“Grande Java Chip Frappuccino for Ari!” Yells a chesty, red headed barista to no one in particular in a bored tone.

“Thanks…” A softer voice says while a hand reaches forward to grasp the cold plastic cup from its place on the counter. Swiftly moving away from the standing crowd waiting for their own drinks, the girl walks over to the self-serve area and grabs a straw. Sticking it into the frothy drink, she takes a luxurious sip and smiles. This is her treat. She isn’t one to buy expensive frothy drinks but once in a while the craving comes on and all she can think of is the whip and the sugar rush.


I’m going to regret this later.

Oh well.

As she straightens the messenger bag hanging from her shoulder, she lifts her head and takes a look around the mostly full café. The initial plan was to take her drink and go to a nearby park to take few pictures but as she had walked in, a few sprinkles of rain had started to fall. It is strange how she used to think of rain as a bummer but now sees it as a thankful reminder that not every day is the same. This feeling of sameness often comes on in this gleaming metropolis of a city where the weather never seems to change and people seem to blend into one another. It’s so different from back home where a common saying is “If you don’t like the weather; wait a few minutes”.

Home.


The thought grips her from inside for a moment. She shakes her head and takes a deep breath as she moves a few feet forward. She’ll get home eventually; right now she needs to focus on her work.

Focus on making sure she can pay the rent in 2 weeks when her landlord comes knocking.

Might as well just find a seat at a table here and wait for the rain shower to end. It can’t last long, this is LA after all. There are probably women that are going to start melting if it were to rain for more than a few minutes at a time.

Hah.


She half smirks to herself as she glances around the room, thankfully spotting an empty stool behind a bistro table. She hikes her bag up a little closer to her side as she weaves through a few people in order to get to the back corner to claim the lone empty table and chair. Placing her drink down on the table, she take her bag off, her blonde hair which had started in a pretty braid this morning gets mostly stuck around the strap of her bag and causes it to tug at her scalp uncomfortably.

With a wince she sets the bag on the table and climbs up onto the stool before she pulls the hair tie from the bottom of her hair and runs her fingers through the soft tangles.

Might as well get a little work done.

She slides her laptop from her bag and sets it onto the table. As it starts to boot up, she takes a moment to loosely braid her hair again and then leans back against her chair with a sigh and a sip of her drink. She looks around the café a few moments, her eyes settling on different people for moments at a time. She enjoys people watching; it’s part of her job and her inspiration. Deciding to not waste anymore time, she pulls up her photo editing software and starts to click through her last few shots.

No. No. Nope. What is that!? Hell No.

Frustrated, she crosses her arms and looks around the room aimlessly again. Inspiration. Why can’t she seem to find people with interesting faces, actions or quirks anymore? That’s what she needs. When she first moved to LA, there was inspiration everywhere: the water, the people, the architecture, the food. Everywhere. Now it seems as if she’s run out of inspiration. People and sceneries are blending into one another. Nothing seems to…spark.

Maybe it’s just time to give it up and go home.

“Shit!” She hears someone close to her grumble in a soft, frustrated voice which pulls her from her own frustrated reverie.

She turns her head toward the sound and sees that it must have come from the guy sitting next to her, the closest table to her right. She’d been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed him sitting there.

“Um...is everything okay?” She asks tentatively as her blue eyes dart to his downcast face.

Bam!

A surprised, and familiar, pair of cobalt blue eyes meet her own as the man turns his attention to her. His cheeks are slightly red as if he is embarrassed.

“Uh…Yeah. I guess that came out louder than I intended it to.” He chuckles and nervously swipes the edge of his nose with his finger. “My laptop is about to die and I’m not done saving something. I meant to charge it last night but I must have forgotten.” He shakes his head slightly and scratches the back of his neck.

JC Chasez.

Fucking JC Chasez is sitting next to me and talking to me.

What. The. Fuck.

“I…I…” She stutters for a moment before she gets herself together and takes a deep breath. “Maybe I can help,” she says, finally able to put together a decent sentence. Was it coherent? Hopefully.

She glances at his laptop and sees that it is the same type as hers, with a smile she reaches into the side pocket of her bag and pulls out her power adapter. Offering it to him, she raises her eyebrows questioningly and is rewarded with a dazzling smile.

