no stars in sight {ari!}

[juliette eliza bloom]

outfit

It was rare to find Juliette without Lily attached to her hip and before/after classes was really one of the only times. Since Lily was only taking one class and Juliette was taking three, she had to spend much more time around the campus and she often found herself eating lunch without her. Most days when this occurred, she ate lunch with Evander, since they were taking all the same classes and were forced to spend most of his time on campus together [not that she minded]. Today, however, Evander had not shown up to class and had only just texted her about it, so she was already on her way to lunch.

The dining hall would have been her best option now that she was alone, but she was already on her way to the union and she didn't really want to go force down any crappy dining hall. She had gotten used to a standard of eating and she was reasoning with herself that, if she didn't find anything, she would just go to the dining hall. She did, however, intend to find something--she just wasn't telling herself that.

Juliette had seen no problem with eating alone--despite the fact that she hadn't eaten lunch alone when there were people around possibly ever--but it was starting to become a problem. For one thing, when she walked with Evander and she was carrying all of her things, she was usually chatting about something or other and didn't notice how heavy the load in her arms was. She also hadn't realized how far the walk from her class to the union was. Walking with Evander made the time go much faster and now, alone, her feet were dragging when she was almost halfway there.

She finally made it, though, and she felt like she'd just run a marathon with a child strapped to her back. The first place she found was a bagel place, so she got herself a bagel sandwich, whose to-go back she had to juggle on top of all of her other things while she walked around trying to find a table. It being lunch time and nice out, it was difficult to find one that was empty, so she settled for a bench in the courtyard where she dropped her things, shaded her eyes, and hoped to god that someone, anyone she knew would come by and sit with her.

[ari j. morphis]

There aren’t days anymore when Ari can wake up and feel okay. He wakes up at six AM every morning and his hand can’t even make it to the alarm clock without the voices in his head beginning to tell him that it’s too early and too dark to get up. His aching muscles lay in rebellion, unmoving, pretending as though they couldn’t hear his brain telling them to move. A legion of voices is constantly in his head, shouting their unanimous decision to let him give-up and to quit all the training all together. When he wakes up, he hurts, his body is sore and stiff and resilient to movement. Even now, walking in streams of crisp, clear sunlight, he was walking uncharacteristically lethargic. His husky figure was dipped slightly, his shoulders inclined, and an emotion as close to blank as one could come on the nineteen-year-old’s face. He had just finished his morning classes and, after a two-hour lunch break, he would have to go to practice. Ari often ate up to seven meals a day, and would eat a lion’s share of food at each sitting to maintain his six thousand calorie diet.

By the way Ari was walking through the courtyard, in jeans and a plain black v-neck t-shirt, there was no doubt that he was hurting. He moved rheumatically and not in the same jogging strut that he was known for. The way his body seemed to slump under the weight of his sport’s bag was unusual, and he looked exhausted by the time had made in to the Union Courtyard. He was thrilled to see how quiet the courtyard was at the peak of lunch hour on such a sunny, sensational day. The light breeze ruffled up the glossy tussles of platinum blonde hair and made it just cool enough for the Minnesota-bred Ari to bear. He still hadn’t adjusted to the raw heat in Florida yet and often struggled with the high temperatures and was particularly subject to heat stroke and dehydration.

The redheaded girl was not hard to spot and he smiled inwardly to himself. Where he had originally planned to spend lunch alone, he couldn’t pass up such a circumstance. “Hey, babygirl,” he said in a playful tone, approaching the bench in which Juliette was sitting in a slightly more energetic pace. Momentarily, the young blonde forgot about the discomfort in his muscles and was overcome with vitality, “May I eat lunch with you?” he asked, but didn’t bother to wait to get a response. He plopped himself rather unceremoniously in the grass, kicked off his converse and set his sports bag down next to him.

