As Jack put some water in the kettle to boil his grandmother got out an old diary to help her grandson with his predicament. A long line of first-born men in their family had been obsessed with finding Ara, or the 'Ara' of each generation.
There was only ever one Ara at a time and coincidentally the last Ara was named Ara and her parents were friends of the family when the boys and Ara were growing up. Unfortunately, the presence of this girl caused a rift in between the two young boys at the time, since as the Ara ages along with their latent power, they begin to attract both people and otherworldly beings. At the time both of the young boys revolved around Ara as their axis in space and time, and things all started to go downhill when her power began to manifest itself with greater intensity.
One day the boys were over at their grandmother's house with Ara and they were playing hide-and-seek in the woods, while their parents ate and talked inside the house. They wandered a little too far and when Jack, the seeker, found them, he found Michael standing over a dead and bloody, lifeless Ara next to a pale, shaggy dead-man. He knew that it wasn't Jack's fault that Ara died, but a ten-year-old kid doesn't always see things logically, and at the time he pushed his anger for her death and at himself for not being able to protect her onto his cousin.
Nowadays he had moved on from those feelings, properly assigning the blame to the pale man that had killed her, but Michael had never quite moved on and his obsession with finding her even though she was dead grew and pushed the two farther apart straining their relationship and hurting the both of them each time he spoke of Ara.
As his grandmother opened the old diary of an ancestor who had studied the Ara and how to control his obsession, he heard her say that the obsession would only settle down to a manageable level when the new Ara manifested and was found. Since this obsession of Michael's was now effecting people outside of their family and he did not want to lose the progress they had made in growing closer, he decided he would help his cousin find the new Ara if only to combat his insanity and his focus on the Ryder family and Eden.
...
At the café around 3 in the afternoon, old man Larry let Luke go on his lunch break and he happily went to the employee's locker room and grabbed his slice of pie.
[Hehe... they tried to hide the cherry pie from me, but it is now mine!]
That thought was topped off by Luke raising the slice of pie above his head, where it nearly slid off the plate until Michael appeared behind him and saved the pie from hitting the floor.
"I can't believe you were so careless to loose your prize while celebrating it", said Michael while laughing silently behind his free hand.
Luke who just realized that he nearly lost his cherry pie grabbed Michael and thanked him happily. His anger at the man seemingly vanished as he had saved the sweet from the trash can. He was smiling looking at the pie in his hand until he looked up and realized that Michael was staring at him without relinquishing the pie.
"Hey Jack, can I have the pie back now, maybe? Or are you just going to keep daydreaming? Hello...", Luke said waving his hand in front of Michael's face while attempting to grab the pie out of his hand. Although, that was a little difficult as the pie had fallen off the plate into his hand and he couldn't think of a way to grab it all at once without seeing it clearly as Michael had subconsciously moved the pie by his head and he was a bit taller than Luke.
Luke trying to wake the man from his daydreams of Eden, with a mischievous look on his face, in an attempt to startle Michael he was going to jump up and clap his cheeks, but miscalculated in his preparation to jump stumbling over the loose tie of his apron falling away from Michael.
Michael, breaking out of his trance went to catch Luke and he did catch him only to realize that he was still holding the pie which ended up all over the back of Luke's shirt and his hand with chunks fallen on the ground.
The two were in an awkward position, but they didn't seem to notice as Luke fell to his knees crying over the lost pie. "My baby died...! Only I was supposed to eat it, not my shirt", he cried between sobs.
Michael was standing above Luke unsure how to comfort him when old man Larry came in after hearing the commotion, gave him an angry look and pulled Luke out of the room sending him home for the day.
Michael was left confused about the situation until he thought back to their positions when the old man walked in and he realized that Jack probably would not be welcomed very well the next time he came to this café. He wasn't really upset about the misinterpretation, but he would rather take credit for it, since the boy looked soo much like Ara to him.