Page 12 of On My Side (Quiblings #3)

Audrey

Playlist: Close To You | Gracie Abrams

I spend the next few hours staring blankly at the ceiling. I don’t want to go to Piper’s lesson. I don’t want to look into the eyes of the man who’s made me come every night for a year.

If I act differently than I have the past few weeks, both Piper and Ren will know something is wrong. But after Piper leaves for class, I force myself out of bed, showering before making Ren’s coffee with sugar and oat milk in one of my favorite mugs.

It’s strange, knowing Ren is Sky. Sky is Ren. I look at Ren, and I see Piper’s piano teacher, a man who genuinely cares about her and her success and talent. But I listen to Sky and… fuck. He’s pure sex.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the pesky butterflies that arrive in my stomach when he glances up from the piano and his face brightens as he takes the mug from me.

“You’re a godsend,” he says.

“No, you,” I say, and immediately wish I didn’t, because yikes.

He blushes. “If you insist.”

“I do…”

“Are you two done flirting yet?” Piper interrupts, a bored expression on her face. She leans her elbow against the keys, the loud clang echoing through the lobby.

“ Piper !” I hiss as Ren chokes on his sip of coffee, his face somehow turning even redder.

“What?” Piper asks, looking between the two of us. “Are you not flirting right now? When Luke and Lorelai do it, you say…”

“Can we talk for a moment, birdie?” I ask, not waiting for an answer before reaching around Ren and wrapping my hand around Piper’s bicep.

She sighs heavily and gets to her feet. “That’s your ‘I’m giving you the illusion you have a choice, but you and I both know you don’t have one’ voice.”

I ignore her, pulling her across the lobby and into the back offices.

“Mo-om!” Piper whines, pulling her arm free. “You’re embarrassing me!”

“Piper. Sweetie. My darling baby girl. You cannot say shit like that about your mother and your teacher.”

She widens her eyes and slowly blinks them. I narrow mine and point at her. “Stop with the puppy dog eyes, you monster.”

“Why is it flirting when Luke and Lorelai do it, but not when you and Mr. Q do it?” she asks, sticking out her lower lip.

“Because… because…” Goddammit, this is what I get for forcing her to watch Gilmore Girls with me so often. “Because I said so!”

“Ah-ha!” Piper points her own finger in my face and I swat at it. “You promised you’d never use that as an excuse!”

“That was before you decided to be a little shit.”

“Hmph.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Sounds like bullshit. You told me when Luke and Lorelai talk like that to each other, they’re flirting. Why is it any different?”

Piper learns a lot about how social interactions work through media.

We’ve spent her entire life pausing TV shows, movies, dog-earing books, and talking over commercials on the radio to talk about social interactions she didn’t understand.

It makes sense she understands flirting through the lens of Luke and Lorelai.

What doesn’t make sense is her thinking Ren and I were flirting. Because that isn’t what we were doing. At all. I mean. Maybe I was flirting a little with him, but he certainly wasn’t flirting with me.

“I didn’t mean to come across as flirtatious,” I say slowly, making sure I get the words right. God knows she’ll remember if I don’t. “I’m sorry for confusing you.”

She shrugs. “Okay.”

“That’s it? No more interrogation?”

“Do you want more interrogation?”

“No,” I respond quickly. “No, I don’t.”

Piper steps around me. “Then you’re off the hook.” I exhale in relief too soon, because she glances over her shoulder at me with a smirk. “For now.”

“You’re treating this like a date!” Piper groans. She’s currently spread starfish on her back in the middle of my bed.

“I am not ,” I argue, pulling a black dress from my closet and examining it.

I’m lying. I totally am.

It’s been a week and a half since Piper accused me of flirting with Ren.

I’ve wanted to make myself scarce the last two lessons, but I’m trying to keep a normal routine with both him and Piper, trying to pretend everything’s normal and I don’t know an extremely intimate detail about him.

But since I can’t interact with this man like a normal, adult, human being, I’ve been giving him his coffee, commenting on how great Piper’s doing, and excusing myself under the guise of having to put out a fire somewhere in the inn.

Piper certainly doesn’t buy it, and if Ren also doesn’t, he’s kind enough to not say anything.

