Chapter 9 Sienna
SIENNA
That evening, Sienna stopped at the Japanese restaurant three blocks from the stadium.
It was a small place with a counter window and a handwritten menu and a queue that spilled onto the pavement at lunchtime, but at six-thirty the queue was gone and the woman behind the counter recognised Sienna from her weekly order.
"Extra edamame?"
"Please."
Sienna paid and stood by the window with the brown paper bag warming her hands, the smell of miso and ginger leaking through the seams. Outside, the streetlights were coming on and the sky was the deep, bruised blue of a Phoenix Ridge evening, the last light fading over the ocean to the west. A sliver of water lay between two buildings, dark and still.
She was going to Elise's apartment for dinner. She was holding a bag of Japanese food and she was about to walk four blocks to a player's home and sit on her sofa and eat and talk and be close to her for an evening that had no medical justification whatsoever.
This was not appropriate. She knew it was not appropriate.
She'd spent the afternoon composing arguments for why it was appropriate, building a case she didn't believe.
Elise was isolated and struggling. She needed support.
Sienna was the person who understood the injury experience from the inside, and providing emotional care was part of a sports physician's remit.
These were all true things. They were also all excuses, and Sienna was too honest with herself to pretend otherwise.
She wanted to see Elise. She wanted to sit across from her and watch how her eyes crinkled when she laughed and listen to her dry, clipped humour and feel the pull of her even when she was sad. That was the real reason. Everything else was scaffolding.
She walked. She could have driven, but the walk was short and the evening was mild and she needed the time to compose herself.
The pavement was still warm from the day's sun and the salt air came in from the ocean in slow, steady breaths.
She passed Lavender's, where the lights were on and Lavender herself was wiping down the counter through the window, and the tree-lined street where she and Elise had walked yesterday, and the bench overlooking the water where the old couple sat with their dog.
The bench was empty now. The water was dark.
Elise's building was a cream-painted stucco apartment block with iron balconies and eucalyptus trees flanking the entrance.
Sienna had been here once before, the night of the injury, when she'd driven Elise home from the hospital and made scrambled eggs in her kitchen.
That had been professional kindness. This was not that.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor, the brown paper bag tucked against her ribs, and knocked.
Elise opened the door and the first thing Sienna noticed was that the apartment behind her was lit with candles.
Not many. A few on the coffee table, a couple on the kitchen counter, one on the windowsill.
But they were there, casting a low, amber glow that turned the open-plan living space into a space softer and warmer than the overhead lights would have.
The framed Valkyries jersey on the wall caught the candlelight.
The bookshelf of sports biographies and crime novels was in shadow.
The kitchen smelled of coffee and vanilla and the close, lived-in smell of a space someone had taken time to prepare.
"Hey," Elise said. She was in a loose t-shirt and joggers, her dark hair down around her shoulders, which Sienna had never seen before. The sling was off. Her left arm hung at her side, the shoulder moving with a careful stiffness that said she was testing the range but not pushing it.
"Hey." Sienna held up the bag. "I got sushi, edamame, gyoza, and miso. And extra wasabi because you strike me as someone who eats too much wasabi."
Elise crossed her arms with her good hand tucked under the injured one. "I eat exactly the right amount of wasabi."
"That's what everyone who eats too much wasabi says."
Elise grinned and stepped aside. Sienna walked into the apartment and set the food on the kitchen counter, and the candles were everywhere. Soft and low, creating a light that blurred edges and made everything look closer than it was.
It looked romantic. It looked like a date.
Sienna's pulse kicked. She told herself it was just candles. People lit candles. It was a normal thing to do. It didn't mean anything. Elise probably lit candles every evening. She probably bought scented candles in bulk and had opinions about wick size and wax type.
Or she'd lit them for Sienna.
She shook the thought off and focused on a task she could control.
She started unpacking the food. The containers were neatly labelled, because the woman at the Japanese place was meticulous, and Sienna arranged them on the counter in the order she always arranged things: sushi first, then the hot dishes, then the sides.
She was halfway through the arrangement when she caught herself colour-coding the soy sauce packets and stopped.
