Chapter Seven: The Three of Night

Piper didn't need to look over the banister to know that Meredith was speechless. The roaring silence between her and Kristen, interrupted periodically by the odd passing car or cricket chirp, was as informative as a vocal freak-out. Her stomach tensed. Thoughts rushed into and out of Piper's brain faster than she could process them. All that stuck, all that registered, was that Meredith and Kristen, the two women she'd been sleeping with, were downstairs and face to face. Worst still? Meredith knew, finally she knew, about Kristen.

At some unknown point Meredith found her voice again. "...Her... girlfriend...?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're her girlfriend?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am." Heavy earrings jingled. Kristen's nod. She spoke on. "May I speak to her please? I really get that I shouldn't be coming here this late, but... when I talked to Piper over the phone she told me she wasn't feeling well. I only wanted to check up on her. Can I come in?"

Although upstairs, Piper heard everything being said downstairs quite clearly, but clearly wasn't good enough. She trod down the length of the hallway and peaked her head around the banister. Right downstairs was Meredith. The cold nightly breeze billowing in through the open door seemed to be making her tremble. Piper hated to see her shiver. It would've sucked all the attention except for the girl standing in front of the woman. Kristen. She was all bundled up in a padded duffle coat, coffee-coloured mittens, and a white knitted ski cap with ear flaps. Her gold earrings chimed with every toss of her bangs.

Piper couldn't see Meredith's face from where she was standing but she saw Kristen's... and she looked generally concerned. For a moment it didn't skip Piper's radar that Kristen might be making up the "I'm just worried about her" talking point to get to see her. The heiress' eyes seemed to search out Meredith's for a moment, then roamed elsewhere, over her shoulder, which was when she looked upstairs and locked eyes with Piper.

"...Piper..." Whispered Kristen.

Meredith turned and shot a glare up the stairs. It was so still and so unreadable it actually sent a chill down Piper's back. It was totally indecipherable. Merry didn't look angry, or unhappy, or even confused, just... peculiarly blank, such a far cry from her almost habitual smile. Piper wasn't sure why that bothered her so much, but it did, and for a long moment that was all she and Meredith did. Stare at each other. Feeling out what the other was thinking. Failing to recognize Kristen's fidgety anxiousness.

At least until she suddenly blurted out, "Mrs. McCullough, can Piper and I talk for a little while?"

Four eyes turned to two and narrowed. Whatever coolness Piper noticed in Meredith evaporated into ire when the older woman fastened her robe with yank, blew an irritated breath and folded back to give Kristen way, seething, "You have five minutes."

Kristen gave her an awkward smile of thanks whilst sauntering in and running upstairs. If for only a split second Piper tried to make eye contact with Meredith, but the older woman refused to look her way anymore. With that newly embittered of hers she padded into the kitchen instead. That was when all Piper's attention turned to her blonde-haired ex. When she reached the top of the staircase Kristen whispered a soft, "Baby, you look a little-" but was cut off when Piper furiously grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her down the hall into her bedroom.

"Piper...! Let go, you're hurting me!"

She threw Kristen's wrist out of her hand and banged the door shut so hard it made her PC judder. "Where the FUCK do you get off telling her about you and me!?"

Kristen winced. "Don't yell at me. I was worried about you. You said you were sick."

"I'm on my fucking period, Kristen! I'm not dying of malaria, all right?! And don't even pretend that that's what you're here for, okay?!"

"I was just worried about you...! I thought it might have something to do with... why you..."

Tch. That one made Piper sneer. What did Kristen think this was? Some "I'm dying of an illness so I gotta break up with you 'cause I can't bear having you see me looking so weak" bullshit? God, it'd only been a couple of days and Piper was already sick and tired of this steaming great pile of crap. When she saw how frightened Kristen actually seemed though, how nervous and fragile, Piper's struggling anger waned. As pissed off as she was with Kristen, the blonde girl had the kind of doe eyes and childlike frown that made you soften, even when all you wanted to do was strangle her ass. No wonder she was such a "Daddy's Girl".

Piper took a deep breath. She calmed down.

"I'm okay, okay?" A pause. "I felt queasy before but I'm a little better now. A little."

Kristen's cushioned lips curved into tiny smile of relief after being told that. Apparently she truly was concerned. Those bounds seemed to matter less when, in her relief, she reached out to caress Piper's cheek, only to have Piper push her touch away.

"Don't," said the songstress.

Kristen's shoulders sagged visibly. "...I can't understand why you're being like this with me. Everything was great between us before I left, I was only gone for a few days, and now you won't even let me touch you?"

