It was the way he used to sneak into the house during high school. I turned and tiptoed down to the kitchen to let him in. I warned him not to say a thing. We slipped along the hallway and down the basement to the safety of the old leather sofa.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I wanted to make sure you were okay. I drove to the cemetery. I didn't join everyone at the graveside, but I was there. You didn't look like you were doing too good," Owen said.
I rubbed my forehead again. "It, it was a tough drive there and back."
"Your parents? I figured."
For a moment, I thought he was going to pull me into a hug, but Owen hesitated and I took a step back. Instead, he sat down on the sofa and opened the backpack he had brought with him.
"I realized I still had some things of Sienna's that I thought you might want back," Owen said. He pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I laughed and took it from him. "This is mine. My favorite book," I said.
Owen smiled. "Yeah, that makes more sense. I remember making Sienna read it before we watched the movie, but she was not into it."
"I remember," I said. "Sienna ended up inviting cheerleaders over and making pep rally signs. She sent me downstairs and you started the movie over so I could watch too."
"Well, here's what else I found," Owen said.
I sifted through the few articles he dumped on the sofa between us. "My constellation map. I wondered where this went."
"Sienna gave it to me after the meteor shower last year," Owen said. "I didn't know it was yours."
"Actually, so is the CD mix," I said.
"I loved that mix. I always wondered how Sienna got all the songs. Not really her type of music," he said. "Sorry. This was supposed to help you remember your sister."
I took his hand and squeezed. "But it did! Much more than the rest of today. Sienna knew we liked the same things and she wanted to give you things you liked, so she gave you my stuff."
Owen smiled. "Yeah, Sienna always figured out how to remove the guesswork from anything."
We sat for a moment, and I was happy to finally be remembering my sister for who she was. When I realized I was still holding Owen's hand, the heat went directly to my cheeks.
"Sorry," I said.
"It’s okay, Quinn," Owen said. He moved closer and took my hand again. "Don't you ever think Sienna might have wanted this? She was always matching us up, always putting us together."
"Then why were you dating?"
"Sienna wanted a high school sweetheart. Those stories don't include breaking up freshman year and spending the rest of high school trying to find someone else," Owen said.
"You wanted to break up freshman year?"
"It was pretty easy to discover that Sienna and I did not like the same things," he shrugged.
"Then why were you dating Sienna?" I asked. I thought about my beautiful, perfect sister and my cheeks flared even hotter. "Never mind."
"No, Quinn, it wasn't like that. Sienna made things easy for me. I'm not a joiner, I don't like being in the middle of things. I never would have experienced half of high school if it wasn't for her. I would have been down here." He looked around our basement family room.
"With me?"
I was not ready when Owen looked back. His blue eyes were too bright, his grip on my hand too warm and tight. He leaned forward and the nearer he came, the less breath I was able to capture. I sat airless and in the vacuum hope, excitement, and fear fought. We couldn't do this, could we?
"Quinn? Are you down there again?"
"Father?" I asked. I dropped Owen's hand as if it had burned me.