He slid the water bottle from the side pouch and began to drink, enjoying the moment to just sit back in the plush grass and enjoy it for a while. Ari had known Juliette for several months now and had gotten to be fairly good friends with her. Had she turned out to be more like a little sister, he probably would have hit on her. He physically flinched slightly when he twisted his hips a weird way. He huffed a little, expelling a sigh; Ari didn’t even have the ambition to eat today, which was terribly unlike him.

“How are you doing today?” he asked, quite finally.

[juliette eliza bloom]

Juliette was not prone to staying calm and collected when surprised, especially when an attractive male was thrown into the picture. Today was no exception and, when Ari appeared, she squeaked and jumped violently enough that, had she been eating anything more fragile than a sandwich, it would have spilled out of her lap and probably hit her in the face. Since all she did was make a minor fool of herself, her face only went a mild shade of red, like a partially-ripe cranberry. The worst was that she had actually seen him coming, she just hadn't expected him to sit with her.

"Oh, hello," she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and flashing him the most casual smile that she could muster while her face faded from the partially ripe cranberry to the color of the inside of a strawberry. It didn't matter that she had known Ari since she pledged her sorority or that she was not exactly attracted to him personality-wise, he was still a boy that had muscles and a face and a deep, manly voice and he was exactly her type and that made her squeaky and flustered.

"Oh, yes, of course!" she said, hastening to move her things out of his way despite the fact that he was already comfortably seated against the grass. Once she realized this, she hastened to put them all back, nearly dropping her bagel on his head in the process, but managing to catch it just in time. When she was relatively certain that she was done flailing around, at least for the next minute, she stopped and smiled at him. Her smile faltered a bit, however, when she realized that he wasn't eating--she could not remember a time that she'd ever been around Ari when he wasn't finishing a meal, starting a meal, or eating a meal and it was sort of strange.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, tipping her sandwich toward him to indicate that she was offering it. After all, she was small--she could always survive on half a bagel sandwich if she really needed to.

[ari j. morphis]

Ari just stared at her rather confusedly with unblinking, unsettling blue eyes. He had his head tilted back, the cool metal from the bench brushing against the back of his neck as he quirked himself to watch her rather amusing floundering. He wasn’t exactly sure what to make of all the squealing and messiness; perhaps if he had known that she was going to turn in to such a mussy, he would have just left her be. Although he considered her a good friend, seeing as they spent enough time together due to events held between his frat and her sorority (and by events, he really meant parties), he couldn’t claim to know her well enough to say he knew how she’d react to certain situations. That was not exactly how he had planned it, but all was well.

“Thank you,” he replied, not bothering to look up from his sports bag that he unzipped. He pulled his unkempt cleats out and tossed them in to the grass, digging for a few seconds before finally producing a small plastic bag with his lunch. Ari’s lunches were always small feasts, of course, seeing as lunch was his most pinnacle meal. It was the last meal he’d eat before he’d begin training for the day and if he didn’t have something that would stay with him, it’d be a very long and grueling practice. His meal consisted of grilled chicken, boiled potatoes, steamed carrots, a bagel, a banana, and a liter of fruit squash. Although it was all chilled from sitting throughout the morning, he ate from the plastic tubberwares both enthusiastically and pleasurably.

Ari made a soft purr of laughter as she nearly dropped things on his head, he quickly ducked away but, thankfully, she didn’t drop anything anyways. “Are you alright?” he asked with a pleasant smile, resting the fork prongs lightly against his lips as he glanced back to her. He picked lightly at his carrots, stabbing one and eating it. If he wasn’t training or playing a game, he was probably eating. Even in class, he’d nibble on fruit leather or be sipping away at fruit squash. Most didn’t understand how he could possibly eat so much and still be as thin as he was, but those people simply didn’t understand how many hours he put in to his athletic endeavors. If he didn’t eat as much as he did with such a high activity level, he’d just wither away.

“Oh,” he shook his head when she offered the sandwich. Although he had quite the appetite, he didn’t like sharing food. Ari was too territorial over his own food and felt uncanny eating other people’s, respectively. “Thank you sweetheart, but I’m okay.”

