Chapter 58 Sienna
Chapter 58
Sienna
She races deeper inside the cellar, her eyes adjusting to the near darkness as she passes bottles of wine lined up from floor to ceiling. She runs until she can’t run anymore, and only then does she trip upon the dark brown leather chair in the corner. It’s musty and cold, and she curls into a tight ball and cries. It’s a few minutes before she hears the metal clicking of crutches.
“Go away,” she shouts.
The shape of her friend approaches; she’s carrying something in her hands. She shuffles closer, and Sienna’s glad she can’t make out her face. Lucy knows not to speak. Not yet. She tosses a blanket at Sienna, but Sienna swats it away, and the blanket lands at their feet. Lucy, undeterred, leaves it there as she manages to abandon her crutches and sit on the cold floor. The only sound is their breaths.
Sienna’s shivering, and she eyes the warm throw.
“Go away,” she says.
“I’m not leaving.”
She screams. Not at Lucy, but at the ceiling, the walls, the rows of wine. The echoes bounce, hitting their ears. The release feels good, and she punches at the armrest and the seat, and when she’s done screaming, she grabs the blanket and wraps it around herself. Lucy doesn’t say a word. She waits. She listens.
And then Sienna cries. A guttural cry that travels from her stomach up to her chest.
“I don’t know how to forgive you,” she finally says. “Our friendship was one of the few things I trusted ... you took that trust ...”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Their history plays in her mind. All the times she leaned on her friend, how they depended on each other. Lucy knows her deepest secrets. How she stuttered as a kid. How she battled postpartum depression with both her children. Why didn’t she feel she could tell her about Henry’s father? If she had, maybe they could have avoided all this.
Sienna knows all about humiliation. She heard what people said about Adam. She’d witnessed how the money and prestige changed him. It didn’t matter how hard he worked for it. The effort didn’t mean anything with all the name-drops and grandstanding. And with status came entitlement. Adam believed he could have anyone or anything he wanted, regardless of the cost.
They were out of their right minds last summer. Drunk. Stoned. Lucy didn’t stand a chance. It’s not an excuse but an explanation. Sienna will have to decide if she hates Lucy as much as she hates her husband.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Lucy says, her voice a whisper. “I can barely forgive myself. Henry and I ... we just haven’t been the same since his dad’s arrest. I lost Henry, and I lost Michael too. He thinks it just happened to him. But I was terrified for us, especially the kids. We were getting death threats. How could I tell you?” She pauses. “We were miles apart last summer. And I made a grave mistake.”
Her honesty strikes a chord in Sienna. They’ve shared a lot, but hasn’t she held back too? “I knew there were other women,” Sienna admits, dabbing her eyes. “I’d smell them on his clothes, found the occasional lipstick on a collar. I turned a blind eye for the kids—for what I thought would give me peace. I was too embarrassed to tell you. I figured you knew. That was even more humiliating.” For this, she lowers her head and sucks in a breath. “I’m going to need some time. But I think I understand. I mean, look at Leo and Penny. We all thought he was the biggest cheating asshole, but he’s kind of nice. And he definitely loves her. Adam took advantage of you. That’s what he does. He did it to me too.”
Lucy doesn’t entirely agree, maintaining she played a part, but Sienna doesn’t want to think about it. The blanket warms her, and she feels the air around them shifting.
“Sienna,” Lucy begins, a lilt in her voice that wasn’t there before. “You know it’s really dark in here.”
Her instinct is to steady herself, evaluate her surroundings. She hasn’t been able to breathe in a dark room for the last year, let alone sit in one for this long. Her heart begins to clang in her chest, and fear climbs up her skin. “Okay,” she exhales. “This is weird.”
“Do you want to go upstairs?”
She thinks about it. “No. I’d rather live amongst wine forever.” She laughs. “What is happening here?”
“Psychologically?”
“I think I’m owed a free session, don’t you think?”
“I think you’ve been holding in a lot of your feelings. And when we hold on to feelings, they manifest in strange ways.”
“You think my fear of the dark is because of some hysterical feelings?”
“Maybe you’ve felt ‘in the dark’”—she uses finger quotes—“with Adam. Even me, maybe.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Then explain why you’re in the dark right now and not having a full-blown panic attack.”
She’s waiting for it to happen. Waiting for the terror to clamp down and squeeze. But it doesn’t. And she doesn’t know what to make of it. And she doesn’t want to tell Lucy that maybe it’s because her best friend is beside her. “This. Is. So. Strange,” she says, enunciating each word slowly.
“You’ve said some powerful things in the last twenty-four hours. Shouted, I should say. Stood up for yourself. Told Adam to leave. Felt the anger. Let sadness in.”
Lucy isn’t wrong. In fact, Sienna feels braver than she’s felt in a while.
“Holy shit.”
Lucy’s features are fuzzy, but Sienna detects a smile.
There’s residual fear, a token reminder that she still has feelings to work through. But for now, she feels hopeful. She wants to hug Lucy, but she can’t. Not yet.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says again.
“I know.”
“I’ll understand if you let me go too. I will. What I did was awful. But just know, to answer Penny’s question, I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
Sienna drops to the floor beside her friend, and Lucy’s arms automatically go around her. She falls into her, mumbling something about hating her but hating Adam more.
Footsteps approach, and Henry appears, almost stepping on them. “I’ll never understand you two,” he says. But Sienna understands their ability to swim through murky water and find clarity in an embrace. He drops a bag of M&M’s in her lap before walking away, and she eagerly pops a handful in her mouth, suddenly hungry.
“Adam’s a shitty kisser, right? Way too much tongue.”
And they laugh.