The Moment of Letting Go

  “OK, think about this,” he says, switching gears. “Helicopters are safer than planes, in my opinion, because the pilot can set them down just about anywhere with a flat surface. He can lower it to a safer height if he has to. A helicopter can hover in one place. An airplane, although generally safe, can’t do any of those things.” His strong fingers curl around my unsteady ones. “If you can get on a plane, you can get on a helicopter.”

  What he said makes sense, and I think on it heavily. I think about my camera in the backseat and of the beautiful shots I could capture. I would love to expand my portfolio, to go on to the next level and see and shoot things I’ve only ever dreamed of. But more than anything, I really do want to break this fear. And for the first time in my life I’m in the presence of someone who truly understands it and seems to want nothing more right now than to see me free of it.

  His lips fall on the corner of my mouth and my heart pounds against my ribs. I turn slowly to face him, our noses almost touching. I get lost in his eyes as they search mine and then he kisses my lips softly, causing my eyelids to become heavy with a warm, relentless tingling sensation. “You can do this, Sienna,” he whispers. “Fear is just the part of you that wants you to fail. It’s all of your regrets and your pain and your failures wrapped up into one emotion. It’s a weakness, nothing more.” Slowly I open my eyes and he’s still there, so close I can feel his breath on my lips and it takes everything in me to keep from tasting them. “We’re all stronger than our weaknesses,” he says. “Sometimes we just need someone else to help us find that strength.”

  “Who are you, really?” I ask.

  His eyes soften on me in a curious manner, and his mouth turns up slightly at the corners.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know … I mean, how is it that you can make me question just about everything?”

  He seems genuinely surprised by my confession, so much so that he doesn’t seem to have an answer or a comment.

  “You make me question my job,” I go on, trying to grasp my own words as much as he appears to be. “You make me question the amount of time I don’t spend behind my lens. I question my future. Where will I be in ten years? What will I be doing? What do I want to be doing?” I laugh lightly. “And every day now I question …”

  After a moment, Luke says, “What do you question every day?”

  I smile, the kind of smile that borders reflection and confusion, looking down at my hands in my lap. But I can’t answer him because I’m still not sure of the answer myself.

  “I’ll get on the helicopter,” I say. “Not because I feel forced, or because I’m trying to do what you want me to do, but because I want to do it for myself. I need to do this.” It was difficult to say that, but it made me feel a little stronger.

  His lips spread into a wide, close-lipped smile.

  “That’s my girl,” he says, and my heart utterly melts into a puddle of hot mush.

  The helicopter ride was terrifying at first, with the floor-to-ceiling glass that gave me more of a view than I initially thought I could stomach, but eventually I came around. My hands and legs stopped trembling. The tears dried up from my eyes. A look of awe and fascination replaced the expression of dread that I knew I wore as obviously as my clothes. The scenery literally took my breath away. The multicolored sea cliffs with sharp ridges and deep valleys. The majestic waterfalls and rolling green mountains. I was surprised how quickly I became comfortable with the height, and I don’t know if it was because the beauty made me forget about being afraid, because Luke was sitting beside me and I felt safe, or a combination of both, but … well, Luke was right—after I did it the first time, I wanted to do it again.

  I thank him all the way to his car: with the actual words; by how tightly I grasp his hand; with the way I can’t stop beaming or talking about how amazing it was to be in the air, drinking in the stunning beauty of this island—I never would’ve done it without his help; I never would’ve even attempted it.

  “Hey,” I say as we stop in front of his car, “what is it with you wanting to cure me of my fear of heights so badly, anyway?”

  He places his hand on the car door and pulls it open for me. The vanilla-scented surfboard hanging from the rearview mirror tickles my nostrils as I hop inside.

  “I dunno,” he says. “Maybe I just can’t help it.” He smiles and starts to close the door.

  I stop it with my hand.

  “No, seriously,” I tell him, looking up at him from the seat with intense eyes. “There’s gotta be something more to it than that.” That’s certainly not a generalized assumption—some people are just that way, ready and willing to help anyone at the drop of a hat, but with Luke, I feel like there’s definitely more to it.

