Noah
It’s almost stunning, how much Ariana Dow looks exactly the same as she did back then.
I’d spotted her in the lone streak of light piercing the shadowed halls and whisper filled corners of this horrid place, but I could barely believe it was her. I watched as disgusting Doyle reached over, taking her hand in his own. He didn’t see the way she recoiled just slightly from his fingers. He didn’t see the way tiny beads of sweat started gathering on her forehead.
But I did.
I knew then that I had to get her. I had to save her.
Even after what happened between us before.
She gazes at me now with fiery, disbelieving eyes. Lips taut over her pearly teeth, like she’s fighting a snarl.
Ari had always been a fighter. Scrappy, since the day she and her twin sister were born - Ari had been breech, her umbilical cord wrapped dangerously around her tiny neck. She turned out fine of course, she’d been wailing before her slightly older sister even had a chance.
Her jaw clenches tight, molars grinding together as she appraises me suspiciously. That was Ari, always suspicious. Those jade jeweled eyes had once held affectionate adoration - now they could have been cut from ice.
I could still remember it so vividly, the last time I saw her. The very last time we spoke. The softness of her fingers intertwined with my own.
Did her full lips still taste of vanilla?
She’d laid all curled up in my bed, swathed in my blankets like a quilted sea, watching me with sleepy eyes and a satisfied grin. Her mussed hair had splayed out around her head on the faded blue pillow like a molten chocolate crown. My sheets smelled like lavender for a week. I couldn’t bring myself to wash them.
How long had it been since that day?
“Six years.” Ari fumes abruptly as though she’d stolen the very thought from my mind. Her pretty olive green eyes are wide, nostrils flaring as she speaks.
Her face is twisted with a rainbow of emotion, from fury to raw regret. She bends downward, furiously throwing her hair over her shoulders as she snatches up the faux leather purse and plops it on her knees.
“I thought you were trying to kick that habit?” I chuckle, watching her dig for her cigarettes. Instead, she yanks free a small bag of candy. Unwrapping a single mint, she tosses it behind her lips before gazing at me darkly from over the lip of her purse.
“I did.” She scoffs, fingers clenched so hard onto her purse handles that her knuckles blanch a ghastly white.
She’s furious with me, for intercepting and for my offer. Probably other reasons too.
“Ari…”
“Don’t you ‘Ari’ me all sweet and kind, Noah. It’s been six freaking years and all of a sudden you just happen to turn up, claiming to have five million dollars just to throw away on my virginity?”
With every word that passes her lips, her voice gets higher and louder until the men at the poker tables have laid down their cards and are gazing at us threateningly.
“We both know there’s no virginity at stake here.” I smirk as her eyes light with even more rage. If I held out my hands, I probably could’ve warmed my palms on the death glare contorting her gorgeous face.
Her voice is the same too. A little more biting, perhaps. Just as beautiful. I had to remind myself not to reach out and run my thumb across the single dimple in her left cheek. It wasn’t mine anymore.
“Let’s get out of here.” I offer mutely, gesturing towards the people staring, “Let me take you out for dinner. You look hungry.”
“Don’t tell me how I look.” She snaps before sucking in a deep breath and giving a slow, tiny nod, “…But JoJo’s sounds good. I suppose.”
“JoJo’s?” I chuckle, lifting my eyebrows, “You really want to eat at that grease ball?”
She doesn’t answer, her stormy eyes narrowing on me threateningly. I still knew the drill. Cheese fries or shut up.
Days and months and years may pass, but some things just never change.
“Alright, alright. My car is outside.”
For a second I think she’s actually going to argue with me, but then she gives another sharp dip of her chin and follows me out the back door of the tiny bar. Settled between a huge probably mafia owned furniture store and an equally shady billiards hall with heavily tinted windows, the backstreet black market had been the last place I expected to reunite with Ari. Then again, I’d heard what happened to her family. And I’d heard who she’d been dealing with lately.
Neither of us had a squeaky clean past, it seemed.
I rustle the keys from my pocket, lights of the black car ahead flashing once as I click the fob.
“Holy hell.” She gasps aloud, purse falling from her grasp to spill at her feet on the sidewalk, “That’s yours?”
