This choice: Piper goes out on the town to run some errands for her Mom... • Go Back... Okay, so having a pregnant mother didn’t exactly make life easy.
Especially since, thanks to a certain asshole father, she was unemployed at the time of pregnancy because he was the paltry breadwinner of the house and no one wants to hire a woman who was about to literally shoot out another, smaller, noisier woman in less than a trimester. Piper’s Mom had been having an especially hard divorce, so money was tight, but she was also having an especially difficult pregnancy. Which was where Piper stepped in to help take care of things where she could.
“Where’re you going?” her sister, Parker, grumbled from the couch, “Hanging out with your little boyfriend again?”
“What? No. Ew.” Piper rolled her eyes as she handled the doorknob, “I’m gonna go out and do some crap for Mom. Zack’s not my... ew!”
Piper and Parker had been at each other’s throats since the day Piper had been born. Parker had been the kind of older sister to try to return Piper to the stork just a week after she’d been born. And then try to take her to the UPS store on her big wheel when that didn’t work. And then, when all else failed, try to flush her sister down the toilet like a dead goldfish. Parker was about four years older than Piper, and took every opportunity to remind her of it by going out and drinking, partying, blowing whatever money came her way and earning the rest of it without scruples. Like Piper she was stacked, with tan olive skin and thick black hair cut short above her shoulders. Unlike Piper, she was seriously hung over, and dressed in her jammies.
“Okay, so your girlfriend.” Parker said with her eyes shut as she laid on the couch, “The one from Arizona.”
“Dakota, Texas, and no.” Piper rolled her eyes as she opened the door, “Bye Parker.”
“Deuces.” Parker spat back as the door shut behind her little sister...
***
The streets of Daven’s Port had always been a more welcome home to Piper than her actual home had ever been. The people knew her name, they didn’t complain when she got stuff wrong, and nobody (well, nobody she’d ever encountered) was hung over on a regular basis. The shop owners on the pier knew her, the street merchants gave her free hot dogs sometimes; life out here was usually a lot better than life in there.
Most of her issues came from Parker, unsurprisingly. She had always been a pain in the ass, but it was like ever since Dad left she had gone out of her way to be as un-helpful as possible. Which, with her constant partying and binge drinking, turned out to be very unhelpful. For God’s sake, their mom was pregnant and she didn’t even want to get a job to help keep food on the table...
Ugh, no time to dwell on all that now.
Piper’s Mom had been getting cravings out her wazoo ever since she entered her third trimester. Maple syrup on everything, off-brand chocolate from the gas station and only the gas station, midnight ice cream binges that nobody woke her up for... it was starting to get a little hard to keep up with!
Especially since, once again, it all fell on Piper to make sure that she got what she needed.
She couldn’t drive, so it wasn’t like she could go pick up the week’s worth of groceries it would take to feed everyone. But she could at least go out and get a few things to make life a little easier. Everything in Daven’s Port was just a long walk or a bus ride away. And thankfully, her mom’s cravings were just diverse enough that she could still get out and stretch her legs, see some friendly faces while she shopped.
“Ah, c’est Piper!” came the jovial, foreign tone of the best baker in town, “Come in, come in! I have just put, eh, chocolate croissants in ze oven!”
Basil Moreau was just one of the many folks in Daven’s Port who had succumbed to Piper’s charm. He was a plump french immigrant (legal, she figured) with two kids. He owned La Bonne Boulangerie, which seemed to cater exclusively to chocoholics and her mother. She had started coming in during her sophomore year and by now, after she’d just graduated a month ago, the Moreaus were like old family friends.
“‘Ow iz your mama, huh?” Basil asked with a smile behind his tweedily french moustache, “Still, uh... eh?”
He held out his hands in front of his belly to pantomime a larger, supposedly pregnant belly.
“Yeah, she’s still pretty eh. Kinda the reason I’m here.” Piper said with a smile as she whipped out her phone and started reading off her mom’s list, “I need, uh... a chocolate cake and... an order of sugar cookies and...”
Suffice it to say, Piper walked out of that place with half the damn bakery in tow.
Only her mother could crave such an inordinate amount of sugar during her pregnancy. She said she always had a craving for something when she was pregnant with her and her sister. With her it had been ice (which is why she was so cool! ba-dum-dum-tiss!) and with Parker it had been dirt. Her mom often joked that, because of all the sweets she’d been eating, this child was going to turn out a lot sweeter than her other ones.
It better.
Because Piper was not doing all this running around, giving up being the baby of the family, and hooking her mom up with enough sweets to induce a diabetic coma to raise another Parker.
As the doorbell chimed behind her, Piper waving a goodbye to the jovial baker inside, her phone started to vibrate.
It was a text from her mom!
"Hey Piper while youre out would you mind...? indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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