Ari had no idea what he was doing here. At some huge banquet hall, even larger than his already ridiculously sized home, wearing the most expensive Giorgio Armani suit he’d ever owned. There was no real reason for him to be there. His dad was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his favorite child, which was, in fact, not any sibling of Ari’s but actually the website-turned-‘social media platform’ his father had started working on way early in college. Really, he didn’t do it alone, but the other guy got no credit. Ever. Initially it was the two of them, George Livingston and John Rothschild, complete nerds in high school, heads of every programming and computer science related extracurricular, graduating on to MIT and planning on maybe becoming freelance programmers - at best. That in itself was the hardest part for Ari to believe. At the time, they didn’t think they were much; now he was pretty sure both of them were huge assholes even if he had barely even seen John in person.

Anyway - they built a portfolio in Ari’s grandmother’s basement/storm shelter, naturally a cringey picture to think of, all 80’s with shag carpeting and wooden panels and rows and rows of industrial sized cans in a pantry, except with a twist; George’s massive, geeky collection of hardware. And, well. Software, too, if you counted the tons of useless programs he never released to the world. Initially the platform was supposed to be a private website for himself, John, and their peers from extracurriculars - and then he realized nothing like theirs existed. No one had such a mature, idealized messaging system, no place to update others, no place with a single purpose of interaction. Or, at least, nothing was as well-functioning, if you could call it that. Given the fact that there were at least one hundred revisions, perhaps it wasn’t exactly a perfect software, but John and George were well-versed in program, knew what they were doing. 

The website was made public in the early 2000’s, but only really got traction in the lates, which is exactly the time that shit started hitting the fan. John insisted that they change the platform entirely: it should be image-based for clarity, it should be a cohesive photostream for users to share their life and interact with others, it would be better if we did X or Y. George was still stuck to the same path of sticking primarily to text, to bigger profiles and more ways to interact with other users, to almost the same layout as the one they’d initially begun with that went post-by-post. John was the creator, the innovator, and George was adamant that they’d stay successful on the road they were already on; and, taking a risk, John left his partner so soon after they could officially call themselves a company. He started his own platform, developed it into a phone application much more functional than George’s, and was suddenly picking up as much traction in a year as it took their initial program to get in a decade of work.

The more updates George made, though, and the less John could keep up with him, their competition grew fiercer and bitterness between them worsened. George’s net worth was in the billions while John’s was just on the cusp of that title; he had less investors, a smaller user base, more bugs on all version of his platform than George. Naturally, they weren’t friends anymore. Which, again, in an opinion nobody asked for, Ari thought was bullshit. They could’ve compromised and made double whatever his dad’s business was making, whatever the hell it was, as he didn’t keep up with any of this capitalistic shitshow. [i]Anyway.[/i] In what could either be a cold gesture, or a sign of goodwill after such a long rivalry between his father and his ex-best friend and business partner, John was invited to the celebration. Of a company he dropped out of that became more successful than his. Honestly, Ari didn’t have the guts to ask what in the hell his dad was thinking.

Miraculously, he came, and clearly Ari’s dad had been waiting the entire night for this to happen. When he saw heads turn to watch them meet each other by the door, Ari decided it was time he ducked outside and missed whatever drama was about to ensue. He had Scott by his side, one of dad’s investor’s sons, already, and he saw a familiar face at the door that he considered maybe rescuing on account of the fact that he was [i]pretty[/i]. River. He’d seen him in tabloids, naturally a rich kid followed around for no reason other than their parents, just like Ari. He didn’t know a lot about him - after all, if his father new he was learning about his rival’s kid (or, worse, thought he was kind of cute), he would not be too pleased. Either way. Ari was kind of pissed at his dad for being embarrassing right now, so he decided to extend an olive branch, at least between the children born during this ridiculous catfight.

He wasn’t friendly by [i]choice[/i], so River could invite him[i]self[/i], but as Ari and Scott passed through the gathered people and beyond the scope of John and George, he nodded at River in acknowledgment, keeping his eyes on him while he pushed through the double doors with his back (out of his periphery, he was fairly sure Scott was looking at him too, then, oddly enough, critically at Ari). Almost immediately, he was on the curb, looking at the massive roundabout driveway with valets milling about and wondering if they’d loan him a car. [b]”[i]Ari.[/i] River Rothschild? Really?”[/b] Ari snapped out of it, looked at Scott, who was folding down onto the curb beside him, straightening his tie and looking judgmental as ever. [b]”What? Oh, you think... Scott, listen, I didn’t give him the ‘fuck me’ eyes, I gave him the ‘isn’t this some shit’ eyes. It’s different. You wouldn’t know.”[/b] He grinned, making fun, and Scott looked unimpressed. [b]”You’re very expressive.”[/b] Ari sighed, long-suffering. [b]”And I’m [i]expressing[/i] that I want you to fuck off.”[/b]