Bending down, I scoop the contents of her purse back inside. There wasn’t much. A single credit card, the pack of candy, some gum, but she snatches the bag away from me like it’s her most prized possession, like she doesn’t want it tainted by my touch.
I shrug, opening the jet black door of the Ferrari for her and ushering her inside.
“You have some serious explaining to do.” She muses quietly, studying my face as she hesitantly climbs into the car. She settles into the comfortable seat, still hugging her purse to her chest.
By the time I circle the car and plunge the key into the ignition, she’s still staring around her dazedly. I half expect her to pinch her arm and make sure she’s not dreaming. I roll down the windows, hoping to obliterate the heavy scent of smoke still clinging to both of us. It was a heavy stench, one that clings to your pores and takes three burning hot showers to finally be rid of. Ari chooses not look at me with deliberative force, leaning her arm against the door and letting the wind whip around her face. Long locks of hair fly around her head, a personal tornado, and I have to fight to keep my eyes on the road.
When she was a teenager, she used to kick her Louboutin heels up onto the dash, her arms tucked behind her head against the seat, screaming the words to whatever song was on the radio while her hair danced around her just like that.
~~
The blinking neon lights of JoJo’s glimmering sign make her face shine like cotton candy pink when she glances towards me from across the middle console of my car. For a heavy minute neither of us speaks.
“Shall we?” She finally sighs with a grim purse of her lips, shoving open the car door as I nod and silently follow after her. She gets to the diner door first, grabbing it with both hands and yanking it open. The bustle of jangling coffee mugs and flipping pancakes from the diner washes over me like a buttery, cozy blanket.
I hadn’t stepped foot in a place like this for years. The teenage hostess, dressed in a red skirt and pinstriped blouse, points distractedly to a nearby booth, much more interested in the lanky boy sipping coffee at the counter.
The table of the booth still has napkins and a half empty cup of orange juice on it, but Ari plops down anyway like she’s right at home.
A woman with grey hair and equally dull eyes approaches, pouring two steaming, dark cups of coffee before sweeping the mess into a black plastic bin. She doesn’t even wipe down the sticky table.
“Can I get whipped cream for that?” Ari asks quickly, gesturing towards the mug and beaming as the waitress yawns and nods. The girl gazes down at her coffee with affectionate eyes, though her face turns to stone when she notices me watching her.
“What were you doing there?” She suddenly asks, voice carrying an accusation of something I wasn’t sure of yet.
“I can ask you the same, Ari. In fact, I think I will. What were you doing there?”
“I asked first.” She quips, practically drooling as the waitress returns and plops a big hunk of white cream on top her mug.
“Are y’all ready to order?” The waitress drawls, “Or do ya need a bit more time?”
We hadn’t even gotten menus yet. But it was pretty safe to assume they still had the same five items they did six years ago. Nothing else had changed, not even the heavily faded JoJo’s logo above the counter or the raggedy red swivel seats perched just below.
“Strawberry milkshake, please.” Ari replies jubilantly, taking a long sip of her sweetened coffee, “And cheese fries.”
The waitress turns her droopy eyes to me, like that sad blue cartoon dog who sings.
“Ah. I’ll just stick with the coffee for now.”
The waitress shrugs, sticking her notepad in her waistband and wandering back towards the kitchen.
“You’re not eating?” Ariana asks, suddenly wary, dab of whipped cream clinging to her upper lip, “Why’d you drag me all the way out here then?”
“Like I said. You looked hungry.”
I shake my head, gazing down at the white ceramic mug. The coffee inside is dark and bitter and delicious. Across from me, Ari dumps another packet of sugar into her cup. White sprinkles land on the table around her mug, glittering like diamond dust.
“Last I heard you were working for Dominic Nelson.” I say slowly, extending my arms along the gummy plastic of the booth’s ledge. Ari goes stiff as a board, shoulders tense as she stirs her coffee with a bit too much fervor.
“I was working for him.” She finally acknowledges, tilting her chin back to meet my eyes, “Not anymore.”
“Why is that?”