Ren texted me this morning offering to drive, using terms like “economical” and “environmentally friendly.” Personally, I think it’s a terrible idea for us to be in such close proximity for the thirty-ish minutes it takes to get to New Haven, but it would make me sound like such a terrible person to refuse his offer.

“Move,” Piper commands, elbowing me in the side. I yelp, jumping out of her way. When did she stand up? “You don’t get nights out, so you don’t know how to dress for a night out.”

Ouch , but fair judgment. No one roasts you like your teenager.

She throws an emerald green dress I wear once a year on St. Patrick’s Day at me. “This one.”

I hold it up and eye it skeptically. “You think?”

“It’ll compliment your hair,” Piper explains, bending down and rummaging through my dress shoes. “You’ll look like a pretty leprechaun.”

“I’m not certain looking like a leprechaun is quite the vibe I want.”

“You don’t know what you want, Mom,” she says, and again, ouch . She stands up with a gold kitten heel in each hand. “I’m making you pretty so you can flirt with a hot, rich Yale dad.”

I bark out a surprised laugh, “Piper!”

“What? You should meet someone, and they might as well be rich.” She holds the shoes out to me. “My very own Daddy Warbucks, if you will.”

“I absolutely will not.” I roll my eyes and take the shoes from her.

“Rich and entitled isn’t your type?” Piper asks as I pull my robe off. Both my bra and underwear are at least five years old, and I wince when I catch the beige-ish colored fabric in the mirror. “Say,” she continues, “what is your type?”

“Good try, birdie.” I laugh, pulling the dress over my head. “We’re not having this discussion.”

“Lorelai and Rory do!” she whines.

I smooth the skirt down and look in the mirror. Curse this troublemaking, possibly matchmaking offspring of mine. The color does compliment my hair.

“Well?” I ask Piper, spreading my arms out and twirling, the skirt swooshing satisfyingly around my legs.

“If you were flirting with Mr. Q—which I know, I know, you’re not —he’d totally flirt back.”

I scowl at her. “I’m changing.”

Of course that’s when there’s a knock at the front door. Piper has a shit-eating grin on her face.

“Oh no ,” she says theatrically. “It’s too late. Guess you’ll have to stay in the hot cougar outfit.”

“What did you say?” I ask, mouth agape as she literally skips from the room.

She, of course, doesn’t answer and I hear the click of the door unlocking. I sigh and fluff my hair before grabbing my purse. I just know she didn’t check the peephole before she opened it.

“Hi, Mr. Q!” she says with an excitement I’ve heard maybe twice in this child’s life. Maybe it’s because she’s excited for the concert, which I’m sure she is.

But I have a hunch she also has some questionable matchmaking goals for the night. And what happens if she’s successful? I let Ren in, and he rocks my world in bed obviously, and when Piper and my life is too much, he leaves and breaks our hearts?

“You can do this. You’re casual friends who are doing this for your favorite fifteen-year-old with questionable intentions,” I tell myself in my mirror, running my hands over the curves and dips of my body.

“You’re doing this for Piper. You can keep a healthy distance.

” I nod determinedly at myself in the mirror before spinning on my heel, throwing the bedroom door open, and immediately realizing I’m screwed.

Ren in his workout clothes is sexy as fuck. Ren in the khaki shorts and college t-shirts he wears while teaching piano lessons is gorgeous.

But Ren in chinos and a sky blue shirt with the top buttons undone and sleeves rolled up to his elbows?

Holy shit.

This man is the beauty standard for men.

The blue makes his eyes pop, and I swear his lips are plumper than usual, his hair even curlier. I can’t help but wonder if he styled it differently, or if this unbelievably gorgeous outfit of his just makes it look different.

Or maybe I am as slutty as everyone said.

The Piper-induced anxiety is still there, but accompanying it is a different, and frankly unwelcome feeling: good old-fashioned horniness.

I’m debating turning around and making retching noises to fake being sick when he glances up from Piper and meets my eyes.

Maybe I’m delusional, but I swear to god, this man does a double take before his eyes do a once-over. I watch with a mixture of emotions as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

It’s been a minute since someone looked at me like I was something lovely to behold, something they don’t want to take their eyes off.

Okay, I don’t think it’s actually ever happened.

Until tonight.

Ren’s gaze meets mine again, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles.

How the fuck am I supposed to get through tonight?