It’s easy to think a day seemed long, but any long day previously experienced seemed to be nothing compared to the longness Arin experienced this very, very long day. Seconds crept by like hours, hours crept by like weeks and, by the time 4:30pm hit, Arin was convinced some sort of time-bending hero had a hold over the office —which, in reality, was entirely possible in Urban City. Probable, even. 

Even the slightest hint of Apryl walking around the office had Arin’s attention like a car wreck. Arin hated acting this way, but she had never been drawn to someone so strongly before. She didn’t even know why. 

Apryl had about eight times as much energy as Arin had possessed in the sum of her entire existence. Something about her was just so captivating.

When the clock finally struck 5:00pm, and Apryl was nowhere to be found, Arin decided it was time to head back to the decrepit hunk of brick and mortar that called itself the Ultimatum Training Academy. 

She shoved what few things she had into the pockets of her jeans, and stood up to see Carl and Stuart, still chatting away with customers on their work phones. Arin wasn’t that dedicated. Her time was up and she was getting the hell out of there.

Right before the elevators, she passed all the higher-ups’ offices. They had the nice rooms with the big open windows that overlooked the Ultimatum HQ. 

Most of them were dark now, as the executives peaced-out at the earliest point in the day that didn’t seem disrespectful to the bottom man, but early enough that they didn’t actually have to see the bottom man. There was only one light flickering in any of the offices down that hall. 

Literally flickering. The light just kept getting brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer again, annoying Arin the entire time she stepped closer. The dead overhead implied that whoever used that office had already left for the night, abandoning the blinking devil. 

By the time she reached the room, she already knew she was not going to leave the light to flicker all night. She looked around and made sure no one was watching as she wiggled the handle to let herself in. 

The culprit was a tall paper lantern shoved into the back corner. Three different light bulbs powered the thing, the middle of the three causing all the problems. Arin put out her hand to touch the lamp to fix it with her underwhelming power, when she heard a voice.

“Do you need something?”

Arin nearly did a front flip from the intensity of her startle. She spun around where Apryl Mae June was sitting at an oak desk in nearly complete shadow and empty of anything except Apryl’s laptop and an ancient computer pushed off to the corner that clearly no one had used in years. 

Of course she had broken into Apryl’s office. That was Arin’s luck.

“Oh—It’s just, this light,” Arin stuttered before she was able to latch onto the pseudo persona she had built up inside of her for these awkward situations. “Your light was flickering and honestly I would rather take a swan dive off the roof of this building than try to sleep tonight knowing that this was here…flickering…all night.” Arin managed to say it all with perfect confidence. 

“That thing has been flickering like that for days. No one can fix it. We replaced the bulbs and everything.” Apryl didn’t have the glow that she had earlier. “Can’t even take it out because the silly thing works like Christmas lights. But it beats the ugly florescent lights.”

“I think I can fix it. Do you mind?” Arin motioned to the lamp like Vanna White and took a backwards step in its direction. 

Apryl returned to clicking at a laptop on her desk. “By all means.” 

Arin reached into the lamp and touched the bulbs. Her powers were odd, to say it simply. She didn’t really know what she was feeling when she felt something, but she knew when the feeling she felt felt off. 

She closed her eyes and absorbed the pulses of electricity flowing through it, uneven and broken; she focused until that uneven brokenness was solidified. When she opened her eyes, the thing shone bright and steady as the desert sun. 

“Wow. You actually fixed it,” Apryl said. Her words sounded shocked, but her voice didn’t. “I guess that should be expected. You have surprisingly high numbers for your first day here. It seems like you're quite good with technology.”

“I mean technically this is an electrical... thing... but sure. I guess I am good with both.”

“Thank you for fixing it.” Apryl attempted to curl her lips into a smile but fell short about halfway before she returned to her computer. 

Arin figured it was time to bow out gracefully. She crept her way over to the door because she absolutely was not going to do or say anything to attempt to stall out the conversation with this beautiful woman. 

Until she did exactly that.

“Are you all right?” Arin asked before she could stop herself. Her brain was telling her to shut up and leave, but her mouth just kept going. “Sorry if it’s, like, out of line, or something. You just seem a little down.” 

Apryl kept her tired eyes on her laptop. “Yeah. I’m fine,” she said. It wasn’t very convincing. 

There, see. She’s fine, Arin. Leave her alone, Arin thought to herself. 

But Arin’s mouth was a loose cannon that could not be tied down. “It’s just that, you just seemed so happy earlier.” There was this little twinkle of disdain in her voice for the pure amount of happiness she was implying Apryl had earlier. Arin tried to suppress it but only ended up making it worse.

“I’m just a morning person,” Apryl said. The four empty coffee cups scattered on her desk gave away that bluff.

It hardly mattered if she knew Apryl was lying through her teeth. Arin couldn’t even see her comfort zone with a pair of binoculars anymore, which meant it was time to leave for real. 

