Page 13 of Set the Moment
Iwould’velaugheddueto the look on Sienna’s face when our eyes connected in the mirror, had this moment been funny. The deer caught in the headlights look works for her.
As if realizing her frozen state, she inhales sharply. Her shoulders relax as her eyes soften around the edges.
“What’re you doing here?” Her angelic voice warms my skin as her attention flickers back and forth between my face and the sketchbook on my lap.
Had I been over the stunt she and that asshole in the tacky green sweater pulled earlier, I would respond to her with something along the lines of“waiting for you, babe,”or“sitting here like an idiot because I bought a dance studio for you even though I haven’t seen you in 615 days.”
But I don’t…Instead, I say,“Is this not a dance studio?” My tone is clipped as my hard gaze locks yet again with hers, daring her.
The fire beneath her hazel eyes blaze alight, her jaw sets as they squint down at me.
I’ve never talked to Sienna like this. Cleo and Georgia, yes, but never her. She’s always been the angel of my dreams, the Alice that I yearned for in Wonderland. But I know that’s not the truth.
She’s been a stranger to me since the day she walked out of my life two years ago.
I watch as she ducks back into herself, placing the mask I’d always pulled away as a kid back on. Sienna had been smiling when she first entered the studio until she saw me.
I take my time analyzing her differences in the mirror. In almost two years since laying my eyes on her in person, Sienna has only made one change to herself.
Her hair, once a long wild mane of Cherry Cola curls, is now a slicked back bun of pink delight.
I tilt my head at the freshly dyed hair.
Pink isn’t even her favorite color, lavender is.
“Yes. It’s a studio, but you’re no Alvin Ailey. Why are you here, Jace?” She folds her arms over her chest, and my eyes immediately flicker to the way they push up in her shirt before flickering back to her face.
Sienna has the face of an angel, the face of someone you’d be grateful was the last person you’d see before the darkness of death takes over you. The cold, dead thing in my chest beats fast as she pops her hip out, giving me the stern look of an annoyed authority figure.
I smirk at her. I can see it in her eyes, the hidden amusement, the questions.
Trust me, angel. I have millions of questions for you, too.
“What does it look like, angel? You’re a teacher, I need teaching. So teach me.”
As if I had stunned her, Sienna’s eyes widen and she reels back before rolling them.
My smirk grows into a full blown smile as she scoffs at my rude tone. Some things never change with her.
As kids, whenever I’d gotten annoyed with either Cleo or Georgia—which was basically all the time since my closest friends were two annoying girls who wanted to practice their makeup on me all the time—Sienna would always stand up for them, or roll those honey-like eyes at me.
I’ve thought about this moment for years. The day that I’d see Sienna Jones again after she’d left me on a rooftop in Manhattan on her 18th birthday, dazed and confused with the feel of her plump, pink lips still lingering on mine.
I bet she’s still wearing the same lip gloss, too.
That expensive raspberry flavored one that almost every girl in the world wears because it’s‘lip oil’not gloss…or whatever the fuck that means.
I just know it felt good against mine.
That night that she’d left, I’d been trapped with the knowledge that there was a possibility I’d never see her again. She was living in New York and so was Cleo. Georgia, Ryan, and I stayed here in Maryland, and the Jones girls seemed like they were living their life in the Big Apple.
Cleo had met some guy, Marcelo, who I’ve played against a few times, and Sienna was doing spectacular at NYU.
The kiss was something you could only dream of. At the top of a skyscraper in the heart of the city, fireworks for the New Year went off and her lips met mine in a dance I hadn’t known was already engraved into my mind and soul.
It was slow and needy like a kiss before war. Your last chance at goodbye.
Until Georgia found us on the rooftop.
