A/N: So, I know I said I would be posting more often after that last chapter, but I have a good reason as to why it's taken me so long to update: I've decided that I'm going to go on a posting spree. Starting next week, on Tuesday I hope, I'm going to be posting a new chapter every weekday, leading to a two-part epilogue that will be up the weekend after next.
Yes, that's right, this fanfic is coming to an end. After this chapter, there are only four more left, not including the two-part epilogue. Which is why, in honor of the end of my first Pretty Little Liars fanfic, I've decided to issue you all a fun challenge. Details are at the end of this chapter.
Speaking of which, as an incentive, I've decided to start my finale countdown with the chapter you've all been waiting for, the chapter in which Aria explains everything. This was originally meant to be posted on Monday, but I couldn't wait, so I had to post it today. Hope you guys enjoy!
Please remember to review. I thank each and every one of the reviewers and readers, even the silent ones, from the bottom of my heart. It truly means a lot to me. No joke. Haha. :)
- J
Disclaimer: I just realized that I've been forgetting my disclaimers lately. Anyway, I own absolutely nothing, except for Tristan.
Chapter Twelve- "And the Truth Comes Out"
Spencer pulled her small Toyota SUV up to the curb in front of The Grille much to quickly for Aria's taste. Throughout the entire twenty minute drive from the airport, Hanna had not shut up for one minute about Aria's ring, Aria's surprise wedding, Aria's something-or-another, and it was starting to annoy her, if only because Hanna's voice kept piercing through her thoughts. Which, at that moment, was not a good thing, considering Aria was trying to determine what she should tell the girls- the truth, or "the truth".
Two minutes later and they were inside the restaurant being ushered to a table in a private room, conveniently the only table available, away from the chaos of the main room.
"Okay, so, out with it! Tell us everything!" Hanna squealed, grabbing a hold of Aria's left hand and twisting it every which way, admiring the ring.
"Nice to know you're so enthusiastic about this whole situation," Aria grumbled, and yet, not quite able to keep the small smile from creeping onto her face. She was happy to know that no matter who it was that she married, Ezra or not, Hanna would approve of the guy- provided he had great taste in jewelry.
"Hanna, chill out. We haven't even sat down, let the girl catch her breath," Spencer muttered, draping her purse and coat over the back of her chair. They all took their seats, the waitress handing them their menus and taking drink orders.
As soon as the waitress dropped off their drinks and left them to their privacy, Hanna launched into a full speed inquisition. "Tell us everything! Where did you guys met, where did he take you on your first date, how did he propose? Oh! You have to let me design your wedding dress! Where are you getting married? When are you getting married?"
"Hanna," Emily said, shooting Hanna a pointed look.
Hanna bit her lips, "Right, sorry, got a little carried away there."
"A little?" Aria asked incredulously.
"Hey! What do you expect? You're the first one of us to get engaged, I have a lot of questions. And besides, it's not as if you've kept us updated on your life over the last few weeks," Hanna replied, laying on the guilt thickly.
"I've kept you updated! I've been emailing, texting and calling..." She let her voice drift off as she saw the looks on her friends' faces.
It was true, she hadn't been able to keep them updated on anything lately. She had gotten so caught up in the rush of a new job, of a new home, of a new state that she had inadvertently left behind all of those who mattered most to her. But that's what this vacation was going to be about, getting back in touch with roots and rebuilding her relationships with the loved ones she had cast aside over the past couple of months.
"Okay," she amended, "so I haven't exactly kept you up to date with everything going on in my life. But, I promise, I'll make up for it this vacation."
Hanna opened her mouth and Aria spoke quickly with a laugh, prompting Hanna to close her mouth, "Starting with the story about Tristan and I." She opened her menu and pointed a finger at Hanna, whose mouth was open again and ready to attack her with questions, "Let's order first. I'm starving and we have all night to catch up."
She watched as all the girls nodded and followed her lead, opening up their menus and flicking their eyes over the pages. For the first time in the longest time, Aria was glad for the silence, it would give her time to formulate her story.
