Ariel Kaplan

evie let out a delighted bubble of laughter at ariel's rather direct description of her lack of intimacy; this was exactly the type of vernacular and unfiltered spirit evie had missed so terribly while ari had been gone, and she was thoroughly pleased to have it back in her immediate vicinity. "six months without a tongue is basically a medical emergency!" she snorted, eyes lit up in amusement. "that is practically a spiritual drought! scratch the lumber yard boys, we need to upgrade you to a full scale, dramatic romance novel protagonist immediately. i am putting on my matchmaker helmet. it has a little flashing siren on top." she spun her index fingers in tiny circles above her hair clips and made a soft woo woo sound to mimic the siren, offering up a thoroughly cheeky grin.

"you have a good heart ariel kaplan," evie murmured softly. she had always believed that to be fundamentally true about her friend, even when ari was furious and dreaming of buried hatchets and punctured tesla tires. "you just want what's fair. and you deserve that." and if evelyn could in any way be part of the process that gets her the justice she so rightfully deserved, she would make sure she did her due friend diligence. and she was just about to verbalize the very sentiment when her old friend uttered a litany of probing questions about her connection with tae-yeol. she froze entirely, like someone had unplugged her internal router. a complicated blush crawled all the way up to her hairline, turning her ears bright red beneath her colorful barrettes.

"i, uh, tae-yeol is..." she stammered, her typical rambling engine suddenly sputtering and misfiring in the most un evie way possible. she pulled her hands back to her chest, her fingers twisting the hem of her oversized cardigan like it held the secrets to the universe. "he’s very... stoic? and a little too cynical for his own good. like, he looks at the world like it’s a mildly disappointing salad, you know? but he’s brilliant! he’s so smart, ari, he reads these giant, terrifying legal books for fun." she paused, her eyes darting toward the window as if tae-yeol himself might be standing in the downpour, judging her life choices. evie’s voice dropped into an incredibly rare, breathless whisper, her shoulders lifting in a tense, nervous little shrug. "and yes. he is...devastatingly hot. like, broody kdrama lead who looks incredible in a dark trench coat while standing under a streetlamp in the rain hot. but we're just friends. purely, strictly, completely platonic co conspirators of life."

she leaned forward, her eyes wide and suddenly overflowing with the agonizing weight of her own romantic limbo. she hadn't even realized how desperately she'd been wanting to download the details to someone until ari had prodded the spout. "except, you know, there was the masquerade ball a few months ago," she confessed in a frantic, hurried rush, her words colliding into each other. "and we were dancing, and he was wearing this black velvet mask and looking at me like he wanted to untangle my whole soul, and we almost kissed. like, the space between our faces didn't even exist anymore. but then the clock struck midnight or someone sneezed or the universe hated me, and we didn't. and then, oh my gosh, he came with me when i got my tattoo last month because i was sweating through my socks, and when the needle hit, i accidentally grabbed him and...our mouths collided? it was a total accident! but his lips were so soft, ari, like a literal cloud made of dark secrets."

she let out a pathetic, dramatic whine, burying her face in her hands for a brief second before peeking through her fingers at her friend. "and now we're just...stuck. in this weird, agonizing orbit where he looks at me with those intense, heavy eyes, and i just...don't know how to function. so no, i am not kissing him. i am living in a state of permanent romantic cardiac arrest. but he will absolutely look at your case, because beneath all that grumpy armor, he has a ridiculous soft spot for...well, for people who need a rescue mission. i'll text him right now."

Ariel made a show of glancing around and putting a finger to her lips when Evie said she had a good heart. "Shh... can't let anyone know that, it'll totally ruin my image." There were few people who actually knew her well enough to realize she wasn't a total bitch. To know that she actually cared so deeply, and was sensitive to being treated poorly. Ariel liked to act like things just rolled off her shoulders, but it wasn't always true. She was selective about who she let into the nitty gritty parts of her, though, so if everyone wanted to believe she was just a bitch and nothing more, she'd let them.

As Evie started rambling about this Tae-yeol guy, Ariel's eyes got wider and her mouth formed a bigger and bigger O of surprise. The nervous finger twirling, the blush on her cheeks, the flitting eyes! Oh, Evie was a smitten kitten. There was absolutely no way in hell that you could be purely, strictly, completely platonic with someone who made you turn into a big pile of mush like this. And when Evie finally admitted they kissed, Ariel threw her hands up and shrieked, not giving a damn about anyone else in the cafe.

"Evelyn Dae!" Ariel gushed, slapping her hands back down on the table. "You little minx! I have literally never seen you turn to this," She waved a hand around Evie's general presence. "Over a guy before! Get me in a room with him, but not to talk shop... I've gotta see what the fuck his problem is. Like, hello, why is he just staring at my girl when he could be kissing her?" Ari got hung up on another detail of Evie's story. "Wait, hang on, you got a tattoo? And he went with you... which is hot, by the way, and he... for some reason... hasn't kissed you ever chance he can get? What's wrong with him?"

the corners of freddie’s mouth twitched upward, a low laugh vibrating in her chest. "exactly, babe. literally every single day, the dumbest men alive commit felonies and manage to completely evade the police. we could pull off the heist of the century and leave the fbi questioning their entire existence. a little light arson is practically a gateway drug when you actually have the brainpower for it." her eyes remained fixed on ari, soaking in the beautiful, unhinged evolution of her friend's coping mechanism.

