Aria's never been more aware of anything in her life than she is of Ezra's proximity to her, his body heat suffocating despite the crisp breeze of the early winter night, her back digging into the metal rods of the chairlift so hard she can feel it through her skin to the bones of her ribcage. She can't seem to breathe, can't seem to think – or maybe she can't seem to stop thinking, her brain is whirring like a nest of wasps, thoughts crossing her mind so fast she can't latch onto a single one. Ezra's eyes seem to gleam in the dark, so blue, always so blue; she used to think blue eyes were so romantic, but now she thinks he has the gaze of a wolf.
"Aria, Aria," he says, and then the lift starts up and she tries to scream, but she doesn't have enough air in her lungs for that so it comes out as a choked gasp, "I didn't mean for it to end this way."
"Wh-what does that mean?" she manages to get out, chest heaving. Her knuckles hurt from clutching the bar that's keeping her trapped. I didn't mean for it to end this way, she's heard that line before, in a thousand books and movies, right before someone gets killed. She tries to tighten her grip on the chairlift; he might try to push her off, that's what happens to the villain's lover in some old movies, they get thrown off buildings or bridges or out of windows – oh god, what if he really is going to kill her?
This is Ezra. This – if she weren't so scared she would vomit.
Ezra's jaw twitches. "I didn't think you'd find the pages," he says, and his voice is very even and very controlled but she knows him, she doesn't know anything true about him but she knows him, she knows he's angry, she can hear it, can see it in the terseness of his lips.
"About Alison?" she gets out, and it comes out halfway between a scream and a sob. Her breathing is so fast she's dizzy. "They were about Alison!" Her chest hurts, hurts from hyperventilating, but she can't seem to stop. "You know Alison! You knew her!"
"Yes, I knew Alison," Ezra replied, and she's never not once heard that voice from him before, or at least, not directed at her; he sounds fed up with her. The hearing of it makes her sob again.
"You told me you didn't know her, you lied–"
"Yes, I lied," he says again, through gritted teeth. The chairlift lurches, and somehow he uses the momentum to slide closer to her. "You weren't supposed to find out. You were the one who was never supposed to–"
"What – I –" She remembers Spencer, hysterical in her kitchen. He's freaking A! Oh my god, this is brilliant! "They know," she gasps out, "they know, the others–"
"You think I don't know that?" he bites out, and she takes a shuddering breath. "You weren't supposed to believe them, you didn't believe it, damn it –"
"You wanted Alison dead," she gets out, and something inside of her sparks up like ice-cold fury and god, god it feels so much better to be angry than to be scared. She pulls up every ounce of anger she can reach and tries to drown herself in it. "You wanted her dead. You thought you got her pregnant–"
"I did get her pregnant," Ezra retorts, throwing the words at her like a slap, and she pulls back, hands trembling.
"Wh… what?" she asks.
"I did get Alison pregnant," Ezra tells her, and the control in his voice is slipping, he sounds half-crazed, she's never heard him sound wild before. "She had the baby, without telling me, without telling anyone–"
"Alison doesn't have a baby!" She can't, she can't have a baby, even when they'd all believed Ali had gotten pregnant they'd never considered that she'd had a baby. Ali didn't have a freaking baby. Aria swallows, tries to get the violent trembling of her jaw under control. "Alison doesn't know who–"
"Of course she knows," Ezra snaps. "God, I thought she reached out to Emily because Emily was the only one who'd believe her sob story bullshit. I didn't realize the rest of you were all that gullible."
Aria makes a sound like a wounded animal; she didn't even know she had that sound inside of her.
They're almost at the top of the hill, and Aria thinks, if I can only make it off, I can run for it. She thinks she's small enough to wriggle out without lifting the bar. She tries to scoot so she's sitting right at the edge, poised to move, and then Ezra just about throws himself over her, throwing off the balance of the whole chair, and trapping her: his knee is pinned between her thighs and his forearm is pressed against her collarbone, holding her against her seat so she doesn't have a hope in hell of moving.
"Let go of me," she pleads, struggling against him even though she knows there's no use, and once they've gone round the bend and the ground is far enough that she couldn't even consider jumping, he does, going back to where he was sitting. She curls into the corner of the chair, shivering.
She closes her eyes and pulls up her entire constructed image of what happened the night Alison went missing, the bits and pieces she's put together from the stories people have told about seeing her that night; how she'd seen Toby, how she'd met Ian at the kissing rock, how she'd seen Garrett and Jenna, how she'd tried to blackmail Aria's dad – and she tries to plant Ezra in the image, at the very end of it all, bashing Ali's head in and burying her alive, leaving her for dead.
