7x07

It had been a whirlwind of a day, and the last thing Piper wanted to be focusing on right now was her schoolwork. She still couldn't believe that she'd gotten to meet Jade, the host of Supernova Superstar, her favorite reality show ever. Yes, working with Jade had revealed some harsh truths about Piper and her dancing that she was still processing, but that wasn't the point.

She had met Jade!

She had texted Amy and Finn in their newly-created group chat the second she'd climbed in her sister's car that evening and had even sent them a picture as proof. Their group chat had been blowing up ever since.

Finn: Yooo, that's sick!!! I'm jealous

Piper: Don't get too upset about it. Nick only asked us "boring" dancers to come in today...

P: Why have neither of you told me I'm a boring dancer btw?!? F: Boring??

F: Makes sense why he wanted Kingston but you?? Nah

F: Nick's one to talk 😂

😬😂

🤜🏻🤛🏻

💕

F: I'd pay money to see you fight him Ames

💪🏻

F: For sure 💪🏻💪🏻

😂😂

F: Don't play with me like that Pipes 😔

F: You know I'm going through withdrawals since the season finale

P: Not playing!! Seriously! Nick signed us up!!!

F: WHY DIDN'T YOU START WITH THAT

F: YO THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!

F: MY MOM'S GONNA BE FREAKING STOKED!!!

F: Acro nation wishes they were us 😏

😂😂

Finn and Amy had since moved on to having their own conversation in the group chat that Piper was trying to follow while getting some reading done for her English class. However, they kept bringing up some strange guy at the bookstore where they had gotten coffee (or tea, in Finn's case) that afternoon, and Piper wasn't following the jokes they kept making. Finn kept bringing up a book about herbs with a very unfortunate title that Amy kept laughing (via emojis) at, and the uncomfortable feeling of being left out started to creep up on Piper again much like it had the other day in The Next Steep.

Wasn't this what she had been hoping for? Finn and Amy, two of the most important people in her life, were getting along better than Piper could have ever dreamed. Her best friends had clearly had a great time together that afternoon, and Piper bit her lip as she reread their text messages, failing to come up with anything to contribute to the conversation since she had no idea what they were even talking about anymore.

She was starting to wish Nick hadn't called her in for rehearsal that afternoon. While she had been dancing for Jade, her best friends had been laughing at books with weird titles and making up wild backstories for some odd-looking guy in the coffee shop.

This was ridiculous. She had gotten to meet Jade. She wasn't supposed to wish she could trade that once in a lifetime opportunity for time with her best friends who she saw everyday instead.

Letting out a long, heavy sigh, Piper turned off her phone's ringer, pushed her book for English aside, and flopped back onto her pillows dejectedly. What was it that Jade had said about them all that afternoon? That they were each hiding something, not dancing to their full potential. Something like that anyway. And Piper had figured out what it was that she was hiding behind.

Really, it couldn't have been more obvious.

She had spent her whole life trying to be a perfect dancer. In her defense, however, she was scarred by past dance experiences that had gone horribly wrong. In her first ever dance recital, which she remembered being so excited for beforehand, she had completely frozen up the second she got on stage and forgot the choreography, and Bridget Calloway and her cronies had made fun of her for it for the rest of that dance season. And then a few years later, at a solo competition, Bridget Calloway made some snide remarks about her dancing, and it had psyched Piper out so much that she completely forgot the solo she had planned and stumbled her way through her song until she could run backstage away from prying eyes and burst into tears.

And that was to say nothing of her experiences with Miss Angela and the way she'd fallen out of her aerial at Regionals.

Piper knew the feeling of humiliation like the back of her hand, and so she strived to be perfect to avoid that, and not just in dance. With three older siblings to live up to, she couldn't afford not to strive for excellence. Lauren was the star student – captain of the debate team, valedictorian of her high school class, a perfect university grade point average, and now earning her master's degree, and maybe one day her doctorate, in family counseling. Julia was the star athlete – captain of the volleyball team, record-setter for the long distance in track, and now a college graduate who'd scored a paid internship at a major advertising company before she'd even walked the stage. And that was to say nothing of James – Regionals, Nationals, Internationals, and Hip Hop Bangerz and Mash-Ups champion and up-and-coming choreographer within the Toronto area. Oh yeah, and he was in a band.

