Page 109 of Small Town Swoo
“Have you heard from Ari?” she asked, following me into my room.
“No. I was hoping you had.”
“Nope.” She flopped across the foot of my bed, head propped in her hand. “I feel so bad for her. She’s so close to her dad.”
“I think he’ll be okay.” I started placing the last of my clean laundry into my suitcase.
“Ari said you guys spent a lot of time together while you were home.”
“I guess.”
“She said you were really good to her. Helped her out a lot. Even took her to see some kind of food truck.”
I shrugged, moving some things around in my bag. “I just want to encourage her to believe in herself. Her parents are a little stuck in their ways, and some dickhead ex of hers made her doubt her talent.”
“I know. She was a wreck after that. But she sounds so much better now. Whatever you said to her really did sink in. She told me she wanted to talk to her parents about the truck—of course, that was before everything with her dad.”
“I offered to buy it as an investment in her, but she won’t let me.” I closed my suitcase and zipped it up.
“She mentioned that. It’s really sweet, Dash.” She paused. “You must care about her.”
“It’s Ari,” I said, trying to sound offhand. “Of course I do. Everyone does. She’s like one of the family.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why can’t you admit you have feelings for her?”
I finally stopped moving around and met her eyes. “Because there’s no point. She’s here and I’m there.”
“So you’re just going to forget about her?”
“No, but we both went into this knowing we were just friends that were going tostayjust friends.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you say so. I’ve just never heard either one of you talk about another person or look at another person or act around another person the way you guys are with each other. It’s actually kind of nauseating.”
“It was just a couple weeks of hanging out,” I said, grabbing my jacket from the back of my door. “No big deal.”
“And where are you off to now?” she asked, her tone laced with phony innocence.
“I don’t really think that’s your business, Mabel.”
She burst out laughing and hopped off my bed. “Whatever. You know, for a good actor, you’re doing a shitty job pretending not to be in love with her.”
“I’m not in love with her,” I scoffed, although my heart thundered hard in my chest.
“Okay.” She patted my cheek. “Then I’ll just give you a hug and tell you to have Ari call me when she can.” Throwing her arms around me, she gave me a squeeze. “It was good to see you.”
“You too.” I hugged her back. “Come visit me in California sometime.”
“I’d love that. Safe travels. And good luck at your audition—keep us posted.”
“Thanks. I will.”
She let me go and wandered down the hall into her old bedroom, and I tossed my coat over my arm and took my bag down the stairs. Julia and my father looked over at me.
“Heading out, son?”
“Yeah, I’m going to run over to the diner and see if Ari needs anything. She’s not answering my texts, and I just want to make sure everything is okay.”
“She’s working tonight?” he asked, rising to his feet.
