notes: wooo 2nd part everybody! Thanks for sticking around! I think i know what i want to do with this story now so the story's gonna start to develop from here on out.

Note: i wrote the first part when i was 16 and everything after the first line break in real time. Blame 16 yr old me for any cringiness before the break lol

I've also developed a slightly new format so i hope u guys like it! Im really excited to try something new!

ALSO HAPPY BELATED BDAY JESLYN! I know i didnt mention a present but take this as a surprise! Tysm for ur support for this fic and i hope u like it (as much as i love u xoxo 3 3 3)

2 weeks ago.

There were two things Piper hated more than anything—one being walnuts, and the other being the famous popstar Leo Valdez.

She had a valid reason for hating walnuts—she was allergic to them, and whenever she even had the slightest encounter with one, her face would puff up, her esophagus would get inflamed, and then she couldn't breathe. It was pretty serious stuff, and to be fair, they tasted pretty gross, too, and they looked like they were deformed versions of pecans or something. But Leo Valdez? He was much, much worse than walnuts. The only thing that he didn't have in common with them was that he didn't make her face swell like a freaking hot air balloon.

She had never met the guy. With all of her shows, venues, and tours year round, she never really had the time or opportunity to meet him. Sure, there was always a slim chance he would be one of the opening acts at one of her shows, but he was too popular. If she were to be honest, the two of them were on the same level of fame. Having him open for her would be the equivalent of Elvis Presley opening up for Michael Jackson. Such things didn't occur naturally, and Piper thought it was maybe for the best.

Why? As far as she knew, Valdez was a spoiled piece of crap. He was always in the tabloids for his various affairs and relationships with other singers and Hollywood starlets that were foolish enough to fall for his so-called charm. He had tons of money, lived in a huge house in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in LA, and wrote dumb pop songs about girls and cash and sex that really weren't Piper's forte. She was always annoyed by him, but Lacy, her best friend and self-proclaimed roadie, was head over heels. She had all of his posters, all of his albums, and a membership on almost every single "LEO V" fansite known to man—and it was infuriating, but Piper could deal. If only Lacy didn't belt out one of his songs every time they got on the road.

"AND I WAAAAAAANT YOUUUUUU..."

"Lacy."

"YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE, ON-LEEEEEEE ONE THAT I WA-A-ANT IN THE WHOOOOLE WIDE WO-O-ORLD…"

"Eugh," Piper groaned, pulling the pillow she had ducked her head under down to cover her eyes. They were on the road, heading back to Los Angeles after a long day in concert at a venue in Las Vegas. Frank, the driver and another good friend of hers, drove on unfazed with a pair of noise-cancelling earbuds tucked under his hat. Piper looked up and scowled, jealous. She'd definitely have to look into getting some of those when they got back to LA.

Lacy wistfully spun around in a wide circle, her flouncy, flowery skirt billowing before settling back down against her pale legs. She batted her lashes towards the ceiling and let out a dreamy sigh. "Oh, Piper—isn't Leo just fab?"

Piper put the pillow back in its proper place and sat up, crossing her legs under the table she was sitting at. "Do you want me to answer that honestly, or—"

Lacy curled her lip at her. "On second thought, don't." She spun around a couple more times as Piper chuckled. "But think about it, though—the two of us would be perfect together. Me and him, in LA, going to restaurants and the beach and concerts and parties and—"

"And crashing and burning, breaking up, being yesterday's new in the tabloids. And you crying all over the place while he moves on and writes a fake song about how 'heartbroken' he'll be over you," Piper finished, not missing a beat as she inspected her manicure to look impassive. "That's how they all go, Lace. He's redundant. It's better if you don't dream about him every night, because I'm sure he hasn't lost sleep over the girls he 'supposedly' loved."

"But come on, Piper! Have a little faith!" she threw up her arms in an attempt at conviction, but Piper only pursed her lips and turned her attention back to her perfectly filed nails. "It'll work out! I'll be, like, the first girl to actually make it through to him! And then the two of us will live happily ever after in LA, the end. Can't you get past your opinion of him for one second here?"

"I could if he proved me wrong." Piper barked in reply, because honestly, Leo changing his problematic ways was the most hopeless thing she'd heard all year.

Guys like him didn't change, never would. Lacy really needed to understand that.

2 days ago

"Oh my God," breathed Lacy, her eyes blown wide. "Oh my God!"

She gave a huge grin, then squealed.

Piper slouched in her seat; she was starting to feel more embarrassed than that time she'd had a wardrobe malfunction at one of her Dad's awards shows. She risked a mean glance at the unassuming CD sitting on Lacy's lap. It was insane to think that something so small could cause such a world of trouble.

"Are you gonna call him? Wait, wait—are you going to release the song? Holy crap Piper! You so have to! And then he'll drop one of his own, and then you'll drop another one—" Lacy rambled on more ideas, most of which were peppered with shrieks and daydreams that Piper couldn't bother to keep track of.

