Sienna pointed at her. "Your eyebrows said plenty."
Helen sipped her tea with elaborate innocence. "My eyebrows are just eyebrows, Sienna." Helen sipped her tea with elaborate innocence. "I'm sure it's perfectly normal for a player to text their team physician at midnight to say thank you."
"It is perfectly normal. She's being polite."
"Of course." Helen's tone was aggressively neutral. She set her mug down on the side table and folded her hands in her lap.
Sienna could feel the flush creeping up her neck. "I drove her to the hospital and made her scrambled eggs. That warrants a thank you."
Helen's eyebrows rose. "You made her scrambled eggs? At her apartment?"
Sienna's face was on fire. "She couldn't cook. She's in a sling. Her shoulder was just diagnosed with a labral tear. I made eggs because she needed to eat. That's a basic human kindness, not a..." She stopped. She didn't know what to call it. A date. A romantic overture. A sign that she was losing her mind.
"Not a what?" Helen asked pleasantly.
Sienna grabbed her mug and took a long sip. "Not anything."
Helen held up her hands. "I believe you. Eggs are just eggs."
Sienna took a long sip of tea and wished it were whisky. The conversation moved on. They talked about Mara's management style and how the coaching staff was bonding and whether Astoria's plans for a training facility upgrade were going to materialise. Helen told a story about a player who'd come to her office and spent the entire session talking about her dog, and Sienna laughed and the tension in her shoulders eased and she almost forgot about the phone on the counter.
But not quite.
But the text sat in the back of her mind, constant and unavoidable. She'd put the phone back on the kitchen counter, face down, as if that would help. It didn't. Every few minutes her thoughts circled back to it.You didn't have to do any of that. I really appreciate it.The words were simple. Friendly. There was nothing unprofessional about them. But the fact that Elise had sent them at this hour, when she was presumably alone in herapartment with her injured shoulder and her sling and the quiet, meant that Sienna was on her mind.
Which meant Sienna's pulse hadn't stopped doing that thing since the phone buzzed.
When Helen got up to use the bathroom, Sienna reached for her phone and typed a reply.
You're welcome. I hope you're resting. How's the pain?
She sent it and then stared at the screen. Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Not great. But the ice is helping. Thanks for the eggs btw. Best meal I've had in weeks. Don't tell anyone.
Sienna smiled. An actual smile, the kind that crept across her face without permission. She was typing a response when Helen came back, and she locked the screen and set the phone face-down on the arm of the chair with a casualness that was not remotely convincing.
Helen sat back down. Looked at the phone. Looked at Sienna. Said nothing.
They talked for another forty minutes. Helen told a story about her niece's wedding in Queenstown and the groomsman who'd given a toast while visibly drunk, and Sienna laughed in the right places and asked the right questions and checked her phone twice when Helen was looking at the ceiling, remembering the punchline. The conversation was familiar and unhurried, as it always was with Helen, and when Helen finally stood to leave, she pulled on her jacket and paused at the door.
"Get some sleep," Helen said. "And maybe put the phone in the other room."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Helen smiled. "Goodnight, Sienna."
The door closed. Sienna stood in her living room and listened to Helen's footsteps fade down the corridor. The sparkling water was still on the counter, unopened. Helen's tea mug sat on the coffee table with a lipstick print on the rim. The apartment was quiet again, and smaller for it. She picked up her phone.
Elise had sent another message while Helen was saying goodbye.
Still awake. Can't sleep. Shoulder keeps waking me up when I roll over.
Sienna sat back down in her chair and texted back.Have you taken the anti-inflammatories I left you?
Yes Doc. I'm a model patient.
I find that hard to believe based on today's evidence.
