The Moment of Letting Go

by J. A. Redmerski

  Sienna

  I burst into tears the moment I walk into my new hotel room. I had been holding them in the whole way back to Oahu, from the moment I went into Luke’s bedroom to pack my things. Why am I crying like this? Why do I feel like my heart was just ripped right out of my chest? I’ve never met anyone like Luke before, who seemed too good to be true, and I guess who turned out to be, after all. But what I felt being with him was different from anything I’ve felt with any other guy before. The way he effortlessly made me laugh, how he could make me blush, how he could say anything to me and I couldn’t find it in myself to not trust him, or feel comforted by him. I wanted to get lost in him. I did get lost in him.

  “She actually said, ‘when she finds out about us’? Are you sure that’s what you heard?” Paige has been talking my ear off for the past five minutes since I called her.

  “Yeah, that’s what she said.”

  “Sienna, you were right to leave,” she says into the phone, her voice carrying through the room from the speaker. “I dunno, but that whole situation really seems weird to me. Obvious, but weird. They definitely had a thing goin’ on at one point—that’s the obvious part.” She pauses and sighs contemplatively. “The weird part, well, whatever happened between them, it wasn’t normal.”

  “What do you mean ‘normal’?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, adrift in thought, and then she becomes energized. “Oooh, maybe she’s like his cousin, or something.” My face twists with disgust. “Yeah, I mean think about it: You said he told her she needed professional help, and all that stuff about her being obsessed with him—ewww, but you said she’s his brother’s ex, so that would mean—”

  “I doubt that’s it, seriously.” I shudder at the thought. “Maybe you should cut down on the time you spend watching Game of Thrones, Paige.”

  I slide open the balcony door and sit down at the table outside, propping my bare feet on the empty chair. I’m in a room on the opposite side of the building this time and now I know the source of the live music I’d heard before: drums pounding and shouting, voices echoing in the night—Hawaiian fire dancers are performing for the tourists.

  “But what else could it be?” she asks and then answers her own question. “Exactly what it seems like: They used to go out after Kendra and his brother broke up—maybe they even broke up because something was going on between Luke and Kendra; that could explain why Landon stayed in China. And it does seem like there’s bad blood between Luke and Landon.”

  I shake my head, listening to Paige ramble on and on. I guess if anybody could figure this out, it’d be my trusty wannabe PI best friend.

  “Well, then, I’ll say it again. You were right to leave. You don’t need that kind of crap in your life.”

  “I know. I don’t.” But I still miss Luke enough that if I saw him right now I could easily change my mind.

  “But why China?” Paige asks. “That’s weird, too. Seems to me like this guy was holding in a lot more about his life than he should have.”

  “Maybe,” I say, gazing out at the swirling fire batons moving rapidly in a circular motion against the surrounding darkness. “But when it came to his brother, it didn’t feel like he was keeping things from me because he might be ashamed of them, but more like they were just really painful to talk about.”

  “Well, did you at least ask for an explanation on the stuff you overheard?”

  “No,” I say. “He started to tell me—he did tell me some, but I stopped him.” I look down at the smoky glass texture in the tabletop, reflecting on the hour earlier. “I was scared to know—but I knew I was going to have to leave Hawaii anyway and I didn’t want to get more invested … more invested than I already was. But Luke and Kendra being involved at one point isn’t what would’ve bothered me, Paige; it was him lying to me about it that I knew I couldn’t forgive. He swore to me that he’d never kissed or slept with her, and he was pretty adamant about it. I can’t stand a liar, Paige. More than anything, I can’t stand a liar.” I sigh heavily and rest my forehead on my fingertips, my elbow propped on the table. “I was falling fast and hard for him. I liked him too much”—I like him too much—“and if it turned out that he’d lied to me about his involvement with Kendra, everything I felt for him would’ve been a lie, too, and I don’t want to give any of that up. I guess I just wanted to leave with the memories intact, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I guess I understand,” she says. “If it were me, I would’ve confronted them both, but I still get where you’re coming from. But what did he tell you?”