Piper kept her eyes on the road. At the moment, she had two options that would guarantee her getting out of this conversation:

Option number one. She could roll out of the car into oncoming traffic and hope to narrowly miss certain death.

Option number two. If that didn't work out, she could always drive directly into the nearest power line and/or tree, and hopefully put them both out of their misery.

Now, don't get her wrong. If this were any other person, anyone at all, Piper would just ignore their excitement, and instead focus on getting the two of them home safe and sound. But this was Lacy.

Lacy, the girl who Piper still buys Hershey's kisses for every time she sees them in the store because Piper stole one of hers in the fifth grade.

Lacy, the friend who still only buys dresses in variations of pink, white, black, and red, because she'd read in a magazine when they were fifteen that those were 'foolproof colors'.

Lacy, the person who'd drunkenly kissed a guy Piper liked at a party, who'd told her everything as soon as it happened, and who'd apologized for the incident for two weeks straight with gifts and cards and long 'forgive me' texts. Lacy was the kind of girl who still brought it up from time to time, just so she could apologize again.

This was Lacy. And Piper loved her.

But Lacy never, ever learned to let things go.

"Tell me again..." Lacy spoke up, pulling Piper from her reverie. When Piper risked a quick glance to her right, she knew she was in for it. Now that Lacy had finished her tangent and calmed down, her expression was downright gleeful. But there was an edge to it that Piper had seen way too many times, a dangerous glint to her eyes that was pronounced in the quirk of her hot pink lips, the set of her dark blond brows, and the way she looked at Piper as if she was the last gazelle on earth, and Lacy was the hungriest lion.

"Tell me again," Lacy restarted, lips curling in pleasure as she realized that Piper's attention was fully hers, "exactly how he looked at you. What was the word you used again? "

Piper slid down a little further in her seat, cursing any name she could think of as her face began to heat up. She was starting to regret telling Lacy each and every detail of the night, from the way he smiled, to the sharpie he'd seemingly pulled out of thin air. It wasn't like she'd memorized the whole thing. Valdez was just...interesting. A little strange. Someone whose presence would be hard to forget.

Lacy tapped at her chin like the evil, horrible best friend she was, her smirk stretching wider by the minute. To make matters worse, the green light that Piper was steadily approaching made the split-decision to turn yellow, and there was nothing she could do as the beige minivan in front of her chickened out and didn't try to make the light, letting it turn red.

"I said he was...mysterious." she mumbled in defeat, not sure if Lacy could hear her words. She looked out of the driver's seat window, trying to hide what was probably turning out to be a deep, red blush.

"That's not how he looked at you, though." Lacy sing-songed, wagging her finger at Piper with a smug smile on her face. "You said he looked amused. And everybody knows that if a guy looks at you in amusement, it means he thinks you're super cute."

"Yeah, everybody being Seventeen Magazine," Piper grumbled, hitting the gas as soon as the light flickered green.

Lacy tutted from the passenger seat.

"Piper, you've got to trust me. He was totally interested in you. In fact, I think you should call him, and—"

"Absolutely not." Piper scowled, glad to know that her encounter with Leo hadn't stopped her from giving that reaction. A second light ahead was already red, and Piper hit the brakes. The car jerked to a stop as she threw her hands up in frustration. "Lace, please. I have no business calling him, okay? I'll let him live his life, you let me live mine, and then we can all live happily ever after, no 'whirlwind romance' required."

"But he gave you his number!" Lacy whined, waving the wretched, signed CD around in the air for all the world to see. The light turned green. Piper blindly reached over and tried to slap it out of her hands. "If what I said before meant nothing to you, then this has to. He wants you to call him!"

The scowl was still on Piper's face, a sour taste in her mouth. Meeting Leo didn't change her opinion of him. He was still cocky—cocky enough to comment negatively on her style of music, to challenge her to sink down to his level and change her genre to something that he was comfortable with. He was flashy—a statement supported by the million dollar shades he had tucked into his shirt, the tailored clothing on his back, the dragon on his collarbone that she knew was the handiwork of LA's best and most expensive tattoo artist. He was cruel, something she swore she had seen in his eyes—he was not amused with her. He was amused at her. Leo thought she was a joke, the laughter in his gaze when he'd spoken to her and the hurt she still felt even now proving every inch of her suspicion.

She hit the gas, gaze forward, mind resolute.

"We don't always get what we want."

The dial tone filled her ears.

Piper glanced through the crack in the doorway to peer at Lacy, who was thankfully still nodding off in the middle of Casablanca.

Relieved, she took a breath. Let it go. Brought the phone into the light, and started to dial the numbers, a weight much heavier than her cell phone resting in her other hand.

He picked up on the second ring.

