I blinked. “That’s very specific.”
“So is she,” he said with a shrug. “Look, Sienna’s not subtle. If she crossed her own name off a guided trip you were supposed to do together? It’s because she feels too much. Too fast.”
My pulse thumped. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Liam said lightly. “Maybe because the last time she liked a guy, she baked him cookies and then literally flew to Arizona for six weeks so she wouldn’t have to give them to him.”
“…What?”
“Yeah,” he said proudly. “We come from a long line of dramatic decision-makers.”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “She’s avoiding me.”
“Yep.”
I winced. “You don’t have to say it so cheerfully.”
“Sorry,” he said, absolutely not sorry. “But it’s probably not that she doesn’t want to guide with you. It’s what she does. Too much.”
That thought hit me squarely in the chest.
Liam continued, “You know she’s only done the whole ‘serious relationship’ thing once? And even then, she ghosted the poor guy because he liked the wrong kind of granola.”
“Granola?” I echoed.
“She said it revealed fundamental incompatibility.” He shrugged. “We all have our things.”
A laugh escaped before I could stop it. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m helping more than you think,” he said. “If she crossed herself off your trip, it means she’s trying to give herself distance. So… step one is don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaked out.”
“You’re freaked out.”
“I’m analyzing.”
“Same thing, just with bigger words.”
I groaned.
Liam clapped me on the shoulder. “Look, man. She likes you. Everyone can see it. Even Louie the goat follows you around now, and that animal hates ninety percent of humanity. Just don’t… push.”
“I’m not trying to push anything,” I said.
“I know. But maybe she thinks she’s protecting herself. She probably erased her name because she thinks she’s doing the noble thing.”
“By avoiding me.”
“Yep.”
“And dropping me into a trip solo.”
“Leadership opportunity,” Liam said with jazz hands. “She’ll tell you exactly that. And she’ll believe it too, because she’s stubborn.”
I stared at the calendar again, the lonely pencil line underLead Guide: Carson.
Part of me was proud. Maybe she did think I was ready to take one alone, and part of me was frustrated. This was not the conversation I wanted to have via office whiteboard.