Fifteen minutes later, it was a busy night after all, they had placed their orders, and Aria had finally decided what she was going to do. What she had to do.
There was absolutely no way that she could deliberately lie to these girls. After the whole "A" fiasco back in high school, they had made a vow to always be honest with each other, no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences. It was the main reason as to why they were such good friends; communication, trust and honesty were the building blocks to their relationship.
As was privacy. Along with the promise to always remain honest with each other, they also made the promise to keep their secrets safe. Anything that they admitted within the confines of their group, whether or not they were told to keep whatever was being said a secret, was to remain a secret. They would never spill each others' secrets just to spite one another or for the sake of telling, everything remained safe within their group. They were the exception to the "Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead" rule. The four of them definitely knew how to keep their secrets.
Aria took a deep breath and causally took a sip of her red wine. She figured, since she wasn't driving, that she was entitled to a small bit of alcohol. God knew she was going to need it once she started the conversation. "Okay, one question at a time," she said, her eyes flitting over to Hanna's to give her a knowing look. "But I have one rule, you let me speak without interruptions. If I'm going to answer these questions, I need to answer them without stopping, because if I do, I'm going to lose my nerve and I won't be able to finish. Deal?"
"Deal."
"Good. Fire away."
"Let's start off easy. Why don't you tell us all about Tristan?" Spencer suggested, "Don't leave anything out. We want to know all about him."
Aria was relieved to begin relatively easily. "Well, his name is Tristan Hill and he's the editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle. He's 28, originally from Massachusetts. He has an older brother named Brendan and a younger sister named Blakely. He comes from old money and lived the typical Society life, meaning his parents often left him and his siblings behind at their estate with butlers and nannies galore.
"His parents never really showed him any sort of approval- a gigantic contrast to his brother and sister, who they were always fawning over. As a way to try and gain his parents' attention, he often worked hard in school in order, channeling all of his emotions into his work.
"In the end, his hard work paid off; he was accelerated quickly throughout school, graduating high school at 14. From there, he got double bachelor's degrees in journalism and psychology from UCLA, his master's from Berkeley and his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard. Since he was only 24 and most people his age were still getting their graduate degrees, he decided to go to Palo Alto and attended Stanford to get his master's in journalism as a way to socialize with people his own age. While he was up there, he realized how much he loved Northern California that that was where he wanted live and start his career.
"Flash forward two years, and he's worked his way up through the ranks at the Chronicle and is the youngest editor-in-chief they've ever had at the age of 28," Aria finished with a deep breath. She looked around the table and saw them all with their eyes wide and their mouths slightly open. Even Spencer, the overachiever who wasn't impressed by anything, was rendered speechless. It wasn't really a surprise, he had truly achieved more than anyone twice his age could ever aspire to reach. And yet, he was also humble, never wanting to ever speak of his achievements. It was one of the things that both annoyed and endeared Aria to him.
Once they regained their composure, the questions began up again. "How did you and Tristan meet?" Aria was slightly taken aback by the fact that it wasn't Hanna to ask the first real question, it was Emily. To Aria, it could only mean that Hanna was waiting for the right time to launch a difficult question at her.
"If you remember, Tristan was the guy who called me up the night of Hanna's store launch and offered me the job at The Chronicle. When I arrived in San Francisco, he was the one who personally came to pick me up from the airport, helped me settle into my new house and showed me the ropes at the newspaper."
Hanna finally asked her question, "How did you guys get to be so close? When did you start dating?" Well, at least it wasn't as difficult as Aria was expecting.
"Like I said, he was the one who basically helped me to get acclimated to San Francisco life. In the beginning, he was just helping me get moved in and settled, he showed me the ins and outs of the newspaper business and introduced me to people. When we first started hanging out together, it was always with a group of our mutual friends from the paper.