"Are you going to kill me?" she asks. That's always what the girl asks in the movies. The answer is usually yes, she remembers, a moment too late.
"I'm tempted," he bites out, and she swallows down a whimper. He gives her an exasperated look. "No, of course I'm not going to kill you," he says. "Do you really think I've set up everything I've set up, moved all the pieces I've moved, waited and watched as long as I have just to kill you?"
He's been running the game for months, and she hadn't even noticed. And here she thought she was so clever and grown up.
"What are you going to do?" she asks, voice wavering.
He looks at her, and for a moment he looks like her Ezra, like he's in love with her, fascinated with her, like he worships her. It's so familiar, and so right. There has to be an explanation, she thinks, please, please let there be an explanation.
His lips spread into a small smile; or maybe it's a smirk. She's never seen him smirk before.
"I guess I'm going to improvise," he says.
He drags her back to his car by the upper arm, and she stumbles along next to him, feeling almost numb. This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense. She can't wrap her mind around the idea that this is real, she just can't, if she thinks too hard about this she'll accept that it is and if she accepts that it is she'll scream until he has to rip out her vocal chords so she can't accept it. She just can't.
When he slams her car door shut for her, something hits her like a freight train.
"Did you know who I was?" Aria asks, when he sits down in the driver's seat. "When you met me. At –"
She feels nauseous. That memory – her at the bar, the gorgeous, smart older guy she'd connected with in a second, that chemistry, that spark, that love at first sight – what if it was all a lie? She feels desecrated, a castle stormed, robbed and left with the all the windows still open, wind and rain blowing in and drenching the ruins that remained.
"Yes, I knew who you were," Ezra says, and puts the car in drive. "Ali's little pink-haired friend whose dad was having the oh-so-scandalous affair. I knew who you were the second you walked into that bar."
"Oh my god," Aria says, in a high, breathless voice.
After a moment, Ezra continues, as though answering a question he'd been waiting for her to ask. "I met Alison in Cape May, that summer," he says. "She and CeCe Drake had the run of place. We met at a little beachside bar, and she told me her name was Vivian, that she was nineteen and from New York and that she was starting her sophomore year of college in LA that year, and I believed every word she said. The next day, I saw her at a restaurant, with her family and her older brother, and I realized that every word she'd said to me was a lie. I was mesmerized."
Board Shorts. Of course.
"I started seeking her out. At first, I'd bar hop until I found wherever she was that night. Then, I started watching her during the day, figuring out where she was going, what she was planning, where I'd find her. And every night, without fail, she was someone else, putting on some other play, weaving some story or telling some lie. She was like something out of Wilde: 'She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual'," he quotes.
He uses his special quoting voice, the slight lilt he always puts on when reciting someone else's words. Aria's never heard him use it to describe anyone other than herself.
"Stop," she says, voice shaking.
Ezra looks over at her. "Stop?" he repeats, tone dangerous.
"Stop talking," she says, tremulous. "Just stop, I don't – I don't want to hear anymore, I don't want to know anymore, just stop."
"You don't want to know anymore?" Ezra asks, his voice mocking. "Spencer would be ashamed of you."
Spencer who knew. Spencer who'd figured it out, who'd tried to warn her – she can't do this.
"Where are you taking me?" she asks.
Ezra raises an eyebrow. "Back to the cabin," he tells her.
Aria swallows. "Are you going to keep me there?"
Ezra rolls his eyes. "No, Aria, I'm going to let you run back to Rosewood and tell everyone the truth about me."
She's not used to him being sarcastic, or at least, not to being the butt of his sarcasm; every word feels like mockery.
She had sex with Ezra just the other night.
She clamps a hand over her mouth as bile rises in her throat. You have to start thinking of me as the person you are closest to. She'd lost her virginity to him.
He's A, he's A, he's A.
"People are going to notice I'm missing," Aria says.
Ezra laughs at that. "Oh, sure. Eventually."
"The girls are going to notice I'm missing," she says. "They'll–"
"What are they going to do, Aria?" he asks. "Spencer is spiraling so badly she can't even remember her own last name half the time, Hanna's playing mystery novel detective with Holbrook, and Emily's about to break up with her girlfriend because she's been in love with a dead girl for three years. What exactly do you think they can pull themselves together enough to do?"
"They'll figure something out," Aria says, in a small voice, not believing it for a moment.
"Maybe," Ezra says, and he sounds like he's humoring her.
She closes her eyes and wants this to be a nightmare. She wants to lash out and break all the buttons on his car and rip the leather off the seat. She wants to slap him so hard her rings break skin. She wants to get out of the car and start running until she drops dead. She wants to not be real anymore.
She sits back and wants, as though if she can just want hard enough she can make this all go away.