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Piper jumped out of her skin, smacking her elbow on the table. She winced and turned to face the culprit. “Ow! Why the fuck are you here? Are you seriously stalking me now?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Emma said she needed help studying.” Leo sat down beside her.
“You two know each other?” Piper asked Emma, pointing between the two of them. Emma certainly seemed like the type of girl Leo would be into.
“Emma’s playing Adelaide, another headlining role in the musical.” Leo’s mouth quirked up, and Piper suddenly felt like a caged animal, a mouse caught in a trap. A mouse with Leo’s handwritten note burning a hole in her back pocket.
“Does Emma speak for herself, or are you planning on talking over her the whole time?” Piper bit off.
“Holy shiiiit,” Emma cackled. “Did you two use to date or something?”
“I would never touch him with a ten-foot pole,” Piper spat.
“You wound me.” Leo rolled his eyes. “And to answer your question, Emma, the SparkNotes version is that we went to the same high school. Piper decided that taking my advice in Spanish class was beneath her even though I’m literally fluent, and now, here we are.”
“You forgot the part where you purposely ripped apart everything I did in that class. You didn’t give your so-called ‘advice’ to anyone but me. It was your mission to make me look stupid in front of everyone the same year my parents died.” Piper scrunched her nose at the memory of each humiliating encounter with Leo back then. She’d meant to keep the last part in her head, but it had come out regardless.
Leo dared to look aghast at this. “That’s not what happened, Piper.”
“Whatever.” Piper swallowed and looked away before thoughts of her parents could overwhelm her senses. “Hopefully you’re better at helping people study now because we have a lot of stuff to cover. Emma, I don’t know if he’s tried to rope you into asking me about the play, but I’d rather not discuss it.”
“It’s a musical,” Leo corrected.
“He only told me that he was trying to get you to do it.” Emma lifted her hands in a show of innocence. “I’m just here to study. I wasn’t lying about my grades. Hornbill said you two were my best shot—other than him, of course.” Piper watched Leo’s face momentarily scrunch in what looked like disgust before relaxing.
“We should get to work, then.” Piper nodded.
“First things first, I need to know what this is.” Leo pointed to the open wooden box Piper had slid off to the side earlier. Emma glared at Leo, and he shrugged. “What? It looks like a little treasure chest. You can’t possibly tell me you don’t want to know, too. My entire existence revolves around storytelling, so a mysterious box in the middle of the table? Yeah, I’m gonna ask.”
Emma chuckled. “Okay, fine. I was curious, but it just looked personal.” She turned to Piper with a small shake of her head. “If there was a button that said ‘don’t press me’ on the table, I bet he’d immediately press it.”
“That’s not even in question.” Leo scoffed. “Obviously, I’m going to hit the button. What’s in the box, princesita? Mementos from boyfriends past?”
It was just a box. Logically, Piper knew that, but her body still locked up with the thought of having to explain. Leo would no doubt find it silly to hold onto things so seemingly meaningless. When she didn’t respond, Leo pulled the box toward himself and peered into it. Piper wanted to throw up. Everyone was going to find out how pathetic she was. That she could never get over something that had happened over five years ago.
To Piper’s utter shock, Leo pulled out the apatite stone first and held it up, squinting at it. “This matches your eyes.”
“Yeah,” Piper finally spoke, and the corner of her mouth tugged upward. “That’s kinda the point. The whole box represents me.”
“You just carry around a bunch of things that remind you of yourself?” Leo’s normal asshole behavior was back, and Piper was grateful for an excuse to fight.
“What a power move. I like it,” Emma chimed in.
“No,” Piper laughed. “My mom called them inspiration boxes. She’d make one for each client during the designing process of their house. They had pieces of wood, rocks, paint swatches, fabrics, that kinda thing.”
“She made you this one?” Leo asked, seeming genuinely intrigued as he pulled out a plaid square. “What does this signify?”
“I like everything in organized boxes, just like she did.” Piper forced a smile in the Pavlovian way she always did when either of her parents came up. She had trained herself well.
“Hm. I’m more of a creative chaos person myself.” Leo tipped his head to the side. “I think mine would look like one of those paintings where up close it looks like just a bunch of dots, but if you back up it makes a picture.”
“Pointillism,” Emma said.
“They have a bunch of paintings in that style hanging up in Roaster’s Republic back home.” Piper nodded. “My uncle bought one from them a while back for my aunt. It’s an open book, but the whole thing is made up of tiny little dots.”
“Huh. I’ll have to go in and look sometime when I’m back in Archwood. I’ve never actually gone inside, even though my sister-in-law’s the manager.” Leo carefully pulled another item out of the box.
“What? Really?” Piper gawked.