  He looks out at nothing, one arm propped on the top of the open window.

  Then he peers in at me and says, “I guess I’m just passing along something I learned from someone very special.” Then he leans into the car toward me, the inviting smell of his clean skin and the heat of his body wrapping around my senses, and then his lips touch mine. “It’s not bothering you, is it?” he asks when he pulls only inches away.

  But his face is still right there, his warm lips so close I can still taste them—how could I ever say anything but no?

  I shake my head slowly. “No …” and am now left wondering if Luke just bewitched me, made me lose my train of thought so I wouldn’t press him further for a more detailed answer.

  I start to tell myself, No, I can’t be bewitched!

  Until much later I realize I had forgotten all about it.

  Two days later, we go back and I can’t get on the helicopter fast enough.

  Every day that passes, it’s a day closer to when my time will be up here. And already I can’t imagine a life without Luke in it in some way. I would love to pursue a future with him. I want that, actually, but he has become so special to me, rare like my stupid poetic freckles—his word, not mine—that even if I couldn’t be with him, I would be happy just to always have him as my friend.

  It rains a lot on Kauai—at least since I’ve been here it has. Today it rained for an hour straight. We planned to go hiking, but ended up hanging around the house instead.

  Luke has been in the kitchen cooking burgers, leaving all the windows and doors open to let out the heat from the stove and let in the breeze. The burgers smell awesome, but I’m worried about having to pretend how good they taste. Turns out that Luke isn’t all that perfect, after all. Ha! That stuff he told me about how well he could cook—well, he did cook me breakfast on the second day: eggs, biscuits smothered in gravy, and bacon on the side. I give him points for the presentation, but the eggs were bland, the bacon was overcooked, the biscuits undercooked, and the gravy was kinda runny. “What do you think?” he said, sitting on the couch next to me that day with a big, proud smile, his cheeks moving around and around as he chewed.

  I smiled back as I chewed more slowly, swallowed carefully, and replied, “Oh, it’s … really good!”

  I was lying through my teeth, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. He really did spend a lot of time on that breakfast for me, messing up his kitchen, and he put a lot of effort into strategically placing everything on my plate as if he were in front of one of his canvases, creating a masterpiece. But I admit, I’d still take his cooking over the hotel’s complimentary breakfast and even the steaks at four-star restaurants. Because no matter how bland or bad it is, Luke cooked it just for me and that somehow makes it taste better.

  “I usually cook burgers out on the grill,” he says, walking out onto the lanai with a plate balanced on each hand, “but it’s gonna rain all damn day it looks like.”

  He sets my plate in front of me on the table.

  I take a deep breath and prepare myself; it’s almost like that day when I prepared myself mentally to get on that helicopter. I can do this. It’s OK if blood runs out the side of the meat. Just take a deep breath, bite down, chew wi
th a smile, make an mmmmm sound, flutter my eyes, and then swallow. Wash it down quickly with soda and then repeat.

  “You don’t like my cooking, do you?”

  Shit! Was that whole scenario on my face just now where he could actually see it?

  “What?” My mouth falls open and my eyebrows crinkle in my forehead. “No, Luke. Why would you say that?”

  He shakes his head, laughing on the inside, and then takes an enormous bite from his burger; the lettuce makes a crunching sound between his teeth.

  “Because,” he says with his mouth full and then swallows, “you reminded me of my mom when she was driving and a spider crawled across the dashboard. She tried to keep from freaking out and wrecking the car until she could pull over somewhere and deal with it.” He laughs.

  “I did not look like that,” I defend, but I know I probably did. “And your cooking is … all right.”

  He raises a brow. “Oh, so now it’s just all right? You’ve been faking it with me since you got here?”

  I take a huge bite so I don’t have to answer.

  Luke smiles. “Well, then I guess you’ll have to cook for me tomorrow.”

  I’m the one laughing now. “I think you cook better than I do.” That’s not true, either.

