over me.

My eyes crack open a little more, slowly, until they adjust to the light. She’s wearing the same white shirt and pink shorts she changed into yesterday, and the same beautiful smile and splash of freckles that I can’t get enough of. Girls with freckles drive me crazy, but this girl, with freckles like a work of rare art, makes me mental.

I rub my eyes hard with the palms of my hands, my fingers curled rigidly into claws. “Noon?” I’m still not registering, but it’s slowly coming to me.

“Yeah, I’ve been up since nine.”

Awareness floods into me like a bolt of lightning. “Nine? Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?” I start to sit upright, but a pain shoots through my lower back and I stay put for a second longer.

I can’t believe I slept this long, especially on this piece-of-shit sofa. And I don’t recall waking up once in the middle of the night even to take a piss, much less to toss and turn, because a good night’s sleep has been alien to me for a long time.

“You looked so comfortable,” she says. I don’t know how she came to that conclusion, but I go along with it. “But I figured if I didn’t go ahead and wake you up now, you’d sleep all day. Not to mention,” she goes on with a growing trace of sass, “you didn’t make my complimentary breakfast and I’m going to have to take one star off when I rate this … establishment.” She sits on the edge of the coffee table, facing me.

Shit! I can’t believe I didn’t get up to make her breakfast. Feeling like a loser, I shoot straight up into a sitting position and drop my legs over the side of the sofa. Grimacing, I reach behind with both hands and knead my lower back with my fingertips, but now the ache has spread upward all the way to my shoulders.

“Hey, I never said what time breakfast was around here,” I counter with a crooked smile, and she narrows her eyes playfully. “This is Hawaii, remember? We’re on an entirely different time scale than the Mainland, and I don’t just mean that we’re a few hours behind.”

She cocks a brow. “So what are you going to do about breakfast, then?”

I try to hide my smile when I catch her checking me out.

I run my hands over the top of my disheveled hair and then raise them out to my sides and stretch until I hear my joints and spine pop and crackle. More pain shoots through my back, and although it’s not unbearable and I know I could easily get off this couch and do front flips if I wanted to, I decide I’d rather play Sienna at her own game and use it to my advantage.

“Damn, my back is killing me,” I say, grimacing and reaching behind me for my muscles again. “Sleeping on this sofa is brutal.”

Sienna’s face falls under a little veil of guilt and pity.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “Is it bad?”

No.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” I groan deeply for added affect. “I should’ve crashed in Seth’s room—would have if I’d known he wasn’t coming home last night.” Truthfully, I’m not sure of that; Seth might be in his room and I just slept so well through the night that I didn’t hear him when he came in, like I usually do.

“Now I feel bad,” she says and stands up from the coffee table, her long, lightly tanned legs stretching for miles underneath the thin fabric of her cotton shorts—damn, she is sexy; the things I want to do to her right now. “I’m not really hungry anyway, so don’t worry about breakfast. I was just messing with you.”

“Nah, don’t feel bad.” I wave it away like it’s nothing, while at the same time still kneading my back with the other hand. “I’m going to make you something … but you could help me out by walking on my back.”

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