Not for the first time that day Arianna was wishing she hadn't agreed to this. After all her father told her that getting addicted to coffee at her age was a bad idea. However, her best friend, Beth, had said that this new coffee house was the hottest new thing. Waiting here at an empty table with a room full of strangers had Arianna on edge. However, the man behind the counter had caught her eye. He was much older, like her dad's age, but something about his smile seemed familiar. She was so distracted by this stranger that Beth's arrival goes unnoticed by her.
"Helloooo, earth to Ari!" Beth chimed in, pulling Arianna's attention back to their table.
"Hey Beth! This place is pretty nice." Arianna smiled as her red-headed friend sat down, placing her backpack next to the table.
"Should I go up to the counter and get us drinks?" Beth asked.
"No, I'll do it. I'm just getting a hot chocolate anyways." Ari said cheerfully as she bounced towards the counter.
Arianna slowed down the closer she got to the counter. She didn't really know why, but for some reason she was nervous about her first meeting with this guy. It's not as if she knew him, he just seemed familiar. Like maybe he's a friend of her dad's, but how she didn't know because her dad mostly dealt with corporate people. The man had his back to her when she first reached the counter, but now that Arianna is lost in her thoughts he has turned around.
"Excuse me, can I get you anything?" the man cleared his throat and addressed Arianna.
"Uh, yeah. My friend would like a medium caramel macchiato." Arianna bit her lip nervously.
"Anything for you?" the man smiled at her with a shiny, happy look in his eyes.
"Oh yeah. I want a large hot chocolate." Arianna responded looking at his name tag. "Sonny."
"Whipped cream?" Sonny addressed her again.
"Yeah a little extra actually." Arianna smiled at him.
"I'll bring them over to you when they are done." Sonny told her cheerfully as he turned to make the drinks.
Arianna walked quickly back to her table and pulled out her cell phone. Beth looked over at her quizzically.
"That guy behind the counter, he looks like he's one of my dad's friends. I wanna see if I can find him on Facebook." Arianna justified.
"You think he really is a friend of your dad's?" Beth questioned, as she moved over to look at her friend's phone.
"Probably." Arianna answered, "However, I'm not finding him. So I guess my idea was a bust."
"Not necessarily. He could be in a picture on your dad's page and just not be friends with your dad or not have a Facebook." Beth reasoned.
"Who doesn't have a Facebook?" Arianna exclaimed giving her friend a crazy look.
"I've heard of some famous people who don't." Beth shrugged.
"I doubt the guy working at a coffee house is famous." Arianna rolled her eyes just as she found a picture, "I FOUND HIM!"
"He really is a friend of your dad's?" Beth exclaimed, scrambling for her friend's phone.
"I don't know, but this picture from back before I was born has my dad and the guy together. They look like they are really good friends." Arianna said just as Sonny set their drinks on the table.
"Thanks!" Beth smiled up at Sonny.
"I'll have to ask my dad who he is." Arianna continued not even realizing that Sonny was at their table.
"Yeah you should ask him tonight." Beth reasoned getting Arianna's attention with a touch of the hand.
Both girls grab their drinks and backpacks and head out the door.
As the girls are walking away Sonny hears the red-headed girl say, "So, guess who friended me on Facebook? Parker Jonas" Sonny shook his head knowing of the little boy, who was now a teenager, and wondered if the girls were actually friends with him or just crushing.
Later that evening Arianna was lying on the floor in the front room, doing her homework, when her dad walks in the door. She heard his keys clanging into the bowl, reserved for keys, and his whistling as he walked towards the front room. She sat up and awaited her dad's arrival.
"Hey sweetheart. How was your day?" Will greeted his daughter as he sat down on the couch near her.
"GREAT! Beth and I tried out this new coffee shop near the Horton Town Square. It was fantastic. Oh and the man who made our drinks was GORGEOUS!" Arianna said excitedly as she jumped up and plopped on the couch next to her dad.
Will shook his head and grinned at his daughter before wrapping her in a hug, "Oh yeah? What was this GORGEOUS guy's name? Does this mean you are over Parker?"
"Daaaad!" Arianna whined as she rolled her eyes, "The guy was WAY too old for me! I meant you should check him out. And Parker is still very much in the picture."
"Ari! I don't need you to 'hook me up' with someone. I am perfectly content to live a single life." Will sighed.
"But, Dad! I'm pretty sure you already know the guy." Ari whined again.
"How do you figure?" Will sighed, looking over at his daughter.
"Well when I met him I thought to myself, 'That guy looks familiar'. Since I knew his name I did a little research. He wasn't in your list of Facebook friends," Ari started to tell her story. However, partway through her father stopped her.
