Sara Shepard - Wicked

“Oh.” Xavier looked up, alarmed. “Hey.”

Xavier was wearing a plain white T-shirt and very familiar plaid pajama pants. At first, Aria thought they might be ones Byron had left behind, but then she realized they were Ella’s . Byron’s favorite old Hollis College coffee mug sat in front of Xavier’s place, as did today’s Philadelphia Inquirer cryptoquote. Aria pressed her arms tightly and chastely against her chest. She hadn’t thought she needed to put on a bra for breakfast.

A horn honked outside. The chair made an angry scrape as Mike stood up, milk dribbling from his chin. “That’s Noel.” He grabbed his enormous bag of lacrosse gear and regarded Xavier. “Wii tonight, right?”

“I’ll be there,” Xavier answered.

Aria looked at her watch. “It’s seven twenty.” School started in an hour, and Mike usually procrastinated until the very last second.

“We’re getting a prime seat at Steam so we can check out Hanna Marin and her hot stepsister.” Mike’s eyes goggled. “Have you seen that Kate girl? I can’t believe the two of them live together! You talk to Hanna sometimes—do you know if they sleep in the same bed?”

Aria gave him an exasperated look. “Do you honestly expect me to answer that?”

Mike hefted his bag over his shoulder and sauntered into the hall, knocking over the enormous frog-faced totem pole Ella had found at a junk shop in Turkey. The front door slammed heavily. Aria heard an engine gunning…and then nothing.

The house was maddeningly still. The only thing Aria heard was the Indian sitar music Ella always listened to before work—she often left it on all day, maintaining that it was soothing for their cat, Polo, and the plants.

“Do you want a part of the paper?” Xavier broke the silence.

He held up the front page. Splayed across the top was the headline Ian Thomas Vows to Find Real DiLaurentis Killer Before Trial Tomorrow. Aria shuddered. “That’s okay.” She quickly poured herself a cup of coffee and headed back toward the stairs.

“Wait,” Xavier said loudly. Aria stopped so abruptly, some of her coffee spilled to the floor. “I’m sorry if I might have made you uncomfortable at the restaurant last night,” Xavier said solemnly. “That’s the last thing I meant to do. And I wanted to be gone before you came down today—I didn’t want to skeev you out more. I know how weird this must be.”

Aria wanted to ask if he meant that it must be weird because he knew she had been interested in him, or because he was dating her not-yet-divorced mom.

“It’s…fine.” Aria set her coffee down on the telephone table next to the door. It was littered with a whole bunch of flyers and postcards of Xavier’s recent shows—Ella must have been boning up on his work. Then she adjusted her way-too-short gray terry-cloth pajama shorts. If only she hadn’t been wearing the ones with the enormous pink Pegasus silk-screened across the butt.

She thought about the A note she’d received at Rabbit Rabbit yesterday. Wilden had promised to call her once he traced the origin of her latest A note. She hoped she’d hear from him today so she could put the whole thing behind her.

Aria had debated just explaining the photos of her and Xavier to Ella before A had the chance. She tried to picture it. The thing is, I kind of liked Xavier before you started dating him, she could say. But it’s not like I do now! So if anyone sends you a note or pictures, ignore them, okay? But their relationship was just too fragile to broach something like this—especially if she didn’t need to.

In truth, Wilden was probably right. The notes had to be from some dumb kid. And there wasn’t much of a reason to be angry at Xavier—all he’d done was draw a sketch of her—a really good sketch. That was it. Even if Ella saw the pictures A had sent Aria, Xavier would jump in to explain that nothing had been going on. He probably hadn’t even realized the message he’d sent, drawing Aria’s portrait in such detail. Xavier was an artiste, after all, and artists weren’t the most socially adept creatures in the world. Take Byron: When he’d held cocktail parties for his Hollis undergrad students, he’d often hidden up in the bedroom, forcing Ella to entertain.

Xavier stood up, wiping his chin with a napkin. “How about I make it up to you? I’ll go get dressed and then give you a ride to school.”

Aria lowered her shoulders. Ella had taken the car to work that morning, and getting a ride definitely beat taking the Rosewood Day bus, which was filled with elementary school boys who never got tired of farting contests. “Okay,” she agreed. “Thanks.”

Twenty minutes later, Aria was shrugging into the black bouclé coat she’d bought at a vintage shop in Paris and stepping out onto the front porch. Xavier’s car, a pristinely restored, late-sixties BMW 2002, chugged in the driveway. Aria slid into the front seat, admiring the sleek chrome interior. “Now this is how an old car should look.” She whistled, impressed. “Have you seen my mom’s ancient Honda? There’s mold growing on the seats.”

Xavier chuckled. “My dad had one of these when I was growing up.” He began to back out of the driveway. “After my parents divorced and he moved to Oregon, I missed the car more than him.”

He glanced at Aria, giving her a sympathetic look. “I really do know how weird this is, you know. My mom started dating right away after she got divorced. I hated it.”

So that’s what he’d meant. Aria stared pointedly in the other direction, watching a couple of younger public school students crunch clumsily over the quickly melting snowdrifts at the bus stop. The last thing she wanted to hear was another I’ve been there story. Sean Ackard, who she’d gone out with for about a minute this fall, had earnestly revealed his struggles with his mom’s death and his dad’s remarriage. And Ezra had bemoaned that when his parents divorced, he’d smoked tons of pot. Woo-hoo, everyone else’s lives sucked ass too. It didn’t really make Aria’s problems any easier.

“All my mom’s boyfriends tried to bond with me,” Xavier went on. “Every single one of them brought me sports equipment, like baseball gloves, basketballs, once even a whole hockey uniform, complete with pads and stuff. If they’d really attempted to learn anything about me, they would’ve known to bring me a handheld mixer. Or Bundt cake pans. Or muffin tins.”

Aria looked over, intrigued. “Muffin tins?”

Xavier smiled sheepishly. “I was really into baking.” He hit the brakes at a crosswalk, waiting for a bunch of little kids to pass. “It helped to calm me down. I was especially good at meringues. This was before I discovered art. I was the only guy in my school’s home ec club. Actually, that’s where my Match.com nickname comes from—Wolfgang. I was obsessed with Wolfgang Puck when I was in high school. He had this restaurant in L.A. called Spago, and this one time, I drove down there from Seattle, where I went to high school, thinking I could just walk in without reservations.” He rolled his eyes. “I ended up eating at Arby’s.”

Aria looked at him, noting his serious expression. She burst out laughing. “You are such a girl.”

“I know.” Xavier ducked his head. “I wasn’t very popular in high school. No one really got me.”

Aria ran her fingers through her long, black ponytail. “I used to be really unpopular too.”

“You?” Xavier waved his hand. “Nah.”

“It’s true,” Aria said quietly. “No one understood me at all.”

She sat back in the seat, thrust into thought. Aria had always tried very hard not to dwell on the lonely, friendless years before she’d become friends with Ali, but seeing that black-and-white photo of her the other day—the one from when Time Capsule was announced—had jostled a whole bunch of memories free.