  “Well, we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?” he challenges.

  Great! Now I know I have my work cut out for me.

  I manage to get most of the food down, but it wasn’t really that bad, just bland, and bland I can manage better than bloody.

  “So other than heights and losing your job and my cooking,” he says, sitting back down beside me after taking our plates away, “what else are you afraid of?”

  I shrug. “Nothing really, I guess.”

  “Nothing at all? Are you sure?”

  “Nothing that really stands out,” I tell him.

  “So you have no issues with snakes or snails or anything like that?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about bugs? All girls are afraid of bugs.”

  He chuckles when I poke his leg with my toe underneath the table.

  “That’s sexist and stereotypical,” I shoot back playfully.

  “So then you’re not afraid of bugs?”

  “Nope.” I smirk at him. “What’s with the twenty questions, anyway?” It dawns on me only slightly how odd he’s acting.

  Then suddenly he very slowly stands up and goes to lean across the table, reaching his hand out toward my hair.

  “Just be still,” he says.

  I don’t.

  Freaking out instinctively, like a jack-in-the-box, I come out of my chair in two seconds flat, shrieking when I feel the movement of whatever terrifying creature is crawling in my hair burrowing itself deeper into my long locks.

  “Oh my God! Ahhhh! What the fuck is it?” I run across the lanai in a frantic, chaotic spectacle, my arms flailing above my head and then my hands grasping at the back of my shirt.

  “LUKE!”

  I can’t see him because my body is spinning, but I can hear him calling out, “Just be still, Sienna, and I’ll get it!”

  Wings of some sort flutter against my skin as it crawls down the back of my neck and out of reach of my hands—I lose it the rest of the way and scream at the top of my lungs, so loudly and intensely that my eardrums seem to pop. And then I take off running in whatever direction is forward. I hear Luke’s voice and laughter somewhere behind me, getting louder as he follows.

  “Come here, Sienna!” He laughs between words. “I’ll get it out! It’s just a roach!”

  “A ROACH?!” Did he seriously just say a roach? I’d rather have a cobra in my shirt than a roach. “GET IT OUT NOW!” I roar, my hands still grasping behind me at nothing because I can’t reach back that far.

  “I’m trying, babe. Be still.”

  In the commotion, I feel my ankle bend painfully to one side and I cry out and lose my footing, then go tumbling down the steps. I hit the ground with a big splash! and muddy water sprays up into my nose and paints the side of my face. I look down in the disarray to see that I’m lying on my hip in a giant puddle of fresh mud, feeling it cold and gross and soaking up into my white shorts and white shirt and all the solid white undergarments underneath—bleach’ll never get this out.

  TWENTY

  Luke

  Oh shit! Sienna, are you all right?”

  I leap off the lanai, missing all five steps, and might’ve landed crouched like a ninja if it weren’t for all the mud—my foot slips instead, and I slide through the mud on my side like a baseball player sliding into home plate.

  “Sienna,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders from behind, “are you all right?”

  She’s sitting upright in the mud, and covered in it, her white clothes drenched and stained; her long auburn hair is dripping and matted. She won’t look at me, and the little humor I found in watching her freak out like that drains right out of my body. She’s looking downward into her lap as she sits with her left leg bent upward and the right one lying against the mud, both hands gripping her ankle partially under the water.

  “I’m fine,” she says in a wounded, unforgiving voice.

  I tried to get it, but I feel like an asshole. Sighing heavily, I place my fingers about the tail of her drenched shirt and lift it to the middle of her back. The bug is nowhere to be found—I think it might’ve fallen from the back of her shirt before she made it all the way down the steps.

  “It’s gone,” I tell her carefully and then drop her shirt back down. “Did you hurt your foot?” I move around on my knees through the mud to be in front of her.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  I reach out for her foot anyway, taking it carefully in both my hands.

  She winces, hissing through her teeth. She still won’t look at me.

