by Roxy Reid
We seem to have developed an unspoken one conversation a day rule. I don’t know who started it, me or Sienna, but I’m hanging onto it with the tips of my fingers. It’s the only thing standing between me and texting her every time I see something that makes me think of her.
Which, let’s face it, is more than I like to admit. The other day a co-worker was eating mac and cheese, and I had to fight the urge to text Sienna.
What was I going to say? Hey, remember how you like cheese? Cause I do.
I’ve told Darian a little of what’s going on. A very, very little.
He thinks this is just because I can’t ask her out. He says normally when I like someone I ask them out if it’s appropriate, or shift them into the “not available” category in my mind and move on. But with Sienna, I’m stuck in this thing where it’s definitely not appropriate, but also all of the play-acting we’re doing keeps this giant What-If sign perpetually blinking in the front of my brain.
I’ve kissed her a couple of times, since the after-party, but always sweet and gentle and quick. Perfunctory. Never when I’m on the edge of control. And definitely not when she’s making jokes about the man she’s going to meet after me.
I’m not normally jealous.
Then again, I’m not normally faking a relationship with a woman who is not actually into me and by definition is going to leave me in the dust.
I mean, she’s a little into me. That kiss was… she was there in it with me. You don’t get a kiss like — or the dreams that follow — when only one person is into it.
And sometimes when she laughs, and she looks at me…
But, as my mom would say, longing looks are a dime a dozen, and co-star chemistry is just a lucky professional break. If she hasn’t said she wants more, she doesn’t want more.
And Sienna Bridges hasn’t said she wants more. Believe me, I’ve been listening.
So when Sienna asks if I want to get out of town with her to inspect the site for the launch, I jump at the chance. Partly, because I want to see her. Partly, because it feels like all of L.A. is closing in on me, and I’m getting restless.
But mostly because I’m looking for a way to pop this stupid crush bubble I’m in. And maybe if we’re working together again, just working, focusing on the project, not putting on some lovestruck show for everyone else… Maybe then I can get myself to look at her and see the incredibly competent but otherwise ordinary woman Darian keeps telling me she is.
I look at the clock and jiggle my leg. Technically, I should wait fifteen more minutes before heading over to pick Sienna up so we can drive to the site together. Maybe twenty. I don’t want to appear overeager.
My phone buzzes, and I glance down.
Hey, the meeting ended a little early, so I’m ready if you want to get an early start?
I’m out of the house in a flash.
Sienna gestures to her surroundings with cocky satisfaction, and a smile so big I can’t take my eyes off her. “Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re right,” I say. “My vineyard is the perfect place to have the launch. It feels like a way to show off the wine, and tap into the farm-to-table movement…”
“... but it also physically gets the reporters onto your turf, and away from the competing noise of the city, and subliminally reminds them how successful all of your other business ventures have been, which is just one more reason why they should take you seriously,” she finishes.
I survey the landscape. Sienna’s right. The rolling fields of vines and the enormous sky would be enough, but the winery itself is a former Franciscan monastery, and the Spanish stonework adds an element of timelessness and gravitas, mixed with that sense of promised reinvention you get when old buildings are repurposed.
“My only worry is that the two hour drive out will be a barrier, and we’ll end up with lower attendees,” I say, but Sienna just looks smug again.
“Since it’s your property, we don’t have to rent it. So I’m re-purposing that part of your budget for luxury shuttles. Add in your personal draw, and restrict the guest list just enough that everyone who gets invited feels special, like this is an event that can’t be missed…” she shrugs, all fake humility.
“Ok, I give in,” I say with a grin. It feels like I say that a lot to Sienna. Both in real life and… not in real life. “You’re brilliant. I can’t wait to see it all come together.”
“Speaking of…” she twists her engagement ring, sliding it on and off her finger. I like the on motion better than the off. “How’s it coming with the casting? Has… You Know Who signed?”
“She’s not Voldemort,” I say dryly.
“No, but she is more intimidating than Voldemort,” Sienna says. She raises an eyebrow, “Well?”
I make a face, “Apparently she’s got a competing offer for another movie that would be filming at the same time. She’s leaning toward ours, but she wants to meet with their director and get a better sense of the project.” I lift her left hand to my lips and kiss it absently, “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for a few more weeks, darling.”
“Joshua!” Sienna tugs her hand away from me, blushing. “What are you doing? No one’s here. We don’t have to pretend.”
Shit. She’s right. I shouldn’t have… she’ll figure out...
“I’m not pretending,” I finally say. “I’m just… practicing.”
“I don’t want to practice,” Sienna rolls her eyes, and trudges across the courtyard to measure how much space we have in the place she wants to put the stage. “Heaven help me if you get any more practice,” she mutters.
Hey. What’s that supposed to mean?
Whatever it means, practicing isn’t in the ground rules. No matter how much I wish it was. The idea of touching her when it’s just us, no one watching…
I shrug off the thought, restless, and go to help Sienna measure.
