Aria never lies anymore, not ever. She has a list of things she would be willing to do before she would lie: Eat red meat. Take dictation for Ezra’s next novel. Watch commercials about how to cure toenail fungus for 24 hours straight.
Once, in the middle of an art history lecture, she was so clearly staring out the window that Professor Troyer interrupted his discussion of Warhol to ask if Miss Montgomery was paying attention.
“No,” Aria said. She didn’t apologize. She wasn’t sorry.
She’s strict with herself, she has to be. Like how Jason can’t have a single drink. She feels herself always teetering on the precipice of the slippery slope, balancing as best she can in her high heels, knowing any lie that comes out of her mouth would be the black ice that twists her ankle, sends her plummeting back down into the abyss. (The abyss is basically the Dollhouse. A place for bad girls who shouldn’t have lied to their parents, to the police.) But she doesn’t need to worry about that anymore. As long as she sticks to the truth, everything will be fine.
She’d been dating a journalism major for awhile in the winter. He was interested in facts. Up until the moment he rear ended a red Honda Civic on the way to the grocery store, and the cop on the scene asked Aria what happened. She stared at the buttons on his uniform, thought of Garrett, Wilden, Holbrook, Tanner. (People die when you lie to the police. People get arrested and kidnapped and tortured.) She pointed at Richard. “He was texting and changing lanes at the same time.” He was so angry that Aria got out of the car, took the bus back to her dorm and never looked back.
She realizes her lines are firmer, darker, than most people’s - that they divide the world mercilessly into good and bad, truth and lies - but they have to be. It’s the way the world works for her, now.
Some people love Aria enough to not mind hearing the truth all the time. She’s closer to her mom than ever. Mike, although he’s not crazy about her honesty when it’s directed at Mona over Thanksgiving dinner. Others, like her dad, grow distant, unwilling to hear the gory details of how she’s really doing, who would feel pretty good about things if every time they ask “How are you,” she responded with a polite but dishonest monosyllabic fine.
She’s not as close to Spencer anymore, hasn’t talked to Emily in months. She understands this is more about them than about her, even if it does break her heart. She can’t really be around people who lie to themselves a lot of the time. It’s like a disease, highly contagious.
Hanna is the only one of her old friends who gets it, who’s strong enough to handle the new version of Aria, who thinks she’s great company. The two of them text back and forth constantly, talk on the phone a few times a week. Aria tells her she’s planning to withdraw from SCAD, maybe transfer to Brown next semester. She wants to work in publishing, where she might still be surrounded by pretentious assholes, but smarter ones with better accents.
“You’ll need help packing up all your stuff,” Hanna tells her.
“You don’t have to do that,” Aria responds.
“Your closet is as bad as mine,” Hanna says. “Seriously, I can take a couple days off.”
“Promise not to throw out any animal prints when I’m not looking.”
“I wouldn’t throw them away,” Hanna protests. “I’d like, donate to them to charity. A time travel charity that could take them back to the 70’s where they belong.”
“Be here next Thursday,” Aria says, with a smile.
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Hanna shows up wearing leather pants, a white sleeveless shirt, and gigantic aviator sunglasses.
“You look amazing,” Aria tells her.
“Freedom agrees with me,” Hanna smiles.
“Have you heard from him, since he left for Europe?” Aria asks.
“Even his postcards make me feel guilty,” Hanna admits. “I hang them on the fridge and then I order take out all week.”
“You order take out all week anyway.”
“True enough,” Hanna agrees. “Speaking of which, I’m starving. Point me towards the nearest fried chicken sandwich.”
They eat at a diner where Hanna orders almost every fried food on the menu, and Aria eats a grilled cheese and fries. Afterward, they go back to Aria’s dorm and start packing boxes. There isn’t much to show for the two years she’s been down here. Overpriced textbooks that the bookstore wouldn’t buy back. A few poofy skirts that make Hanna roll her eyes, poke out her tongue in mock disgust.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Aria says, filling a box with negatives of pictures she doesn’t even like to look at anymore.
“Me too,” Hanna tells her. “Me, too.”
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Hanna declares that Aria’s booze isn’t worth packing, but should be perfectly fine for drinking, especially all at once.
They sit on the floor, now covered in boxes, trading pulls of straight vodka, then some ridiculous potato gin. By the time they get to the bourbon, they’re lying on the floor and the room is spinning in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant. The windows are open, and the air has the hot pressed feeling of a Southern sky about to storm. Aria can see the Spanish moss outside the window swirling in the wind.
Aria wonders for a moment if something broke inside her, back in Rosewood, the night Ali disappeared. If all the years of being stalked and terrorized together saturated her feelings for her friends with the a high color super octane gloss of emotion that no one else is ever going to be able to match. Everyone else in the world is going to feel a little grayer, a little boring, in comparison. Her love for them is so huge, like an ocean, it makes everything else seem like grains of sand.
Hanna’s fingers are interlaced with Aria’s. Aria looks over at Hanna, and feels like she can look through the boozy haze and see all the versions of Hanna that have ever existed. She’s like Cinderella, Aria thinks. A Cinderella who went from Alison’s heavier shadow to her Queen B replacement, the homecoming queen who had to run out of the ball to break into a psychiatrist’s office. A Cinderella who went on to become a white blonde tough girl before transforming into a fashionista princess. A Cinderella butterfly, always changing into something newer and better and prettier than ever before.
“What?” Hanna says. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Aria never lies anymore, not ever. “I want to kiss you.”
Hanna grins one of her flirty grins and rolls over onto her side. She doesn’t bother to ask if it’ll be weird. Weird was dating your English teacher, or falling for a boy who lived in an air vent. Weird was their best friend vanishing, then coming back from the dead. Weird was being locked underground and tortured. They’re both well aware that making out would be the least weird thing to happen in their friendship since at least eleventh grade.
Hanna kisses Aria, and her lips taste sweet, like cupcake flavored lip gloss. The kiss is playful and fun and it’s like how when Hanna looks at you sometimes and smiles it feels like the sun is shining just for you, her kisses are just like that, have a piece of that same magic charm.
Aria deepens the kiss, moves on top of Hanna a little, which makes Hanna moan and shift their position so that she’s on top, moving her hand up Aria’s body, her metal bracelets brushing against Aria’s left nipple in a way that makes Aria gasp. Hanna’s desire is raw and honest and Aria can’t get enough.
They make it to the bed, losing most of their clothing along the way. Things get so loud that Aria’s neighbor turns up her gamelan music to try and drown them out, which makes Hanna laugh and let out all the stops in terms of noise, those she’s making and those she’s conjuring from Aria.
Afterward, they collapse, naked and sweating, lying half on the yanked out fitted sheet and half on the bare twin mattress. The storm has broken outside, and the air is fragrant with the smell of grass, the first jasmine blooms opening.
“Wow,” Hanna says, catching her breath. “That was a hell of a way to cross that off my bucket list.”
Aria beams at her, warm and content and comforted by the weight of Hanna beside her, constant as the truth.
“This was my best night in Savannah,” Aria says. She’s been here two years, but Hanna understands she means this, means every word. Because Aria never lies anymore, not ever.