Page 32 of Reverb

Peter, Maggie, and Sienna were posed together, all of them dressed up. Sienna looked to be about ten. She wore a floor-length dress of ruby-red fabric that made her look like a childish Snow White with her dark hair and pale skin—except for the tortoiseshell glasses she wore. She was smiling broadly. Maggie’s hand rested on Sienna’s shoulder, and Peter stood next to his wife, smiling as he leaned in. The photo was lovingly framed, hung in a place of honor.

I stared for longer than I should have. I couldn’t help it. The people in that picture were alien to me, their life so far from mine we could be from different planets. This house that was so lived-in and welcoming, these people who loved each other—I tried to imagine what it was like to grow up like that, but I couldn’t. I may as well imagine what it was like to live as a giant squid, miles under the ocean. I had no clue.

That thought made something sharp slide through my chest. Pain, maybe. Envy. At the same time, I was glad that this was Sienna’s life, her childhood. I was glad she didn’t have a life like mine.

At the end of the hall was another small, winding set of stairs. The attic, maybe. I walked to the bottom of the steps and made my voice work. “Maplethorpe?”

“Up here,” came the reply.

I set my stockinged feet on the steps and climbed carefully so I wouldn’t break my neck. The steps led to an opening in the ceiling, and I fit my head through, then my shoulders. The whole thing was awkward, especially for a guy my size. It was like climbing into a submarine.

When I was waist-deep in the steps, I looked around. The attic wasn’t a dusty storage space; it was a cozy living area with a sofa and coffee table. The walls were lined with shelves, all of them filled with vinyl records. A turntable sat on a cabinet with speakers on either side. The lid of the turntable was open and a record was on it, though it wasn’t playing.

Sienna sat on the sofa, a laptop in her lap. She was wearing black leggings and a hip-length tee, her feet bare. Her dark hair was unstyled and messy, as if she’d run her fingers through it and not bothered with anything else. She had no makeup on. She was staring at me from behind her glasses, and she didn’t look even the least bit surprised to see me.

I made myself look at her. It was fucking painful, because she was so wildly beautiful in that moment—her hair mussed, her body relaxed, her knees up, her eyes fixed on mine—but I made myself do it. I put my hands on the railing. I looked, at the moment, like a man who had been cut in half. “Can I come up?” I asked.

She shrugged in answer.

I grunted and climbed the rest of the way into the attic. I couldn’t quite stand up in here without cracking the top of my head against the sloped ceiling, so I crouched like a monster in an old movie. The window on the front wall let in the evening light, and Sienna also had a lamp on next to her elbow. “You hiding up here, Maplethorpe?” I asked.

“It’s the best place in the house to work,” she replied.

“It’s a fucking hobbit house.”

“It only seems so for people who are freakishly large.”

“Or it’s made for people who are freakishly small, except for their brains.”

“A nerd house, then,” she said, which was objectively funny. I barked a laugh.

“My god,” Sienna said. “Actual laughter. I should document that somehow, like they do on nature shows.”

“I may not be a laugh riot, but at least I don’t live in a nerd house,” I said. “You gonna move your legs so I can sit, or are you gonna make me crawl on the floor?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” she shot back, but she closed her laptop and moved her feet off the sofa, making room for me.

I tried to sit gently on the sofa, but it still groaned when I put my weight on it. She probably thought I was an oaf. “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” I remarked.

Sienna put her laptop on the table, and for the first time, I noticed that her cheeks were flushed. Anger? Embarrassment? Lust? The burning desire to tell me to fuck off? I had no way of knowing. “You said we were going to talk,” she answered me with another shrug, not meeting my eyes anymore. “So here you are.”

“Yeah, sure.” I pointed at the window. “But that window looks over the front driveway. You were watching me like a stalker, Maplethorpe. Admit it.”

She blushed harder, her gaze still downcast. She parted her lips to say something, then decided against it, pressing her lips together and shaking her head.

She was so close. I wanted to lean over, take her face in my hands, breathe her in, taste her. She’d kissed me back—I hadn’t mistaken that. It felt like a dream now, that this woman had kissed me back.

“What?” I asked her. “What were you going to say?”

She shook her head again, ran a hand through her hair. She looked tired and smart and like she just woke up, fucking beautiful. “I don’t know where to start,” she said.

I scratched the back of my neck. She was right; there was too much to say. “Here’s where we start,” I told her. “You said you didn’t know which one of us is supposed to apologize, Sienna. The answer is me.”

She looked up at me, her gaze wide with surprise.

“I yelled at you,” I said. “It was shitty of me, and I shouldn’t have done it. I know you think I’m—” She was still staring at me, her expression unreadable, and the feelings rose up in me. My throat choked closed. My words left me. I scrubbed my hands over my face, leaned my elbows on my knees, and closed my eyes. She hated me, and I was tired, so tired of being that guy. The guy that pissed everyone off, the guy that everyone hated. It was fucking exhausting, being him, and it was Sienna that made me feel it, made me wish that I was someone else. Someone better.

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I said again, starting over, then realized that, like an idiot, I hadn’t said the right words yet again. “I’m sorry. I came here to say that. I’m really fucking sorry.”

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