Page 35 of When You Wish Upon a Wideout

His hand slid down, fingertips ghosting through the strands of her messy ponytail. “I wish you’d let me show you again.”

After a moment of silence, Sienna sighed. “I wish I was brave enough to let you.”

chaptersix

Beau’s gazedidn’t waver from Sienna’s.Please let me show you everything I’ve wanted to do, everything we should’ve done together. Give me a chance.Beau’s thumb stroked the soft skin of her cheek, which had faded from flushed red to a soft pink, the change bringing a smile to his face.

“Actually, my favorite color is your cheeks after I kiss you,”Beau once told her a long time ago. At the moment, he decided the light flush was, in fact, still his favorite.

But Sienna didn’t return the smile. She removed his hand from her face and stood, pushing the chair back. He followed, expecting her to walk out the front door. Instead, she made her way up the stairs, careful not to step on the book she had left at the bottom.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

With a hand on the banister, Sienna paused. “I’ll take care of the linens while you work on Greg’s room.”

Beau shook his head. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.” Sienna continued up the stairs, picking up a flattened box from the stack and a roll of tape, then disappeared from his sight.

Sighing, Beau took the stairs and went down the hall to Greg’s room, opening the door slowly. He wished it would have been magically empty, the opposite of how it was—full and exactly how Beau had remembered it as a child.

It was a stark contrast from his own childhood room. Greg’s room practically bled maroon, a manifestation of playing at Florida State. The bedspread, the curtains, the faded posters littering the walls—all of it was a shrine to one of the greatest houses of college football history.

Apart from a game-winning ball and some school sweatshirts from early college visits Beau had taken with his parents, there was no evidence of his football career in his room across the hall. And yet he wore the maroon jersey, the gold helmet. While Greg was six feet under and his name was whispered as if people weren’t supposed to say it, thousands chanted Beau’s name as teammates lifted him onto the shoulders of the biggest lineman, celebrating game-winning catches.

Beau shook his head and began pulling out clothes, neatly laying them on the bed. He would pack everything. It wasn’t his place to decide what pieces of Greg needed to be kept even twenty years after he had died. And Beau didn’t need one piece. Enough had already been embedded the day he had decided he would continue to live his brother’s life.

Sienna knocked on the open door, and Beau turned from the desk, still filled to the brim with school supplies and yellowing homework assignments Greg had never turned in. She pulled in a few boxes and approached the bed.

“This stuff?” she asked.

“All of it.”

Sienna began placing sweaters and pajamas into a box. “Is there something of his you want to keep?”

“No,” he said. “I think I have enough.”Of him in me. Too much.

For an hour, they worked in silence, filling more boxes until the closet, desk, and dresser were empty. Sienna gently peeled the posters off the wall, rolling the thinning papers up as Beau stacked the boxes neatly in the corner before plopping down on the bed they hadn’t yet stripped.

“You know, I hate this kind of red.” Beau patted the maroon bedspread as Sienna looked up from her place on the floor. “You were right back then, I neverhatedfootball. But I didn’t love it the way he did. I still don’t. Keep that to yourself though,” he added, trying to lighten the mood.

Sienna rose from the floor, dusting her hands across her leggings before sitting beside Beau. “You had to love it a little to put in all the work.”

“I guess. But I loved Greg more.” Beau leaned forward, balancing on his elbows. “Maybe too much.”

Beside him, Sienna shook her head. “You can’t ever love someone too much.”

“But you can live for them too much. Even when it’s something you would do without a second thought.” He turned to face her. “But at some point, kids, brothers, they live or die without you. And then what?”

A somber expression fell across Sienna’s face. “I don’t really know.”

Beau ran his finger over the scar at his temple. “I lived for Greg every moment after this,” he said, tapping it. “Except for two times.”

“When?”

“When you came back in high school,” Beau told her. “And when I saw you at the game.”

Sienna’s eyes dropped to her lap.

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