"If this is a fan…" he started, tone obviously exhausted and wary; Piper nearly dropped her phone in surprise. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest as she fumbled with it in the darkness, fighting to keep it off the ground.

A heavy sigh filled the other line.

"Look, I get it, I'm awesome, I know. But I've had a really long day today, so...if you don't identify yourself in the next thirty seconds, I'll have no choice but to—"

"Ugh, don't flatter yourself," she interjected, almost by reflex. The other line went deadly silent. Piper's brain finally caught up to her mouth, and she stopped, realized what she said, and slapped a hand over her mouth.

"Okay…" he said slowly before Piper could scramble up a good enough apology in response. "...so it's not a fan, then. Who is this?"

"It's—I'm—" she cleared her throat and tried to calm her heart rate, trying her best to regain her composure. "This is, um. McLean, remember? Piper McLean—"

"Oh! Hey! What's up, McLean?" His disposition changed just from the sound of her name. All traces of tiredness and annoyance disappeared from his voice, and every hint of negativity she'd heard at the start of the call was replaced with something else—amusement, she thought, and a frown began to tug at her lips.

Piper backtracked a bit and realized what he'd asked. "Nothing much," she said plainly, eyes trailing back to the image of a drowsy Lacy slumping over on the king-sized bed. "Do you always start calls by stating how awesome you are?"

There was a pause on his end, one that made her assume that he was taking time to remember. "I do not, thank you very much. Do you always use an insult as the first line?"

"Not usually,"she smirked, moving to sit down on a nearby stool that was further back into the closet. "You're the exception."

"How touching." said Leo, voice dry. She could picture him with that trademark smirk on his face, smiling widely on the other line. "I doubt you called just to insult me, though."

"You're not wrong." she admitted, but she wasn't so sure. Why had she called him? Lacy's words from a couple days ago wouldn't stop replaying in her mind.

He wants you to call him.

Piper didn't know what to say. Now, here, listening to Valdez's voice on the other side of the city, she still didn't know what to say, and now was the exact time for her to speak up. What did she want to do? What did she want from this? What did she want from him?

Like the intelligent person she was, Piper blurted the first thing that came to mind.

Uh. "—My friend Lacy is real."

There was another long pause where Piper's conscience responded with a heartfelt what the hell, and all she could do was shrug back.

Clever, her thoughts drawled before she mentally smacked herself upside the head.

"Uh," Leo said eloquently, sounding just as confused as she was at the moment. "Who's Lacy?"

"She's my friend,"she rushed out, face hot. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. "Lacy's the one who asked for your signature on the CD, remember?" Piper looked down at the object in question in her hand, and scoffed at the writing on the cover. "That's how I got your number. Not that I ever wanted it."

Despite her slight comment, Leo started to chuckle on the other line. There was a shuffling noise, like he was moving around, but the sound settled again quickly after. "My bad, I didn't mean to be disrespectful to your friend. I guess I owe her one, huh?"

Owe her one? The uncharacteristic sincerity of his tone made Piper's brows shoot up in surprise.

"I might have to tweak my schedule a little, but how about dinner tomorrow night?" he proposed. "I'll bring a new CD, apologize in person, and we'll get to know each other a little better. The whole night's on me, promise."

Piper didn't know what to say, wasn't sure what to do. Part of her knew that Lacy would go nuts when she broke the news, even though her friend had spent the last few days avoiding the use of Valdez's name for Piper's sake, instead settling for pointed looks and leaving her CD around the house in plain sight.

On the other hand though, Piper was skeptical. She wasn't entirely sure what he was getting at. Valdez had had a lot of flings. If he wasn't on TV for a relationship announcement, then he was in the tabloids for a break up. He was a player, and she didn't want Lacy to be played. Piper cleared her throat and squared her shoulders, finally ready with an answer.

"What time should we be ready?"

"We? This is for Lacy," he laughed, and Piper's face heat up, a protest on her lips. "—but I mean, if you're so desperate to see me, I wouldn't mind if you tagged along, too."

"Screw you." she snapped. "I'll be there. Where and when?"

"That's TBD. I'll text you the details?"

"I'd rather have you delete my number, but fine. Text me around eight."

"Increíble. Sleep tight, Princess. Thanks for the call."

"Whatever," she grumbled, sitting back against the wall. Staring at the roof and picking at a loose thread in her satin shirt to try and figure out how she got herself into this mess. "And don't call me princess." She wrinkled her nose.

"Okay, princesa," Leo crooned, tone amused as she groaned.

"Ugh, stop."

"Sure thing," he said. "Sure thing."

notes: The chapter's called "things we do in the dark" because all the scenes take place during the early evening/nighttime. I like being clever lol

Imma have chap 3 out asap, i'm already working on it. Pls leave a review bc they keep me going yall. Thanks for reading!