"mediocre men protect other mediocre men. it’s a global union of the chronically talentless. they knew if they actually investigated, his whole little house of cards would fold. but don't worry. the universe always collects its debts, and usually, it uses people like us to do it." she couldn't even count on two hands the amount of times she'd wanted to stick it to a toxic superior, and could accurately recall the satisfaction she felt when she had given into the urge. playing mouthpiece on someone else's behalf felt just as natural, what ari needed was a rally and someone beside her at the helm to fan the flames of the scorned retribution.

she strolled around the sticky perimeter of the table, watching ari set the wooden triangle over the foot spot but noticed the hushed chittering from the group huddled over a basket of fried pickles, shooting obvious, narrow eyed glances toward their table. "don't you just find it so ironic when people who peaked in high school have the nerve to pass judgement as if the highlight of their entire existence wasn't probably wearing cheap polyester on their prom night," freddie drawled, letting her voice carry lazily over the low hum of the bar, ensuring the words landed squarely at the table of gawkers.

she leaned against her cue, side eying them just long enough to drive the point home, radiating the kind of casual, untouchable confidence that made insecure people break out in hives. "you went out, you conquered the bay area, and you only came back to recharge your batteries before you burn the world down. there's levels to this, and they..." freddie shot the table a brief, mocking smirk before deliberately turning her back to them. she leaned against the pool table, making sure they had a nice, unobstructed view of her ass as she dismissed them entirely. "...aren't on yours," she finished, looking back at ari with a wicked grin. "diabolical plotting, botanical or otherwise, looks extremely sexy on you by the way."

"They're going to regret this decision when I win a fucking Nobel Peace prize or something for my breakthrough scientific research... and fucking Jeremy has some how managed to ruin every notable experiment they ever try and conduct." Ariel knew that her former co-worker had ruined her research on purpose but the dude was a fucking idiot. She figured he'd eventually make some mistake on accident that would cause a whole thing. The entire lab would regret it when they realized she'd never make a mistake. Ari was just that good. "Or they'll regret it when they're standing there watching their fucking yard burn up."

Ariel put the rack back on the hook and moved around the table to set up her shot. She looked over at the table of oh so obvious table of whispering former classmates. She knew who they were, and she knew exactly what they were saying. Before she leaned over the pool table to make her first shot, Ari pointed a finger directly at the women and told Freddie, "That one is mad because I fucked her now husband in high school after they'd been broken up for, like, three fucking months!" She moved her pointed finger a few inches to the left. "That one is mad because her now ex-husband agreed that it wasn't a big fucking deal that I fucked the other ones not boyfriend." Ariel looked at the third woman, her brows scrunched as she tried to think of how she knew her. "And I don't even know that one, so who knows what her problem is." Ariel spoke to the women directly. "It's been almost ten years, get over it!"

"You're so right," Ari agreed, leaning over the table to knock the cue ball across the table and into the triangle of balls. The separated, flying in different directions across the table. She smiled in satisfaction as two different striped balls went into a pocket. Ariel surveyed the table, looking for another ball she could hit. She shimmied her shoulders as she passed by Freddie, "It could definitely be said that I've never been hotter..." She missed the ball she was aiming for and moved out of Freddie's way. "If only the people of this town would realize it... besides you, of course, angel, you're on the same level with me." Ariel winked at Freddie.

evie’s eyes dilated instantly at the very mention of a torrid love affair, her mouth dropping into a perfect, thrilled little circle before her brain could even fully process the fact that ari was just joking. "oh my gosh, yes! a torrid love affair with a mysterious stranger who just moved to town to escape his own dark, agonizingly dramatic past! we can absolutely, one hundred percent arrange that for you. it's like a kdrama!" evie squealed, her pitch spiking so incredibly high that it genuinely rivaled the screech of the espresso machine’s steam wand behind the counter. "i know at least three different brooding guys who just stand around and stare intensely at the treeline near the lumber yard. one of them definitely looks like he has a deep, dark secret, or at the very least, a very complicated legal relationship with his landlord. imagine the meet cute, ari! just imagine it!"

of course, as the conversation inevitable shifted back to the cold, hard edges of reality, evie’s grand romantic delusions dissolved back into that soft, fiercely protective earnestness that defined her whenever the people she loved were hurting. she listened intently, her teeth pressing back into the plump swell of her bottom lip, her heart aching acutely at the small, defeated slump in ari's shoulders. she absolutely hated seeing her friend look so small. ariel kaplan was supposed to be giant; she was supposed to be cracking the very universe open with a glass beaker and sheer force of will, not hiding away from it in a dreary, rain soaked cafe.

"if there's a thread to pull, then we should pull it, ari. i know it feels like wasting money you don't want to spend, and i know it feels like your word against a whole bunch of prestigious, ego inflated men in white coats, but germ-y shouldn't get to win. at least let me just talk to my friend and see if there's a shot? please?" she leaned forward, her hands practically vibrating with a desperate need to fix things, to smooth out the universe for her friend.

