Right now they’re fighting a losing battle on their own.
She blinks a few times, tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth as I watch the tears well up in her eyes. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why would I have come at her like that?
“I’m sorry,” I instantly say, looking around the crowded mall and realizing this is not the time or the place to have this conversation. We’re supposed to be Christmas shopping, our attempt to enjoy the holiday when we both know everything is caving in on us.
Sienna shakes her head, her eyes wet and her mouth turned down. “Don’t be sorry. I have no idea how to handle any of this and I’m falling apart.” She now starts to cry. We’re standing in the middle of this damn mall and I’ve made Sienna cry. I’m a horrible friend. “I don’t want to lose him,” she whimpers, admitting her worst fear out loud.
Sienna has lost so much already even if her mom and dad weren’t fully a part of her life, it still doesn’t discount both of them dying before she reached twenty-five. We don’t ever talk about what it was like to lose her mother at six years old, but I imagine the impact is too huge for her to even realize.
“We aren’t going to lose him,” I say, reassuringly, even if I don’t know if it’s true. All I know is I can’t lose him either and I’m going to fight like hell to get him to realize we all support him and we all need him.
Sienna swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara a little and it makes me smile. This is the last place we should be. We should be at home with Caleb, all of us. We should be telling him how much we need him to get better and how much we love him. We should be sharing with him our fears and helping him find a way to slowly get better.
“Let’s go home,” I say, linking arms with Sienna.
She sniffs a little, her head leaning over to rest on my shoulder as we walk toward the exit.
When we arrive back home, I park my car in the alley, but neither Sie or I get out immediately. The air between us feels filled with worry, bouncing between us and resting heavy on my heart. Every day that passes feels like weeks, minutes tick by feeling like hours, endless hours of worry and stress. But even as I think this, I know it’s so much worse for her. Without Caleb I’m not sure Sie would survive.
“How do you want to handle this?” I ask, the words shaky and weak. We need to have an intervention. We’re twenty-two years old and we’re dealing with something that most people never have to deal with in their lifetime. It’s more than Sienna should ever have to deal with, and I can’t help but wonder when the hell she’s going to catch a break.
“I think we just need to explain how we’re feeling,” she replies, her eyes focused out the windshield, never looking over at me. “Maybe I should tell him…” She stalls out, not wanting to admit out loud she’s worried about him taking his own life. Her only experience with something like this was her mother and that’s how things ended in that case.
“We’re all going to be uncomfortable. This isn’t the time to beat around the bush or only share half-truths,” I say, attempting to encourage Sie to share her thoughts and feelings. “We have to be brutally honest with him.” I let out a hard sigh, thinking back to mine and Caleb’s conversation this morning. “I tried to come down on him this morning, but I don’t think it worked. I don’t want to argue with him. It feels like it makes everything worse and then I feel like shit too.”
Sie nods now, her eyes looking up as if she’s thinking about what to say to him. I don’t think we need a script or even a plan for that matter. We all just need Caleb to know we’re on his side and we want him to get better.
“Do you think Reid had any luck?” I now ask, knowing he was planning to get Caleb out of the house today.
“Fuck, I hope so. Caleb is stubborn as hell, but if anyone can get through to him it’s Reid. Their relationship is so…” Sie trails off again, looking out the side window now and I catch the sound of her breath being pulled in raggedly. She’s crying again, but this time I’m joining her.
“Their relationship is so fucking solid. Reid would never let anything happen to Caleb,” she says, her words coming out in a plea of desperation, almost like she’s willing Reid to fix all of this. “I can’t even think about where we’d be if Reid hadn’t…” Again she stops, her words catching in her throat, trapped by a sob she’s holding in.
All I can do is nod in agreement, trying to find the words to help her through this, but I have nothing. I might be new to this little family, but it doesn’t mean I’m not fully invested. I fell in love with Caleb the day I met him, which I never thought would happen. I never believed in that sort of thing. Soulmates and finding the one person you’re supposed to be with, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen with Caleb. The universe created this little life for me when Sie and I were placed together by the freshman dorm lottery. It was all part of a grand plan that would find me falling in love with her brother.
This is on all of us now.
“We should go inside. The boys are going to see us sitting out here and wonder what the hell we’re doing,” I tell Sienna and she smiles a little.
“We probably do look like weirdos hanging out in the car in the alley.”
She opens the door now and walks to the back of my SUV to grab what we did purchase out of the trunk. We were able to grab a few random things for Reid and Caleb while we were shopping and we both have some pretty big gifts waiting at home that we bought earlier.
With the bags in hand, we make our way to the back door. Sie stops, taking in a deep breath as she looks over her shoulder at me. I smile, encouraging her on and knowing this is what we need to do to set things on the right path. If Caleb thinks we’re giving up, he may too. We have to stay on him. We have to keep talking no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
But when she opens the door, there is Christmas music playing and the house smells like cinnamon and cloves.
Now when she looks back over her shoulder at me, her face is all narrowed eyes and furrowed brows and I laugh out loud.
“What the hell are they doing?” Sie whispers, and I shake my head, eyes wide and just as confused as she is.
While Caleb likes to cook, he hasn’t done much of anything since his arrest. We’re lucky if he gets out of bed, let alone cooks a meal. I call it a good day if he’s awake when I get back from a run or whatever.
We walk in and the first thing we see is Caleb at the stove, and through the doorway to the living room is Reid putting up a Christmas tree.
It smells like winter in our house and the only thing that’s missing is snow. Growing up in Lake Tahoe I was used to having a white Christmas along with the smell of fresh cut pine trees and newly fallen snow. Since moving to Hawthorn, I have to admit I miss it a little, but walking into this makes it almost feel like…home.
Sienna doesn’t say a word, she drops the bags in the mudroom and bolts to where Caleb is stirring a pot of something on the stove. She hugs him from behind, her arms wrapping around his waist and crushing him with her weight.
“I love you!” she yells out before skipping over to where Reid is fighting a losing battle with a string of lights and I hear Caleb call out after her, echoing her sentiments.