Page 50 of Catch Me
Ari made a second channel for meditation with recordings she composed herself. That channel gained over two hundred thousand subscribers within the first year. Since then, she’s moved into video editing for other creators and social media management.
She chose to drop out of school with less than a year to go.
Her channels and freelance work have sustained her independent lifestyle ever since.
“Right?” Ari says. “He pissed me off because I started to remember all of the times he threw little comments like that in my face.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, my body tensing.
That sounds all too familiar.
“Ari,” Mya draws out her name in warning when Ari goes silent for a while.
“I didn’t want to tell you this because I knew you would judge him.”
“See, now I know this is going to be some bullshit.” Mya sits up.
Ari pushes out a harsh breath. “Fine, okay, so it was subtle in the beginning. He would make comments here and there about ‘it must be nice to sleep in whenever I wanted.’”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I blurt out.
“Right? We know your ass gets out of bed at the crack of dawn.”
Ari laughs, which I know is what Mya was going for. It’s also the truth. Even during college, when students are known to sleep until well past noon on weekends, Ari was up early.
“I work best in the mornings,” she says. “But when I would remind him of that, he would dismiss it. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it, but over time his comments grew in frequency. When I would offer to treat us to a nice dinner, he started saying things like ‘I'm trying to upstage him.’”
Ari looks at Mya.
“Remember your law school graduation?” she asks.
Mya and I both nod.
“I felt like there was tension between you two.”
“We’d gotten into a big fight the day before we arrived in L.A. He didn’t believe I needed to make such a big deal out of attending your graduation. I cursed him out and told him he could keep his ass right in North Carolina, but I was going to my best friend’s graduation.”
“And did,” Mya ad libs. She looks between me and Ari, squeezing our knees. “You both were the loudest in the crowd, cheering for me.”
“Damn straight,” Ari and I say at the same time, clasping both of her hands.
“We broke up for months after that. But when we got back together, I made it clear that he would not ever speak about either one of you again.”
“Again?” I ask.
Ari’s eyes balloon. “Shoot,” she murmurs. “I didn’t mean?—”
I narrow my eyes. “Say it.”
She waves her hand and shakes her head. “It’s no?—”
“Don’t you dare. What did he say?”
“He had mentioned something …” She trails off.
“Ari.”
“Ugh, I should’ve left him for good the moment he said that foolishness. He just made a comment about, you know, what happened at your graduation.”
