Breaking the Silence

The belt was still in Sienna's hand when I came down from it.

Not the belt. Her belt. The brown leather one she'd worn through airport security that morning, the one with the worn notch that sat a little loose on her hips because she'd bought it before the season started and dropped eight pounds since. It was doubled in her fist, hanging there like something she'd forgotten she was holding.

I was on my knees on the living room rug, which is where I'd been for the last twenty minutes, and my whole body was doing that thing it does after, the shaking thing, the blood coming back to the surface. The overhead light was too bright. It's always too bright in here. Sienna doesn't believe in lamps.

"Brooke."

I knew the voice. Flat. Not loud. She doesn't have to be loud.

"Look at me."

I lifted my head. She was standing over me in her road clothes, the gray sweats and the white tank she'd flown home in, and her hair was still up in the pineapple she does before a flight, and she hadn't taken her shoes off. That was the first thing I noticed. She hadn't taken her shoes off. She always takes her shoes off at the door. She'd walked past the mat and straight to me and hadn't even kicked them free.

"You came," she said.

I didn't say anything. My throat was dry from the way I'd been breathing, fast and shallow, and I could taste salt on my lip where I'd bitten down.

"I asked you a question."

"Yes."

"Say it."

"I came."

"Without asking."

I nodded. My knees hurt. The rug is a cheap one, the kind that sheds, and I could feel the fibers stuck to the skin of my shins. I'd been counting on the pain to keep me grounded. It wasn't working anymore.

Sienna dropped the belt on the couch. She didn't throw it. She just opened her hand and let it fall, and the buckle hit the cushion with a soft thud, and then she crouched down in front of me so we were eye to eye, and I could smell her. Airplane smell. Recycled air and the lavender hand cream she uses and underneath that, the sweat from whatever she'd done in the fourth quarter that had her coming home with a bruise already going purple on her forearm.

"Two months," she said.

"I know."

"Do you know what two months means? Because I don't think you do."

"Sienna."

"Do you know what I was doing when you texted me that you were here? I was in the tunnel. Coach was talking. I had my phone in my sock because I knew, I knew, you were going to try something, and I still checked it, and I still saw it, and I still had to stand there and nod at him like my girlfriend wasn't sitting in my apartment waiting to get herself in trouble."

"I wanted to surprise you."

"You wanted to come."

"It's the same thing."

"It's not the same thing." She stood up. She's tall, five eleven, and from down here she takes up the whole room. "It's not the same thing at all, Brooke."

Here's the thing about Sienna. When she's mad she doesn't yell. She gets quieter. She gets precise. She starts talking in that way she does when she's breaking down film, like everything is a possession and she's deciding what to do with it. It's worse than yelling. I've been yelled at my whole life. My dad yelled. My ex yelled. I know how to sit inside a yell. I don't know how to sit inside this.

"I came because you were gone for six days," I said. "And you didn't call me back Tuesday."

"I had a back-to-back."

"You didn't call me back Tuesday."

She looked at me for a long time. Then she walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and stood there with the door open, not taking anything out. Just standing in the cold light. I stayed on my knees because she hadn't told me to get up, and I wasn't going to assume.

"I was going to call you tonight," she said. "After I showered. I had it planned. I was going to call you and tell you about the game and ask you about your shift and we were going to do that thing where you tell me about the customers and I pretend to care."

"You care."

"I care about you. I don't care about the customers."

She closed the fridge. Came back. Sat down on the floor across from me, cross-legged, and now we were the same height, and I could see the bruise better, and I could see that her eyes were tired. Not angry tired. The other kind. The kind that comes from six days of hotels and press and a body that's been asked to do too much.

"Get up," she said.

I got up. My legs were unsteady. She didn't help me.

"Sit on the couch."

I sat. She stayed on the floor, which she does sometimes, because she says it keeps her from looming, and I hate that she has to think about that, and I love that she thinks about that, and both of those things are true at once and I don't know what to do with them.

"Tell me why you came without asking."

"Because I wanted to see you."

"That's not a why. That's a what."

"Because I was scared."

"Of what."

"Of you not wanting me anymore."

There it was. Out on the floor between us, ugly and small. Sienna didn't move. She's good at that. She can hear a thing like that and not flinch, and I don't know if that's a basketball thing or a her thing, but it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

"Why would you think that."

"Because you're you. And I'm me. And you have a life that's on TV and I have a life that's a register at a coffee shop on Ninth and you've been gone for six days and I sat in this apartment and I thought, what if she comes home and she looks at me and she realizes she can do better."

Sienna leaned her head back against the coffee table. The wood knocked against her skull and she didn't react. She was quiet for so long that I started to hear the fridge hum and the neighbor's TV through the wall and my own heart, which was still going too fast.

"You came without permission," she said finally. "That's the thing we're talking about. Not whether I want you. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the fact that I gave you one rule and you broke it because you were scared, and now I have to decide what to do about that."

"I know."

"Do you? Because you're sitting there looking at me like I'm supposed to fix it. I'm not going to fix it. You did the thing. You get the consequence."

"I know."

"Stop saying you know."

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't ask for sorry."

She stood up. Walked to the bedroom. I heard her open the closet, and then the drawer, and then she came back out with the wooden hairbrush, the one with the flat back, and she set it on the coffee table next to my knee. Didn't say anything. Just set it down and stood there.

"I'm going to shower," she said. "You're going to sit here and think about what you did and why you did it. When I come back, you're going to tell me, and you're going to be honest, and then we'll deal with it. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes, ma'am."

She walked past me toward the bathroom. I heard the door click. Then the water. Then nothing but the hum of the fridge and the neighbor's TV and the sound of my own breathing, and the brush sitting on the table like a question I already knew the answer to but was going to have to say out loud anyway.

I looked at my phone. Six missed calls from my mom. I turned it face down on the cushion.

The water kept running.