"i mean, if hiring a lawyer, even a small town one who wears slightly rumpled corduroy suits and gets easily distracted by common backyard birds outside the window, which tae-yeol is definitely not, by the way, he's super capable and knows an absolute ton of very impressive lawyer jargon, i promise. but even if hiring him just makes these corporate bastards sweat even a little bit? it is worth every single penny. you don't even have to want the job back! we just need them to sign a piece of paper that says 'ariel kaplan did not destroy the science, she is the science, and jeremy is a liar.' that's it! that is literally all we need to do!"

Ariel looked up again, listening intently to Evie and really considering her words. She supposed it wouldn't hurt to talk to a lawyer. Surely, if she went through all the trouble to hire someone to defend herself, the lab would see she was telling the truth. Who would keep pressing the bruise after three months if they'd actually done what was said they did? No one. So... maybe Evie was right. Maybe she did need to get legal advice.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to talk to someone," Ari agreed. She had been wrongfully terminated, and now she was being punished for it. They were jeopardizing her entire career. She was only 27 years old, it was too early in her life for her to never get to do what she loved again. Ariel didn't even necessarily want Jeremy to have his entire career ruined. She thought he should lose his job, and that this should all make it harder to get a job, and maybe he only needed to work somewhere without such important work... but he should still get to be a scientist. She just wanted justice for herself, and she thought she deserved that.

"Okay, sure," Ariel nodded. "If you can talk to your friend, and just see if there's a case, then I'll talk to my parents and see if they want to meet with him." Maybe it wouldn't cost as much as Ariel was imaging. Maybe getting an official letter from a lawyer would make the lab reconsider. Maybe it would be enough for Ariel to move past this instead of being stuck in this limbo of rage.

"Who is this friend, by the way?" Ariel didn't recognize the name, but that didn't mean he hadn't been around. "Is he hot? Kissable? Are you kissing him?" She probably shouldn't, if they were going to have a professional relationship. But if Evie was, Ari wanted all the details. She needed to live vicariously through someone getting kissed.

@ari-kaplan

the air inside mcnasty’s was a thick, almost structural entity, a predictable cocktail of flat miller lite, industrial grade bleach that didn't quite cover the stench, and the phantom weight of several years of bad decisions made by the regulars who glued themselves to the vinyl barstools. it was the kind of local dive where the floorboards were permanently sticky and the neon signs buzzed at a frequency that guaranteed a migraine. freddie chalked her pool cue, her movements deliberate, because her brain was still mostly fried from her own daily, soul crushing cage match with her demanding boss. across the green felt, ariel kaplan wasn't looking like a girl winding down with a casual game of billiards anymore; she looked like a woman currently calculating the logistics of a federal crime. and honestly, after ari had finished delivering the grueling, play by play debrief of the absolute circus that had forced her back to the borders of pinehaven, freddie was a hundred percent ready to help her buy the lighter fluid.

freddie couldn't help letting out a loud, sharp laugh; the kind that vibrated with pure, mocking delight. it wasn't aimed at ari, obviously, but was just a spontaneous release of genuine bafflement at the exhausting predictability of insecure men. "oh, bless his little, tiny, microscopic heart," freddie hissed, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "a man lying to cover his own incompetence? shocking. groundbreaking. give him an oscar for best performance by a coward. did his balls drop when he told the lie, or is he still waiting on those to arrive in the mail?" she shook her head, pacing the edge of the table. it was just another classic, textbook case of a painfully mediocre man who became so profoundly uncomfortable around a woman with a massive brain that his only survival mechanism was to plot, scheme, and backstab just to level the playing field.

freddie leaned over the table, sizing up her next shot, but her eyes remained locked on ari. "so, when are we setting fire to his lawn? because i'm going to be entirely honest with you, ari, i have never committed arson before…" she paused, tilting her head to track the precise angle of the solids. "…or any crime, really, unless you count jaywalking or sneaking sour patch kids into a movie theater. but between the absolute dumpster fire of my current employment and the sheer audacity of your life right now, i feel like i have accumulated just enough deeply repressed corporate rage to go full dual john wick style in the name of vengeance." she leaned down, took a breath, and smacked the cue ball. the white rock cracked violently against the eight ball, sending it screaming across the felt and straight into the corner pocket with a hollow, deeply satisfying thump.

"I could literally see the fucking sweat on his brow," Ariel scoffed, leaning heavily into her pool stick. "Like, fucking petrified that he was about to get caught... I was too busy getting screamed at for anyone else to notice, though, naturally." None of her superiors had even looked in Jeremy's direction when she rightfully passed the blame onto him. That weasel had already told "his side" of the story, and she was sure he'd claimed that he'd never even been in the lab in the first place.

"Me neither," Ari said about never committing a crime. "But, like, how hard can it be to figure out? Morons commit crimes every day, I'm positive that I could figure it out without getting caught." Especially such a petty crime. Ariel wasn't trying to hurt anyone for god's sake. She just wanted to destroy something they loved. Wreak a little havoc. "I thought about smashing windows... like, all of them... but that seems harder to pull off without getting caught." Especially since she wasn't a runner. "Slashing tires, too, but they all drive fucking Tesla's so there's cameras, apparently." Ariel wasn't opposed to a ski mask, though.

