Piper
When Tati gets home, she takes one look at me, then turns and walks back out of the apartment.
By the time Henry swings by at nearly eight, she still hasn’t returned.
He stoops down to peer at the tiny sparkling stud in my nose.
“I like it,” he declares.
“My sister hates it.”
“Who cares?” He kisses me, smiling against my mouth. “It’s hot. Did it hurt?”
I’ve decided to keep the news about losing my job from him as well. I’ll tell him as soon as I secure something new, same as Tati. I’ll pretend it’s no big thing—story of my life.
“Nope,” I say with a sunny smile. “Not even a little.”
We order a pizza, then joke and laugh while we wait for it to arrive. Henry, who can’t sit still to save his life, clears the kitchen counter of an empty seltzer can and the bowl I ate grapes from earlier.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, watching from a barstool.
“I know. Sorry, it’s become habit. My dad never puts anything away.”
“How’d he get by before you showed up?”
“He has a housekeeper who comes once a week. It’s not that he’s lazy. I just don’t think he notices clutter. He’s too busy looking for the next exciting adventure.”
You two are cut from the same cloth. Of course you can’t see his faults.
It bothers me that Tati’s not wrong.
“You want to hang out in my room?” I ask.
Henry’s expression is a mixture of intrigue and wariness. He’s been over plenty of times, but we’ve always stayed in the common areas.
“Your sister won’t care?”
“My sister’s not here.”
“What about the pizza?”
“Oh, Henry,” I say, comforted by how totally and completely dependable he is. “We’ll hear the buzzer.”
His mouth curves into a smile. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s hang out in your room.”
***
“This is so you,” he says of my space.
I think so too. The far wall, where my bed sits, is painted in horizontal black and white stripes.
My headboard is a saturated teal, almost identical to the color of the ocean outside the window.
My linens are white, and there’s a graphic black-and-white rug covering most of the hardwood floor.
Gabi helped me decorate two summers ago, after convincing my sister that the pink explosion she’d chosen when we’d moved to the Towers was too juvenile.
With a tight, Tati-approved budget, Gabi and I ordered the bed and the rug online, then went to Pensacola with Maggie to shop for everything else.
We painted the stripes ourselves after watching how-to videos on YouTube.
Sorrow knocks me off-balance. I’ve thought about Gabi a lot this afternoon—too much.
Being fired wouldn’t hurt so badly if I could process it with her.
If she was still around to act as my champion, Tati’s beastliness might stop deadening pieces of my soul.
She’d love my little nose piercing. Before, she would’ve had her belly button done in solidarity.
God, I miss my best friend.
Henry steps over mountains of clothes and beach towels scattered across the floor. I spend a second worrying about whether the disorder bothers him before convincing myself that it doesn’t matter. He likes me, flaws and all.
He checks out my bookshelf, which is stuffed with a bunch of fantasy series, plus Nora Roberts and Curtis Sittenfeld novels I lifted from my sister.
My Delphina books are there too. I have three complete sets of the trilogy: the dog-eared paperbacks my parents originally bought me (the copies I continuously reread), plus the movie tie-in paperbacks and a pristine set of signed hardcovers.
The author appeared at a book festival in Tallahassee a few years ago, and Gabi’s parents drove us all the way there so we could hear her speak, then spend hours standing in her signing line—totally worth it.
Henry draws his finger across the hardcover spines, which in combination form the image of a shimmering mermaid tail. “Whoa,” he whispers.
“Different from your bookshelf, I bet.”
“A little.” He tosses a grin over his shoulder. “But now I know who to come to when I’m ready to dive under the sea.”
He heads for my unmade bed. He spends a minute standing over it, looking at the rumpled burrow of cotton I sleep in. His back’s to me so I can’t see his face, but I’m dying to know what he’s thinking.
He turns around to tell me: “Not gonna lie, I’ve imagined myself here a few times.”
I smile. “Same.”
I go to him. I pull him down onto the soft sheets. I kiss him, and the disaster that was this afternoon dissipates. We stop only when the pizza arrives. We hear the buzzer, as I told him we would.