Her entire life had been shaped around living up to the standards her siblings had set. She wanted to be as good as each of them, and that meant that she strived for perfection in everything she did. Every move in her dancing was calculated to minimize risk of failure, and if she couldn't pick up choreography, she put in as much extra rehearsal time as she had to in order to get it right.

But she'd let go today. By the end of their rehearsal with Jade, she was prancing around in a butterfly costume and allowing herself to dance without planning every move beforehand. It had been so long since she had allowed herself to dance for fun, and she had forgotten how good it could feel to let loose a little. When she had gotten home, she'd even let her hair out of its ponytail, and just for fun (and because she was alone in her room), she'd done a couple of hair whips that would have made Michelle proud.

When she'd allowed herself to stop striving for perfection so much, Summer had given her positive feedback, and Jade had deemed her ready to compete on reality TV, and Piper had thought that maybe they were on to something.

But there was still something nagging her at the back of her mind, like her self-ingrained need for perfectionism wasn't the only thing she was hiding. But what else was there to hide?

Her phone vibrated once, then twice, then three times at the end of her bed, and she sighed, squeezing her eyes shut as Finn and Amy continued to blow up their group chat.

Can they not just text each other? Piper couldn't help thinking when her phone continued to vibrate. Finally, after one too many bzzts, she sat up and snatched up her phone angrily, unlocking it to see at least twenty new text messages from her best friends. Now they were talking about bumblebees for some reason? Finn had asked Piper's opinion on something a few messages back, but then he and Amy had continued texting each other as if a question had never been posed at all.

Somehow, Piper didn't think it would matter if she responded or not at this point. Would they even notice? Would they even care?

Stop it, Piper. They're your best friends.

But something about this... Something about Finn and Amy getting along so well really rubbed her the wrong way. Why was that?

Falling back onto her pillows again, this time phone in hand, Piper ignored her texts and opened Instagram instead, hoping for a distraction. She liked a few posts mindlessly then scrolled back to the top to go through her friends' stories. The first one she opened just happened to be Amy's. It was a boomerang that she and Finn had clearly taken that afternoon. There was a pang in Piper's heart just at the sight of it, and she immediately closed out of the app and rolled over onto her side.

Was she jealous? Is that what was happening here? But why should she be jealous of Finn and Amy's blossoming friendship when she was already so close with both of them as it was? What did it matter if the two of them were becoming friends? This was what she had wanted. When Amy decided to come back to The Next Step, Piper had dreamed of this – the three of them hanging out and having fun together.

She supposed that the thought of Finn and Amy having fun together without her hadn't quite crossed her mind. That was perhaps a small oversight on her part.

Except...

What if it wasn't an oversight at all? What if she hadn't imagined Finn and Amy together without her because she was the common link between them, and without that common link, well... What reason would they have to spend time together? She had never considered that possibility, but she had practically handed it right to them the other day when Nonna rescheduled her flight into town without telling anyone, and Piper and James had been sent by their frantic mother to pick her up when Piper was supposed to be hanging out with Finn and Amy instead. She'd thought nothing of it at the time, had even thought it would be a great bonding experience for her best friends after their disastrous first attempt at hanging out that had ended with Amy's new white jacket drenched in tea.

Another small oversight on her part apparently.

None of this was making sense, and frankly, all of this psychoanalysis was giving her a headache. (Or maybe that was the continual vibration of her phone. Seriously, she should just mute the stupid group chat at this point.)

Taking a deep, calming breath, Piper closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Aunt Esther, who was perhaps one of the calmest members of the Monaldo clan, was a firm believer that some problems could be solved just by clearing one's mind and taking a moment to rest, so Piper figured she would give it a try. It certainly couldn't hurt at any rate. She cleared her mind of all of the confusing thoughts that were running through it and took another few deep breaths, reveling in the quietness of her bedroom.

Maybe Aunt Esther was on to something. This was nice.