She watched Freddie hit the cue ball, which hit the eight ball, which rolled into the pocket she was aiming for. Ari huffed, eyeing the two stripes still on the table. "Fire is good," She said, grabbing the rack off the nail on the wall and placing it in the center of the table to get another game starter. "I know for a fact one of them has this precious flower garden that he talked about all the fucking time... setting them on fire would be so satisfying."

the defensive retort regarding her vocal output barely registered as a blip against the monolithic quietude he preferred to cultivate. when she attempted that atrocious, exaggerated caricature of his native dialect a second time, noah’s lips tightened into a hard, defensive knot. he didn't find the mimicry particularly amusing; rather, it struck a raw, sensitive nerve that had everything to do with the asphalt streets he’d been violently uprooted from. yet, the low chuckle that bubbled from her throat, entirely self contained and seemingly immune to his hostility, diffused the tension before it could manifest as a physical retreat. she was trying to be funny, he gathered, and considering he was lacking in that department he shouldn't take too much offense. "you sound like a bad movie, don't do that. it’s embarrassing."

swimming. cinema. the supposed vocal catharsis of the wilderness. live music. the diversity of the itinerary was dizzying, a blueprint for a companionship he hadn't sought and felt entirely unequipped to maintain. his mind, stiff and unyielding from years of regimented isolation, struggled to process the underlying, implicit invitation of her words; do you want to spend time together? the concept of leisure; of engaging in activities that weren't strictly tied to survival, the line, or the terms of his release felt entirely foreign. an abstract luxury belonging to a version of noah that had died long before he ever stepped onto a greyhound bus heading west. sure he'd made friends since settling in the pines, he had afia and odette, and rocky was a good boss. but he'd generally considered both of these friendships a fluke, or rather a mercy bestowed by people who bewilderingly found him tolerable enough to stick around.

the heavy weight of this woman's expectation settled squarely over his broad shoulders. his mind aggressively processing the absolute absurdity of the proposition. he was a felon with a violent record, a reclusive line cook who couldn't even navigate a simple workplace exchange without his heart threatening to burst through his ribs. and here was this woman, unpredictable and entirely undeterred, handing him an open ended pass into her life. "i don't swim," he said, his voice dropping into that characteristic register, the syllables heavy and completely unadorned by inflection as he systematically dismantled the list. "water's too cold out here. ain't like the city."

he paused, his gaze tracking a slow trickle of rainwater as it ran down the rusty side of the dumpster across from them, his jaw working as he debated the risk of continuing the dialogue. he shouldn't say yes. he should tell her he worked double shifts, that he slept during his hours off, that he was a ghost in this town for a reason. but the image of her screaming alone in the pines, or sitting miserably at the counter under rocky’s suspicious glare, lingered in the periphery of his thoughts like an unwanted obligation. "the bar," he muttered, a concessions, the words dragging reluctantly across his teeth as his indifference returned in full force. a physical manifestation of his intense discomfort with the admission. "the music's loud. you don't gotta talk over it."

he shifted his heavy leather boots in the wet gravel, his eyes finally sliding sideways to fix her with one last, intensely serious blank stare, ensuring the boundaries were drawn in iron before he could fully commit. "i'm only off on sundays. if...if you're actually going. bring your own cigarettes, and leave the shit accent at home."

"The bar?" Ari perked up, smiling. "Okay, the bar!" The music would be loud, yes, but they had pool tables and darts. It was still somewhere people could hang out even if they weren't engaging in conversation. The way she saw it, this was a good first step towards a potential friendship. Ariel was going to take as many first steps as she could with her old friends and new people in town to see how many stuck. Even if she and Noah never spoke to each other again, at least he wasn't rejecting her straight to her face right now.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Ariel pulled up a new contact screen and turned it towards him. "For logistics," She said, nodding at him to take it. "I don't text as much as I talk." And that was the truth. Ariel was a notoriously bad texter. It was one of the reasons she'd lost touch with all her friends in Pinehaven after she moved. She could be a very out of sight, out of mind type of person.

"Only on Sundays?" Ariel blew out a breath, tutting her tongue. "Loosen up, Rocky, am I right?" Another jest. In her experience, people who worked a lot were people who wanted to work a lot. "I don't smoke, I just wanted one puff! But, fine. I will not attempt to be funny or ask to share a cigarette ever again." Ariel, likely, would do both of those things again. One thing she was good at, was knowing when to take her exit, so Ari took a few steps away from Noah, motioning a hand towards the back door he'd eyed throughout their entire conversation.

"You're gonna get used to me," Ari said it like a promise, pointing a finger at him. "Don't fight it."

the word loud took on a different meaning when she explained it like that. noah didn't say anything, his eyes still anchored to a grease stain on the gravel, but the hard line of his jaw eased just a fraction. he understood the kind of loud where everyone knew your business. in brooklyn, it was the neighbors whispering on the stoop after the cops left his building; in pinehaven, it was apparently just the weight of everyone's eyes waiting for an explanation. believing know one would care too much in new york had his eyebrow twitching again. yeah, he thought, until you mess up. then they don't stop looking. but he kept the thought behind his teeth.

