The Architect [Pipabeth AU]

e l e v e n: interviews and isolation

P I P E R

The traffic was much worse than I anticipated.

"You're going to be late! Oh gods, you're going to be late!" Trisha panicked as she hammered away on her phone.
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"California infrastructure sucks," Annabeth decided, looking through the limousine window.

"New York isn't much better," I interjected.

She raised her eyebrows at me. "Beg to differ," Annabeth said. I've never seen traffic this bad in New York. Not even during the holidays."

She pulled a laptop out of her briefcase and began pecking away on Gods knows what. Geez, she really never took a break.

"Todays Thursday," she mumbled to herself. "I have a virtual meeting tomorrow at 8. Then my flight back to New York is tomorrow afternoon."

"You're going back to New York?" I asked. A part of me was kind of disappointed. I had thought surely over the weekend Annabeth would stop working and maybe we could hang out for more than two hours at a time.

"For the weekend," she said absentmindedly. "I have some work I need to get to in my office."

"Do you need a ride to the airport?" I asked.

"Yes. I can Uber, I wouldn't want you to-"

"It's no problem," I said. "We'll get you covered. Tomorrows Friday?"

"I'll be glad to take her," Trisha said.

"Do I have anything tomorrow?"

"Just the meeting about tour dates today at 5," Trisha said.

"I can take her," I said.

"Piper, don't you need to be working on your album draft?"

"I already have 5 of the songs completely drafted," I said. "Really, it's no problem. I'm ahead of schedule."

"Are you sure? Tomorrow is your only free day. I scheduled that interview with Ellen for Saturday." Trisha asked.

"Oh geez," I pinched the bridge of my nose. I didn't even wanna think about these interviews. My manager had said I had no choice. I needed to get up there and be honest. We'd already gone over the script of my responses. Things I should or shouldn't say. Possible questions. The thought of going on live television in an hour made me almost nauseous. "It's still no problem."

Annabeth looked at me graciously. "Thank you so much."

"Don't mention it," I said.

We pulled into the parking lot of the studio.

"Show time," I muttered to myself.

***

I stood backstage in the left wing of the studio.

"And now, here to comment on the allegations about her sexuality and former secret relationship with famous kickboxer Reyna Ramirez-Arellano, Piper McLean joins us on the Olympus Beat."

I stepped out into the lights, waving to the crowd and cameras. Clapping and cheering interrupted from the stands, and though I couldn't see much of the crowd because of the blinding lights, I thought I flipped glimpsed a few signs with my name and pictures. Apollo stood to welcome me.

"Hi, Apollo," I said, as I walked across the stage and embraced him.

"Piper McLean, beautiful and lovely as always," Apollo commented. I blushed from the compliment.

"You're too nice," I replied.

"Have a seat," he said, gesturing.

We both sat down on our respective comfortable white couches.

"So how are you feeling after this week?" Apollo asked. "Did confirming the rumors to your fans lift a burden off of you?"

Time for the lies. Time for the faking and the cover-ups that always made me feel more isolated than anything.

"You know, my sexuality was never something I necessarily tried to hide." Complete bullshit. I had always been worried about what the public would say. Though I knew I shouldn't be ashamed of it, I had watched lots of my classmates or friends be bullied and ridiculed for their sexualities throughout our years in school. It had created a lot of internalized homophobia within me. "I like having private relationships. I preferred to keep my love life quiet and so did Reyna. We agreed our relationship would be kept out of the public eye. Not because we were scared of people finding out about our sexuality, but because we thought it was healthiest for our relationship."

"So how long were the two of you together?" Apollo asked.

"Even now, I don't want to get into the details of our relationship. Reyna and I dated for about a year. We broke up several months ago. I talked to her this week to see if she was comfortable with me talking about our relationship publicly," I started. "She agreed we would share some of the general things about it. It was very healthy, and there's really no bad feelings towards her. It just fizzled out like all relationships do."

"No spicy details? No back and forth?" Apollo leaned forward.

Not that I'd tell them about. "Nope."

"And there's tell of Reyna with a friend of yours, Octavian," Apollo said. Now he'd hit a sore spot. "Some folks are saying Octavian was actually the one that tipped the press off about your prior relationship."

Octavian and I were no longer friends. "Whoever tipped the press off did no favors for me or Reyna. But Reyna and I are both confident and proud of who we are."

"Some fans on Twitter have noticed that you and some of your friends, Hazel Levesque, Frank Zhang and your half-sister, the model Silena Beauregard, unfollowed Octavian on all social media platforms. There was also some news that he wasn't even invited to Hazel's premier party for the movie Witches and Warlocks. Are you sure there's no bad blood between the two of you?"

"I'll decline to comment."

"So I suppose Reyna was the inspiration for some of your songs," Apollo hypothesized, changing the subject.

I laughed. "I don't throw people under the bus with my songs. I wrote about a lot of people, places, things, experiences. Some of them weren't even mine."

"And are you working on anything new?" He asked.

"I'm always working on my next thing," I confirmed.

"So is there someone new?" Apollo led me straight into a trap. "Any new inspiration?"

I thought about the song I'd written about Annabeth. "If there was, I'd tell you." I lied.

Apollo seemed disappointed to not be getting the scoop. "Well, thank you so much for being here on the Olympus Beat." He turned to the audience. "Piper McLean everyone!"

Cheers. I stood, hugged him and waved to the crowd as I exited the stage. The applause lingered after I was gone. I'm glad someone was a fan of me, because I wasn't the biggest fan of myself.