  “That it was something about their lifestyle,” I answer, though with difficulty as I try to understand it myself. “That there was something they were involved in that he hadn’t told me about yet.”

  “Another red flag,” Paige points out—I wish she’d stop doing that. “These people could be serial killers or something.”

  “Paige,” I cut in before she goes off on another tangent, “they’re good, normal people. That much I’m confident about. I just—”

  Already I’m starting to regret … everything.

  “Like I said,” I finally go on, “I knew what we had wasn’t going to go further than my two weeks on that island.”

  Neither of us says anything for a long, tense minute; and for a moment I forget I’m even on the phone with Paige. All I can think about is Luke, and the more I think about him, the more I want to cry into my pillow until sleep gives me some reprieve.

  “Things between us felt so real. I just …”

  “Sienna.” Paige says my name as if preparing to scold me. “Don’t talk yourself into giving him the benefit of the doubt. Don’t you dare. Just leave things like they are, like you said you’d rather do, because you know he’s lying. You don’t want to believe it, but I think deep down, you know.”

  Paige is right. I do feel that way deep down—it’s the main thing that gave me reason to stop him from lying to me further and to get up the courage to finally end it and leave.

  After I hang up with Paige and tell her I’ll be heading back home tomorrow, I give my mom a call to tell her how my vacation has been going. I don’t tell her as much as I told Paige, but I do tell her about Luke and how he made me feel.

  “But what is your heart telling you, Sienna?” my mom asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I answer distantly, thinking about it. “All I know is what I want it to be telling me, Mom.”

  “Well, baby, don’t you think that’s pretty much the same thing?”

  My mom always knows the right things to say. But that doesn’t mean I’ve always listened. As I lie in bed, missing the feel of Luke’s lumpy pillows pressed against my face, all I can think about are all the things that I knew going into this: We live in different states; Kendra hates me and seems out to make my life a living hell if I trespass on her turf; Luke seems to have a lot of baggage he has yet to unpack and put away.

  But what gets me the most, what confuses me to no end, is that even though I’m running away physically from this situation, emotionally I’m not ready to let go. I have to, but it’s going to be hard when I get on that plane tomorrow.

  I slept awfully last night. I missed the quiet peace of Luke’s secluded house on Kauai and listening to the rain fall against the earth as I lay in his bed at night, thinking about him being on the couch. One night I came so close to letting him know it was OK to sleep in the bed with me. I don’t know if I would’ve taken it further than that, but the thought of going to sleep with his arms wrapped around me was enough to sustain me probably forever.

  But things are so much noisier at the resort. I constantly hear people shuffling by outside my room in the hall, the rolling wheels of suitcases, kids talking loudly, excited to be going swimming. After Luke’s house, I never want to spend another night in a hotel again. After Luke, any guy I meet in the future will have a lot to live up to.

  Standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a frothy tooth-brush in my mouth, I hear wha
t sounds like a knock at my room door. I shut the water off and listen, my head hovering over the sink, toothpaste dripping from my lips. Another series of knocks rap against the door and I spit and rinse quickly so I can go answer it. For a second I assume it’s just the housekeeper, but toss that theory quickly when I don’t hear “Housekeeping!” following the knocks.

  My heart races just knowing that it’s Luke, because who else could it be?

  I press my eye to the peephole and freeze with my face against the coated wood.

  What is Kendra doing here? Kendra, of all people.

  I move my eye from the peephole and just stand here for a moment, not sure whether I want to, or should answer the door; my arms are rigid down at my sides. She might be here to hack me to pieces or something—crazy comes in many forms and Kendra doesn’t seem far from the farm.

  I open the door. There’s a long pause rife with tension between both of us as we stare at each other.

  She breaks the quiet. “Can I come in and talk to you?”