I was screaming in the woods the other day, noah’s blank stare cracked completely, eyes sliding sideways an inch or two to furrow his brows at her. yet, despite the brevity of their acquaintance, a strange, begrudging intuition told him that such an absurd admission was entirely, characteristically fitting for a creature like her. his mind immediately categorized her as unpredictable, which was the highest tier of dangerous on his internal radar. he’d known guys in the joint who talked like that; people who just acted on whatever impulse rattled through their skulls first. but she wasn't threatening. she was just...a lot. "small town hospitality," he muttered under his breath, repeating the words like he was trying to figure out what language they were in. the brooklyn cadence made it sound like an insult.

his social battery was in the single digits, the red light flashing in his head, but at least the pressure in his chest had settled down into a dull, manageable ache. she hadn't pushed him about the girl. she hadn't pushed him about why he was really here. "wasn't boring," he said. the words came out low, almost buried by the rumbling hum of the kitchen exhaust fan behind him. "the cigarette. it was a good cigarette."

"you talk too much, and you're weird, could have guessed you were a semi local from that alone" he added, his voice flatlining back into that gravelly, default drone. it wasn't mean; it was just a statement of absolute fact from a man who considered three sentences a marathon. "but...you ain't the worst, i guess," he paused. "i'm not good at conversation if you were expecting a back and forth." it was as much of an olive branch as he was capable of carving out; most people didn't unlock anything close to chatty from him unless he'd known them for a considerable amount of time.

Figuring that Noah would need to go back inside soon, before Rocky came out looking for him and realized that she'd ignored what he'd said, Ariel turned to face him again. "Do you like to swim?" She asked. "Or watching movies? Or screaming in the woods?" Ariel tilted her head to the side, her long dark hair falling like a curtain behind her. "Oh, or live music? A local band is playing at the bar this weekend... I haven't decided if I'm going or not, but I could be convinced."

Half of those things she couldn't even talk during. The music would be too loud at the bar, Ariel never talked during movies, and, well, if they were screaming in the woods then she couldn't talk while doing that. Before and after, sure, but not during. The underlining question hung in the air, do you want to hang out? This short interaction in the alley behind LouLou's wasn't enough for Ariel to decide if Noah was someone she should be friends with, she needed a second longer interaction. To both decide, and convince him, probably.

"I'm not currently working," Ariel went on. "So, I've got a lot of time to kill." Pretty soon, her parents would probably try to convince her to pick up some shifts at the dry cleaners. Doing that would be easier than trying to find another part time job in town. But, for now, she was still 'settling in'. "So... we should do something... when you're not here."

evie’s brow furrowed, her lips puckering into a tight, deeply troubled line as she watched ariel swipe at the remnants of her tears. the fierce, cartoonish vengefulness in evie's face instantly evaporated, completely replaced by that soft, intensely earnest vulnerability she only showed when the world got too sharp for the people she loved. "oh, absolutely illegal," evie murmured, her voice dropping into a comforting whisper as she addressed the vending machine crisis first. "i’m pretty sure it violates the geneva convention of breakroom morale. so sour cream baked onto a windshield at seventy two degrees fahrenheit seemed perfectly reasonable. it would smell like a haunted dairy farm within three hours. it’s magnificent. we are absolutely keeping that on ice for a rainy saturday."

but then the heavier question hung between them, a sudden weight in the air; what would you do if you were me? evie fell completely silent and it was a rare, almost shocking occurrence for evelyn dae to run out of words. her teeth pressed gently into the plump, glossy swell of her bottom lip as she thought about it. "oh, ari. if i were you, i’d probably be trying to build a localized weather machine to strike them all down with targeted lightning. because you are so allowed to be in the deep, dark pit right now," her voice dropping into a quiet, unhurried cadence that was entirely devoid of her usual rambling rhythm. "it's like…your life plan got hit by a cosmic semi truck, and right now you're just standing on the side of the highway looking at the smoke." evie offered a small, tentative, incredibly sweet smile, her shoulders dropping in a soft gesture of total comfort.

"if i were you, i would take a deep breath, and i would let myself be completely miserable for exactly three more days. eat lots of orange cheese. wear the baggy sweatpants. plot the destruction of the sourdough syndicate with me. and then, on the fourth day, we find a tiny, stupidly insignificant thing in this town that makes you feel alive. we don't fix your career in a day, we just find a project. maybe you help me test the stations radio signals up at deadman’s pass. maybe we find a way to test the ph balance of the local creek because i’m convinced the town council is dumping glow in the dark sludge in it. you're a brilliant scientist, ari. germ-y didn't take your brain when they took your badge. they just lost access to it."

she paused, the heavy, empathetic stillness lingering for only a fraction of a second before that familiar, chaotic spark flared back to life behind her eyes. a totally fantastic, glowing idea struck her so hard she was surprised strands of her raven locks hadn't given way to static in the prelude, her posture instantly straightening with a renewed, buzzing energy.. "have you thought about taking action legally? cause I totally know a guy," suddenly the stoic visage of tae-yeol clouded her mind. "he's grumpy and a little difficult, and he behaves like a man who has never experienced joy in his entire life, but if i ask nicely. or, you know, annoy him into submission. he could at the very least give some guidance on if it would be worth taking this to court!"