"After about a week or so, I noticed that we started going out more and more by ourselves. I guess you could say that's when we started 'going out'. He would bring me coffee in the mornings, we would go out for lunch in the afternoons, then in the evenings we would go out for dinner at our favorite diner, and afterwards we'd scour the nearby bookstores for new novels. He started opening up to me about the stress of his family and how he always felt inadequate, while I told him all about you guys and our lives in New York. I would even tell him about Ezra and the problems that we're having to overcome right now.
"He was so supportive and always listened to anything I had to say. He never judged. I guess the reason why I was so drawn to him int he first place was because he reminded me so much of you three rolled into one. He's intelligent and confident like Spencer, loyal and in tune with his emotions like Emily, while also being fashionable and impulsive like Hanna. He is basically the guy version of you all."
"So how did he propose?" Hanna asked once Aria was finished speaking. So much for Hanna not asking the difficult question.
Luckily at that moment, their food arrived, giving Aria a chance to catch her breath and reorganize her thoughts. However, once the food was placed in front of them and the waitress was gone, all three girls looked at her expectantly.
Aria took a large gulp of her wine, she knew that the secrets would start pouring out soon, and she wanted as much alcohol as she could possibly have, while still being able to speak and think coherently, in her body.
"Well, he didn't exactly propose, per se..." she began.
"Isn't that an engagement ring on your finger, though?" Emily asked.
Aria strained to look anywhere besides at the girls in front of her, but it was no use, Spencer had caught her eye and refused to let her look away. "It's not an engagement ring, is it?" she asked slowly. Aria shook her head.
"It's a wedding ring?" Hanna yelled so loudly that Aria swore the main room outside went silent.
"Yes," she answered quietly.
Spencer put her fork and steak knife down, "Okay, now you really have to tell us the entire story. How could you just get married out of nowhere to a guy you barely even know?"
"More importantly, how could you get married without having us there? Let alone not even tell us until now!" Emily exclaimed.
"I wanted to tell you guys, but it all happened so quickly that I didn't get to really tell anyone what happened." Aria drained the rest of her wine in her glass and took a deep breath, leaning back into her chair. It was going to be a long story.
"We had just covered a huge breaking story, front page news, an expose on a government injustice they had been researching for months, and all of the lead reporters worked for the last two weeks straight on it. Once we finished and had it successfully sent to the printers, we decided that we were entitled to a weekend off. So me, Tristan and the rest of the lead reporters left the paper in the hands of the staff writers for a weekend and set off for Vegas.
"We drank, gambled, shopped, went out to a club or two, just letting off a little steam. We had worked so hard, and that weekend was our chance to have a little fun. Anyway, on our last night there, we all went out for drinks at one of the casinos on the Strip, which one it was, I don't even remember. Long story short, we all ended up having a little too much to drink. Me especially, because that was the weekend right after that blowout I had with Ezra, and I was trying to forget all about what happened between us, even if it was just for that night."
She placed her elbows on the table and leaned her head into her hands, not wanting to see their reactions when she revealed what she was about to say. "I woke up the next morning in the honeymoon suite of Caesar's Palace with Tristan in the bed next to me, his family's heirloom on my left ring finger, and absolutely no recollection of what had happened the night before. We called our friends, but none of them remember what happened, only that around 3 in the morning, we left the group saying something about wanting to 'make things official'.
"Tristan immediately hired the best lawyers and investigators to figure out what had happened, because we didn't have a single piece of evidence saying whether we were married or not. We found out this morning before we left my house that it was official, we were married," Aria paused, lifting her head up to meet the glances of her best friends. But she wasn't finished yet. "At least, that's the story we're sticking with."
"What do you mean that's the story you're sticking with? It's not the truth?" Spencer asked, cocking an eyebrow. She had leaned back into her chair and crossed her arms across her chest, blatantly showing her disapproval of Aria acting so irresponsibly.
"Not exactly."
"Well go on, then. Tell us the rest of the story!" Hanna replied excitedly, leaning forward on the table, eyes sparkling the way they always did when she heard a juicy new tidbit of gossip.
