36. WILLIAM
WILLIAM
"Guys, hurry up. We're gonna be late."
I raise my voice toward the bathroom door. The only answer I get is Sienna's moan. Low, muffled, not remotely rushed.
I look at myself in the mirror and I'm smiling.
That's been the difference lately. The old William would’ve been at the door already, keys in hand, grumbling about punctuality. Now I'm standing here listening to Sienna’s moans and there's no urgency in me anywhere.
I’m less rigid. Less angry. Lighter in a way I haven't tried to explain to myself.
It's been like that since the Vale Hotel. Since the four of us have settled into something. I don't know what to call it. I've stopped trying to name it and started just living it.
There's no jealousy. That was the part I'd expected to have to fight through, and it never arrived.
Some nights it's the four of us, like it was that first time, and other nights it's just a two or three configuration that arranges itself without any real discussion or effort.
Last week it was me, Carter and Sienna in her apartment, and two nights ago it was just me and her, her bedroom, the door closed, no one else in it.
Carter couldn't make it last night because of a work thing, texted around nine. So it ended up being me, Adrian and Sienna here at Adrian's beach house, which is where I've been waking up more often lately. His spare drawer has three of my shirts in it. I stopped thinking about that.
We woke up tangled with the sun cutting through the gap in the curtains, nobody moving for a while.
Sienna was between us with her back against my chest. Adrian had one arm across her waist and I lay there listening to the ocean outside the window underneath her slow breathing and I couldn't think of a single thing that I would rather be doing.
Adrian kissed her shoulder collarbone. She made a sleepy sound, turned in my arms and we kissed her, her mouth soft and half-asleep.
Adrian eventually announced a shower was required, and for ecological purposes, grabbed Sienna, and disappeared.
I took the guest ensuite and gave them alone time.
Now I can hear she's getting close.
I check my watch. Look back at the mirror. Stop trying to care about the time and mostly succeed.
When the bathroom door eventually opens, Sienna comes out in a white towel.
Her skin is still flushed from the steam. Hair wet and loose. The towel sits low on her chest and I can’t help it. I need to be near her.
I pull her to me kissing her with my hands in her damp hair, her wet skin warm against my shirt, and she makes a small sound against my mouth that goes straight to my body.
The towel drops.
I get both hands on her ass and pull her closer so she can feel exactly what she does to me. It has become a permanent condition whenever I’m around her.
"I thought we were late," Adrian says from the bathroom doorway.
I pull back. My hands stay on her for one more second before I let go. I turn her around by the hips and bring my palm down across her ass. "Hurry up getting ready or you're going to be late for your own Green Guerrilla thing."
That gets her moving. She's already heading for her bag, and I can see her trying not to smile. "Thanks again for coming along to help. It really means a lot to me. We are going to need every hand we can get. There is a lot to do."
"You sure you have authorization this time?" Adrian asks. He's pulling a shirt over his head, watching her.
"Yes." She doesn't look up from finding her clothes. "For the thousandth time, yes. This time they even invited us. Santa Rita Correctional Facility wants us to help with their pilot rehabilitation garden initiative."
I kiss her forehead on my way to the door. "I'm going to make us a quick breakfast." And I leave them to finish getting ready.
Adrian's fridge is different now. I stand there with the door open looking at it.
Before Sienna it was brie, three beers, and a lime that had seen better days.
Now there's produce in the crisper, eggs on the second shelf, a container of something that might be leftovers from Tuesday.
A pepper. Actual yogurt. I call it the Sienna Effect and I've watched it happen over the past month, her presence leaving traces in all of our spaces that none of us have tried to correct.
I'm deciding between eggs and toast when something moves at the glass door to the balcony.
Tabby cat. Sitting at the glass looking in.
I open the door. It walks straight past me to the kitchen island and jumps up like it lives here.
"Well, don't be shy," I say. "Make yourself at home."
The cat looks at me. Looks at the fridge.
Sienna comes in first. She stops in the doorway, her voice going immediately warm and slightly ridiculous: "Oh, you are faaaat. Adrian has been feeding you too much."
Adrian is right behind her and his face tightens when he sees the cat, something moving through him in a fraction of a second before it's gone. His eyes go from the cat to Sienna.
"You have to feed him healthier things," Sienna is saying, stroking the cat's back. "He is chunky."
"I haven't been feeding him anything." Adrian's voice is slightly careful. "He hasn't shown up since..." He looks at Sienna. Stops. "Since the morning after I drove you to get your truck at Dev’s."
Something happens between them. A look, a small pause. Sienna's hand slows on the cat and then starts again.
I lean over, pick up the cat by the front paws, and hold him facing me. Take a proper look.
I set him down. Look at both of them.
"You two need to go back to the biology classes. This is a very pregnant lady cat."
Adrian stares.
Sienna turns immediately to the fridge, takes out the milk, finds a saucer, fills it, and kneels on the floor to place it carefully.
I pat Adrian on the shoulder. "It seems you are going to be a grandparent."
"It's not my cat." he says.
He says it with the conviction of a man who is already working out where to put the litter box.
I look at my watch. "We are officially late. I think it's best if we grab breakfast on the go."
"Yeah," Adrian says. He's still looking at the cat. "Probably best."
"Come on. We'll take my car."
Sienna turns from the floor where she's crouched beside the milk saucer and gives me a look.
"Right," she says. "Cause it will be totally normal to arrive at site in a Bentley Flying Spur." She blows a raspberry. "We will take my truck."
I look at her face. I have an internal debate on whether this is a fight I want to have, which takes approximately two seconds.
"Fine," I say. "But let's go." I start toward the door.
Adrian falls in behind me and when he gets close enough he drops his voice: "That's not a truck. That's a rusted death trap."