"Three more days," She repeated, nodding. The thing was, there were tiny and stupid insignificant things in this town that Ari did still love. As much as she talked about never wanting to come back to the Pines... it was still home. She'd grown up here, she'd been raised in these picturesque streets, growing up right alongside the beautifully generous people like Evie. Her parents still lived here and had no plans on leaving even though one set of grandparents had moved to Florida and the other to Portland. Pinehaven was home.

"I could use a project," Ari agreed, mirroring Evie's small smile. "Testing radio signals or the creek... maybe I could do some science tutoring... keep the mind fresh." It was almost summer, but surely there were kids in summer school or parents who needed an hour or so every week to breathe. "Maybe I could have a torrid love affair... spiral into toxic codependency." Ari grinned enough to show that she was joking.

"My dad suggested it but..." Ariel shrugged. "I just don't see the point. My key card was the last one scanned in the lab before the accident and if they're telling the truth about the cameras, then there's no proof to get me off. So it would be my word against there's and as big of an asshole as they all are... they're well respected scientist." She sighed heavily, shaking her head. "Plus, my parents already had to bail me out with my rent and, like, they say it's okay and it's what their supposed to do but... I don't want to waste a bunch of money for nothing." She didn't even know what the outcome would be. It's not like Ariel wanted to work at that lab again. She just wanted them to not make it impossible to get another job in the future.

the question hit the alleyway like a bucket of ice water, freezing the blood right in noah’s veins. was it a girl? his hand froze inside his jacket pocket, fingers curled around nothing, the only sound was the low, steady hum of loulou’s exhaust fan and the rhythmic drip drip of the rain off the gutter. his mind didn't just stumble; it dropped straight into a black hole. a girl. if she only knew. the only woman he’d upended his life for was his sister, and that little stunt had earned him three years in a state issued orange jumpsuit and a permanent spot scraping grease off a diner flattop. the heat in his chest spiked, a prickly wave of adrenaline that made his vision blur at the edges. the anxiety was a physical heft now, pressing down on his lungs.

she was turning away but the question was still hanging there, demanding an answer he couldn't possibly give without tearing open every scar he’d spent the last two years trying to hide. just walk inside, his brain screamed. push the door and go. but he didn't move, he stood there, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle bunched in his cheek. he looked at the side of her face, then down at the wet gravel. he couldn't tell her about the probation officer. or how he used to be a sous chef in manhattan before everything went sideways, or the three years of staring at a gray cinderblock wall. he didn't even know this person. she was a stranger.

"no," noah said, his voice dropping into a flat whisper that was almost swallowed by the damp air. "no girl." he shifted his weight heavily from one boot to the other once more. "i just..." he swallowed, his throat dry as he forced himself to speak past the static in his head. he didn't look at her, couldn't look at her, but his face settled into a hard, defensive line that was more about self preservation than anger. "new york got...loud. too many people. too much noise." it wasn't a total lie. the noise of his own record, the constant rejection, the suffocating crowds; it had all become a trap.

he took a slow, deliberate breath, trying to steady the shaky rhythm of his chest before he completely lost his grip. he glanced at the kitchen door, then back down at his boots, the silence between them stretching out until it felt less like a threat and more like a heavy blanket. "can't claim i'm any less weird, 'suppose" he muttered abruptly, the words coming out rough and clumsy, like he was forcing them through a grate. he cleared his throat again, his gaze flicking toward her profile for a split second before darting back to the gravel.

"definitely no less weird that the girl cornering strangers in an alley behind diner's." his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch as the worst of the panic attack finally began to recede, leaving him drained but grounded in the cool washington rain.

"I get that," Ariel replied. "It feels like that for me here... not that this town compares to the noise of New York, obviously, but... everyone just knows everything... and that's loud." She chuckled softly, self deprecatingly. "I didn't exactly leave here... pleasantly, I guess. I'm pretty sure I told everyone that would listen that I'd never live here again, and they may never even see me again. And now I'm back and everyone wants to know what happened..." It's why Ari wanted to talk to people who didn't know her, or her parents, and didn't care why she was here or where she'd been. She glanced at Noah sidelong. "I bet I'd like the noise of New York... no one would give a fuck about me there."

Ari knew she was contradicting herself by saying she was lonely but being reluctant to reconnect with the people she knew here. There were certain people she did want to see, and people she wished she never lost touch with, but she just felt so... silly. She wished she could go back in time and tell her 18 year old self to shut the fuck up, but Ari had never known when to stop running her mouth. She just had a lot of complicated feelings mixed in with all her anger. Ariel was trying to work through them, however she could.

