Disclaimer: I own OC, that's it.
I end up hiding in a small nook I find in the lounge. It's blocked by a support pillar and can't be seen from the door. I feel it's the perfect hiding spot since if anyone were to walk into the lounge they would just assume the room was empty.
I sit for an hour breathing heavy, but silently so as not to draw attention to myself. While I sit in that little nook I hear the door open multiple times. Once I hear Leo call out my name to see if I'm in the room. Of course I don't answer. While I sit in the nook I think, my brain swimming in possibilities.
Leo might like me…why does that thought make me want to sing? Leo just wants to be my friend, but he wouldn't if I hadn't said so first, maybe? Trevor still kept me hanging on by a string back home, but he hadn't bothered to text or call me since I got here. He wasn't my boyfriend, why should he hold me back? For that matter what exactly would he be holding me back from, Leo? We were just friends; I was getting ahead of myself. I was his friend, he was mine, and we didn't want anything else. Did we? Did I?
I pictured Leo's face in my mind and a smile spread across my face…well that answered that question. I had a crush on Leo. Great. What happened to not making things complicated? Well, it was his fault!
Who brings a girl a piano in a grand gesture of friendship? Nobody, that's who. Those things only come from grand gestures of love. Unless you're Leo. Damn Leo, with his welcoming eyes, and sexy smirk, and heart melting smile, and ridiculously cute dimple, and oddly still attractive bald head…get a hold of yourself Piper!
I slapped myself softly out of that train of thought. Only to quite quickly fall back into an inner argument. This goes on far longer than I'd want to admit (hours) before I can't ignore my cramped legs and sore butt any longer. I finally scoot out of my hiding place and stretch.
"Everybody's looking for you." Nurse Jackson is standing there looking completely nonplused by my appearance.
"How – you know what I don't even care." I sighed.
"So why were you hiding?"
"I wasn't hiding!"
"Mmmhmm." She raised an eyebrow to me.
"I wasn't." I defended.
"I didn't say anything." She just smirked at me and turned to leave. "Oh, and like I said, everyone's been looking for you since you ran away. So you may want to take the actual elevator if you want to avoid confrontation."
I almost argue again, but instead just take her advice. I use the regular elevator for the first time since the first time I came to Ocean Park. It feels weird, like some sort of violation. When I get off the elevator Kenji is smiling at me.
"Don't you start too." I look at him.
"I didn't say anything. Except, you seem to have caught the attention of a certain someone on the floor, haven't you?"
"Kenji." I sigh.
"There you are." I turn to see Dash heading towards me. "We've been looking for you everywhere."
"Let's keep it that way, shall we?" I turn away from him.
"Oh, no. You gotta tell me something."
"What?"
"Why did you go AWOL?"
"I didn't." I say quickly.
"Piper, look who you're talking to. Let's not play this game."
"Okay, so maybe I was hiding from Leo and Emma."
"Now we're getting somewhere." Dash smiled.
"Try not to look too excited." I say deadpanned.
"You were hiding because…?"
"I might have accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation they were having and heard lots of things I shouldn't have." I am definitely trying to be evasive. Dash knows it too. We end up walking towards my room as he pumps me for information.
"Okay, well maybe I should just go tell everybody I found you."
"Don't you dare! This is why you get along with Kara isn't it?" I glare at him. "Okay! I overheard them deciding they are better as friends and then Emma suggested we were perfect for each other and that Leo likes me."
"And?"
"And then I ran into Nurse Jackson who alerted them that I was there and I got super embarrassed and ran away."
"Okay, but do you like Leo?" Dash said, ignoring everything else.
"Does that matter right now?"
"It's all that matters right now."
"I can't. I mean I don't." I correct myself.
"Nah, you meant you can't. But you do." Dash smiled.
"Of course I do!" I groan and drop my head into his chest. "What girl hasn't liked him here? I mean, seriously! Who surprises a girl with her piano and doesn't expect her to go weak in the knees? He doesn't play fair."
"What are you going to do about it?" Dash begins to rub my back to comfort me.
"Hey."
"Kill me now." I say to Dash as we turn to find Leo in the doorway, eyeing us and the scene before him.
"Sorry." Dash said before patting my shoulder and leaving. He had to slide past Leo who was glaring slightly at him as he passed.
"Hey, how's it going?" I smile awkwardly at him. "I was actually just on my way out, so –"
"Oh, no. You've been running from me all day. We need to talk." Leo stands right in the doorway, blocking my only exit.
"Okay, you wanna come in and sit down then?" I offer. He comes inside and closes the door.
Leo walks over to my bed and sits, patting the spot next to him. I hesitantly take a seat, but leave a bit of distance between us. We sit in silence not looking at each other for a few minutes.
"So, what did you want to talk about?" I ask.
"What did you overhear me and Emma talking about?"
"Nothing really, just that you both got your closure. That's really good by the way." I smile.
"Yeah, except you were there a lot longer than that weren't you?"
"I didn't really hear anything after that." I lie. My heart is pounding against my ribcage.
"You didn't hear anything?" The tone in his voice tells me he knows I'm lying.
"I mean, I heard Emma say some silly stuff about us being perfect for each other, but…" I trail off.
"You think she's wrong?" Leo turns to me now.
"I don't really know what it means to be perfect for someone."
"So you don't like me?" I turn to look at Leo.
"I didn't – we're just friends, right?" I can't take my eyes off him now. Something so confusing is happening and I'm almost positive Leo is getting closer.
"What if I don't want to be friends?" He asks, completely serious.
I don't have an answer for this question. I wasn't prepared for this conversation to go this way.
"I just don't want things to get complicated." I say.
