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ChapterEleven
Now I know who John Cusack is.
No one woke me that morning. Nothing woke me that morning.
I didn’t fully register it until I was blinking the sleep from my eyes and searching for my clock to discover it was almost midday, and I hadn’t heard a single noise. I scrubbed a hand over my face as I sat up, which is when I did finally hear something. But the something was not my niece living life as noisily as possible at all hours of the day.
It was laughing.
Not five-year-old giggling.
Grown up laughing.
I recognised Mum’s laughter easily.
The other sounded familiar, but my half-asleep brain couldn’t quite place it.
I heaved myself out of bed and decided I’d need to mainline about six cups of coffee before I had any hope of working out what in the fuck was going on. So, my feet shuffled me to the kitchen, and it took me far too long to take in the scene in front of me.
“Morning, love– Well, afternoon. Almost,” Mum laughed as she turned the coffee machine on. Again, by the looks of it.
Mum in the kitchen was not a weird occurrence. She’d basically been brought up in the kitchen. She pretty much brought me and Paris up in the kitchen. It was the family way. No, that made sense.
What didn’t make sense was seeing Piper at the breakfast bar, her hands wrapped around a mug. Something was nudging up against my sleepy mind and I felt panic welling, though I couldn’t yet pinpoint the source.
“Barlow?” I asked, the scratchiness of my voice making me think of monsters for some reason.
She blinked hurriedly and I caught her eyes travelling down and up my body slowly. She liked what she saw. I didn’t blame her. I quite liked what I saw, and I was only thankful that my morning wood had subsided, and my brain was too confused for it to return with reinforcements.
As we stared at each other – for no more than a heartbeat or two – she went from carefree and easy to the skin around her eyes tightening and that nervous restlessness settled in. I didn’t have time to comment on it, nor the higher brain function.
Because I’d finally remembered the night before.
I remembered why I’d woken up feeling some weird combination of elated and stressed, but completely not hungover. I remembered my fuck up, and that made me even more confused as to why she was in my house, with my mum.
I wasn’t done with her, not by a long shot, but we didn’t have a future. So as much as something about her in my kitchen laughing with my mum felt so unbelievably right, it was dangerous. We’d crossed boundaries and I didn’t know where we stood anymore. I didn’t know what she expected. And I couldn’t very well say anything in front of Mum.
Not that Piper expected us to talk about it in front of my mum, which I should have known.
“Lombardi, hi.”
“What are you…?” I asked, looking between her and Mum as I dragged my hand through my hair.
“Uh, I should probably go,” Piper chuckled nervously.
“Are you sure, love?” Mum asked and Piper nodded. “Well, thank you for your help with the bags.”
That went some way to explaining why she was having coffee with Mum.
“Thank you, Carmen, for the coffee and the stories. Roman in a tutu is an image I will always treasure,” she said as she slid off the barstool and headed out.
All worries about the night before were pushed momentarily to the side as I wondered just what in the fuck Mum had been saying, and how fucking long she’d had to say it. No one except Mum and Paris had ever known that I’d once entertained the notion of being a ballet dancer. And I’d got plenty of shit from the both of them that I’d given it up.
Not that I cared anymore.
“Bye, love,” Mum called to Piper as I spat, “You did what?” at her.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Mum said. “We were just talking about your childhood.”