"You looked through my Facebook friends?" Will cried incredulously.
"Yes, but he wasn't there. So then I snooped through your pictures and I found him." Ari finished triumphantly.
"Really?! But he wasn't in my friends?" Will asked, suddenly intrigued.
"This picture was from before I was born. So, you probably aren't friends with him anymore. A kid tends to change friendships." Ari reasoned.
"What picture is it?" Will asked, his face taking on a contemplative look.
"This one." Ari pulled up a picture on her phone and handed it to her dad.
Will looked at the picture and got a sudden blast from the past. Looking up at him, from the picture, is a smiling Sonny with vampire fangs. The two of them are smiling at each other like they hold a secret no one else knows. It has been over 14 years since he'd seen this picture, let alone that face. Sonny Kiriakis. Will's thoughts drift back to that time. Him and Sonny had it all, each other and love. Then Gabi had dropped the bombshell about the baby. Sure Sonny had stuck with him but after some time, Will had felt like he was holding Sonny back. Will had done what he thought was the only option; he broke up with Sonny. That had been it. Sonny left town and Will raised his daughter.
"Earth to dad!" Ari called, bringing Will back to the present.
"Sorry, sweetie. I just haven't seen this guy in years." Will mumbled.
"Who is he?" Ari asked excitedly.
"His name is Sonny Kiriakis." Will said shortly before he handed his daughter back her phone and got up from the couch.
"Is he related to Mr. Kiriakis the lawyer? The one who tried to defend mom when she blackmailed that one guy?" Ari asked running after her father.
"Yes, Mr. Justin Kiriakis, the lawyer, is his father." Will said, without any elaboration.
"How do you know him?" Ari continued.
"Ari! Can we just drop it?" Will turned on his daughter suddenly, his face closed off.
"No! All of a sudden a guy that I find familiar shows up and it turns out that you know him. We can't just drop this dad! You've been lonely for YEARS! Don't deny it because I know you have! I'm not STUPID!" Ari screamed at her dad, an action she didn't usually do.
"Can I just plead the fifth?! Ari, I don't want to talk about it." Will said, tiredly.
"DAD! You are gay and yet, you NEVER date! It's like you use me as an excuse to not let yourself become vulnerable to someone else. You close yourself off to the world! I'm done being your excuse." Ari finished stubbornly.
"You're not my excuse!" Will argued.
"Really? What about that corporate lawyer who showed interest in you a couple years ago? You shut him down because 'you didn't have time between me and work'. Dad! I'm your excuse, but not this time. You should reconnect with this guy." Ari insisted.
"NO!" Will yelled. He turned away from his daughter and began fiddling with something on the counter. That's when Ari came to her final realization.
"You LOVE him! Sonny was your BOYFRIEND!" Ari squealed. "What happened between you guys?"
"Life happened, Ari." Will said as he sat down again, this time in one of their kitchen chairs.
"What about life happened? Me? Did I break you guys up?" Ari asked, sitting down across from her dad.
"No, I broke us up." Will slumped his head down.
"Why? If you still love him, to this day, then why did you break you guys up?" Ari asked, reaching across the table and grabbing her dad's hand.
"Ari, it's complicated."
"What's complicated about it? You either love him or you don't."
"There's more to a relationship than that! I don't expect a 14 year old to understand that."
"Try me. I understand a lot more than you ever give me credit for."
"Clearly. Okay, I broke up with Sonny because I was holding him back."
"How do you figure?"
"Well, you were about 18 months old and you got really sick. Had to be in the hospital, the whole nine yards. Sonny was supposed to go on a trip with his buddies. He cancelled and stayed with us at the hospital instead. I realized then and there that I was preventing him from living his life."
"Dad, did he actually say that he didn't want to be there with you and me?"
"No, he didn't have to. I just knew. Anyways, he left town right after we broke up anyways. Kind of proves my point doesn't it."
"Or it proves that you broke his heart."
"Let's just drop it, ok?" Will asked quietly, standing up from his spot.
"Okay, dad." Ari replied as she stood up and wrapped her dad in a hug before walking towards her bedroom.
Ari closed the door to her bedroom and immediately crossed the room to her desk. She opened her laptop and smiled at the picture of her and Parker at the 4th of July celebration this past summer. Then she pulled up her internet browser. Once the internet had loaded, Ari pulled up Facebook. She typed in the name Sonny Kiriakis and found his profile. Ari scrolled through the parts she could see, the man had a higher level of protection on his profile. She looked at his About Me section. Seeing "single" under his relationship status made Ari smile bigger than she already was.
It was then that Ari hatched her plan.