BOOK III: BROKEN WINGS
The only word to describe Piper's visit to Italy in the spring of her freshman year was magical. Alex had shown her all of her favorite places in Milan; they travelled to Venice to ride the gondola and Bologna to enjoy culinary delicacies. No matter where they went—whether on the way to a cathedral or admiring a century-old monument—Alex and Piper were joined at the hip and freely expressed their love. The entire trip felt as if they were in a fairytale.
Alex had a runway show on one of those days, so Piper got to see her strut her stuff. The sex that ensued afterwards was the best either woman had ever experienced. To say that Piper was a generous lover was an understatement. Although a week was entirely too short, Piper had relished every moment of the trip.
Alex came back to the US again that summer, but something had shifted between her and Piper. In Italy, they'd been spoiled by their anonymity, and Piper hadn't worried about their public displays of affection; however, in Greenwich, she would hardly be caught alone in the same room with Alex much less hold hands in public. They'd taken a giant step back from where they were two years ago when they'd first started messing around. Back then, Piper was willing to hold hands in a park or make out in the car—now the blonde wouldn't hear of it. "I don't want anyone to be suspicious," Piper had explained. Alex left it at that, primarily because her trip was only 10 days long, and she hadn't wanted to spoil it with a fight that was generally unnecessary.
Piper went back to Smith for her sophomore year of college, and things with Alex still seemed fine. The only squabbles they got into were about coming out to Piper's family, and at that point in her life, she simply couldn't deal with the drama that would cause with her father. The newness of being in love had worn off, but they were still committed to being together (as together as they could be when they were 3,000 miles apart.)
The next time Alex traveled to Connecticut was for her mom's wedding to Bill Chapman. It was in the spring of Piper's junior year at Smith, and she'd informed the blonde almost in passing that she was afraid that her modeling days were coming to an end. She'd landed three deals with European designers, but all three terminated their arrangement not long after they began. Alex had gained weight and looked like a healthy 21-year-old with curves everywhere they were supposed to be. However, hers was not the look the clothing designers were seeking, nor was her body the shape that Elite Modeling kept on the payroll.
At the May wedding, Alex chanced a kiss on Piper's neck in the middle of the cake cutting portion of the evening, and the blonde's mouth hung open at her audacity. She'd pulled away and considered slapping Alex right then and there but was afraid that would've drawn unwanted attention. They'd argued about it that night, and Piper still resisted coming out. The fight escalated the morning of Alex's trip back to Milan.
Bill had taken them out for brunch, and Alex drank four mimosas and one Bloody Mary before the two hour brunch was over. She was tipsy to be sure, and when they arrived back at the Chapman house, Piper could tell she was in a mood.
"What's going on with you?" Piper asked as she shut her bedroom door.
She sauntered towards the blonde, stumbling a bit. "What do you mean?"
Piper lifted her eyebrows and folded her arms. "You're drunk."
"Yeah, so what?" The brunette shrugged. She took a step away, and Piper could see her take a few deep breaths before facing her again. "I don't want to deal with this shit anymore."
The blonde shook her head. "What shit?"
"I'm 21-years-old!" Alex ran a hand through her hair. "I'm tired of hiding our relationship. When I come back to Greenwich, we still have to sneak around like teenagers, and that fucking sucks," she huffed and paused before adding, "I'm not willing to do this indefinitely."
Piper shrugged, arms still crossed. "I don't know what to tell you."
Alex gave her a look, and then grabbed the girl's forearm and marched into the living room.
"Bill, there's something I want to tell you if my mom hasn't already filled you in." She let go of Piper's arm. "I'm gay."
He lowered the newspaper. "Excuse me?"
The brunette looked at her mom. "You haven't told him?"
"It wasn't my place, Al," Diane said with distressed eyes.
She put her hands on her hips. "Is that the reason, or is it because you were afraid if he knew your daughter was a lesbian, he wouldn't marry you?"
"Alex," Piper whispered with wide, blue eyes and shock in her voice.
Diane shook her head and Piper could see a puddle of tears forming in the older woman's eyes. "You know that's not why."