After hours of working together, we’re finally heading back to the city. I’m driving down the highway, and it’s all I can do not to speed recklessly. I thought getting out of the city would help, but if anything it’s made this edgy feeling worse. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.
In the small enclosed space of the car, I can smell Sienna’s perfume, and I hit the gas harder than I should.
Do you know what’s real Josh?
We turn a bend, and Sienna gasps. To the right, the Pacific roils and flows beneath us.
“Oh, Josh,” Sienna breathes. “That’s beautiful.”
And she’s right. In the heart of the city, I forget how close we are to the wild of the ocean.
Pacific, my ass. There’s nothing peaceful about that ocean.
We pass a mile marker, and suddenly I realize where we are, “We’re coming up on my favorite beach,” I say.
“Really?” Sienna asks.
“When I first moved out here, and I was going to audition after audition and I wasn’t getting anything, I’d drive out here. I had this shitty car — one time it broke out here, and I had to spend the night — but yeah, I’d drive out here and I’d go down to the beach and just breathe.”
Sienna looks out the window at the ocean, “There are other beaches closer to L.A.”
“I think the distance was the point. I just had to get away from it all.”
I keep my eyes on the road, but I can feel her turning to look at me.
“Then let’s go now,” Sienna says.
“What?” I say. “We can’t. I’ve got paperwork. I’m sure you’ve got launch details. We should get back.”
“You’ve been in a funk for the last few weeks. If this is where you go to recharge, and we’re right here, then let’s go.”
We’re getting closer to the beach exit, but I hesitate. For some reason, taking her to that beach feels more personal than letting her into my house ever did. There’s also the risk that if we go together, there will always be a little bit of her imprinted on those sands. We’ll go our separate ways, and I’ll go back to my beach to mo
ve on, but it will be as suffused with Sienna as the rest of my life is.
“Please, Joshua?” she softly asks. “I haven’t been to the beach in forever.” And without another thought I take the exit.
I’m like a fucking marshmallow when this woman asks for something. It’s going to be so embarrassing if she ever notices.
We’re not even to the beach yet, but the winding drive down to the access point is already calming me. We roll down our windows, and the salt air washes over me like a balm.
We park, and even though the small parking lot is empty, we stash her purse and my briefcase in the trunk.
We clamber over some rocks to get down to the sand, and when Sienna loses her footing, she grabs my arm for support, and for a moment it feels like everything is right in my world.
Do you know it’s not real, Josh?
We take our shoes off when we get down to the sand, and stash them behind a rock. I like seeing my lace-ups nestled next to her practical heels.
“Well?” Sienna says, looking to the right, then the left. There’s empty beach as far as the eye can see, bathed in that golden-hour light that makes everything it touches look like something out of a fucking fairy tale. “Which way do we go?”
I point straight ahead, toward the ocean, and she grins.
The water is icy cold as it laps our feet, but it’s like it clears out the fog in my head. I close my eyes and breathe deeply for the first time in what feels like forever.
“Why do you want this production company so much?” Sienna asks.
I turn to see her studying me, as the tide withdraws, leaving our feet bare exposed in the wet sand.
There are a million answers I could give: creative control, the next natural step in my career, a secure income when my looks go, but on this beach, next to her, all those reasons seem flip.
“My parents are from New York,” I say instead. “Actually my whole family is. I’m the only one who came west. And they all work in the theater.”
“I think I read that somewhere,” Sienna says.
The tide comes in again, and I grit my teeth against the cold.
“I don’t want to work in theater. I don’t. I get bored playing the same character for that long. And I get frustrated that half of what you’re doing isn’t legible to the people crammed into the cheap seats. And I’m sorry, I’m just not that into Shakespeare.”
“... didn’t you win an Oscar for a Shakespeare-?”
“-Shakespeare re-telling. That’s different.”
I turn and start walking along the beach, the tide dancing in and out around my ankles, and Sienna falls into step beside me. “The point is, I don’t want the theater. I definitely don’t want New York. But every Thanksgiving when we sit around and talk, they’re all so damn creatively fulfilled. They throw themselves into whatever they’re working on, no holds barred. They take absolute ownership over it, no matter how big or small their part of it is, and they expect everyone else to do the same.”
I pick up a rock and chuck it out to sea. Sienna doesn’t say anything. She’s just letting me talk.
“I think the idea of a production company fills that same hole in me. Where I get to go all out on stories I pick. And where I don’t have to put up with the shit that is baked into so much of Hollywood. If someone is a bully, I can fire them. If someone says racist shit, I don’t have to work with them again.
“I mean, I’m not an idiot,” I say, hurling another rock. “I know it’s not going to magically make everything easier. In fact, it will be a lot more work. But it will be work on my terms. I decide when we gamble. I decide when we play it safe. I decide when we dig our heels in the sand and say, fuck it, this matters, I don’t care if we lose money, we’re going to stand for what’s right.”
I’m about to pick up another rock and hurl it into the ocean, but Sienna’s voice stops me.
“Joshua King. You’re an idealist,” she says it like she’s discovering something wondrous about me.