"I was screaming in the woods the other day." Ari grinned, turning her head to look at Noah. "This is the least weird thing I've done all week. And this isn't even that weird, this is called small town hospitality..." She waved a hand, still grinning. "Weird isn't so bad, I guess. Weird keeps life interesting." Ari used a thumb to motion in his direction. "Like you could've come out here and had a boring cigarette, and then gone back inside and kept cooking... but thanks to moi," She turned her thumb to herself. "You got to have an absolutely stimulating conversation with an averagely weird semi-local."

the swelteringly oppressive heat carried relentlessly through twilight, bidding farewell to setting sun, in great anticipation of the rising moon. a defiant and stubborn spike in weather unnatural for this time of the year. it seemed even in pinehaven, no one was safe from the winds of change. indiana sat back against the stool observing the maniac pulse of the evening crowd at mcnastys. his fingers curled delicately around whatever hipster IPA bullshit this evening's bartender wanted to peddle. the condensation dribbled down the smooth glass neck and seeped into the callused pads of his fingers. a soft light broke through the heavy hazy and a spark of recognition fired in his brain at the soft silhouette basking in the backlight of the balmy evening. "well look who it is. i thought the rumors are false that the ari kaplan dared step foot on familiar soil. I'd be damned."

@ari-kaplan

Now, was it fate or a cruel joke from the universe that the first person she ran into tonight was Indiana fucking Rose. "In the flesh," She said, playing it cool by brushing her hair back over her shoulder. "And totally not offended that you didn't text me the minute you thought I might be back in town..." Ari grinned, a finger pressing into Indy's bicep.

evie felt a dizzying mix of profound concern for the local hardware store's inventory and a deep, primal urge to grab a pair of pom poms and cheer. "well yes, they absolutely sell those at the hardware store, right next to the riding lawnmowers and the birdseed, but ari," evie squeaked, her voice hitting a frequency that probably made every dog in pinehaven sit up straight in alignment. she leaned across the table, her hands flying out to frantically rearrange her sorted sugar packets as if building a small, defensive wall against the gravitational pull of ari's dark side. "a hatchet? into a tesla tire? do you know what happens when you puncture a tesla? it’s basically a giant, rolling iphone! it’ll probably record your face in 4k, text your mom, sound a siren that plays elon musk's voice on a loop, and automatically drive itself to the nearest police station with the hatchet still stuck in its lithium ion soul!"

she paused, taking a rapid, desperate breath, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. confronted by her friend’s slow, sinister, utterly unbothered grin, evie’s face contorted into a mask of agonized empathetic conflict. her mouth puckered into a tight, prune like line of disapproval, even as her brows knit together in a display of almost maternal anxiety. "as your official spiritual advisor, self appointed, and temporary keeper of your sanity, I legally have to forbid the physical destruction of property because no one looks good in prison orange, ari. it totally clashes with every undertones." she shuddered dramatically, as if the bright colored accessories she sported on the daily weren't just as egregiously clashing. case in point, the chunky frog ring frame her face as she rested her chin in her hands.

"but, the marriage thing? that is entirely psychological, which means there are zero property damage fees! we would just need to figure out which of them are cheating on their wives with their spreadsheets, which is probably ninety nine percent of them. we could mail their houses anonymous, heavily perfumed letters that just say, 'thank you for the wonderful afternoon, the isotope analysis was unforgettable.' it'll sow seeds of absolute chaos!" while ari clearly had her own hit list, evie blinked, her eyes rolling upward as she mentally scanned her entirely non threatening, aggressively whimsical life.

"me? oh, gosh. nobody really does me dirty because I think people are just generally confused by me? but like, in a benign, non confrontational way, I hope.." she frowned, genuinely trying to conjure up an enemy to contribute to the cause. "I mean...okay, there is the regional manager of the vending machine company. i've been locked in a cold war with him since march because he refuses to restock the sour cream and onion chips in the radio station breakroom. he keeps putting in those baked veggie straws that taste like literal, compressed lawn clippings! it is a dietary hate crime. if you want to put him on the list, we could definitely slash the tires of his snack truck. or, wait, no! we hide the keys to the snack truck inside a giant tub of sour cream! that’s thematic justice!"

"These dudes are such losers, their wives probably wouldn't even believe they could pull two women." Ariel rolled her eyes. Honestly, she was surprised that some of them were married. She'd even met one or two of their wives over the years, and wow, talk about out of these dudes league. There was part of Ari who really wanted to ruin their lives and marriages, but another part that would hate to cause that kind of torment to an innocent woman. Maybe if she knew them better she'd see that they were potentially evil, too. But, alas. "I guess I need to go back to the revenge drawing board."

Ari chuckled as Evie described who was on her hit list. A very typical response from her old friend. Both because Evie was simply too light and magical to have any true enemies and because this was Pinehaven. "Water balloons full of sour cream," Ariel mused, pursing her lips in thought. "In the middle of the night on a weekend, and then when the sun rises it'll bake that shit right into the paint job." Did sour cream ruin paint jobs? She had no idea, but it sure would be gross as shit. "And, by the way, who in their right mind puts healthy snacks in a fucking snack machine? Sounds illegal to me." Ari rolled her eyes, but still chuckled. Sour creaming a snack van would be something to help get out this rage, even if the snack dude didn't actually deserve it.

