Page 46 of Love is a Lyric
14
Ben
By the time Ben took a very long, cold shower and made it downstairs, his parents were enjoying Saturday morning breakfast just like they had every week since he was a kid. They’d called it pancake day, treating their kids to pancakes and bacon. He’d expected it to end once their nest was empty, but they’d continued on—treating themselves now instead.
“Morning, honey.” His mom smiled. “There are pancakes on the stove. Is Piper coming down?”
“What?” The question froze him as he thought back to their moment in his room. “How would… why do you think I’d know that?”
His parents shared a look before his dad hid laughter behind a cough. “You okay, son?”
“Fine.” He busied himself making a plate of pancakes and sausage—which they had instead of bacon for some reason—before moving to the giant bowl of strawberries his mom cut up. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Pancake day?” Piper’s excited voice wound through him, and he forced himself to focus on his plate, not turning. What was wrong with him?
“Made you sausage.” The affection in his mom’s voice whenever she spoke to Piper both warmed him and nearly killed him, a reminder that Piper was a part of the family, that his parents were practically hers as well.
“Yes!” Piper practically ran toward the food, and Ben turned away, walking to the table to take a seat next to his dad, using him as a shield against the confusion swirling inside him.
Piper plopped her plate on the table and slid into a seat before shoveling sausage into her mouth, moaning as she did.
Ben couldn’t take his eyes off her, off the way something so small made her happy. She looked up, meeting his gaze, her cheeks flushing.
“What?” She wiped a napkin across her mouth. “Do I have something on my face?”
Say something, Ben. Anything.
Her eyes held no memory of their moment with the guitar, or at least no memory she let affect her. Piper had always been the rubber girl, anything that happened, any words directed to her bounced right off, disappearing in the atmosphere. It served her well when Quinn hurled insults, but what about the better moments? Did she not let those in?
“I can’t believe anyone prefers sausage over bacon.” His joking words broke the tension between them, and a smile tilted her lips. He pointed his fork at his mom. “Or that you let this go on. When I lived here, we always had bacon.”
Piper stuffed another forkful in her mouth and gave him a closed-mouth smile before swallowing. “Mmm delicious. Ever think your parents just miss me more than they miss you?”
“That’s impossible.”
She shrugged in a ‘believe what you want’ kind of way.
“Okay,children,” his mom said. “We missed you both. But we need to chat.”
“I’d be chattier if I had bacon.”
“Spoiled,” Piper coughed out the word.
“Me?” Ben shook his head. “You’re the one who got sausage this morning while I’m forced to starve.”
“Bruise your rockstar ego?”
Ben couldn’t remember ever seeing Piper like this. Around Quinn, she shrank away from everyone, disappearing into the work. It was like her sister snuffed the fire right out of her. Ben could finally see the real Piper Hayes.
And she intrigued him.
The girl he’d known his entire life, but never trulyknown.Was this the girl Chase had always seen? The one his parents loved?
“I don’t have a rockstar ego.”
She snorted. An honest to goodness snort. “Okay.”
He didn’t have a big ego, did he?