Emily, who had been sitting straight up in her seat, unable to stop fidgeting, elbowed Hanna. "Aria, you only have to tell us if you want to. Your secret is safe with us."
It was now or never. She had to make up her mind, was she going to tell them or not? She took a shaky breath to steady herself before launching into the real truth. "In essence, everything I've told you so far is true. But that's not all there is to it. There's more. A lot more. And in order to understand the rest of the story, you have to know what happened from the very beginning.
"When I first arrived in San Francisco, I automatically felt a connection with Tristan. And, like I said, he helped me settle down, introduced me to new friends, took me out after work with our co-workers to help make my transition to San Fran life that much easier. A week after I moved there, we did start going out more and more by ourselves, but there was a reason for that."
Aria remembered with such clarity the day her relationship with Tristan changed. It was the day after she had received Ezra's autographed first edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in the mail, and she initiated a video chat with him, intending to chew him out for sending her such a priceless gift through the mail without so much as First Class or Certified stamp on it. She laughed lightly, remembering the nonchalance he treated it with, not understanding the gravity of leaving a $25,000 book on her front porch.
"I was video chatting with Ezra that morning, talking about the package he sent me that I had received the night before. We were talking, then Tristan walked in, asking if I could meet him in his office before going out to lunch. I thought it was weird because we had plans to go out to lunch together that day, so I assumed that that was just his way of telling me that he wouldn't be able to go on break together, but there was something else in his eyes that told me there was more than he was letting on. I guess Ezra must have noticed my apprehension, because he told me to go ahead and talk to him, and that we would talk again soon.
"I disconnected from Ezra and asked him what he needed to talk about, and, I remember, he looked so nervous. He kept trying to dodge the question, but he finally let something slip, saying he had something he had been meaning to tell me ever since I started working at the Chronicle."
"So, what did you need to talk about?" Aria asked after she disconnected her conversation from Ezra. She motioned for Tristan to sit down in the chair in front of her desk.
"It wasn't anything, really," he said, twiddling his thumbs, obviously attempting to buy time. "It's just, I have something I've been meaning to tell you ever since you started here."
"It kind of scared me, since he wasn't telling me what was wrong. He was acting so differently than the way he usually was. Whenever I would see him, he was always so confident, he never let any situation get the better of him. But that day, I knew something was up. I could see it in his eyes that he was struggling to find the right thing to say; that he didn't know whether he should even be telling me what he wanted to tell me."
"What is it?" Aria asked, thoughts fluctuating between anxious and concern. He looked so nervous, a side of him she had never seen. Granted, she had only known him for a little over a week, but that was besides the point, he was always debonair and charming, while also calm enough to handle any situation. It unnerved her seeing him so worked up.
"I'm sure you've noticed by now the way I act around you. No one here in the office really knows the real reason why, and I know they all have their suspicions. Which is why I decided to come to you directly, before they attacked you with their hypotheses."
"Tristan, you know you can tell me anything."
"I know, it's just, I don't want this to jeopardize our work area. I would hate for things to get awkward around here, especially since I love working with you."
"He told me that people around our office had been talking about the way he acted around me. It wasn't that I didn't notice it before, it was obvious that he acted differently around me than everyone else. Whenever he was at the office, he was always friendly, but he was also cautious, like there was a guard he put up that even his best friends couldn't break down. But when I arrived, I could see that he was automatically at ease around me. He looked comfortable whenever I was around. I was happy that he had allowed me to be the one person who he allowed to see past the façade he put up.
"But I was scared for what he was going to say. I didn't want anything he said to jeopardize our friendship, because it was something special. Even just a week in, I could see that it could be one of those friendships that last a lifetime. As long as he didn't say anything to ruin it."
"Tristan, please, just spit it out. You've got to tell me now, before I assume the worst," Aria said, terrified that her voice would give away the fact that she was scared to hear what he was going to say.