"I heard that." Sienna says from the doorway.
Adrian grimaces. Turns back toward the kitchen. Stops at the sofa where the cat has already relocated and is arranging herself among the cushions like she has been living here for years.
He looks at the cat for a long moment. Then he goes back to the fridge and takes out more milk and the brie, which he sets out carefully on the coffee table.
He stands there and points at her. "Behave."
We don't wait to see if she listens.
By four in the afternoon I’m feeling exhausted as I survey how much we have done so far..
The facility yard was hard-packed dirt and potential when we arrived this morning. Now there's structure to it.
Carter showed up around noon, came through the gate, took one look at the retaining wall situation, and went directly to it without being asked. He's been at it for hours, concrete mix and block work, his shirt soaked through the back, looking more alive than I've seen him in weeks.
Further along the yard Adrian has been crouched beside a kid named Emilio working through the assembly of the vertical gardening towers. Adrian showing him, the kid watching his hands, then trying it himself. Adrian adjusting. The frames are almost done.
Dust everywhere. The smell of fresh concrete, turned soil and something green underneath.
Irrigation hoses run across the yard in three directions.
Two correctional officers along the perimeter, surveying.
A group of inmates at the south beds spreading mulch, quiet and methodical.
Somewhere behind me someone's dropped a crate of stakes and they're clanging across the concrete.
Volunteers shouting across the yard at each other. A wheelbarrow going by.
And, in the middle of it all, Sienna
She's in the mini bobcat moving a load of soil from the south pallet to the north beds and she handles the machine effortlessly. She reverses in a clean arc around a pile of irrigation equipment. Tips the load exactly where it needs to go.
Who knew I would get hard by watching a woman driving heavy machinery.
Not a woman. Sienna.
My sister is also here. She doesn’t have her arm on a sling anymore, but she still needs to take it easy, so she is at the truck, with the tailgate down and she is in charge of drinks and snacks for the volunteers.
And, that’s where I am now. Taking a break and having some water.
"Happy to see you up and about." I say. She looks good. Color in her face. I watch her hand something to a passing volunteer and I think back to when Sienna called me from the hospital, the cold drop of it, the instant narrowing of everything.
"Don't do that again," I say.
Charlotte smiles. "I'll do my best."
My eyes go back to Sienna. She has stopped the bobcat and is now talking to one of the inmates over the cab pointing at the south beds.
"So…" Charlotte says.
I look at her.
"This thing between you, the guys and Sienna…" and she doesn’t finish the sentence, waiting for me to fill in with the missing information.
I take a drink of water and ponder on how much to tell her. Afterall Sienna is one of her best friends and this situation is not conventional. "It's new. We are all trying to figure things out. But it's real."
I look directly at her trying to gauge her reaction.
She just raises her hands, palms out, "Hey. No judgment here." She settles back against the truck. "Remember, I’m a cop. I’ve seen some shit that made me believe that at the end of the day what matters is to love and if you get lucky, be loved in return. No matter what shape or form"
Love.
I look at Sienna across the yard.
Is that the name for this feeling that fills my chest whenever I think of Sienna? This want. This need. To always want to know she's okay, before I think about anything else. I want to be the person standing next to her when something good happens.
My thoughts start to spiral and I need to stop them. I elbow my sister and ask, "When did you get so smart?"
She grins. Shrugs. "What can I say? I was raised right." and she looks at me with emotion in her eyes.
I know what she is saying. I practically raised her. My father was present, but he became consumed by the grief for my mother and that took up a lot of space.
I reach over and just squeeze her arm.
"I mean it," she says, and her voice is slightly different now. Quieter. She's looking at the ground. "You are the best big brother a girl could have."
She pauses. Her jaw shifts, something tightening there. "And that's why I need to tell you something. Something I've been carrying for years and has been weighing on me."
A long breath. "I used to think it didn't matter if you knew or not." She looks at Sienna again. "But now I know that I owe you the truth."
Her hands are in her lap. She's not looking at me.
"The car accident I had when I was 16." Her voice is careful, the way you hold something fragile. "It was me who was driving the car."
I hear the sentence.
I can't make it mean anything.
Sienna was driving. I was at the crash site and she told me herself. Didn’t she? I have had that scene in my head for ten years.
The yard is still going on around me. Someone's radio. The clanking of tools.
"You were driving?" I hear my own voice. "And Sienna…?"
"She wasn't even in the car with me." Charlotte's voice is very quiet. "I hadn't seen her in years prior to that day. I was with my boyfriend. We had a few drinks. The car was new." She stops. Swallows. "I was speeding."
She keeps talking and I don't hear the sentences in order. They arrive but my brain isn't connecting them to anything.
"Why?" It's the only word that comes out.
Charlotte's hands are pressed together. She's looking at them.
"I lied because I was scared it would go on record.
You know that I always wanted to be a police officer.
I couldn't have that on my record." Her voice is small now.
Young. "I was sixteen and I was scared and I was selfish.
I told myself Sienna would be fine. Her family had money.
That it would just be a fine and it would go away.
" She stops. "I convinced myself she would be fine. I convinced myself of that."
I shake my head in disbelief.
"Why would Sienna lie and take the blame?"
Charlotte bites her lower lip. Her eyes move away across the yard to Sienna.
She's quiet for a long moment. When she looks back at me her eyes are wet.
"I think that is something that you need to hear from her.
I just want to say that I'm sorry that I lied to you all these years and allowed you to hate her for so long. "
Hate.
I look at Sienna at the gate. At the easy way she stands with the officers, the way her hands move when she's explaining something.
I don't think I ever hated her. Not really. I hated her father. I hated what I thought she was. I hated the idea of her, the version I had built from secondhand damage and old rage.
Hate is what I feel for myself when I think of what I did to her.