"You're living in a hospital, going through chemo, living with a brain tumor. This is where you decide to worry about complicated?" He chuckled.
"But that's a different kind of complicated. It's not…boy/ girl complicated."
"Do you like me?" Leo asks again. I nod slowly. He closes the distance between us. "I like you too. See? This is the complete opposite of complicated." I don't get a chance to say anything this time. Leo brings his lips to mine and kisses me, and I don't stop him. It's not shy, or overly invasive. But his hand is on my face and neck and mine are around his neck. And I'm not sure when this happened or how long we stay like this, but for a wonderful moment I can't think of anything but the feeling of Leo's mouth on mine.
Then his crutch falls and clatters against the floor. Suddenly, all my senses come flooding back to me and I push away from him. "Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no." I say, standing up and putting some distance between us. Leo reaches down and grabs his crutch, then stands.
"Piper, please don't freak out." He says calmly.
"I'm not freaking out." I snap. "Okay, that wasn't very convincing, but I'm really not freaking out." I say, with a much calmer tone. "But, that was a lot more than I expected to be dealing with tonight, so I need to go." I start for the door.
"This is your room." I can hear the smirk in Leo's voice.
"I know." I say turning to shoo him out instead. "I meant you need to go." I walk him out and he turns around.
"How long are you going to freak out over this before you talk to me?" He asks.
"I'm not freaking out! Also, I don't know." I say honestly.
"But you will come talk to me when you're done, right?"
The look in his eyes breaks me down. "Yeah, of course."
"Good." He smiles as I start to close the door. "Hey!" I stop to look at him. Leo grabs my face again and kisses me really quickly. "Good night." He smiles like a villain and walks away.
The next day was chemo with Jordi. I paid extra attention to my outfit in the morning, not that I was trying to impress anyone. I wore a black polka dot shirt, with spaghetti straps and lace edges. I wore my usual comfortable dark wash jeans and my black Chucks, instead of the usual flats. I almost put on some makeup, but decided that it was too much, especially since the only makeup that was in my room was stuff Kara had left behind. I started to pull my hair up, but decided to leave it down. I hadn't done that since I got to Ocean Park, and honestly didn't do it much back home, unless I ran out of time getting ready for school.
"You're wearing your hair down." Jordi said in the doorway.
"Yeah, does it look bad?" I asked.
"No, it looks really good, actually. It looks like you." He smiled. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah."
Down in the chemo room we settled in our usual spot and Dr. Howard sets us up before leaving. "So, Leo walked into the room last night looking like he was on cloud nine. You know what happened?"
"Nope." I shook my head, but the red tint on my cheeks gave me away.
"Did you guys get together?" Jordi looked at me excited.
"What? No, we just might have, sort of kissed." I blushed, but a smile started to form on my face and I couldn't help myself but look a bit happy.
"Seriously? That's great. So are you guys an item now? Like official boyfriend and girlfriend status?"
"No…I sort of freaked out on him and kicked him out afterwards, actually." I scrunch my face.
"Why?" Jordi looked really shocked by this turn of events.
"I don't want things to get complicated. There's this guy back home, and we aren't technically together, but we make out sometimes and I don't know what's going on there."
"He sounds like a tool."
"You're only saying that because he isn't Leo."
"So?" Jordi shrugged. I chuckled at him. "But seriously, where is this guy if you guys have such a thing? I've seen your dad in here several times. Even your mom managed to Skype you, and she's miles away in another state. So where is this guy?"
"I don't know. I don't think anyone at my school knows where I've gone." I defend.
"But we have cell phones. He can't call, or text, shoot you an email maybe?"
"Jordi, stop." I start to get uncomfortable. "I know Trevor isn't the best person in the world but you don't even know him."
"Exactly, I don't even know him. He's never shown up, and you've never mentioned him. It seems like the only reason you're bringing him up is because you need a reason to keep you from trying with Leo."
"That's not true." I defend feebly. "Okay, look, I can't afford to make things more difficult for me than they already are. Yeah, I like Leo, but I'm also sitting here with an IV in my arm. They are pumping us full of poison every three days in the hopes that it'll kill something in our body that's already killing us. Things are already difficult enough to deal with without adding all the confusing emotions that come with liking someone."
"So your brilliant idea is to just stop feeling things for people until you get out of here? And then what? If you make that choice you're also making the choice to give up completely on you and Leo. When you get out of here, you aren't going to the same school, or living in the same neighborhood, or hanging out with the same people. Your lives will go in different directions and you might never get this chance again. The one good thing about being here is that it brought us all together. We are a group of people who might've never met if it weren't for the fact that we got sick. I feel almost lucky to have gotten sick, because without this cancer, I wouldn't have you guys."
I looked at Jordi for a long time. I just looked at him. He wasn't nearly as immature as I thought he could be. "Yeah, I know what you mean." I smile at him, thinking on our group.
I'd never had friends like this in my school. I'd never felt like I did with Leo with Trevor. I knew enough to know that I wanted to kiss Leo again, and I wanted to spend more time with him. But I also knew there were things we had to discuss, things he had to understand, before I was ready to give in to any feelings.
AN: My internet was not working last night so I couldn't post this. So instead I wrote chapter 8 and started chapter 9. Get excited people! Lol, I'm just messing with you, not about finishing chapter 8 and starting 9, but about you having to get excited. 8 will probably be posted tomorrow so everyone has a chance to read 7 tonight and tomorrow, I don't want to bombard you all with too many chapters.
Also, I changed Piper and Jordi's conversation to bold and italics this chapter just to remind you all that when they are in chemo they speak Spanish to each other. I thought it would be easier to do it that way, instead of actually writing it in Spanish and then giving the translation at the bottom of the chapter.