Sienna moves her hand closer to my heart, and my hand collapses around it, squeezing gently.
“But Landon, being the brother that he was, made it his priority to help me beat my fears. He practically kicked me out of my bed one morning and said, ‘Get up, big brother! I’ve got something to show you!’ He took me to Perrine Bridge that day, and after a long drive listening to Landon tell me everything I needed to hear about why I shouldn’t be afraid to live, it was enough to make me want to leap off that bridge that day. And I did. And I never looked back.”
“You’re like him in that way, you know,” Sienna says softly, her cheek pressed against my chest. “That drive and passion to help someone overcome.”
I squeeze her hand, acknowledging the meaning behind her comment.
“Sienna,” I say in a composed, purposeful voice, “when I met you out on the beach that day, do you remember what I said to you? When I told you that if you stayed longer I could show you how to let it go?”
“Yeah. How could I forget?” She raises her head from my chest and props it on her hand so she can see my eyes. “I didn’t understand it really, but that didn’t matter. I was intrigued by your weirdness.” She blushes a little.
I reach out and brush her short bangs with my fingers, the tips of them grazing her forehead.
“There was more to that,” I say, and drop my hand back on my chest, winding my fingers around hers. “You were upset that day, all stressed out because of your job. I had this ridiculous idea that I could somehow make you see what Landon tried to make me see.” I pause, thinking back on my motives that day. “You seemed to be drowning in some of the same shit I was drowning in before my brother died. And it wasn’t until after he died, after I lost the person in my life I loved more than anyone, that I realized everything Landon tried to make me see, all of the arguments we had about money—I finally understood what he was trying to tell me.”
“What was he trying to tell you?”
My eyes fall away from hers and I look toward the open window running horizontally along the wall above the bed. The rain is still falling outside, the waves still pushing against the shore, churned up by the weather. A gray light pours in through the screen on the window, bathing us in the overcast day, and somehow it seems perfect for the moment.
“That I didn’t need money to be happy,” I answer. “He was trying to make me remember who I already was. Before the money, Landon and I were inseparable. We always had been, but when I started BASE jumping with him, and skydiving and surfing, and rock climbing—you name it, we probably did it—that was when we were the closest as brothers. We didn’t give a shit about material stuff, or worry much about not having money to keep the electricity on, because we were too wrapped up in life itself to care—he could turn any bad situation on its head. And Landon still played computer games and dabbled in that stuff on the side when we weren’t going here and there to find the best places to jump. He had computers. I had painting.”
“Sounds like you both lived … free,” Sienna says.
I nod once.
“That’s exactly what it was,” I say. “We lived free. And as long as we were happy, nothing else mattered. We had a fucking blast.” I smile faintly, looking above me, picturing my brother’s smiling face.
Sienna
Luke begins to sit up on the bed and I do the same. He presses his back against the white wall, his knees bent, his arms propped atop them, dangling at the wrists. He looks out ahead of him, deep thoughts running rampant over his unshaven face; paint is smeared on the side of his chin.
I press my shoulder against the wall beneath the window and cross my arms over my naked breasts, not to hide them, but for comfort. And I take in every last word, finally beginning to see what Landon had tried to make Luke remember. And I think about my own life, and my job, and my struggles, and the more Luke talks, the less significant I begin to feel these petty things in my life really are.
“The money blinded me,” he goes on. “It changed me. I didn’t become a rich prick who thought he was better than everybody else, but I lost the person I was. I no longer had to think about bills, or how I was going to afford my next tank of gas. I could buy anything I wanted. Cars. Houses. Stupid shit that collects dust. I could take care of our mom and dad, who’d struggled all their lives, raising us. I had everything I could ever need or want, Sienna. Except anything left to strive for. I lost my ability to push myself to greater heights. I lost my inspiration and my drive and my passions. I stopped painting because all I could think about was the business. I didn’t want to ever fall back into a life of being ‘poor.’ ” He quotes with his fingers; there’s bitter sarcasm in his voice. “It terrified me to think that I might ever have to work some shit job for minimum wage again, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling each week to live a halfway comfortable life.”
I watch and listen with the utmost attention, absorbing every one of his words as if this is a pivotal moment in my own life. Because it is.
“Sorry for the rambling,” he says. “I-I just feel like I’ve needed to get this out for so long.”
“No,” I tell him, “don’t be sorry, Luke.” He’s sharing a part of himself with me that he hasn’t been able to share with anyone else and I can’t find words to explain how much that means to me, how deeply it breaks my heart but also fills it with a sort of tragic joy. I feel special to Luke in so many ways—that he’d trust in me to understand and care about his deepest, darkest feelings, that he’d allow me to be the one to help him carry the burden.