Piper slots into our life so seamlessly, and Ellie has warmed to her so well.
I catch Piper’s eyes across the table. We couldn’t cut the tension with a knife. I chew on my last bit of pancake and suddenly feel like throwing it up as my brain recounts the past text messages we shared.
We were sexting in the same house. Under the same roof.
Fuck.
I swallow the rest of my breakfast and take away the dishes as an excuse to leave the table.
“Thanks, girls,” I say from the sink. “Best breakfast I’ve had all day.”
“Dad!”drawls Ellie. “You always say that!” She giggles and I hear Piper chuckling too.
The rest of the day feels like I’m watching movie clips of her. I wake up around lunchtime and hear laughter. It’s coming from outdoors. Peering through the window, I see what I thought I would—Piper chasing the kids through the lawn. The pair of them wail with laughter as she imitates what must be one of Sonny’s airplanes, her arms extended wide.
The yearning returns to my chest again when she’s cooking dinner, shaking a stray piece of hair from her eye. All I want to do is tuck it behind her ear.
But I can’t.
I watch introspectively as she uses the stove. She knows what she’s doing in the kitchen. If she wanted to set fire to her own house, I’m sure she’d know how to do it.
Sonny hands over one of his toy planes and lists out some rather impressive facts about it. He’s like her. Has a curious mind. And just like her, he can never sit still.
His brown hair has a mind of its own, which he definitely inherited from Piper. But as for those brown eyes, they must have come from her partner. Whoever he was. She hasn’t spoken about Sonny’s father once. And interestingly, Sonny doesn’t speak about him either.
Which suggests he doesn’t even remember who his father was.
I catch Piper’s gaze several times throughout the day. But with kids in our space, we glance at each other for only a second. And then look away.
It’s only after the kids go to bed that we actually start holding eye contact. She’s boiling the kettle, and I’m out on the porch rifling through pages of documentation that Keller wants me updated on.
“Hey.” She gingerly joins me outside, both hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Sparks fly the second I look at her face, reminded of yesterday when we were dangerously close to kissing. When she wrapped her hand around me and flashed me a wicked smile.
Her eyes are a startling shade of blue tonight.
“Apparently the universe doesn’t want to keep us away from each other,” she jokes.
I’m glad she’s the one addressing the elephant in the room. I probably wouldn’t have made it to the end of the sentence.
“Yeah.” I stare at the steaming mug of tea in her hand. “It never occurred to me that it could have been you I was texting.”
“The town is small,” she states. “But I never thought it would bethissmall.” Her eyes catch mine. “You kept pestering me to meet up.”
“And you kept refusing. Why was that?”
“Because I don’t have time for much else. And honestly?” she adds, taking a sip of tea. “A few text messages here and there was all I wanted.”
The silence rings extra loud tonight. Of course it’s all she wanted. You can’t get any more noncommittal than a few anonymous text messages. And a nude photo.
She doesn’t want to be involved in anything serious.
“What happened with you and Sonny’s father?”
Good thing I didn’t ask that question when her mouth was full of tea. Her eyes go wide, and she clutches the mug tighter. “Um. Nothing much. What happened with me and Sonny’s father isn’t worth talking about. Trust me.”
I don’t. But Idochoose to leave the conversation there. Something clearly happened between them, because she’s being vague. But I decide not to press. Ignorance is bliss and I’d rather not know about the competition.