He paused a moment to set his fork down in his chicken container, twisting around so he could poke her in the knee, “Hey! How is the sorority going for you this year, new girl?”

[juliette eliza bloom]

At his question, she blushed. Despite the fact that she knew she was crazy and obvious about her nervousness, she always seemed to think that no one ever noticed until they mentioned noticing. This happened without fail almost every time. "Oh, yes," she said, laughing nervous and tossing her hair behind her shoulder because she needed something to do with her free hand. "I'm fine, thank you. I just--thought I saw a bee." She smiled at him, aware of how ridiculous this sounded but hoping that he would just accept that there was probably a ten or so percent chance that this was true and just go with it.

Juliette felt better--and a little foolish--when Ari pulled out his own lunch, taking hers back to finish eating. Being the sister of an avid athlete, she did know that athletic boys could pack away food, but Ari's bag, as he pulled out item after item, was like Mary Poppins' bag. She didn't know how he fit all the food in that or, really, inside himself, but it wasn't like she was going to say something, so she just continued to munch away on what comparatively seemed like a meal for anorexics.

"Oh, good," she said, smiling at him. She didn't know what to do, though, now that he was eating and the only conversation topics running through her head involved the mass quantities of food in his lap. It came as a relief when he asked her a question, especially since it was a question which she was very enthusiastic about and had lots of words to say.

"It's going really great!" she said, nodding. "I think we're picking bigs and littles soon, though that might be when they finally decide which pledges they're accepting." She chewed her lip. "Do you know how greuling the process is?" she asked. "How was it when you were a pledge? I mean, I know we're not in the same organization, but they're similar, right?"

[ari j. morphis]

“Oh, a bee, right,” he didn’t argue the matter; instead, he went about idly picking at his lunch. For such a large variety in his meal, he wasn’t eating much. He always had a hard time eating before practice or a game, like his nerves were all jostling at full speed, making him stomach uneasy. For someone who was always so calmed, collected, and ruthless out on the field, he turned in to a wreck beforehand. He wouldn’t eat; he’d be sprinting up and down the dressing room until he was dripping in sweat from his own anxiety. Although he just had practice today, every time he thought about having to go on the field, his stomach practiced its Kung Fu techniques.

Stretching his legs out in the grass, he smiled a little, resting his back against the bench and soaking up some of the afternoon sun—not at all unlike a cat would have. He wasn’t bothering to eat much either, which was unusual for him. When she began to speak on the matter of the sorority, he idly glanced back—languidly, lazily—smiling a little. He had been in his frat for a year now, since freshman year, and he liked it, moreorless. The energetic, obnoxious behaviours of some of the boys did grind on his few nerves every once in a while, but he usually shut them up with a quick, traumatic snap to the back of the neck. Ari didn’t bring his violent nature off of the soccer field very often, but he utilized it when necessary.

“It was okay-“ he shrugged, thinking aloud as he plucked a grape and chewed on it thoughtfully, Ari being Ari, he never had many problems with the social side of things. He kind of just got what he wanted. “But boys are entirely different than girls,” he chuckled dryly, “I mean, in fraternities, the guys just sort of snort at each other, scratch themselves and—viola, you’re in the fraternity.” Ari probably wouldn’t have attempted to join had his father not pushed him in to it. By nature, the young blonde was not an overly social creature, and probably would have excelled even better in a single-man sport like tennis or swimming. Alas, that was not the path taken. Pity, really.

“I don’t know, pledging is ridiculous,” he said, rolling a grape between his fingers before popping it in his mouth, “All the stupid candlelit nuances and blindfolds, it’s pointless-“ he endured it though because that’s what he had to do, “But I don’t really care, I only care about soccer and the frat is something I do for it,” which was true—he didn’t really care about school, friends, even girls, besides the occasional flirt.