  “How did you know what room I was in?” That’s the only thing I want to talk about right now.

  She seems anxious to come inside, but answers just to get it out of the way. “A friend of mine works at the front desk.”

  Oh really? Well, if you attack me, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

  “Sienna …” She sighs and hesitates, looking discouraged as her big brown eyes stray toward the wall. Then she looks right at me. “I just really need to talk to you. I’m not here to give you shit, or to make you feel any more uncomfortable than I already have. Can I come in?”

  I step aside to clear a path for her.

  She wastes no time getting right to the point.

  “Seth tried to call Luke this morning,” she begins, standing in the center of the room with her tanned arms crossed over a pink tank top, “and it took forever to get through to him. Basically, Luke didn’t want to talk, but Seth got enough out of him to know that you took off last night and that … well, you might’ve overheard our argument.”

  I cross my arms, too, and nod slightly, unable to look her in the eyes. “Yeah, I did. I heard enough.”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” she says, and my gaze snaps back to hers. “I think if you did—well, what did you hear exactly?”

  My eyebrows stiffen and my defenses shoot up around me. “Well, you said some really hurtful things. Called me a bitch in a roundabout way and basically told Luke he’s better off screwing me and leaving me”—I snarl at her—“And, well, if there was more, I’m kind of glad I didn’t hear it.”

  I purposely omit the part about if I found out about them, even though I want to know the truth. I don’t want to know because of what I told Paige last night, but with Kendra standing here in front of me, I can’t help but give in to that desperate need to know all the answers even if they will destroy the memories. Kendra reaches behind her head and tightens her ponytail. Her long blond hair dangles against her back. She has freckles splashed across her face like me, but not nearly as many. She smells of suntan oil and salt and apology and regret.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about all of this,” she goes on. “It’s just been really hard on all of us, mainly me and Luke, since Landon’s death. Really hard, you have no idea, and I hope you never have to go through it.”

  “Wait a second.” I stop her, waving a hand in front of myself. “What are you talking about? What do you mean Landon’s death?”

  She stares at me with a blank expression, though behind it seethes an ocean of confusion and shock. She starts to speak, but at first the words only manage to part her lips. The corners of her eyes crease with deepening lines and she shakes her head looking at the floor.

  She looks back up.

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  No, he didn’t tell me. Suddenly I feel nauseous with grief and guilt. And anger.

  I shake my head and move around Kendra to sit on the end of the bed. “I had no idea …” My voice is as distant as my thoughts are.

  “Jesus,” Kendra says with disbelief. “I can’t believe he didn’t at least tell you that much.” She turns around to face me and starts to say something else, but I cut in.

  “How did he die?” My voice feels a little choked.

  She gets really quiet and even her demeanor shifts. Before she seemed eager, ready to talk, but now her shoulders appear to have stiffened and she isn’t as ready to open up anymore.

  “If I’d known that Luke hadn’t told you that Landon died, I wouldn’t have even said that much. When it comes to you, it’s more his story to tell than mine.”

  “OK, then what did you come over here for?” Now I’m just getting irritated with her, but the pain and sadness I feel for Luke overshadows it.

  “To apologize,” she says, “and to clear up anything you might’ve thought you heard.”

  “Well, I’m ready to hear it.” Really, I’m not. I’m terrified. I don’t want her to prove me right, that Luke lied about the two of them.

  Kendra sighs heavily and then walks over to the table by the window and pulls out a chair. She sits down on it much like a guy would, with her back hunched over, her deeply tanned legs wide apart and her arms resting atop her thighs, her hands dangling freely between them. She’s beautiful, but definitely one of the guys.