The brunette turned to Bill. "I'm no better or worse a person because I'm gay, and if you hold my sexual orientation against me, you're far less of a man than my mom deserves."
"Alex, please," the blonde pleaded, putting a hand on Alex's elbow.
The dark haired woman twisted her neck and glanced at Piper expectantly. "Is there anything you want to tell your father?"
"I…" She looked like a deer in headlights. Piper closed her eyes, realizing that this was the moment of truth. In 20 seconds, she could confess to her dad that she was in love with Alex. She took a deep breath, and then opened her eyes. "No, there isn't."
Alex shook her head and whispered, coward, so that only Piper could hear. She walked to her bedroom and slammed the door.
A few seconds later, Piper appeared. "What the fuck, Alex?"
She threw a few items into her carry-on bag and ignored the blonde.
"My father has an extremely hard time accepting homosexuality," Piper tried, crossing her arms. "You've known that as long as you've known me, and coming out to him is not in our best interest."
"You mean in your best interest," she said in a raised voice.
"He writes a $50,000 check every year for me to attend one of the best colleges in the country," Piper began, taking a step closer. "If I come out, he will cut me off. I can't do that right now…I won't."
The brunette let out a suspicious laugh. "So this is about money?"
Piper jutted her chin forward. "No, it's about my education—my future."
"Because I don't have a future." She licked her lips. "That's what you're insinuating, right?"
"Don't you dare put words in my mouth!" Piper yelled.
"I'm not good enough for you," Alex replied, ignoring the blonde's statement.
She stepped back. "Where is this coming from? I've never said nor implied such a thing."
Alex didn't respond at first. She closed her eyes, and thought about where their conversation was headed, a little more drunk than she probably should have been to hold her own against Piper. She decided to return to the larger topic at hand. "To not be able to sleep in the same bed with the woman I love is fucking ridiculous. It's childish, and I'm not a fucking kid."
"As soon as I'm out of college, and you're back in the States, we can talk about living together," Piper tried again in a much softer tone.
"I don't know if I'll be back in a year." Alex spun around, facing the window rather than the other woman in the room.
"We discussed this." She creased her brow. "The plan was that you'd return when you couldn't model anymore."
"Things change! I don't have a roadmap of every detail of my fucking life like you do!" She faced Piper and shook her head. "I don't want to hide our relationship anymore. It was fine in the beginning, but now it's exhausting." Alex exhaled and averted her eyes. "Maybe we need a break. It doesn't mean I don't love you, but I don't want to live like this."
The blonde's eyes widened. "Are you breaking up with me?"
"That might be what's best for a while," came out in a shaky breath.
Piper sat hard on the edge of Alex's bed and stared straight ahead, mouth agape.
"Look, it doesn't mean we can't be together in the future." Alex bent down and took her hand. "But I want to be with you when you feel comfortable in your own skin."
"I am comfortable in my own skin," Piper protested.
Alex glanced down, and then back up at her. "Then let me rephrase my statement. I don't want to hide anymore. When you're ready to let your family know about us, we can talk."
Piper brushed a tear off of her cheek. Alex was leaving in 20 minutes, and there was no way to fix this in that time. She didn't know what to say—all she knew was that this time, the love of her life was saying goodbye in more ways than one.
"I do love you, Pipes." Alex stood and kissed her on the forehead. "Go. Spread your wings."
Her chin quivered. "This isn't what I want."
"It's not what I want either," Alex let out a frustrated sigh. She tipped Piper's chin up with two fingers and placed a tiny kiss on her lips.
When the blonde didn't respond, Alex hooked her bag over one shoulder, and then pulled her suitcase handle up. "I understand if you don't want to ride with us to the airport." She put her hand on the door knob. "Take care of yourself, Piper."
The second Alex left the room, the blonde crumbled to the ground, disgusted at herself for not loving Alex enough to stand up for their relationship.
It came as no surprise to Alex that she was released by Elite Modeling two days after her return to Milan. She'd said goodbye to the woman she loved, and her heart felt like someone had ripped it right out of her chest. She loved Piper but refused to spend another year of her life hiding from the people who mattered most.