"You're organising the takeaway," Elise said. She was leaning against the counter beside her, hip cocked, watching with unconcealed amusement. The candlelight caught the green of her eyes and turned them amber at the edges.
"I'm arranging it efficiently."
Elise peered over her shoulder. "You've put the soy sauce in size order."
Sienna looked down. She had, in fact, put the soy sauce packets in size order, smallest to largest, labels facing the same direction. She swept them into a pile with as much dignity as she could muster. "Force of habit."
"Is this what your fridge looks like? Everything labelled and facing forward?"
"My fridge has oat milk and one container of leftovers I haven't identified yet. There's nothing to organise."
Elise pressed a hand to her chest. "That's the saddest fridge I've ever heard of."
Sienna straightened and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's functional."
"It's a cry for help, Sienna."
They ate at the kitchen table, which was small and round and positioned beneath a window that looked out onto the trees outside.
The candle on the table was between them, the flame throwing shifting shadows across Elise's face.
The food was good. The edamame was perfectly salted and the gyoza were crispy on the bottom, and Sienna ate slowly and watched Elise navigate sushi with one functional hand and a pair of chopsticks and a determination that was both impressive and slightly dangerous.
"If you drop that in the soy sauce, I'm not fishing it out," Sienna said.
"I haven't dropped a single piece."
Sienna raised an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at the napkin in Elise's lap. "You dropped one in your lap two minutes ago."
"That was a strategic relocation."
Sienna laughed. The sound came easily, as it always did with Elise, and she let herself enjoy it.
The kitchen felt small and private in the candlelight, separate from everything outside.
Through the window, the trees were dark silhouettes against the evening sky, and the sounds of the street were muffled to a low hum.
They talked. About Elise's family first, her mother's stoicism and her father's quiet pride and the sister Sophie who was studying nursing now and called Elise every Sunday to complain about her anatomy homework.
"My mum wants me to come home for Christmas," Elise said, picking up a gyoza and biting into it, the crispy bottom cracking between her teeth. "She says I sound different on the phone."
"Different how?"
"Quieter." Elise's mouth quirked. "She still sends care packages with canned soup. I'm a professional athlete."
Sienna smiled. She turned her water glass slowly on the table. "My mother sent me a framed concert programme when I moved to Phoenix Ridge. Rachmaninov's Third, San Diego Recital Centre. I think it was her way of saying she was proud, but it came across as 'remember what excellence looks like.'"
Elise laughed, her chopsticks pausing halfway to her mouth. "That's brutal."
"She's not brutal. She's just Korean. When I got the Valkyries job, my father sent me a text that said 'well done' and a link to an article about ergonomic office chairs."
Elise shook her head, smiling. "My dad would have taken me to Applebee's and cried into his napkin. He cried at my college graduation. He cries at dog food commercials."
The tenderness in Elise's voice made Sienna's chest tighten. "That sounds lovely."
"It is." Elise's voice went soft. "He just feels everything and can't hide any of it." She paused, pushing a piece of gyoza around her plate. "Did you have the internet growing up? Like, properly?"
Sienna blinked. "I had dial-up in university. Why?"
"I had dial-up when I was seven. My sister taught me how to download music off Limewire."
"I had cassette tapes when I was seven, Elise."
Elise's grin was wicked. "What was it like, the Paleolithic era?"
"I'm going to leave."
"No you're not." The grin softened, gentler now. "I like that you had cassette tapes. I like that you remember a world before all this." She gestured vaguely at her phone on the table. "It's part of why you're so present. You actually look at people when they talk."
The compliment caught Sienna sideways, arriving through a door she hadn't expected.
The contrast sat between them on the table, unspoken. Elise's father who cried at everything. Sienna's parents who cried at nothing. The age gap between them that showed up in the strangest places.
Elise asked another question and the conversation found another room.
She told her more about her parents than she'd told anyone in years: her father's cardiology practice, the long hours and the pager on the kitchen counter, her mother's Steinway grand piano in the living room, the house that had always been full of music and silence in equal measure, as if emotion was meant to be performed but never discussed.