"Stop acting like a victim here, okay?" Piper's heart was thumping in her chest again even as she laboured to cool herself down. "You had no right to come here and tell Mer-" she almost forgot that she didn't like calling Meredith "Merry" in front of other people, so had to fall back to the one name she hated calling her, "...tell... my step-mom... that you're my girlfriend. You had no right."

"Why is that a problem? You told me your family knows that you're gay."

"That wasn't your call, Kristen! I'll tell her when and where I please, not when you say it's okay. And I'm not your girlfriend."

"Of course you a-"

"No, I'm not! Not anymore, Kristen! I ended this, remember?!"

Kristen stepped closer. "Yeah, and I don't get that...! I'm sorry if I'm being a pain but I just don't! We were such a great couple, Piper... your friends liked me, didn't they? Didn't we talk? Don't you remember that day we went to Busch Gardens? We were the only ones on the bus back home. You kissed me. You told me I was special. God, you made me feel so... I never..."

The platinum blonde sighed over the inability to get her thoughts out the way she wanted to, but the message was loud and clear.

All Piper's bubbling anger simmered down again. What Kristen had said over the phone was true. This girl was totally in love with her. One need only look into her crystalline blue eyes that hung on the edge of tears to know it was true. All the fury that had welled in Piper's cramped stomach shifted into torturous butterflies of guilt. This was the truest consequence of dragging this relationship out for so long, for failing to break up with the girl so many damn times. Kristen really was in love with her.

Piper softened. "You are special. Kristen, you're wonderful. That why you should be with a girl who appreciates how wonderful you are. I'm not that girl. I know you think I am, but I'm not."

Instead of responding to that, Kristen wiped something wet out of her eyes and tucked her mitten-covered hand into her jacket. She pulled out something. A locket. A gold plated locket that she ungraciously tugged open with her teeth. There was a ticket stub inside.

Piper blinked. "...What's that?"

"It's from the first movie we saw together," In spite of her teary eyes Kristen gazed at it with warm nostalgia. "Baby Mama, remember? We sat at the back and you held my hand. I still remember how your breath felt against my ear when you whispered about how I was so much cuter than Amy Poehler."

She remembered. Back in those days Piper meant it.

"That was the night we first..." Kristen swallowed her emotion. "...I just... I'll never forget it. Any of it. I've never been happier than this. People think `cause my Daddy has so much money I couldn't want anything, but they're wrong. That can't give you, like... good friends or a girlfriend who doesn't care that you're rich. A girlfriend who makes you think, who makes you feel like the most important thing in the world, a girlfriend who makes you feel better after a rough day at school just by kissing your forehead and saying "I missed you". So what now? I'm supposed to just... give that up? Give you up? I can't do that. You're the girl I wanna be with, Piper. You. I don't wanna be with anyone else. Just you."

All of that caused Piper to wax nostalgically about that night they saw Baby Mama. The movie turned out to be kind of lame, but since she was such a big fan of Saturday Night Live, Piper gave it a whirl and asked Kristen to join her, making a date of it. When it was clear that the movie was more like shit than sugar, Piper distracted herself by playfully playing with Kristen every few minutes. Stroking her hair, caressing her thigh, playing footsie, silly little things like that. At the time she hadn't known it but doing all of that throughout the night made Kristen crazy hot, which was how they ended up having sex when Piper took her home that night. That was certainly one of the more memorable moments of their relationship.

"You're my first," Admitted Kristen, with a similar track of thought. "I wasn't gonna give that up for just anyone."

Piper looked at her shoes. "...I don't know what to say."

"Say you didn't mean it. Say you want we back. Say I'm still special."

"I can't do that."

Things went quiet for the first time since Kristen had been yanked in here. Piper still had her sights locked on her shoes. She arched her toes up and watched them poke at the crowns of her slippers. They were pink and fuzzy. They weren't really hers though -- they were Meredith's. She'd lent them a month ago when a pipe burst in the kitchen. Merry told her to wear them at night if she went downstairs (for late night coffee or something) so as not to catch a cold. They looked cute, if not marred a bit by being a bit of a mis-fit, but that was to be expected since Meredith's feet were longer and broader than hers.

Then Piper wondered why on Earth she was spending so much thought on her footwear -- until she remembered who was staring her down right now. Who could blame her for using

adorable slippers to distract herself from Kristen's pleading eyes?

"Kiss me."

...until she said that. Then, all the fuzzy pink slippers in the world couldn't hook Piper away from that one. "...What was that?"