She watched as he took a breath and opened his mouth. "Aria, I…"
"I almost wanted to stop him before he said anything. I was terrified he was going to say something like, 'Aria, I love you,' and although, I'll admit, he's really attractive and sweet and I found myself growing more and more attracted to him, I knew we could never be more than friends. I couldn't do that to Ezra, because I'm still in love with him and I wanted to eventually work things out with him, but on the other hand, I couldn't bring myself to break Tristan's heart, either."
Aria laughed, "Which is why I was so relieved when he finally finished his sentence. I almost cried because I was so happy."
"What did he say?" Emily asked. Aria had been caught up in telling the story that she hadn't noticed that they all had inadvertently moved forwards, arms on the table, heads leaned in, creating a small space around the table.
"He told me he was gay."
"He told you he was WHAT?" was the resounding, screeching response all around.
Aria slouched back into her seat, laughing at their reaction. "That's exactly what I said. I couldn't believe it. I thought stuff like this, the whole "girl leaves behind the love of her life to pursue her dreams in a different city across the country, meets a new guy who challenges her to see things from a whole new perspective, making the girl feel guilty for feeling attracted to this guy, only to figure out that the guy is gay" plot line, only happened in bad TV shows. But no, it turns out it's the story of my life."
"So, wait, now you're married to your gay best friend?" Hanna asked, twirling a fork into her cold chicken fettucini alfredo and ate it. It was then that Aria realized that their food was getting cold and no one, besides Hanna, had taken a bite yet.
"Why don't we eat first, and I'll explain the rest over dessert? I think we need a break," Aria replied, flaking off a piece of salmon and popping it into her mouth. She needed a little time to regain her confidence. And time to text Tristan to warn him that she was straying from their deal- she was telling Spencer, Hanna and Emily everything.
"Am I the only one that finds this kind of ironic?" Emily asked after the waitress had dropped off four slices of their famous cake, a moist, five layer chocolate mousse cake with three different types of chocolate, topped with a dark chocolate ganache, and four espressos.
"It is, isn't it?" Aria said, spearing a piece of cake with her fork and eating it, letting the flavors melt in her mouth. "I mean, when we were in Rosewood right before I moved to San Fran, we stopped and ate dinner here, then grabbed chocolate cake and espresso to bring back to my house for a sleepover, where Tristan called for the first time, offering me a job. And now I'm here from San Fran and we're back again, eating chocolate cake and drinking espressos while discussing Tristan."
"Speaking of Tristan, I think you should get back to the story," Hanna said.
"Nice transition, Han," Spencer muttered.
"What? Aria said she would finish over dessert, and our dessert is here, so I think she should finish!" She countered, eyes wide with false innocence.
"No, she's right, I promised that I would explain the rest of the story over dessert, so that's what I'm going to do." Aria didn't miss the look of triumph Hanna shot Spencer.
She began slowly, because it was at this point that everything was going to get complicated. "A few days after he told me he was gay, over dinner he asked me for a favor. And that's kind of when everything started."
"Aria, we're friends, right?" Tristan asked out of the blue. He and Aria had finished up another long day at the paper and were relaxing over burgers, fries and milkshakes from their favorite diner across the street.
"Of course! Why would you asking a question like that?" Aria asked. She watched as a flash of some emotion she couldn't really decipher cross his eyes.
"Can I ask you for a favor?" He asked, reaching across the booth to take a hold of her hand.
She furrowed her brows. Where was he going with this? "Um, sure. Shoot," she said, although she knew she probably shouldn't have. This wasn't going to end well.
He looked deep into her eyes, his gaze still holding that unknown emotion. "Would you be my girlfriend?"
Aria searched his face, trying to find something that would determine if this was some kind of joke, but couldn't find anything. She pulled her hand away from his and tucked her hair behind her ear, chuckling nervously. "Of course I'll go steady with you, but only if you give me your letterman's jacket and promise to propose to me with your class ring," she replied, a horrible attempt at diffusing the tension that had developed in the air between them.
