Sienna had ordered sparkling water with lime. The bubbles rose in a steady column and the lime wedge bobbed against the ice. Elise had a glass of red wine that she was nursing slowly, her cheeks still flushed from the game, her hair down around her shoulders. She'd changed out of her game clothes into jeans and a dark top and the gold chain she wore outside of uniform, andshe looked relaxed and so present that the restaurant might as well have been empty.
Lavender had brought them the bruschetta without asking and a lemon poppyseed cake for later, the same order they'd had on that first visit, and the familiarity of it filled Sienna with a tenderness she was learning not to fight. Sienna took a sip of her sparkling water, the lime tart and sharp against the fizz, and Elise was so beautiful across the table that she kept losing track of the conversation.
"Mara said she's going to rotate me and Lex," Elise said, twirling the wine glass between her fingers. "Different roles. Lex takes the power minutes, I take the tactical shifts. She said the team is better with both of us."
"She's right." Sienna turned the sparkling water glass between her fingers, the lime wedge bobbing against the ice.
"I know. I think I've always known. I just needed to hear it after playing, not before." Elise's fingers turned the stem of her wine glass. The candlelight caught her face and her expression was thoughtful, the competitive edge from the game still there but tempered now by quiet peace. "I spent eight weeks terrified that Lex would make me obsolete. And then I got out there today and the ice was the same ice and my body knew what to do and the team responded to me as they always have, and I thought: why was I so afraid?"
"Because your identity was tied to your performance," Sienna said. "And when the performance was taken away, you had to figure out who you were without it."
Elise raised an eyebrow. "Have you been talking to Helen?"
"Helen helped me see a few things about myself too." Sienna smiled. "The injury took from you. But it gave you back more."
Elise set the glass down. "It gave me you." "I was so scared today. Standing on the bench waiting to go on. I kept thinking, what if my body's forgotten? What if I can't do it anymore?"
Sienna squeezed Elise's hand across the table. "Your body hadn't forgotten."
"No. It hadn't." Elise smiled. The smile faded, her expression turning serious. She reached across the table and took Sienna's hand. Her fingers were warm and rough and they wrapped around Sienna's with a firmness that was both tender and certain.
"I love you," Elise said.
The restaurant sounds faded. The clink of glasses, Lavender's voice at the bar, the music playing low from the speakers. None of it registered. There was only Elise's face across the table, unguarded and certain, and her hand holding Sienna's, and the three words sitting between them like a door opening.
Sienna's eyes stung. Her throat closed. She thought of Helen's office and the tissue box and the words she'd said there:I don't know how to be loved.And now Elise was loving her, openly, in a restaurant, and the words were not clinical or analytical or complicated. They were simple. Three words. And Helen had told her to stop fighting.
"I love you too," Sienna said. Her voice was rough and her eyes were wet and she didn't care. "I love you so much it scares me, Elise. I've been scared of it since the first day."
"I know." Elise's thumb stroked across Sienna's knuckles. "But you don't have to be scared anymore."
Sienna wiped her eyes with the heel of her free hand. "I'm working on it."
"I know that too."
Sienna brought Elise's hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles, one by one. Elise's eyes softened. The restaurant continued around them and neither of them moved.
They walked back to Elise's apartment with their hands linked and the cool evening air carrying the scent of salt and eucalyptus from the trees along the road. They didn't rush. The walk was slow and quiet and the streetlights cast long pools of amber on the pavement and their shadows stretched out ahead of them, merged at the hands. Sienna's body was humming. The I-love-yous were still reverberating through her, not fading but settling, becoming part of her, a new load-bearing wall where there'd been empty space before.
Elise kissed her at the corner, slow and wine-warm and certain. A car passed and its headlights swept across them and neither of them pulled away.
In the apartment, Elise kissed her against the front door. Then against the wall. Then they were in the bedroom and the lights were off and Elise's mouth was on her neck and her hands were undressing Sienna with the focused attention she brought to everything, and Sienna let herself be undressed and let herself be wanted and let herself say "I love you" again with Elise's body pressed against hers in the dark.
The sex was different. Not more intense than before, but deeper, layered with what they'd said at the restaurant. Sienna was on her back and Elise was above her, inside her, her fingers moving with a rhythm that was slow and devastating, and they were looking at each other in the dark and Sienna kept saying her name, just her name, over and over. When she came, it was quiet and powerful and she pulled Elise's mouth to hers and kissed her through it.
Then Elise lay back and Sienna went down on her with the confidence she'd been building for weeks, and Elise's bodyresponded to her mouth as if it had been made for it, and Sienna made her come twice, the second time with her fingers and her tongue together, and Elise's hand in her hair and her voice cracking on Sienna's name.
They lay together afterward, tangled in the sheets, breathing hard, the room smelling of sex and salt and the faint lemon of Elise's shampoo. Elise's head was on Sienna's chest and Sienna's fingers were in Elise's damp hair and the silence was full and warm.
“Can you stay tonight,” Elise murmured.
Sienna closed her eyes. The words pulled at her, the familiar gravity of Elise's bed and Elise's body and the fierce, aching want to wake up beside her in the morning.
"I can't tonight." She pressed her lips against the top of Elise's head. "I have an early start. The sports medicine conference in Denver. I need to be at the airport by six."
Elise lifted her head, chin propped on Sienna's sternum. "How long?"
"Two days. Back Friday evening."