“Awesome! You don’t mind if I use it for a little while? Just enough so that I can recharge my battery a bit and save my work? I really don’t want to lose anything.”

“Nah, go ahead I don’t need it right now.”

Nodding he stands up and looks around his table and chair for a place to plug in the adaptor. She can’t help but check him out as he does this: he is wearing what seems like an expensive pair of dark blue jeans (the ones that cost an extra hundred bucks for that slightly used look); an uncreased, soft looking black hooded sweatshirt and slightly scuffed leather shoes. The look is deceptively casual and relaxed but at closer inspection seems more calculated and precise.

She completes her once over of his outfit as he triumphantly finds a place to plug in and bends down.

Arrg.

This is wrong.

Stop staring like a hormonal teenager.

With all of her might, her eyes dart up from the slight peek of skin that formed between the band of his jeans and the red t-shirt he seems to be wearing underneath the hoodie.

Hormonal? Check.

She looks back at her screen.

Teenage fantasy? Check.

Looking like a total creepy stalker girl that wants to have his babies?

Will become a check if I don't get my ass in gear.

Taking another pull from her drink she smiles at him as he takes a seat next to her again.

“You’re a life saver,” he says kindly as he leans a little closer and offers his hand. “I’m JC, by the way.”

I know who you are.

“It’s my pleasure,” she answers him as she reaches forward to slide her hand into his larger one. “I’m Arianna.”

“Arianna." He seems to test her name on his lips before he smiles. "I like that. Are you from around here?” He questions as he grabs his own drink and takes a sip.

“Not originally. I've been out here about 6 months,” she answers and leans back against her chair.

“Oh? Where are you from? How do you like our little city?”

“I come from the Great Frozen North of Canada.” She laughs and sips her drink. “And you have a nice city. Lots of things to do, lots of people to see. Very different from back home,” she finishes softly, her eyes lowering to her hands for a moment.

“Different good or different bad?” He asks, his tone somehow automatically matching her soft one.

“Both, I think. It’s beautiful here, the weather is great and fruits and veggies are always in season. I just sort of miss…this will sound stupid,” she says making a funny face and shrugging her shoulders.

“Nah, go ahead I won’t laugh,” he says quietly, his eyes meeting hers and making her instantly feel at ease and unjudged.

How does he do that?

She plays with her fingers as she answers. “I miss…seasons you know? You always have something to look forward to like, when it’s snowing you always tell yourself that spring will come. When it’s raining in the spring you tell yourself the sun will come out in summer. When it’s too hot in summer, you can’t wait for fall to come.” Her eyes remain downcast for a moment as she runs the tip of her index finder along the condensation of her plastic cup.

He’s not laughing.

She risks raising her eyes to his once more and is pleased to find that they are soft and smiling, and not in a <i>you’re crazy, honey</i> sort of way, but in a way that makes her feel as if he is pleased with what she said.

“Yeah, I get that. I sort of miss the cold and the snow when it’s hella hot out here. I think back to when I was a kid in Maryland during winter and it would snow a little bit. It made outside seem so peaceful, like all you wanted to do was go out and play in the snow and then come in to have some hot chocolate and cookies your Mom made you.” He smirks, a slight chuckle ends his sentence.

“Do you go back often?” She asks, bringing her straw to her lips once more.

“Nah, just once in a great while. My parents have a house in Florida where they spend most of their time and where my family gets together. Whenever I go back and it starts getting cold I start wondering why the hell I left LA or Florida.” He chuckles again and takes a sip from his coffee. Making a face he swallows and squints his eyes, “Talking about cold…Ew.” He shakes his head and pushes the cup toward the edge of the table as if it suddenly has become contagious.

Laughing she presses the spacebar of her laptop to bring it back to life, “I don’t know how you drink that stuff,” she says nodding toward his cup.

“Well I don’t know how you drink that stuff,” he rebuts looking at her mostly empty cup which still has about an inch of whipped cream hanging around. “Won’t your teeth fall out? Or are you going to be running a mile around the block with your sugar rush?”

