AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“There’s no way to get out of it?” Yuri asked
“I don’t think so.” Piper shook her head. “I’m sure Leo’s told half the school by now that I agreed to the role. If I back out now, he’ll have more fuel to torment me. Plus, I do kind of want to do the set design. I researched Guys and Dolls while I was at the library, and I think I could do something really cool with it.”
“Aren’t you a bit overbooked with classes, the musical, and the set? That seems like a lot.” Thea gave her a look of concern that said everything Piper hadn’t voiced yet.
“You know me. It’ll be a little stressful, but I’ll figure it out.” It was the understatement of the century, but Piper was experienced in the art of never being able to say no and always offering more of herself than humanly possible. Taking on too much was a mere fact of life for her now, and as long as she had her mental breakdowns alone, no one would be the wiser. Thea lived with her and usually noticed when things were spiraling, but Piper had gotten pretty good at hiding the plight of her personality. She was and would always be a helper, regardless of the toll it took.
“Are all the highlighted lines yours?” Thea sifted through the script, her eyes widening as they took in Leo’s sloppy highlight work. Piper wished he would have left the script alone so she could meticulously highlight her lines with the pen set her brother Carter had gotten her for her twenty-first birthday. They didn’t bleed through and had tips that made it easy to guide the marker in a straight line. Leo’s lines were all over the place and distracting.
“Mm-hmm.” Piper took the script from Thea’s hand and thumbed through it. “I have to memorize a bunch of lines before tomorrow, so I should probably get to it.”
“Can we play the other characters?” Yuri’s eyes practically sparkled with excitement, and Piper tried not to let her shoulders sag with relief.
The plan when Piper had walked into the apartment had been to guilt trip Thea into helping her, but as it turned out, Piper was terrible at manipulation and also terrible at asking for help—both things Leo Diaz seemed to excel at. She took a page from his playbook. “Please? I swear I’ll do your laundry for a week if you help me.”
“I don’t need you to do my laundry, Piper,” Thea scoffed. “I don’t need to be bribed to help you. What scenes are we working on?”
Twelve
PIPER
The Olson Theatre was on the opposite side of campus from the majority of her classes, so in her time at Fletcher, Piper had only been inside once. Her boyfriend during her sophomore year was a concert violinist, and an extremely pompous one at that. She had sat alone for his entire performance to cheer him on despite hating classical music, only for him to dump her right after, high off the attention he was getting from the other musicians.
The air was frigid when Piper finally entered the theatre through a heavy black door. A chilly gust of air blew back her hair, and she shivered, vaguely wondering if Leo had control over the thermostat. She wouldn’t put it past him to purposely make everyone mildly uncomfortable while they rehearsed. Lucky for her, she was sporting the hoodie Leo had lent her the other night, which she was planning on never returning. She had worn it as a sort of fuck-you to flaunt in his face.
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here!” a voice shouted from below.
When Piper made it to the ledge on the first flight of stairs, she swallowed and looked down toward the stage. She once again regretted her decision to attend a university that was built into the side of a hill. The elevator in the lobby or the wheelchair ramp to the bottom of the hill would have been the better option than the main entrance, but it was too late now. People onstage were starting to slowly notice her presence as she descended. Her footing was careful, but the cascading rows of folding maroon cloth chairs were still an ominous threat to her poor balance. “We’re not doing a musical about Antarctica, so why is it negative two degrees in here? Even if we were playing Santa’s elves, I am not a method actor,” the voice continued, and Piper finally tracked it to Leo’s friend and her male counterpart in the play, Sam.
“No, but you are dramatic as fuck,” Emma replied. “You’re in the Pac Northwest now, honey. It’s cold here.”
“All right, all right. I know it’s not ideal, but maintenance is coming by tomorrow to fix the heating,” an older Latino man with perfectly styled dark hair said as Piper got to the halfway point of her descent.
Sam spotted her and waved ecstatically. “Piper!”
Despite being fifteen minutes early, Piper wished she had shown up even earlier so she didn’t have to make the trek to the front of the theatre with an audience. Leo stood next to the older man with a victorious smirk aimed in her direction, and she wanted to slap it right off his face. She was suddenly the center of attention, and the nervous energy she had when stage fright set in started to bounce off the walls of her body.
“Ah, you must be our newcomer,” the older man said with a warm smile.
“Uh, I guess so,” Piper called back as she made her way down another step.
And that was when everything went wrong.
The ground slipped out from under her zero-traction flats, and Piper was freefalling. Shouts from the stage were followed by her arms waving about frantically like she was trying to stay upright on roller skates. There was nothing to hold on to on the way down the two steps she hadn’t completed yet. By the time she felt the searing pain of her kneecaps smacking down on the hard surface of the black floors, she was almost grateful the wait was over. Then the embarrassment set in, turning her face red. If her legs weren’t screaming in pain, she would have bolted, changed her name, and moved to a small island off the coast of nowhere.
“Demonios, princesita.” Leo was now directly in front of her, squatting down to her level. Piper winced as she moved to sit back on her butt. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Piper croaked. She nervously scanned the rest of the theatre only to find exactly what she thought she would: everyone looking at her with a mix of shock and pity.
“Mira, I know I said I wanted you to headline, but there was no need to make a grand entrance.” Leo chuckled.
Piper’s eyes pricked with tears as the panic set in. “I don’t know why I’m here at all. I can’t do this.” She started to adamantly shake her head as Leo’s eyes widened.
“Piper, look at me,” he urged. When all she could do was continue to shake her head, his hand reached up, cupping her cheek. Warm fingers curled under her chin and stopped the motion of her head. With a steadying pressure, he tipped her chin to look at him. It should have been repulsive, but it was oddly comforting. “Yes, you can,” Leo said softly. The fear of her backing out was written into the creases of his face. “That was a bad joke. Sorry. I should have told you there’s a back entrance to the theatre.”
Piper swallowed and sniffed back any remaining emotion. “Was that your first time apologizing for something?”
Leo let out a breath and relaxed his shoulders with a grin. “Was that your first time walking?”