“He got arrested.” She averts her eyes again, dunking a finger into her the cream on her coffee. She lifts it back up, delicately sucking at her fingertip. I have to shift in my seat and tear my eyes away from the visual.
“He’s a conman.” I mutter towards the sickly yellow counter.
“Was a conman.” She corrects icily, “Now he’s a jailbird.”
“So you’re working for a conman and selling yourself? What kind of trouble are you in, Ari? What’s going on?”
She shivers, clutching her coffee mug in her hands like it’s a tiny space heater. “If I tell you, you have to tell me what you were doing in that place.”
My shoulders jerk slightly up and down in a careless shrug, glancing up as the waitress glides Ari’s unnaturally pink milkshake and huge platter of fries onto the slick plastic of the table. The girl instantly perks up, frost melting from the dimples on her face. She snatches up a waffle fry to glide between her lips. I look on silently, fingers dancing on the vinyl cover of the booth.
Ari had never been one to be rushed.
“I just needed the money.” She finally says through a mouth full of strawberry ice cream and shredded cheese. She swallows thickly, half collapsing against the booth with a content sigh.
“Well then I was at the bar because I just needed a drink.”
She gazes at me evenly, her eyes green slits on her tan face.
“That’s not fair.” She finally grumbles, plucking a piece of crispy baked cheese from the corner of the platter. She nibbles it thoughtfully.
I don’t respond, gazing out the window of the diner. Dark clouds have gathered in the night sky, tendrils of lightning dancing between them. When the too cheery music lulls, the soft roll of thunder echoes in the distance like a tired giant’s roar.
“My family… they…” She clears her throat and shifts uncertainly in the plastic, the vinyl sticking noisily to her legs, “we need extra money.”
“I heard your father lost his job.”
Her eyes shoot up to me in surprise, brow furrowing, “You knew that?”
My chin ducks as I lift the coffee mug back to my lips, “Happened last year, right?”
“Who the hell are you, Noah James?” She whispers softly, “A Ferrari? That shady bar? Keeping tabs on my family? I don’t get you.”
“Lots of things change in six years, Ari. I wasn’t keeping tabs on your dad. I just heard about the trial.”
She bristles but doesn’t say anything, her teeth grinding together.
What happened to her family was humiliating, but it was her who carried the burden apparently. There was a reason she was going to such lengths to get them money, after all. And it wasn’t because she was trying to buy a new purse.
“Well, last I remember you had shaggy hair and a two bedroom apartment that you had to share with seven roommates.”
“Ah. Yes.” I grin, glancing back out the window. Oh, college. Those had been the days, “Now I don’t have any roommates. And last I remember, you had a silver spoon shoved so far between your lips you didn’t care about anything but when you’d get your next sack of gold delivered.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” She snaps, rolling her eyes with an equally theatric flair.
She takes a long sip of her shake, the straw scraping along the bottom of her half finished drink. She alternates between her coffee and the drink, occasionally thrusting another fry between her lips. All the while, she watches me, analyzing me, storing away tiny little mental notes that she could use against me later.
“So, Noah, where did you get the five mill from? And why do you need me?”
“I started a lawyer firm. I made lots of cash.”
“That was only half the question.”
“I’m twenty seven now, Ariana.”
Her face is entirely blank as she gazes at me, “And…?”
“Being single is starting to affect my business.”
“How so?”
I drum my fingers on the table, sighing with growing irritation. Ariana had always been a questioner. Why, why, why?
It was endless.
Once, when I was still in college, she’d interrogated me for thirty minutes about why I’d gone with blue sheets over green. In the end, to shut her up, I’d purchased the green sheets. She never got to see them. By the time they were on my mattress she was ignoring my calls.
“Clients are starting to believe I’m irresponsible, that I’m flighty. Untrustworthy. I need a beautiful, domestic woman on my arm to convince them otherwise, apparently.”
“You don’t sound thrilled about that.”
“I’m not.”
She leans over her shake, dragging the straw around the bottom once more, collecting the tiny fragments of fake, frozen strawberries.
“So, I need money and you need… what exactly?” She smacks her lips contentedly, tiny tip of her pink tongue tracing her lower lip.
“A bride.”
