Chapter Text
The problem with running away from your problems was that when you ran away from your problems you always ended up taking your problems with you, so wherever you ran away from your problems to, there your problems were. A little out of breath from having to run to get just ahead of you so they would be there when you arrived, but otherwise untouched.
Also wherever you ran away to, there was a good chance you would be alone there and maybe while you claimed, loudly and often, that you only ever wanted to be left alone, when push came to shove and you were actual-factual alone for realsies, you got very lonely very quickly. And you tried to cover it up but it just made you more lonely.
It was almost enough to get April to make friends with Rebecca Bunch.
Almost.
Instead she'd just gone home. Rebecca had been easy enough to avoid; the New Mexico resort where they'd both been staying was large and spread-out and had a lot of strangers milling around in it at all times. But knowing that she was hiding from her problems in the same place Rebecca was hiding from her own problems had been, to put it succinctly, a problem. For April.
So a few weeks after her abruptly coming into a sizable fortune in her divorce from tech magnate Gustavo Vort, April returned to her old stomping grounds. Hopefully her boyfriend was still hanging out there. She hadn't been in touch with him the whole time she was gone, but that was only because they were that kind of couple. The kind that didn't stay in touch when one of them went out of state for a couple of weeks.
She wasn't worried or anything, but April had stopped at the mall on the way to Ye Olde Shoppes at Goldfarb, and picked up a present for Jason. Several presents, actually: a new phone with a data plan she would pay for, so he didn't have to keep using burners; some Jacksonville Jaguars merchandise, because that was his favorite sports franchise; and a few other oddments, including an Orange Julius, because she knew he liked them and the mall had them. The Orange Julius was melted by now, but that was okay, Jason usually had them melted.
She was halfway across the YOSaG parking lot, en route from where the taxi had dropped her off to Jason's nail salon/apartment, when the sound of her own name made her stop in her tracks.
"April! April Ludgate! April Vort!"
She turned and saw the one person who might call her that, standing next to one of his stupid electric cars with a dumb grin on his dumb face. "Don't call me that! That's never been my name! What are you doing here? I don't care!"
April turned away from Gustavo Vort but it was too late. Having acknowledged him, he felt carte blanche to chase after her, calling her name.
"April, darling! It's so good to see you! I've been thinking of you lo this past month or so, you know, my darling wife, and I thought perhaps we should give it another shot—"
"No! Ew!" cried April, and broke into a jog. She was almost to the nail salon when somebody almost ran her over. A sedan, nondescript, black.
"Watch where you're going!" April shouted at the woman driving it, Gustavo Vort momentarily forgotten.
"April Ludgate!" cried the woman as she climbed out of the car, which she'd illegally parked in the middle of a fire lane. April recognized her then: the angry lawyer Gustavo Vort had hired for the divorce, Paris Geller.
"Stop shouting my name, stranger!" April shouted at her. Never admit you remembered somebody's name, that was the motto April lived her life by.
"You know me!" Paris shouted back.
"Paris!" cried Gustavo Vort. "Paris, darling! It's so good to see you! I've been thinking of you lo this past month or so, you know, my darling attorney, and I thought perhaps we should give it another shot—"
"I'm not your attorney!" Paris barked at him.
"Why are we all standing here shouting?" April demanded. She didn't lower her voice, because she didn't want to be the one to unilaterally disarm.
"I live here!" declaimed Gustavo Vort.
"I'm meeting a friend for casual social interaction," Paris said, modulating her tone. "I saw you and I thought I should warn you about him."
"I'm standing right here!" Gustavo Vort cried.
Paris ignored him. "He's bankrupt, did you know that? People have been trying to get in touch with you. VortTech went belly-up, he couldn't cover his debts—"
"It's all being worked out," interrupted Gustavo Vort. "It'll be fine!"
"And now he's living out of his car." Paris pointed down the parking lot to the stupid electric car that April had seen Gustavo Vort climb out of, when she arrived.
"Only temporarily!"
Paris shook her head. "So he might try to worm his way back into your good graces so he can mooch off of you and reclaim some of the finances he had to sign over to you back when he had finances."
April dropped her bags of presents for Jason, taking care not to spill the Orange Julius. "What?" she said to Paris.
"Call your lawyers," Paris advised her.