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“What do you think?” Moreno asked Leo.
“I think Sam’s bending down enough to make up for the height difference, but Piper looks unnatural.” Leo sighed. “I can practically see her thinking about the stage directions instead of the feeling behind it.”
“Can you just… I don’t know, show where I’m supposed to be putting my hands or how far I’m supposed to tip my head?” Piper groaned. “Maybe if I practice that part enough, it’ll become second nature, so when I go to do it I’ll relax more?”
“Here.” Leo walked over to her, and Piper stiffened, her mouth propping open. “I’m not going to kiss you, so calm down.” His voice was low, eyes staring directly into hers, their shared secret heavy in the air between them.
“Okay,” she breathed.
“We’re going to change the stage directions I gave you originally. Don’t do anything I said earlier. Where would you put your hands if I didn’t tell you to put them around his neck?”
“I’d…” Piper stepped forward, and she saw the muscles of Leo’s body go taut. “Can I touch you?”
“Yes.” His voice was shallow, like he was barely breathing, and she liked it entirely too much for her own good.
She brought her right hand up to the back of his bicep. “Probably this.”
“Okay.” Leo swallowed. “Can you use your other hand to do that on my—I mean Sam’s—other arm?”
“Yeah, I think so.” She switched hands, her left hand caressing Leo’s shoulder blade instead.
“Good. That’s going to be a little lower on Sam because he’s a lot taller than me. So just make sure it’s not on his ass.” A raspy chuckle left Leo’s mouth. He was still standing with both his hands at his sides, not touching her. The lack of contact made Piper feel touch-starved and desperate to egg him on. “And now we figure out what to do with your other hand.”
Piper had an idea, but the second she did it, he would know where she was getting her inspiration from. She took a chance and did it anyway, reaching her right hand up and grabbing a handful of his shirt. Leo’s breathing stopped entirely, the muscles in his back going hard under her palm.
“Ooh, that’s good,” Sam chirped from the sidelines. Piper immediately let go and stepped back, blinking back into the present, where she was still at rehearsal and not in a library with Leo’s hot mouth against hers.
“Yeah, I think that’s much better. It’s fully visible from the audience, too, especially after the hand switch,” Moreno said. “Good call, Leo.”
Leo cleared his throat. “Sam will be wearing a suit jacket during the show, so I think grabbing his lapel or his tie will work best.”
“I can go grab one from storage,” Moreno offered. “Keys?” Leo pulled them from his pocket and tossed them across the room into Moreno’s waiting hands.
“While he’s doing that, we’ll practice the shirt grab.” Leo backed off and swiveled his pointer finger in the air, indicating for them to run it again. “And Piper?”
“Yeah?” Her voice sounded too eager, and she hated it. Hated him for reducing her to this person waiting with bated breath ever since their kiss.
“If the problem is that you’re not physically attracted to Sam, and you need that to make the kiss good, just imagine the last person you kissed,” Leo said nonchalantly, as if he wasn’t continuing in their unspoken mind game.
“I’ll imagine the last good kiss I had,” Piper said with a pointed look.
The playful spark behind Leo’s eyes dimmed, and his frown deepened. “From the top!”
An hour later, Sam was being a giant baby about his chapped lips, but they had finally gotten the kiss to look sufficient. “Sufficient” was the exact incredibly underwhelming word Leo had dubbed it. Considering how hard Piper had worked and how many times she had pretended that Sam was Leo, his reaction felt a bit like a punch in the stomach.
Then there was the matter of the road trip. Piper had spent the last fifteen minutes slowly drinking water out of a plastic water bottle, trying to figure out a way to bring it up—or, at least, figure out if Leo knew about it yet. By the time she was supposed to go home, she still hadn’t worked up the courage.
With Emma on her left and Leo and Sam trailing behind them out the back door of the theatre, Piper fiddled with her chipped nail polish, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. Leo still hadn’t said a word about their Thanksgiving plans. Unlike Piper’s, Emma’s chipped black nail polish still looked cool with a few missing chunks as she shoved her hands against the push bar to hold the door open for everyone.
“So, Professor Hornbill said he’ll give me an extra credit assignment when I meet with him after Thanksgiving, and I think that will help pull my grade up,” Emma said. Things were finally looking up for her, and Piper could tell, whether it was because of her instruction or Leo’s, that Emma was finally getting it.
“That’s great,” Piper said and heard Leo murmur something under his breath behind her. She was starting to get the impression that he didn’t like Hornbill because every time she or Emma brought him up, Leo got even grumpier, if that was possible. Piper would tell him to pull the stick out of his ass if she didn’t secretly feel the same way.
The sound of Leo’s phone ringing interrupted Piper’s curiosity to know more about their shared disdain for Hornbill, and Piper froze.
In one fluid motion, Leo pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and swiped to answer it. “¿Ma, todo bien con Abuelita?”
Piper had lost most of her high school Spanish, but she could still recognize when someone was asking about the well-being of their grandma and determined that she was most likely safe from discussions of their upcoming road trip for now. That was until Leo’s eyes slid over to her.