Laughing again, she arches a brow and looks at him pointedly. “You mean like after shooting 6 pixie sticks at once?”

A real laugh comes out of him and it makes her smile grow wider, its hearty sound pleasantly surprising.

“I haven’t done that shit in years, lady,” he answers, his smile just as wide as hers as he sits back against his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.

This is pleasant.

She eyes him for a moment before she starts to feel her cheeks warm and looks back at the screen of her laptop. Feeling the slightly uncomfortable silence creeping in, she starts to type a few things into her browser, purposely not looking at him. She hears him do the same and the sound of a cell phone vibrating on the wooden table. She glances up high enough to see his large hand wrap around the phone, flipping it over to check what it had vibrated for. She watches his thumb smoothly slide over the screen and his index tap a few things before putting the phone back down.

His hands. He has beautiful hands, strong and large although the fingers are long and thin. Musician’s hands. Lover’s hands.

Biting her lower lip, she shakes her head slightly as if to clear it, willing herself to stop blushing around him. He really is going to think that she is a love sick, stalking fan girl.

“Excuse me? Are…are you JC? From *NSYNC?” A soft, shy voice breaks through her thoughts and she looks up to find a tall brunette with hipster glasses step forward, a red headed shorter and slightly plumper friend trailing behind her.

“Yeah. That’s me,” he answers smoothly, leaning forward a little and smiling patiently at the apparently tongue twisted girls. “Nice to meet you.”

“Can…can we have a picture with you?” The red headed girl asks thrusting a smart phone in front of her.

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” he says as he stands up and straightens his dark hoodie. Moving closer to the girls, he lifts his arms so that each girl can get underneath one shoulder. “You mind taking the picture for them Ari?” He asks, his eyes flicking to hers.

Ari.

“Yeah…no problem,” she answers, standing up and grabbing a smart phone from each girl and snapping a picture for each. “These look great!” She smiles and hands the phones back before moving out of the way so JC can give them each a quick hug.

The girls giggle softly as they say goodbye and start to turn away but one of them swings a hip a bit excitedly and accidentally nudges the small table. As if in slow motion JC’s earlier cold cup of coffee goes flying and splashes over the front of his hoodie and part of his dark jeans. Both girls blanch instantly, mutter apologies and move away quickly, leaving him to look down at the mess that is now his clothing.

“Damn it,” he groans, grabbing a few loose napkins that were on his table and dabbing at the bottom of his hoodie and the front of his jeans. “I have a meeting in an hour and a half with another producer…I don’t have time to go home in this traffic. Fuck!”

Rooted to the spot, Ari tries really, really hard not to laugh.

Why should she be laughing?

Because she always laughs when she is nervous.

As his eyes meet hers, she breaks and a nervous giggle comes out of her lips although she is biting her lower lip hard enough to leave marks.

“You think this is funny huh?” He asks her softly, dangerously, although his eyes don’t seem angry.

“A little…yeah,” she answers before breaking out into an all-out fit of giggles, no longer able to contain her reaction.

After a pause, she hears him start to chuckle and unbelievably both of them stand there for what must be a solid 2 minutes just laughing at each other laughing.

“Well…now I’m going to have to walk out of here and find a store to buy new clothes before my meeting.” He runs a hand over his hair and takes a deep breath to stop the laughing.

“You don’t have to…I, I live only about 2 blocks away. It would only take max an hour to clean your clothes and then be on your way. If you want…” She says, her sentence dropping off towards the end as she starts to realize that she is asking JC Chasez to come home with her and take his clothes off.

To clean them.

Come on, Ari.

“Actually…that’s not a bad idea. You wouldn’t mind?” He questions, pulling the bottom of his hoodie away from his stomach and shaking it a bit, “This is kind of uncomfortable”

“At least it wasn’t hot anymore…” She smirks as she gathers her laptop and phone, slipping both into her messenger bag. “And of course I wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t have offered if I did.” She slings her bag over her shoulder and watches him gather his things, also sliding them into a dark messenger style bag. He grabs the now empty coffee cup off of the floor and wipes a few of the remaining puddles with some napkins and stands up.

“Lead the way.” He says, nodding toward the exit door and dropping the soiled cup and napkins in the nearby trash bin.