Do Me a Favor?

Christmas Eve

"I'll take it back."

"No, it's too late. It's been said. No take-backs."

"No take-backs? Are you ten?"

"No take-backs."

"Shut up."

"You think I'm pretty." Piper sang.

"Shut up." Nico covered his face so Piper wouldn't see him blushing. Annabeth had been watching the whole exchange with amusement since they sat down for breakfast. "You're a conventionally attractive woman." Nico said.

"'I can get people to do anything.'"

"It's not like I'm attracted to you, shut up." Piper smiled brightly and Annabeth could see she silently decided she was done teasing him. They ate their breakfast together, with Piper sneaking teasing looks at Nico all throughout.

*

Annabeth had been scrolling through Instagram for a few minutes when she saw a post by Calypso, a girl in her psychology class she followed. Leo happened to be her boyfriend, which was a shame since Annabeth liked her. They used to rant about how annoying Leo was, but then Calypso and him started dating. Then all Calypso talked about was how "annoying" Leo was but with hearts in her eyes.

The post was two videos. One of Leo at a party doing shots, and the other of Leo singing karaoke that's too hard to hear from the noise of everyone else there. Annabeth rolled her eyes and skipped the post. She knew she said she wanted to try to understand, but if she was being honest with herself, she would neither ever want to understand, nor actually try to. She knew she was right about him. She knew Leo was staying at school for the break to finish his exams since he missed them before, for a reason Calypso never mentioned, though Annabeth hypothesized it had something to do with the sudden influx of parties he had been going to.

Annabeth closed the app and sighed. She could always pretend to be fine with Leo. She was willing to do that for Piper. But there was no way that could lead to a healthy relationship. She wanted to be able to be real with Piper, but with Leo in the way, that would never happen.

*

Annabeth wasn't proud of what she did. She couldn't get Leo out of her head. So what better way to fix that than to stalk his whole Instagram page? It was a bad idea from the start, and she was well aware of that. That still didn't stop her. Her pride always seemed to get in the way of just letting her opinion of Leo go and trusting Piper can choose the right friends to hang around with.

Leo had a lot of posts. A lot. It took Annabeth about five minutes to simply scroll all the way to the bottom. From what she had gathered from the third she had seen of his posts, he was self-centered and liked to show off and brag. She couldn't begin to understand how they shared an engineering class together. The more she saw of him the less she respected him. Her head pounded with how stressed that made her.

She thought back to her first interaction with Leo.

It was the first day of her sophomore year of college.

She had just made it to her last class of the day, already exhausted. The last thing she needed was a short curly haired boy with too much energy and too much to say. He constantly interrupted other people to butt in about his own opinions. Once the lecture started, however, his talking never stopped. He goofed off with his friends and didn't seem to give a single damn about the class. Annabeth couldn't pay proper attention because of that one boy a row in front of her.

Annabeth complained about him to Piper, who said it sounded like a friend of hers, of which she never mentioned by name so how was Annabeth supposed to know those two people were the same person?