  “Luke needs just as much professional help as he says I do,” she explains, “but he’s also as stubborn as I am, too, and won’t admit it.” She slashes a hand in front of her. “But I didn’t come here to talk about Landon—I can’t talk about Landon.” She sighs. “When Seth told me how devastated Luke was that you’d left last night, I felt like shit. I know it’s no excuse, but I was only ever trying to look out for him. I didn’t mean to hurt him—Look, I just came here to tell you that Luke is an awesome guy. He’s golden, Sienna, and if you let him pass you by … I just think it’s a huge mistake, is all.”

  “From what I heard last night,” I say resentfully, still skeptical of her sincerity, “you don’t want me within five feet of him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she says, shaking her head again and gesturing her hand. “I totally admit that I said some messed-up shit, things I shouldn’t have said. But you’ve gotta understand that I really do love him like a brother, and he’s been through so much and he means everything to me. I know it sounds clichéd, but I just don’t want to see him get hurt. Especially right now. It’s too soon. He hasn’t even come to terms yet with Landon’s death and I’m just so afraid that if something else happens before he can find some closure, he might lose his shit, y’know?”

  I nod slowly. I do understand, as much as I can anyway, only being someone looking in at the situation from the outside and not having all of the details.

  “Luke is better around you,” she goes on. “Since you came here he’s changed. He’s happier—I dunno, like I said, he’s just better around you. I just think you should at least give him a chance to explain.”

  “If I ask you something,” I speak carefully, “will you answer me honestly and not get offended? Because I’m not trying to offend you in any way.”

  “Sure.” She shrugs her petite shoulders and raises her back out of a slouch, resting it against the chair. “As long as it’s not about Landon. I don’t talk about Landon.” There was a harshness in her words this time that I recognize right away as unbridled pain seething beneath the surface—she’s at as much risk of losing her shit as she says Luke is; this much is clear to me.

  I nod, agreeing, and then prepare my question, but I’m so nervous about the answer that I literally feel sick to my stomach; tiny beads of sweat are beginning to form in my hairline. I take a deep breath and try to compose myself, try to prepare myself for the truth, no matter how deeply it’ll cut into my bones to hear it, if I turn out to be right.

  Licking the dryness from my lips, I look back at her and say, “Has anything ever happened between you and Luke?”

  She looks down at the floor. “No,” she answers, surpris
ing me, because I thought her hesitation was all the answer I needed. “But there was a time when I tried.” She can’t look at me for a moment. She appears ashamed. “But don’t worry about me, or feel like I’m somehow a threat. I’m not. And I don’t want to be. That’s not what any of this is about and it never was. I guess since I tried to hook up with Luke months ago, he can’t help but mistake my concern for jealousy. It’s understandable, I guess. Frustrating, but understandable.”

  “But … something you said,” I begin. “You mentioned something about if I found out about the two of you.” Was Luke telling the truth? And why am I now suddenly feeling sick to my stomach because of the possibility that he was?

  She shakes her head and corrects me. “No, I said ‘about us,’ but I wasn’t talking about Luke and me. I was talking about all of us. Me, Seth, Luke, Alicia, and Braedon.”

  Suddenly Kendra jumps up from the chair, lets out a long, deep breath, and heads for the door. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to talk about anything having to do with her and Luke anymore, beyond what she’s already admitted.

  I feel a sort of panic rising up in me because she didn’t elaborate on her explanation. “But … what were you talking about, then?” I ask with faint desperation in my eyes—now that I know Luke was telling the truth, I need to know what the rest of the truth is. “What about you and Luke and Seth and everybody?”

  She sighs and shakes her head, looking briefly at the carpeted floor.

  “Luke didn’t want you to know before,” she says, “because he thought it would scare you off. It always does with girls like you.”

  “But what does—girls like me—I don’t understand.” I can’t decide which question to ask first.

  Kendra smiles slimly, but it looks more apologetic than anything else.

  “Sweet girls with their heads on straight and their feet firmly planted on the ground,” she says. “That’s all I mean.”

  My gaze drops to the floor as I try to take it all in, but I’m just becoming more frustrated.

  “What does he do, Kendra?”