I know I’ll have to talk to her at some point during the dinner, but I put it off for as long as I can. 

“So.. do you really think he likes me?” The words spill from her thin lips as if they’ve been pounding on the walls of her mouth to escape. 

I make eye contact, knowing I’ll lose myself in her eyes the minute I do. She always says her eyes are plain, normal, nothing exciting. But. When I look into those eyes, I see the world I want to be in. 

They’re different, not brown, not green, not blue, but this prepossessing mixture. They start out dark green with a slight hint of blue, similar to when blue waves crash into algae covered rocks. 

They cut off, unevenly, into a faintly orange tint, which fades into a shade of green like the leaves right before they turn yellow in the fall. 

In her eyes I see the waves reaching for the bank’s surface, screaming a warning to the trees of the fire on the shore. The fire is creeping into the trees, taking its chance to swallow the leaves whole in the dry of fall. 

In her eyes I see the beauty of everything in nature lying on the forest floor. In her eyes I see the place I want to lay on my back, feeling the coolness of the ground, staring into the sky, with the chaos of a wildfire around me.

“Sierra?” Her voice brings me back.

“Huh? Oh, yeah I’m sure he does.”