"Aria, I'm not joking. Will you please just go out with me?" he asked again. It was then that Aria realized the emotion behind his eyes. Desperation.
She took a hold of his hand in hers once more, "Tristan, I can't do that. You're gay, remember?" For a split second, she was worried that he had lied to her, that he really wasn't gay.
"But we're really good friends. We have a connection that I've never felt with anyone else. I've known you two weeks, and I already love you. Maybe if we went out on a couple of dates, we could fall in love." He was pleading with her.
"Tris, you can't force yourself to fall in love with someone that's not right for you. I do love you, as a brother. And I don't doubt that you love me, but you love me as a sister, as a best friend. You could never fall in love with me, because I'm not the right person for you. You deserve to find yourself a great guy who accepts you for who you are; don't try to change yourself into someone you're not, just because you think people will like you more."
The look in his eyes broke Aria's heart. For the first time in the few days that she had known him, he completely let his guard down and opened himself up to her. For the first time, he was completely vulnerable. "You're the only one that knows."
Aria was taken aback. "I'm the only one that knows you're gay?" He nodded slowly. She began connecting the dots in her head, "This isn't just about you being insecure with who you are, is it? People at the paper are starting to get suspicious about you, so you want me to be your girlfriend to throw them off your track."
His eyes grew wide, "No! That's not it at all. I will admit that the thought of you pretending to be my girlfriend has crossed my mind before, but I could never ask you to do that. It wouldn't be right to you."
"I'll do it," Aria said after a moment, surprising even herself.
"What?"
"I'll pretend to be your girlfriend." She couldn't believe what she was saying. "You said it yourself, people around the paper have been suspicious about us, we already go out all the time, why not?"
"Aria, I can't ask you to do that."
"You're not asking, I'm offering."
"But what if someone from New York hears? What if Ezra finds out? I know you really want to make things work out with him."
That deterred Aria for a moment. What if someone found out? What would Ezra say if word somehow got to him that she was 'dating' Tristan? She desperately wanted to make things right between them, but at the same time, she wanted to be able to help out Tristan. She needed a compromise.
"How about if we never actually make things official? We'll keep going out for coffee, for dinner, acting like we do right now, keep our Facebook relationship statuses as 'single', except we turn it up a tiny bit. When people at the paper ask, we keep coy and say we're just friends. That way if word somehow gets back east, we can truthfully say we are just friends. We never said we were anything more, they all just assumed."
Tristan looked at Aria closely, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I'm in if you are," she replied, eyes locked on his, proving she wasn't wavering.
"Deal."
"After our deal, something changed. Suddenly everyone wanted to know if we were going out, how long we had been seeing each other, how serious it was. But, per our deal, we kept quiet, saying we were just friends, which was the truth. But it worked out well, because no one believed that we could just be really good friends, and no one questioned why Tristan didn't ever have a girlfriend. Except it kind of changed the weekend we went to Las Vegas.
"Everything happened just like I said, including the drunken wedding and waking up in the same bed the next morning. When we called our friends asking what had happened, all they could do was offer their congratulations, since it was obvious what we had done, even if we didn't say anything that would lead them to think about it. The plan was going better than we had planned, which was not a good thing.
"Tristan called his investigators and lawyers after we made the calls to our friends, and this is where the truth diverges from what I originally told you guys. The morning that we left my house, we discovered that we hadn't gotten married. In fact, a couple witnesses they had managed to track down said they saw us check into Caesar's Palace and go straight up to our room; we didn't even make it to the chapel.
"We were both relieved, because neither one of us wanted to have to deal with the consequences of a stupid mistake like that. I figured it was a sign that this deal wasn't going to work out, so as I was going to tell Tristan, he dropped a bombshell on me."
"Tristan, I don't think we should go through this whole 'me-pretending-to-be-your-girlfriend' thing. Our wedding was a pretty big scare, and it made me realize that we should probably stop now, before anyone really gets hurt," Aria said after Tristan's towncar pulled up to her house and her luggage was in the trunk. They were, at that moment, speeding down the freeway towards San Francisco International Airport.
