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“Okay.” Emma wiped under her eyes. “I promise I’ll do better at rehearsal.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Leo said. A pang of guilt stabbed through his heart. “I am so sorry about today. You are extremely talented, and having one bad day doesn’t mean anything.”
“What do you need right now?” Piper asked Emma.
“I want to not think about going to class tomorrow, just for two seconds.” Emma sniffed. “I’m so tired of thinking about it.”
“Okay.” Piper clapped her hands together the way Leo did when he was calling order to the stage. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to call my roommate and tell her to stay in for the night. We’re going to stop by Target on the way to my apartment and get an excessive amount of spa things and probably something for Thea to bake because baking’s her love and her stress language. Then we’re going to wear those sheet masks that make us look like horror villains while we watch movies and eat an obscene amount of pizza and ice cream till we want to vomit. Sound good?”
“God, yes.” Emma’s shoulders sagged in relief for the first time since Leo had sat down with her. Piper peeked over Emma’s shoulder at him, and he knew exactly what her apologetic look meant. Any plans they had made were now canceled. The pang of longing in his chest was inexplicably not about the lack of sex he would be having that night, but rather that he liked the idea of Piper blowing him off to help a friend. And knowing that only made him want to touch her more.
“Have fun tonight.” Leo forced a smile and got up from the floor, dusting his hands off on his thighs. He still felt useless and was definitely going home to relieve some of his anger with a punching bag, but at least Emma would feel better. He had exactly twelve hours to figure out how to control himself enough to sit in a classroom while Hornbill pompously explained business practices like he wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
If Leo made it out of the classroom without breaking every bone in Hornbill’s body, he would consider it a win.
Forty-One
PIPER
“It’s so cute that it’s gross. I need a toaster bath,” Emma sighed. They had just made it past the scandalous library scene in The Promenade, which had Piper flashing back to her first kiss with Leo and blushing furiously. Now, Quinn German was bathing in a large copper tub while her co-star intimately washed her hair.
“Stop moving!” Thea scolded as she put the finishing touches on Emma’s toes with black nail polish. “Have either of you ever done it in a bathroom?” Her tone was wistful, as if she were remembering fond times, and Piper’s brain immediately jumped to wondering when the last time she had cleaned their bathroom was.
Piper wrinkled her nose. “I swear, if you were fooling around in the bathroom with Yuri—”
“Answer the question.” Thea smirked and capped the jar of polish.
“I haven’t,” Piper grumbled, then tactfully looked away in case someone could read the guilty look on her face. Showers didn’t count, as far as she was concerned. Especially because she hadn’t technically touched Leo during that encounter. It wasn’t an outright lie so much as an omission of mutual masturbation. Dressing rooms, though Thea might consider them bathroom-adjacent, didn’t count, either.
“I haven’t, either, but I don’t date much. Most men either think I’m terrifying, or they think I’m into really freaky stuff. It’s probably the fishnets and the choker.” Emma pulled on the close-fitting elastic necklace around her throat.
“Your entire vibe is hot,” Thea praised. “I wish I could pull that off.”
“I tried it once. My hair was dyed black at the tips in high school, and I wore fishnets everywhere. My uncle was not a fan. I wasn’t really, either, but I was trying to be cool. You,” Piper pointed at Emma, “actually are cool.”
“Thanks,” Emma said through a bite of crust. The coffee table was covered in pizza and breadstick boxes, a plate of freshly baked cookies already half-devoured between them. The excessive amount of food made Piper remember Leo’s comment about the lack of food in his apartment.
“So… I have an idea.” Piper curled her lips over her teeth, feeling a bit sheepish.
“And what is that, Pipes?” Thea lifted her eyebrows suggestively.
“Okay, hear me out.” Piper sat up straighter. “Whatever’s left of the food, we package it up and drop it by Leo and Sam’s.” She could already tell that Thea wanted to read into her suggestion more than Piper wanted her to, but Emma was the first to speak up.
“Leo, huh? Are you into him?”
Piper adamantly shook her head. “It’s not like that. I just…” She sighed. “He said he was literally going to eat a can of beans as a meal tonight. Not only is that gross, but it just feels wrong to not share with them.”
“Are they really going to want our half-eaten pizza, though?” Thea asked.
“They’re college boys, so probably. I’ve seen Sam eat plenty of questionable things,” Emma said.
“Good point.” Thea nodded. “Yuri would eat a full horse if it was offered to him.”
Piper tapped her lips with her finger, thinking. “We could just go back to Target and get them real groceries instead of our leftover pizza. Or is that even weirder than the pizza idea?”
“I like it.” Thea slapped her thighs decisively.
“Okay, but can we do it in a way where they don’t know it’s us, then? I don’t want either of them to think I’m being… what’s the word?” Piper asked.