Alex chose not to inform her mom about her relationship with Piper, because there was a good chance she'd tell her new husband. She didn't want Bill to find out that his daughter was gay through back channels—Piper needed to grow up and take responsibility for her choices.
The blonde had tried contacting Alex by text, calls, e-mails and Skype, but Alex didn't reply to any of them. She needed enough time to pass so that Piper understood that they were really over until she was able to be honest with her family. It wasn't fair to anyone that they'd kept their relationship under wraps. The ball was in Piper's court, and in the meantime, Alex needed to figure out what to do with her life.
Over the next few months, she was in a tailspin—she went from partying only on weekends to five nights a week with no steady income. (The only nights she didn't drink or do drugs were when she was too hungover to indulge.) Alex had wisely saved a good chunk of change during her earlier modeling years, so she was able to pay rent and sustain some semblance of a normal life during that period of time. Janae was worried about her and told her as much, but Alex promised that she was good for rent money until the end of summer. Trouble was, she didn't know if that was true with the way she was blowing cash on booze & drugs.
One of the photographers she'd befriended a year earlier got her a gig selling dime bags, but Alex wasn't thrilled about the opportunity. She made a few transactions and counted the pennies that she earned, but it just wasn't worth it. Another guy offered her a better position within a drug cartel, and Alex was so desperate that she jumped at the chance to earn twice as much money as she'd made as a model. They'd promised that she wouldn't 'technically' be selling drugs to clients, and Alex appreciated that she wouldn't be labeled a drug dealer, so the position suited her just fine.
By autumn, Alex was able to pay rent and put food on the table without issue. Janae asked how she'd earned the money, but the brunette lied and told her that she'd saved more than she actually had. Alex tried almost every drug offered to her—she'd do anything to get high so that she didn't have to think about Piper. She swore to herself that if she spiraled out of control, she'd quit the drugs cold turkey, but as it stood, she was making a decent income and having fun in the process. (Truth be told, she had fun when she was high, but there was a complete absence of joy in her daily life.)
Piper's attempts at contacting Alex had waned by that point, but she still reached out weekly in one form or another. She'd e-mailed the brunette at one point with this: Alex, I need to know you're alive. I'm begging you to write back.
She read the e-mail one night when she was high on X and replied without thinking it through: Alive. She'd wanted to say so much more—that she was nothing without Piper, that her life was in shambles, that she did drugs to forget, that she hadn't so much as kissed another woman—but none of that came out. Alex withdrew deeper into herself, and the only thing she was good at was bringing in cash for a fucking drug cartel.
Piper's grades suffered that semester, because she couldn't keep her mind off of Alex. She was furious with her former lover for cutting her out of her life. Alex had called her a coward, but what she was doing to Piper was equally cowardly. The blonde simply couldn't tell her father about their relationship while he was footing the bill for her to attend Smith, plus the car payment for her new BMW. Alex probably thought of her as being selfish, and perhaps she was, but she was also allowing her father to invest in her future.
Unlike Alex, Piper had her eye on the prize—she'd graduate from Smith soon and do something in mass communications or become a writer that much was certain. Other than the modeling deal that fell into Alex's lap, not once had her ex-lover shown any desire to plan for her future. That had always turned Piper off, and now, she felt justified in her disenchantment.
Nevertheless, Piper loved Alex, and nothing the brunette did (or didn't do) could make that love vanish. She was worried sick about her ex-girlfriend, so she confronted the only person who would know Alex's whereabouts. She'd gone home for a long weekend in early October with every intention of talking to Diane.
Piper poured a glass of orange juice, trying to act as casual as possible. "Have you heard from Alex recently?"
"She sends me e-mails pretty often, but I haven't spoken to her in a couple of weeks. That's not unusual though." Diane glanced at her. "Why?"
Piper looked down at her waffle. "I'm worried about her."
Diane raised her brows. "Is there reason to worry?"
"She's not modeling, you know." She pushed a piece of dough around in the Mrs. Butterworth's.
"No, I didn't know that." Diane folded her arms.
The blonde looked up. "I called Elite Modeling, and they told me she was let go a few months ago."
"Huh." Diane furrowed her brow. "She didn't tell me that."
"She would never want to disappoint you."
