No Place Like Homecoming, Dallen, Maggie [beach read book .TXT] 📗

and I didn’t need another reminder of all I’d be leaving behind.

I didn’t have friends. Not really. But I had a life here. I had people who cared. And for better or worse, this was the only home I’d ever known.

Savannah let it drop. But I almost asked her to bring up my trip again when she switched the topic to one I was even less interested in pursuing.

“So what do you think of the new girl?” Savannah asked.

I shrugged. Eloquent as always. But honestly, if I tried to put my mixed bag of feelings toward that girl into words, we could be in this car all night. And while there was no one at my home waiting up for me, I imagined Savannah couldn’t say the same.

“I hated her at first,” Savannah said, unprompted. “But...I don’t know. I think she might not be too bad once you get to know her.”

I stared at her for so long she finally snapped at me to keep my eyes on the road.

“What?” she said, all defensive.

“I just didn’t expect you to be her champion, that’s all.”

She snorted. “Please. I’m not saying I like the girl, but tonight she was cool to Callie.”

She shrugged, but she didn’t need to say anything more.

Savannah might not have been overly friendly with her work pals at school, but she was protective of them. Sometimes I was certain she liked her work friends more than her actual friends, but we’d never talked about it.

“She’s nice to Willow, too,” she continued. “She doesn’t act weird even when Willow is being, you know...Willow.”

I laughed because, yeah. I knew what she meant. Willow was as straitlaced as they came, which wasn’t exactly a selling point for a teenage girl. She acted more like a little old lady with her rules and her style. Her serious, goody-two-shoes personality didn’t exactly endear her to our classmates, in general.

So yeah, I knew what Savannah meant, and the thought of Isla being nice to those two made my chest do something...foreign.

I wasn’t sure if this tight, warm feeling was good or bad, but it was one of many new side effects I seemed to have when it came to Isla.

The girl was clearly bad for my health.

“Speaking of Willow,” Savannah said. “Are you going to her party tomorrow night after the Ronski event?”

I arched a brow. “Party?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

I did. Willow’s parents were almost never home so her house became home base for the princess troupe—and me, since I was almost always at the same gigs. The word ‘party’ was a stretch, though. Party would suggest that there were kegs and loud music, or something.

This was not the case.

Willow had more rules than any parents I’d ever met. Which was fine. We all respected that. “Is Isla coming?”

The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Savannah shot me a funny look, but she didn’t say anything about why I cared.

And I didn’t care.

Or, at least, I shouldn’t. I was leaving this town for good in a few weeks’ time. I didn’t have room to care about some new chick, and especially not one who seemed to swing from one extreme emotion to the next like a freakin’ monkey in the jungle.

“Maybe,” Savannah said. “Willow will probably ask her even though she’s not working the event. She and Callie are all about making the new girl feel included.”

I nodded. I was catering the engagement party so I knew how small it was. This would just be another glorified babysitting event for the Princess Troupe. They’d been doing more and more of those these past couple years as word had spread that the troupe wasn’t just entertaining, but actually good with kids. So now, any rich person who was hosting a dinner party wanted to have the Princess Troupe on hand to watch the kids.

“So? You coming?” she asked again, nudging me with her elbow. “You’d better. We want to spend as much time with you as we can before you ditch us.”

I ignored the searching look that followed.

I knew where this was heading and I had no desire to go there. Not with Savannah. But she let it drop, thankfully. I was so not in the mood to be grilled about when I’d return—never. And how I planned to finish school—I didn’t.

“Will Roman be doing the catering with you?” she asked instead.

I nodded. “They’re training him to take over while I’m gone.”

She pressed her lips together, and I held my breath as I waited for the questions about when I’d be back. Yet again, she surprised me by not bringing it up. “You should bring him to the party.”

I glanced over “Wait. Don’t tell me you have a thing for Roman—”

“Oh please.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t do bad boys.” She shot me a quick sidelong glance. “That’s why I never fell for you.”

I choked on a laugh. “As someone who’s spent the entirety of my high school years working to support my family, I guess I’d never thought of myself as a ‘bad boy.’ More like a boring old man in a teen’s body,” I said.

“If the ripped jeans fit,” she said. But then she smiled. “I think maybe the two of us grew up faster than we were supposed to.”

I couldn’t argue that. “So if you’re not into Roman—”

“Callie’s into him,” she said.

My eyes widened.

“I know, I know.” She held up her hands to stop any protests. “I don’t like it either.”

“It’s just—” I started and stopped. “Roman’s a good guy and all, but he’s just…”

“Yeah,” she said when I failed to finish. She got it. He was a good guy, but he lived a very different lifestyle than Callie. He was way more experienced and had a jaded worldliness about him that made the idea of him and sweet, naive, optimistic Callie just seem wrong. He’d only graduated one year before us, but next to Callie it seemed like a lifetime.

“I’m