  “I’m sorry. I think you just twisted it. Here, I’ll carry you back inside.” I start to reach for her when she cackles loudly and then her hand comes toward me, mud flinging in the air between us, before it slaps me across the side of my neck.

  Sienna roars with laughter.

  Mud covers one side of my face, sticking to the facial hair I need to shave soon and dripping down my neck and into my shirt. I’m too stunned at first, realizing she was playing me for an idiot—and did it so well—until she tries to run away from me and slips twice, scrambling to get to her feet.

  “Oh no, you’re not going anywhere,” I call out from behind.

  Her laughter fills the air, along with the sounds of her hands and feet sloshing through the puddle as she tries to crawl her way out and onto the wet grass. In a swift movement I reach out and grab the ankle she was pretending was injured and I yank her backward. She falls onto her back into the water. Slimy mud and droplets of brown water splash outward from beneath her.

  “Let me go!” she shrieks, laughing so hard that it seems like she might cry.

  And then bam! The wind is knocked out of me momentarily when her bare foot buries itself into my gut. Instinctively I release her other ankle. She stops, on her hands and knees, looking across at me with wide eyes, shocked and riddled with guilt.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to kick you that hard!” She winces.

  I growl under my breath, low and guttural, shooting her with the most pretend pissed-off look I can manage, my jaw grinding harshly behind my mud-caked cheeks. Sienna’s eyes get wider. Mine get meaner. Sienna’s lips press together hard. My nostrils flare. And then, just when she intends to crawl over to me through the mud and console me with her girlish innocence, my lips turn up at one corner, my glare shifts, and she knows she’s in for it. She takes off in the opposite direction, laughing and shrieking as she tries desperately to get to her feet.

  “No! Please!” She chortles, looking back as I’m coming up behind her on my hands and knees.

  She flings herself out of the mud and onto the grass, and just as she’s clambering to her feet, my hand collapses around her ankle and she’s on her back before she knows wh
at’s happening, sliding toward me. I’m on top of her in seconds, straddling her with my knees pressed into the grass on either side of her hips, glaring down at her shrinking, laughing face.

  “I’m sorry!” she cries out, tears in her eyes.

  Her arms are stretched out at her sides, my hands securing them against the wet grass.

  “You kicked me,” I tell her.

  “You laughed!” She cackles, struggling futilely underneath my one-hundred-eighty-pound weight.

  “You said you weren’t afraid of bugs.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want them in my clothes!”

  A quiet calm passes between us; Sienna’s laughter subsides, her smile softening. She’s so beautiful, even with mud streaked across her face and clinging to her eyebrows.

  I’ve wanted to be with her since the first night she stayed in my house. A part of me hoped she’d initiate sex. I’ve laid on the couch every night since she’s been here, imagining her coming into the living room to get me, or calling for me from my room for something stupid like a glass of water, just to get me in there. But the other part of me hoped she wouldn’t, as if I want to wait as long as I can, and I’m afraid that if she gives in to me too soon, I might feel differently about her like I do with every other girl. But if she were some other girl, I might’ve initiated it myself already, and she’d surely be gone by the very next day. But with Sienna it’s different. Everything is different. I want her more than anything, especially right now as I feel her body beneath me. And I know it must be obvious to her just how much I want her, but I don’t care. I don’t try to hide my hard-on this time. And she doesn’t seem to mind.

  I lean in closer and study her features with a calculated sweep of my gaze, fighting my growing feelings for her and my ever-present conscience. Her hazel eyes—more green today than brown—the plump heart shape of her lips, and her cute nose and the freckles splashed all over that I want to kiss individually no matter how long it takes. The smell of her skin and her breath and her soft hair makes me ache with need. I grow even harder against her, having never imagined that I could get any harder. Leaning over farther, my fingers tightening around her delicate wrists, I press myself eagerly against her below. A little gasp escapes her parted lips and it alone drives me insane. I bite down on the inside of my mouth—God, what I wouldn’t do to strip off her clothes and take her right here. Or even just to put my fingers inside of her, or pleasure her with my mouth—I’d do whatever she asked me to do.