"Kiss me. Kiss me really, like you used to, and then tell me you don't feel anything. I'll go if you don't."

What the hell was she saying? It wasn't like their first kiss or anything, there were hundreds more that came before this, in cars, public toilets, kitchens, libraries, house parties and in their beds; an elongated trail that stretched from the day they broke up all the way back to that first day they bumped into each other afterschool at the piazza. Ashley went home with a new blouse. Zack went home with a Trivium CD. Piper came home with Kristen's number.

Wait, why was she recalling these things?

Piper was so consumed by them she barely noticed Kristen's body heat enfolding her. The heiress leaned in and cupped her cheek, softly, whilst her free hand carefully swept a stray tress of blonde behind her ear. Piper knew she was in dangerous waters when her whole world was swallowed up by Kristen's face. She had a naturally cute one, no doubt about it. Zack wasn't so far off when he compared her to Heidi Klum. She had the supermodel's nose and smile as well as that "square with curved edges" chin, but the rest was all Kristen. Strawberry-shaped face, thin eyelashes, naturally rouge cheeks, that little beauty spot mounted on the left side of her jaw -- the one that would've made her look French were she born a redhead.

Kristen's lips were wet. The space separating them from Piper's was so small you couldn't thread licorice through it.

"I can't let you go..." She was breathing so hard it tickled Piper's lip. "I just can't..."

Suddenly the bedroom door burst open. Meredith. Piper juddered and backed away from Kristen at Meredith's unceremonious entrance. The matriarch's wide grey eyes moved slowly from left to right and back again, from a sheepish Piper to an uncomfortable Kristen. When those silvery orbs came back to Piper they held point there, narrowing and hardening. Piper refused to look at them. A car horn blared across the street. It broke a silence so fucking unnerving that Piper wished the cement and floorboards beneath her slippers would capsize.

Meredith`s glare turned to Kristen again. Her voice was just as stern. "You're five minutes are up. It's time for you to go home."

"But Mrs. McCullough, I-"

"Young lady, don't you have school tomorrow? Don't make me call your parents. Go home."

Beat.

Kristen's parents didn't know about Piper nor did they know about their daughter's sexuality. If Meredith called them those two facts would become undone. The threat of that was enough to pierce Kristen's desperate bubble. She stole one last loving glimpse of a trembling Piper, who wasn't looking at anybody, and left without a word. When she heard the front door close Meredith pulled the window curtains and peered outside. By the time she closed them again Kristen was probably halfway to the bus stop.

Silence again.

Piper found the strength to look at Meredith. Her expression was one of composed anger, like a coiled spring brimming with tension. More than anything else Piper hoped to God that that anger wasn't intended for her.

"Merry, I-"

"I'm going to bed," declared Meredith, not even giving her a chance to speak. There wasn't a trace of anger in her voice though. Strangely enough. There was a word for what Merry seemed to be feeling and it wasn't really anger. The word was `disappointment'. Nervousness set in. Piper felt like a defendant desperately longing to plead her case, but judge Meredith McCullough wasn't likely to listen.

The giant "fuck off!" that was Meredith storming out of Piper's room and slamming her bedroom door shut put an exclamation mark on what was left of the evening, and after standing in shock for three long minutes wondering how things had gotten so fucked so fast, Piper found her way back to her bed.

She flicked off Meredith's fuzzy pink slippers, and crawled underneath the rumpled covers again. Her stomach still hurt and because of it she couldn't get to sleep straight away. It was midnight before the weight of her eyelids was too heavy to sustain. Piper found her sleep, but she wasn't sure she ever wanted to wake up again.

**********

Afterthoughts

* I was supposed to be working on the next chapter of My Girl is My Poison, but... as time and chapters roll on I'm becoming more and more obsessed with this story. I just love the characters, they're so easy to write for, especially Kristen. While the chapter didn't come out exactly the way I intended for it to (Kristen ended up looking a bit more sympathetic than I would've liked) I'm happy enough with it that I don't want to change anything. I liked explaining some of the history of Kristen and Piper's relationship too.

* In hindsight I think this story would work a hell of a lot better (especially with regards to this chapter) if parts of it were told from Meredith's POV, but I've seen too many age-gap romance stories told from the perspective of the older person. I prefer it this way, even if it limits the narrative potential a tad.

* Thanks to all y'all who've given me feedback, reviews and blog comments! Keep reading!

* As per usual, I encourage you all to visit my blog! It's http://ksn-kaiser.blogspot.com/ Hope to hear from you!