She backed up to the door. “As much as I’m totally convinced that was the truth, I get the hint. I’ll go.”

“I’m sorry,” Apryl sighed. “It’s hard to keep up that level of presentation all the time.” 

Arin took one really-not-smooth, large stride back into the room, accepting the not-invitation Apryl had given her to stay.

“You know,” Arin began, “you really shouldn’t try to force yourself to be that happy all the time. It’s not healthy. Hell, I’m happy almost none of the time.” No one wants to be around someone who isn’t happy. Shut up. Stop talking.

Apryl snickered at the joke which eliminated Arin’s inner self-contempt and filled her with more confidence than she knew how to handle.

“Just don’t go around telling people Ms. June sulks around her office after hours in the dark. I’ve got a reputation with the bosses I need to uphold.” The small, lighthearted grin on Apryl’s face was so much more pleasant than the big pseudo-smile she had on before.  

Arin chuckled. “Trust me, I don’t want to talk to anyone enough to spread rumors about you.” Good. That was fine. Now stop talking. “But,” ugh, “you could just try acting, well, normal.” 

“I can’t. I’ve been working really hard on getting a promotion. Keeping up the persona is part of it.” She paused her work and closed her eyes tight. “No, I shouldn’t even bring this up. I’m sorry.”

 

Her words came out at the speed of Flux’s and with the confidence of Arin’s. The presence Apryl radiated made her seem invincible to that level of nervousness, which was a ridiculous assumption to make. Arin knew that, but it didn’t spare the shock. 

“Promotion? What kind of promotion?” Arin asked. Clearly she doesn’t want to talk about it. Stop. 

Apryl shifted in her seat. “I want to move up to—I mean, into news. Producing news. I want to be a news producer. I want to start working my way up to Channel 20,” Apryl stammered the words like she wanted to change her career goal mid-sentence. 

Somehow, the fact that Apryl was embarrassed to talk about this made her so much more relatable, ergo that much more intimidating. 

“I think that’s great,” Arin assured her. “But do you really have to be so happy to produce the news? Because I’m positive the entire goal of the news is to make everyone as unhappy as possible.”

Apryl let out her first, genuine laugh. “You’re not wrong. They want to know you can handle pressure, and they have an image of what someone in my desired position is supposed to be like. I have about four blonde wigs just waiting around for that day. Blonde. Pretty. Happy.” 

Arin scrunched her eyebrows until they practically touched. “That just sounds awful and totally unfair.”

“At least it’s only a few more hours. I had my interview today, hence the over-the-top execution this morning. I’ll find out if I got the new position tonight.” Apryl’s eyes fluttered back to her computer, and her fingers clicked the same two buttons over and over again.

Arin could tell which two keys she was pressing by their positions: Control, R. 

“Ah—well, that makes sense. I get this whole aesthetic, now.” Arin motioning her open palm to the bleakly lit room in which Apryl sat, alone, curled over her desk of empty coffee cups, sulking, refreshing a page over and over again. 

Apryl glanced around her office and sighed. But it wasn’t the kind of unhappy sigh most people sigh. It was more like a sigh of realization that sitting in a dark room to mope around about her possible potential failure was probably not the best way to deal with stress.

There was a silence that filled the air for an awkward number of ticks from a rather loud clock on the wall, like it was specifically counting how many moments could pass before Arin finally realized she should leave. 

“It’s 5:20,” Apryl finally said, checking her computer. “You were supposed to leave twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Apryl leaned over her desk. “Technically, if I am keeping you here, I have to pay you. That wouldn’t look good to the bosses.”

“Right,” Arin said, with a snapping finger-gun she wished she hadn’t used. “I’ll go.” Good. Go. Grab the handle. Open the door and just leave—

 “Apryl?” Damnit Arin. “If you ever need someone to uh, not be happy around, I’m really good at it.” That was dumb. You’re an idiot. 

“Thank you, Arin.” Apryl giggled, apparently Arin had actually tricked her into thinking she was amusing. The smile faded from her lips, but it remained in her eyes. “And my friends call me Mae.”

Arin’s face lit up. She knew her grin was the dorkiest, ever, and tried to force her mouth closed, but it only made it a hundred times worse. “Thank you, Mae,” she choked, nodding her head. “And my friends call me…Uh, Ar-Ari?” No one calls you Ari. What?

“Cool, Ari,” Mae said, and Arin raced for the door. The amount of self-inflicted embarrassment she could handle in one day had reached maximum levels about four jokes ago. 

“See you tomorrow,” Arin said before slamming the door behind her, rattling the thin sliver of glass that made a useless window. Her hands rubbed at her own face, trying to massage out the tension and brewing headache she had for whatever just happened.

“Nice going, Ari.”

 She pounded the ‘down’ button on the elevator, ready to just go home and sleep. Tomorrow morning she had her first training class and she could only hope that would go better than this weird-ass day.