How long could Ariel reasonably keep up this anger before she actually needed to move on? Being this angry was truly dragging her down into a deep dark pit, and the deeper she went the harder it would be to pull herself out. "What would you do if you were me?" She asked Evie. "How would you... move past this, I guess."

noah did not merely stand; he ossified. the rough, damp masonry of the alleyway bit through the cotton of his shirt, and he welcomed the minor physical sting if only because it anchored him against the absurd theater unfolding mere inches from his nose. she was doing a voice now. some garbled, cartoonish approximation of a brooklyn accent that sounded less like the neighborhood he’d grown up in and more like a bad community theater production of guys and dolls. under normal circumstances, noah possessed a healthy, deeply ingrained reflex for sarcasm; he would have snorted, or thrown out a dry, defensive piece of vitriol to protect the honor of the borough. but his lungs felt like two dry leather sacks. instead, he just watched her wave off the astrology nonsense, his internal clock hammering, a frantic, digital countdown toward the exact microsecond he could reasonably wrap his fingers around the cold brass of the kitchen door handle and vanish.

then, the performance ended. the smile vanished from her face with a suddenness that felt almost violent, and the entire trajectory of the evening plummeted off a sheer, unmapped cliff. noah’s chest tightened. on the outside, his face remained a stubborn, unreadable slab of stoicism. but internally, the gears ground to a horrific, screeching halt. he didn't know how to handle tears, he didn't know how to handle heavy sighs, and he definitely didn't know how to handle a stranger suddenly dumping a bucket of existential loneliness onto the wet gravel between them. his eyes tracked her movements like he was watching a live wire sparking on a sidewalk. the sheer volume of her vulnerability was overwhelming. his social skills were practically non existent on a good day, but when people started getting real, his entire cognitive system short circuited, leaving behind nothing but the smell of burning wires. he wanted to tell her that it wasn't personal, that he didn't want to talk to anyone, but the words felt like dry sand in his throat. instead he stared at her, his left hand tightening into a hard fist inside his apron pocket.

the true panic, however, lay in the geometry of his own features. he simply did not know what to do with his face. she was looking at him now, her eyes heavy with the expectation of something. a sympathetic tilt of the head? a soft, reassuring murmur? a shared grievance about the local dentist who also happened to be one the closest things noah had to a confidant in this town? he had absolutely nothing in the reservoir to give her. the animal part of his brain, the survival instinct that had kept him alive in new york, was screaming at him to pivot on his heel, throw open the door, and bolt into the safety of the dish pit. but some deeply buried, stubborn part of him. the part that couldn't stand seeing someone kicked when they were down. held his boots to the floor. the silence that followed was agonizing. noah swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the quiet alley. he shifted his weight, looking from her closed eyes down to her oversized leather jacket, then back to the metallic door handle. the kitchen fire excuse felt too cheap now.

"it's..." the syllable died in his throat, cracking so violently that it sounded like dry twigs snapping. he stopped, furious with himself, and cleared his throat with a rough, deliberately aggressive cough that echoed off the brickwork. he looked away, refusing to meet her gaze, choosing instead to fixate entirely on a rusted, unidentifiable piece of scrap machinery leaning against the dumpster. "it ain't...you." the words felt clumsy, heavy, and entirely inadequate, but he forced them out anyway, his cadence cutting through the washington damp like a dull blade. "people here are..." he trailed off, his jaw working as he tried to find a word that didn't sound completely abrasive. he couldn't. he let out a short, sharp breath through his nose, his eyes flicking back to her for a fraction of a second before darting away again. "they're just weird. they talk too much or they don't talk at all," he recognized the irony, of course. he was the poster child for the latter category. he took another breath, forcing his shoulders down a fraction of an inch. "the guy from your high school...he's probably just an idiot. all guys are idiots." even him, especially him.

Ariel turned her head, that was still rolled back between her shoulders, and opened her eyes when Noah cleared his throat. When he didn't look at her, she looked back to the sky. "People here are weird..." Ari agreed. "And I don't usually talk this much..." Even if he wasn't specifically referring to her, she felt the need to clarify. Ari picked up her head, blinking a few times, and then grimaced. "That might be a lie, actually." Did she talk a lot? She'd never really considered it. Not when she'd always been surrounded by certified chatterboxes like Evie. But, she supposed, next to someone who clearly didn't say much, she was the chatterbox.

Ariel crossed her arms against her chest again, moving back to the brick wall and leaning against it again. "So, if Pinehaven is so weird, what are you doing here all the way from Brooklyn? Seems kind of random." She waved a hand, meant to encompass the entirety of the tiny town. "A town this small you don't come to unless you actually want to. Was it a girl?" People moved across the country for another person all the time, didn't they?

Ari let her gaze sweep over him, from the clenched jaw down to the tattoos on his arms. His hands were still shoved in the pockets of his apron but she noticed how tense his arms looked. He had to be clenching his fist. Ariel took that as the hint it likely was, and looked away. She turned her whole body away, leaning her head back against the brick wall and watching the gray clouds in the sky. He didn't want to be looked at, that was fine. She didn't need to look at him to have a conversation.