We return to my room with dinner on paper plates and glasses of water garnished with lemon wedges, spreading out picnic-style on the floor, which I clear with a few hasty swipes of my foot. I let Henry get through a slice of pizza before I raise the topic we’ve been avoiding.
“So, what went on with your dad earlier?”
He frowns, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Well, he slept until noon. I didn’t even know he was in the apartment until he started snoring louder than a trash compactor. After he dragged himself out of bed, he ate some peanut butter off a spoon and—get this—downed a beer. Not his best showing.”
There are a couple of things I could delve into.
First, alcohol does cure a hangover. Damon taught Gabi, and Gabi taught me, and I’ve kept the lesson in my back pocket for the direst of mornings.
That said, it’s pretty gross having to pop a top to kick-start functionality.
Second, I’ve had a couple of mornings that sound similar to Davis’s, and that doesn’t make me proud.
But the first knot that needs unraveling is, “Does he remember fighting with Tati?”
Henry winces. “He didn’t really go into it.”
I put my plate with its half-eaten slice of pizza next to his. “I only got Tati’s side, but it didn’t sound good. The way she tells it…your dad was kind of terrible.”
I’m not trying to make Henry feel bad, but I’m not going to let Davis off the hook—not again. The more time passes, the more I wish I’d been supportive of Tati this afternoon.
You’re exhausting, I told her.
I’d take it back if I could.
“How pissed is your sister?” Henry asks.
I sigh. “She’s been through a hundred breakups and she’s always low afterward, but this feels different. She seemed more heartbroken than angry.”
“She brought him upstairs,” Henry says, red-faced, like he’s embarrassed on Davis’s behalf. “She took off his shoes and set him up with a trash can.”
“I’m not surprised. Even when she’s mad enough to breathe fire, she’s good at taking care of people.”
He lifts a brow. “I think that’s the first nice thing I’ve heard you say about her.”
“It’s the truth. She wades through shit to make sure the people she cares about are okay. She doesn’t always do it with compassion, but she does it.”
He ponders that for a minute. “I’m sorry my dad made her sad.”
“I know, Henry, but that’s not your apology to make.
” His empathetic nature is one of the things I’ve come to like most about him, but it’s got to be awful, shouldering the hardships of others.
I reach for his hand and ask the question that’s been on my mind since Tati and I talked in her office.
“How often does your dad drink like he did last night?”
Henry’s posture wilts. He’s obviously considered this before, and that worries me.
“I don’t know. He drinks socially. He owns a sports bar. It’s part of the job.”
“Is it, though?” I ask.
He lets go of my hand to tear a hunk of crust from a second slice of pizza. He shovels it into his mouth like that’ll keep him from having to respond.
After too many quiet seconds, I whisper his name. I have no idea what I’m going to follow up with, but the solemnness of his expression pierces holes through my heart. I need him to look at me.
He does, his eyes swirling with emotion.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Piper.
Does my dad overdo it sometimes? Maybe. Do I wish he wouldn’t?
Fuck yes. Is his drinking the reason he and your sister fought?
I have no idea, and I don’t think it’s fair to automatically slap him with all the blame.
You know Tati’s not easy to get along with.
And to tell you the truth, it’s not really our place to psychoanalyze what’s going on between them.
They argued. They’ll work it out or they won’t. It has nothing to do with us.”
I’m starting to feel a little prickly. “That’s easy for you to say.
You weren’t called down to Tati’s office.
You didn’t have to see her looking all dejected.
You didn’t say the wrong thing, as usual, and end up catching her wrath.
” I pick up speed. “How nice to be you. Your dad got wasted and acted like an asshole, and you’re okay with pretending that’s fine. ”
He stares me down.
Once again, I’ve spewed the wrong words in the wrong way.
Once again, I’ve left careful consideration in the dust.
Once again, I’ve hurt someone I care about.
My breath catches as I realize that Henry could walk out before we’ve resolved this.
He could walk out for good.