The older woman put her hands on the edge of the counter and leaned forward. "How's she earning money?"
Piper shrugged. "I think she saved quite a bit when she was working."
She pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket. "Would you mind if I called her?"
That was exactly what the blonde wanted. "No, not at all."
Diane dialed the number, and Piper could hear the phone ring. "Voicemail," she whispered. "Hi hon, it's your mom. There's something I want to talk to you about. Call when you get this."
Piper put her hand over Diane's. "Please let me know when she calls back."
Alex had called back hours later when Piper was at lunch with her father, and Diane reported everything sounding fine. Her daughter had admitted that she wasn't represented by Elite any longer, but she still had a couple of modeling contracts that paid the bills.
Although suspicious, Piper took Alex at her word and tried contacting her again. When the brunette didn't respond, Piper figured that was it—Alex didn't want anything to do with her. It damn near broke Piper's heart, but she had to find a way to move on, at least until she graduated from college.
Alex made friends in all the wrong places, but she continued to enjoy traveling on the cartel's dime. She quickly gained responsibility, which made her feel useful and even somewhat powerful. When she was home in Milan, she treated Janae and a few other friends to fancy dinners, and she enjoyed being able to provide for them.
One night in their small apartment, Janae broached a taboo subject. "We've been friends for a long time."
"Yeah, I guess." Alex took a sip of gin.
"I'm worried about you, Al."
"Why?" she chuckled. "I have enough money for rent and utilities. In fact, I was thinking we should move to a bigger place."
"Nah, I'm not trying to move." She turned the kitchen chair around and straddled it. "What ever happened with you and Piper?"
Alex sat up straight and averted her eyes. She hadn't heard anyone say the blonde's name aloud in months, and it made her heart ache.
Janae grinned. "Did I hit a soft spot?"
She scratched her head. "Piper refused to tell our families about us being a couple," she replied, as if all answers lay in that one statement. "I can't be with someone who isn't authentic."
"I hear you," Janae said. "But you two were like crazy in love."
"We were," she admitted in a whisper.
"She probably deserves to at least know where you're at," Janae tried.
The brunette's ears perked up. "Has Piper contacted you?"
"She might've reached out…"
"Damn it!" Alex interrupted, slamming her hand against the table. "She needs to move the fuck on!"
"Why?" Janae lifted her shoulders. "She loves you, Vause."
Alex stood abruptly, nearly knocking her stool over. "We cannot be together!"
"See, that's the part I don't get." Janae looked up. "I know it has nothing to do with distance since ya'll been doing that thing for years."
Alex spun around, arms out to her sides. "I don't deserve her!" She blurted out. "We were never on equal footing…Piper is this…this ray of sunshine, and I'm a dark fucking cloud, aimlessly wandering the sky."
Janae shook her head. "I don't think she sees it that way."
"Of course she doesn't!" Alex shouted, tears prickling her eyes. "Piper sees everything in fucking Technicolor. She always has a plan and sticks to it. Why the fuck would she want to be with someone like me?"
"She seemed to be doin' just fine."
The dark haired woman shook her head, and then looked down, one hand on the back of a chair. "Piper is everything she should be without me, and I'm nothing without her," she whispered in an unsteady voice.
Neither woman spoke for a moment, so Alex drained her glass before shuffling to her bedroom. Before she entered, she turned to her roommate. "Please don't ask about Piper again."
Janae held up her hands in surrender.
It was in that moment when Alex fessed up to herself: Piper not coming out to her family was the surface-level reason why she had broken up with her. If the blonde knew that Alex didn't feel worthy of her love, Piper wouldn't have allowed them to part ways—she'd have listed a hundred reasons why they were good together. Trouble was, Alex believed every word she uttered to Janae that night—she might've been able to go toe-to-toe with Piper for a few years, but now, her ex-girlfriend was light years ahead of where Alex was, and the brunette refused to weigh her down like an anchor.
Note: I won't lie - Book III was extremely difficult to write not from a plot standpoint, but from an emotional one. I hope it settles well with you despite the angst. I also hope that the reader understands Alex's legitimate reasons for breaking up with Piper. Please let me know what you think.