"We can't," Tristan said simply, looking out the window, refusing to look at Aria.
She furrowed her brows, "And why not?"
"Because my parents somehow found out about our 'wedding'. They called me this morning, said that they were proud that I grew up, took the next step in my life and settled down."
Aria placed her hand on his shoulder, and he turned to her, a pained look on his face. "Tristan," she began. She knew that his parents were a sore topic for them to discuss.
"They said they were proud, Aria. They took time out of their vacation to actually call me and tell me they were proud. They've never done that before." Aria was silent, she knew where this was going.
"I can't break it off with you. My parents would be so disappointed. I am so sorry for dragging you into this," he apologized.
She cracked a smile, albeit slightly tense, "It's okay. I shouldn't have suggested it in the first place. It's my fault."
"No, it's mine, I shouldn't have agreed." They sat in silence until they reached the airport, fully immersed in their own thoughts.
"We decided that we would keep pretending that we got married while drunk in Las Vegas, at least for now, until we can figure out how to get out of this whole mess," Aria finished.
"Wow," Emily breathed.
"Yeah, you can say that again," Aria said. She saw Spencer open her mouth, but then close it again, as if saying what was on her mind was going against her better judgement. "Spit it out, Spence."
Spencer took a deep breath, "So, you're going to keep pretending you're married? What about your parents?"
"I have to keep the pretense up. We can't risk something slipping. I wasn't even supposed to tell you guys, but I can't keep secrets from you, we made a pact all those years back."
"Oh, crap," Hanna said, catching on to what Spencer was thinking.
"Seriously," Emily agreed.
Aria could tell she was missing something, "Wait, what's going on?"
"You wanna be the one to tell her, Spencer? It was your idea, anyway," Hanna suggested, glad she wasn't going to be the one to have to break the news.
"Tell me what, Spencer? What's going on?" Aria repeated.
"I, um, I kind of invited Ezra to spend the holidays here in Rosewood with us. He got here two hours before you did, and he's surprising you on Christmas Eve," Spencer said quickly, hoping Aria wouldn't blow up at her. Surprisingly, it wasn't nearly as explosive as she thought it would be; Aria only muttered three words.
"Holy freakin' crap."
A/N: So, the challenges. :)
The first: Right now, my average number of reviews per chapter is basically ten, with the record number of reviews on one chapter being seventeen. It would be incredible if you guys could surpass that record. If I get at least twenty reviews per chapter before the epilogue, I will move the day the each part of the epilogue is to be posted. In my head, I have it planned for Saturday and Sunday of the weekend after next. For example, at least twenty reviews on this chapter, and Part One will be posted on Friday of the week after next, with Part Two following on Saturday. Twenty on the chapter afterwards, and they move to Thursday and Friday. Hopefully that makes as much sense in words as it does in my head. I know it's a lot to ask, but hey, why not give it a shot? Haha.
The second: As it stands at this moment, there are one hundred and ten reviews for the eleven chapters I've posted so far. Including this chapter, but not including the epilogue, there are going to be five more chapters in total. I would absolutely love to see this story surpass the two hundred review mark. If this story passes that mark before not Monday this week but next, the earliest day part one of the epilogue can be posted, parts one and two will be posted on the same day.
Like I said, it's a lot to ask. That's exactly why it's a 'challenge'. It's all in good fun, though, I just want to see if it can be done. I promise, nothing will interfere with my posting of the new chapters next week, meaning if you don't get the twenty reviews for a chapter, it's not going to delay the next one and it's not going to push back the day the epilogue is going to be posted; these challenges are only meant to speed up the time in which you get the epilogue, not slow it down.
So, spread the word! Tell your friends, your friends' friends, your friends' friends' friends, get everyone to review! I would love this story to end with a bang, but in order to do that, I'll need your help. Don't forget to review, and I absolutely thank you all so much for your continued support. It's you guys that keep me writing. :)