“I am not,” I grumble, and throw my rock. I’m pretty sure an idealist wouldn’t have a recurring dream about you going down on him. I reach for another rock, but she snatches it out of my hand and skips backward, holding it high over her head.
“You know I can reach that,” I say.
“Only if you catch me first, Idealist,” she takes off running and laughing, that dark hair streaming behind her.
I race after Sienna, splashing through the surf. She’s surprisingly fast for a woman who I happen to know scorns treadmills, but I catch her, one arm wrapping around her waist to tug her back into me.
“Take it back,” I say, as she laughs and twists to break free.
“Never!” Sienna turns in my arms to shove at me, and I loosen my hold, in case she’s done playing, but she doesn’t slip out of my arms. If anything, her hands on my chest are turning into a caress.
I should let her go. I should really, really let her go.
But I’m selfish, and I don’t.
“Well, I caught you, fair and square,” I say. “So if you’re not going to take it back, you have to give me something in return.”
“Okay…”
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
She blinks, “What?”
“What’s Sienna Bridges Big Want? The dream? The thing fueling the whole story?”
Sienna shrugs, “I’m a person, not a movie character.”
The wind blows, and she sidles closer against me. Probably just for warmth — her silk off-the-shoulder sweater isn’t meant for the beach — but I’ll take it.
“No, that’s actually one thing the movies get right,” I say, looking down at her. “Everyone’s got something big they want. So what is it you want?”
We’re straight up holding each other at this point, and instead of answering, she hides her face in my shirt.
At first I think that means she’s really not going to answer, but then she says into my chest, “I don’t know what I mmph.”
“What?”
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT!” Sienna shouts. She steps away from me and throws her arms up in the air. “Everyone comes to L.A. with these big dreams – write the script, star in the movie, build the business, make the thing. And I just… don’t.” She wraps her arms around herself. “When I try and picture it I just come up with… feelings. I want to be challenged at work, and content when I leave the office. I want my life to be full of people I love. I want a closet full of shoes, and fresh herbs growing on the counter. And there’s no road-map for any of that. I mean, I love my job. But I don’t know if I want to be in marketing forever. Although, I don’t know. Maybe if I got to pick a cause I loved, or had the chance to work with someone I absolutely believe in…” She tilts her chin up defiantly. “I don’t know what my big dream is. But one day, I think I will. So until then, I’m working hard on making sure I’m in a position to jump up and follow that dream, when it comes knocking. Paying off my student loans, learning everything I can from Carlotta, volunteering with causes I think I might be interested in.”
She tosses the rock she stole from me up and down in her hand, “I know that’s not sexy, Tell-Me-Your-Dreams beach walk talk. But that’s where I’m at right now.” She hurls the rock into the ocean. “And I don’t like lying to you.”
“When have you lied to me?” I ask, confused. “We lie to other people. We don’t lie to each other.”
Well, unless you count the rather big lie about how I want to fuck her brains out.
Sienna studies me, those blue eyes stormy. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but she seems to make a decision, because she walks toward me with purpose.
She reaches up to put a hand on my cheek, and I hold still, motionless, scared that any movement will make her back away. But she doesn’t back away. Instead she rises on her tiptoes, and presses her lips softly into mine.
She tastes like heat and excitement and home, all rolled into one, and I try to hold back, but Sienna Bridges is kissing me, o
f her own free will, no one’s watching. I lift her up, to get a better angle, and she moves with me, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her hair falls like a dark curtain around me, as a sink into her warmth and softness and that scent - her scent, that is impossible to describe but absolutely her.
It’s so much better than every dream I’ve had.
“I lied,” Sienna says, and it takes me a moment to remember what she’s talking about, “when I said I didn’t want to practice.”
“Then let’s practice,” I say, and we do.
We kiss and kiss, like horny teenagers, until finally I come to enough to realize her lips are swollen and my arms are aching. She must be realizing something similar about her legs, because she loosens them and slides back down me.
Which, hello. That’ll make you feel every nerve in your body.
I’m worried that means we’re done, and I’m not ready to be done. So I loop my fingers in her belt-loops and tug her toward me, which she seems to like, because soon enough she’s back in my arms, and I’m trailing my lips down her neck.
God, she’s sweet. She’s so fucking sweet.
I need her on me, or under me, or something, and she’s moaning. Every place I touch, every pressure I use, comes with a new catch of breath, or a sigh, or, best of all, an answer from her hands as they slide through my hair and grip my muscles and trail along — and under — the waistband of my pants.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I fall to my knees. I know I’m rushing it, but after months of emotional foreplay, I need to taste her now.
Sienna’s hands are in my hair, and I’m easing her zipper down, when she says, “Wait.” And then, “No.”
I groan, and release her. Dammit, you moved to fast. If you’d only gone slower…
But I know that’s a lie. Sienna wouldn’t sleep with a client. And that’s what I am to her. A client.
Even if in my brain she’s completely eclipsed her original role as the contractor I hired. To her, I am, and will always be, a client. I have to remember that.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse. “I should have asked before I… I mean I shouldn’t have in the first place… I mean…”