But then, Amy's boomerang of her and Finn crept back into her mind, and clarity seemed to hit Piper so strongly that her eyes shot open.

She wasn't jealous of Finn and Amy's blossoming friendship. She was jealous of Amy.

But why was she jealous of Amy? It didn't make sense. Just because Finn was friends with Amy now didn't mean that he wasn't still friends with Piper. She wasn't going to lose him as a friend, and she knew that.

Even still, a sense of discomfort was forming in the pit of Piper's stomach the longer that she thought about Finn and Amy together. Her phone was lighting up with texts between the two of them, and she couldn't shake the feeling that maybe there was more going on here than just her two best friends getting to know each other.

Squeezing her eyes shut again, Piper rolled over onto her other side, willing the familiar bundle of nerves growing in her stomach to go away. Reluctantly, oh-so-reluctantly, she thought of the one thing she tried so hard to keep buried deep in her heart ever since that day when Finn had given her his hoodie and she had noticed just how beautiful his eyes were in a moment that had probably meant more to her than it had to him.

The thought of her and Finn – together.

Most of her family seemed to operate under the assumption that Piper was destined to fall in love with Finn given how close the two of them were, and this forced her to be very adamant about the fact that they were just friends and she was not interested in Finn at all, thank you very much.

It wasn't exactly a secret, of course, that Finn had some kind of crush on her when he'd first come to the studio. He'd made that plenty obvious when he asked her out on multiple occasions.

But he had stopped asking her out after prom, and Piper had finally felt comfortable enough around him to actually give him a chance. Looking back on it now, she realized the astounding rate that they had gotten to know each other. She had been vulnerable and confided in him about things she had never confided in Amy or even her family about.

After what happened with Josh, that was no small feat.

Piper had sworn off boys after Josh. She had vowed to herself that she would never get so close with a boy ever again because when she got too close, she got vulnerable, and when she got vulnerable, well... That was usually when the feelings set in.

And now, here she was with Finn. Her best friend. The person who she had danced with at prom, and who made her laugh when she was on the verge of tears, and who held her hand after she'd messed up her aerial at Regionals, only letting go when he was absolutely certain that she was going to be okay. It had been Finn who had come after her when she'd felt left out at the Christmas party, and it was Finn who had sat with her for hours at a time and listened and almost effortlessly found ways to ease her worries and distract her with something else when she felt like her anxiety was going to consume her.

It would be so easy to fall for him, and she knew it. That's why she had to put up walls – to protect herself. To protect him.

Because if they ever did try to date, and it ended badly? That wasn't a risk Piper was willing to take. She had already made that mistake with Josh. She wasn't going to make it with Finn.

Because even if there were reasons to like Finn, there were also reasons to not like him. He was loud and clumsy. He was constantly showing up late to things, and he used too many exclamation points when texting. He constantly distracted her from the things she really needed to get done, and he was so relaxed about everything that it infuriated her sometimes because she wanted to be that carefree too but was pretty sure she was physically incapable of it.

But maybe the biggest reason of all to not like Finn was that he hadn't asked her out in a long time – the telltale sign that his little crush on her had been just that: a crush. He wasn't interested in her like that anymore, and Piper was fine with that. As long as she always had him in her life as her best friend, that was all she really needed.

So yes, maybe she thought that Finn had the prettiest blue eyes in the world. And maybe he was a little (or actually very) cute. And maybe the thought of him getting closer with another girl (Amy) filled her with a feeling of utter dread (which was completely ridiculous because Finn was a person, and Piper didn't own him, and he was fully allowed to be friends with whomever he so pleased).

And fine, maybe there had been one night where she had lay awake in bed wondering what kissing Finn would feel like. (It had been the night of the Christmas party when their faces had been mere centimeters apart just hours before. She couldn't help it, okay? She was curious.)

Maybe all of that was supposed to mean that she liked Finn. But feelings were complicated, and relationships were complicated, and her friendship with Finn was simple. Why complicate something that didn't need to be complicated?

She and Finn were just friends. Really good friends. And Piper was perfectly content to stay that way.

Really, she was.

(But maybe, deep, deep down inside, a hidden piece of her heart felt otherwise.)