This is the prologue to a novel that I started a year or two ago. It will probably never see the light of day, but I needed to vent. I needed to take reality and turn it into fiction. It has never been edited, and I've only ever read it once. Enjoy.
Prologue
I love you…
The heart felt words were met by silence. Sienna’s heart was pounding a mile a minute, and was breaking by the second. She hadn’t meant to tell him the truth, he didn’t need to know that she was in love with him. But they’d almost kissed, and she’d gotten caught up in a tornado of emotions, and now, here they were, staring at each other, one waiting for the other to speak up, to elaborate, to say me too. Zach had been Sienna’s best friend since she was fourteen and he was seventeen. They’d been through the death of his mother, and had lived together when her parents offered to take care of him and his younger brother. They’d become the sons that Sienna’s parents never had.
The two best friends shared everything. When Zach made the decision to forego college and head straight to the NBA, Sienna was the first person he’d shared the information with. When he had bought his first house, Sienna was the one that had gone house hunting with him. They were best friends, and Sienna never had any intentions of falling in love with her best friend. But here they were, twenty four, and twenty seven and she was pouring her heart out to him. And he hadn’t responded.
Sienna looked up into the dark eyes of her friend, and her heart stopped, skipped, and slammed against her chest. She saw uncertainty, and fear staring back at her. What had started out as two friends having dinner and drinks, had now turned into something totally different.
“Sienna…”
She watched him struggle to find the words. “I’m not asking anything of you Zach.”
“Maybe not directly, but you are indirectly asking something of me that I’m not sure I can give.”
“Just forget I said anything.” Sienna turned toward her door and pulled out the key to her condo, she wanted to get inside of the house and away from this awkward situation as soon as possible. But she stopped when Zach reached out, and placed his hand on hers, preventing her from inserting the key into the lock.
“We need to talk Sienna. I need you to understand why I don’t know how to respond.”
“Why?” The question was but a mere whisper, and she refused to turn around.
Zach sighed, if Sienna had told him this months ago things would be different, this conversation wouldn’t be so difficult. “I’m engaged.”
Shock, anger, hurt, and sadness washed over her like a bucket of ice cold water. And with those two words, Sienna knew that things would never be the same between her and Zach again.