She slaps her palms down on the table in shock, both our coffee cups quaking dangerously. The waitress glances over with grumpy, hooded eyes.
“Say that again.” She gasps, “I must’ve… I think I blacked out for a second.”
“Ariana, I need you to marry me.”
“You were in that hell hole to find a wife? Do you know the kind of people in there?”
“The kind of people like you and me?”
She glowers at my smug smirk, sinking slightly in the booth.
“So I get five million for marrying you? For how long?”
“Two years. Give or take.”
She glowers suspiciously, “What do you mean ‘give or take’?”
“Well if you get pregnant-”
“Hold the freaking phone!” She cries, lurching over the table, “You didn’t say anything about getting pregnant!”
“I’m just saying, if it happens then-”
“Under no condition am I sleeping with you.” She huffs, “You had your fun six years ago, bucko! On those horrible blue sheets. What were they? Like 100 thread count? I think I still have scratch marks…”
“I suppose if you can resist me, you won’t have to worry about that.”
She cries out indignantly at my self-righteous chuckle, snatching up a fry to hurl it at my face.
“Hey now. None of that shit.” The grey haired waitress interrupts, snatching up the plate of fries with a shake of her head and a bitter tsk of her tongue, “I make a dollar an hour and I am not cleaning up your mess. I’m gettin’ your damn bill.”
Ariana glares at me from the table, her arms crossed over her chest. The sheer ivory dress hangs low on her cleavage, hugging her body perfectly. I’d thought she’d been unbelievably sexy six years ago, turns out I knew nothing then.
Within seconds the waitress tosses the bill in front of us with another warning look. I lay down my heavy black credit card, leaning my elbows against the table. My suit drags through a tiny puddle of old maple syrup, gluing me down.
“So, what do you say, Ari? Do we have a deal?”
“I want more money if I have your baby.”
This time it’s me who chokes on my coffee. I carefully swallow, rubbing my throat.
“I suppose that could, ah… be arranged.”
“And I want this all in writing. And reviewed by a third party. Not some hoity-toity hotshot at your own law firm. I won’t let you screw me over, Noah.”
She folds her hands primly on the table, little smug smile on her perfect lips. She has that same glint in her eyes she did even back then, when she used to look at me like I was her entire world.
Had it really been six years since then?
What had happened to us?
“Ari, I want-”
She groans, cutting me off as she digs through her purse, retrieving the steadily ringing cell.
“I swear to God.” She grumbles, rolling her eyes towards me, “Claire has literally called no less than sixty times tonight.”
“Maybe she figured out where you were going.”
“I suppose it’s that twin thing.” She added softly, scrolling through the dozens of texts her sister had left.
I’d never met Claire. Not one time, even when Ari and were getting serious. I’d heard so many stories I felt as if I practically knew Ari’s twin sister though.
“Maybe you should call her back?”
“I will.” She nods, “It’s too late now. I’ll catch a taxi or an Uber and head home.”
“I can take you.”
“No.” She shrugs calmly but her voice is rock hard, tugging her long hair into a messy bun on the top of her head with a lime green hair tie. Her eyes trace over my face, down to the hands folded in front of me. She stares at them for a long breath, then shakes her head again.
When she meets my gaze, her face is hard as a rock. Unreadable. At least to most people. Not me.
“I think… I think tonight, Noah, I’ve had as much as I can take of you.”
“I’ll have the contract drawn up.”
She nods silently, pulling herself up from the booth. She has to drag herself free, like she suddenly weighs a thousand pounds.
“Ari?” I murmur quietly, voice barely audible over the din of the noisy diner.
She glances over her shoulder at me hesitantly, the corners of her lips pinched tight together. While she waits for me to speak she digs another peppermint candy out, popping it between her lips.
“It’s good to see you again.”
She doesn’t respond the sentiment, her glassy eyes reflecting the moonlight outside the diner shining in through the window.
Instead of speaking, she slings her purse over her shoulder, gripping her phone tight in her hands as she walks from the diner. Her white dress whips around her thighs, fluttering like an angel wing.
Just as she pushes her way out the large glass doors, she glances back towards me with a single intense stare, like she’s memorizing my face - like she expects never to see me again.