F***in' Arizona

A Lot Can Change in Two Years (Chapter 5)

2012: The End of Senior Year

"I can't believe you're going to be so far away from us!" Maya whined to Ari.

"Phone calls are never far away though. They're at the tip of your fingers," Ari says smiling at her and tapping her fingers with his own.

"Maya, Ari is going off to pursue his football dreams and major in computer sciences. Not everyone is going to be attending the same school like the two of us," I say to her.

The three of us were hanging out and enjoying each other's company one afternoon in one of the many "hole in the wall" restaurants around the city while waiting for Charlie and my boyfriend Remi to show up.

That's right, Ari and I have now gotten to the point of hanging out together on a regular basis.
After that day in the library two years ago, we started to talk and get to know one another better. We actually started to become really close friends. How crazy is that! I went from gagging anytime someone mentioned the name Arizona (even when mentioning the state), to widely grinning and gushing about him.

I also have been deterring Maya's crush on him since learning of Ari's liking for guys and not girls. She still doesn't know since he asked me to keep it to myself, but I've been putting other males in front of her to preoccupy herself. She gets easily distracted by cute boys.

It's been two years since Ari entrusted me with his secret and it's been two years since he started secretly dating his football teammate and longtime best friend Charlie.
He broke things off with Blaire after finally telling her that he wanted to start dating Charlie. She was perfectly fine with that because it gave her the freedom to date Loki, aka "Class Clown Kevin". The two of them are actually really cute together.

Because she and Ari were the school's "golden couple", most folks didn't take their breakup very well. But, because they were still best friends, people moved on from it quickly and Ari still had his groupies if not even more now that he was "single".

Ari and Blaire are still just as popular on their own as they were while dating, funny enough. Guess that whole, "only dating for the popularity" thing paid off.

Now that Ari was "single", girls were constantly trying to be around him and get him to notice them. He didn't seem to mind the attention, but of course he paid their advances no mind. He would politely decline each one of them and say that he was, "taking time for himself and wanted to focus on his studies and football until we graduated". Even though he told them this, girls still continued to try to pursue him. YOLO, I guess.

Charlie and Ari seem to be doing well despite the unwanted hoard of females and having to keep things under wraps.
They always look so happy together. I wonder if it has anything to do with Ari finally coming to terms with his sexuality? Or the fact that his first boyfriend is someone he already knows so well and trusts?

I know they have their fair share of arguments though. Sometimes Ari confides in me and tells me that he believes Charlie is becoming tired of being his "dirty little secret". He said that Charlie wants to be able to hug, hold, and kiss him in the public of the school when he wants and not just in the shadows. Like any other regular couple.

I mean, it's understandable for him to feel that way, but I don't really think it's fair to push him like that. If Ari isn't ready to come out, then pushing him to do it really isn't going to help him. Some flowers need more time to bloom than others. Pushing him may cause him to retreat.

Like I said, after that day in the library, Ari and I became better friends. We started to tell each other mostly everything.
I think I must have sort of replaced Blaire after they broke up. Even though they were still best friends, she became more focused on Loki, and he became more focused on Charlie. And since I was one of the very select few who knew his secret, Ari found himself talking to me more often.