Spring Secrets - Allie Boniface Page 0,17
with this place. It’s still pretty new, and it keeps me up nights. I like you, maybe that’s obvious, but I think it would be kind of a disaster if we got involved.” Plus if you really knew my history, you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.
Her face went red. “A disaster? Okay. I get it.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. If things were different—”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to explain. We’ll just be friends.”
“Friends?”
“You know, people who see each other once in a while. Hang out. Grab a drink, or coffee, or whatever.” She flipped her phone between her fingers. “I have your number now. So I could randomly text and ask how your day was.” She leaned in close. “And you could answer. The way friends do.”
“Gotta be honest, I’m not sure how good I’ll be at any of that.” He hung out and got drinks with Zane or Mac or Damian, sure, but not with women. Wasn’t there a line from some movie about how men and women could never be friends?
“Well, you still owe me six more training sessions, so I’ll be around at least that long,” Sienna said. “And last time I checked, my next one was tomorrow at four-thirty, so I’ll see you then.” She slid off the stool. “Friend.”
“FRIENDS?” MAX SQUINTED at Sienna from the iPad screen. “That doesn’t sound like very much fun.”
“But it makes sense.” Sienna stretched out on her sofa and tried not to think about her keen disappointment. Turned down by Dash Springer. Who, by all reports, slept with pretty much any woman who showed the least bit of interest and had a pulse. Even that woman she’d met at school today, Harmony, had alluded to the fact. Sienna had tried to play it cool today at the gym, but really? She’d thought Dash would have jumped at the chance to have a little casual fun with someone who’d be gone by summertime.
Not that I’m really the have-a-little-casual-fun kind of someone.
But she could be. She could try to be, anyway. That was the whole point of adding it to her list.
“I mean, I’m leaving in six months,” she added, faking the explanation for her best friend. “So it would be silly to get involved with him.”
“Do you want to get involved with him?”
Sienna didn’t answer. She couldn’t stop thinking about Dash’s hands touching her hips, her wrist, the small of her back as he kissed her. And she couldn’t stop counting the hours until tomorrow’s training session. Saying they could be friends had sounded okay in the moment, but when she thought about it now, it seemed like a copout. A major disappointment.
“Did you know he lived in California for a while?”
Max took a long drink of her beer. “He dropped out of high school, I heard that much, and hitched his way out of town. I didn’t know he ended up on the west coast, though.”
“That’s rather...”
“Ballsy? Stupid?”
“I was thinking brave.” At that age, what had Sienna done besides go to class and do her homework and follow all the rules her parents set for her?
Well, you started dating Jason Kingsley.
Oh. Right. She and Jason had met at Youth Fellowship Group the summer after junior year and fallen into an easy relationship spanning nearly a decade. He was the first guy she’d kissed, the first guy she’d traveled with, the first guy she’d brought home to her parents, the first guy she’d made a promise to.
“Sienna? You still there?”
“I’m here.” For a long time, she’d been completely content with that life, living in Whispering Pines and dating a guy who wanted nothing more than to raise a nice family who never ventured outside the town limits. Jason had waited for her all through college, even though they’d gone to different schools hundreds of miles apart. He’d held her hand at her grandfather’s funeral and tutored her brother when he was failing sixth grade math. Jason was kind and reliable and predictable. Good and gracious to a fault.
She just wasn’t sure he was the guy for her.
“I’m really glad you convinced me to apply for the fellowship,” she said. Everything in her life had changed the day she’d gotten the email from the Allbright Foundation. She’d felt her horizons cracking open, her whole future stretching out ahead of her. Once she got to London, everything in her life would change.
Except it was funny, but a lot had already changed in her life in just a few