I shake my head quickly. “No, not at all. He’s just a friend from work, nothing to worry about.” The lie that would usually slip so easily from my tongue is forced.
Jess’s frame visibly relaxes, and he takes my hand in his own. “Well, then I’m sure they’ll be fine. You know how jealous guys can get, Els.”
He gives me a smile and squeezes my hand. Usually this action would bring me comfort, but at this moment, the guilt of lying to him causes knots in my stomach.
Ten minutes later, we’re at Dina’s, with Wren and Claudia already waiting for us inside. As Jess pulls up to the curb, Will jumps out of the car, leaving a distraught Viv in the back seat.
“I’ll give you two a minute,” Jess says as he hops out of the car. He gives me a quick wink before closing the door.
I quickly move out of the front seat and place myself next to Vivian, who looks to be seconds away from losing it.
“Oh, Ellie, Will is so mad at me. When you and Dean went into the kitchen, he kept asking who Dean was and why he was so friendly toward me. I had no idea what to say, so I just said he’s your friend, but Will didn’t buy it for a second. Then he said how can we have a relationship if I can’t trust him enough to tell him the truth about something that’s clearly upset me.”
I don’t know what to say, because Will is sort of right and both of us know it. Vivian has never been in a relationship serious enough to even need to consider how her job would affect it. But now, here we are and neither of us knows what to do.
“It’s going to be fine, Viv. Will never has to know who Dean is, okay?” I take her hands in mine and look her in the eyes. “I promise you this will all blow over. We just have to stick to the story that he’s a guy from my work who has a thing for you.”
“Okay,” she huffs. “Ellie, I really like him. Like, I’ve never felt this way before. Last night I was about to tell him about what happened with my dad. I think I might be in love with him, and I can’t lose him. I just can’t.”
The reality of her feelings for Will hits me like a lead balloon. It took Vivian almost six months to tell me about the abuse she endured at the hands of her asshole stepfather. The fact that she nearly shared this with Will speaks wonders for how she feels about him, and from what Jess has told me, Will feels the same way.
“Don’t worry, Viv. I’m positive Will feels the same way. Trust me on this.” I give her a reassuring smile and open the truck door. “Now come on, we have two cheeseburgers and thick shakes with our names on them in there.”
Viv gives me a small smile and takes the hand I’ve offered her. As we walk toward the restaurant, she redirects the conversation to the mixtape Jess made me. She’s convinced that it’s a declaration of his love, while I’m almost positive it’s a declaration of friendship.
As I open the door to Dina’s, the smell of onion rings and fried goodness fills my senses, causing my stomach to grumble. Jess, Will, Claudia, and Wren are already seated, so I slide in next to Jess while Vivian hesitantly sits next to Will, who is acting uncharacteristically like a dick by ignoring her.
His behavior continues until our meal arrives and that is when I see Viv crack. Although I can’t fault Will for being upset, him ignoring her won’t do their relationship much good.
Although Vivian can get upset often, it takes a lot for her to show it in public, especially to people who aren’t me. To everyone at Breslin, Vivian Clark is a ray of sunshine who’s always upbeat and happy, but I know the real Viv. She loves deeply and gets hurt even deeper, but only a select few see that side of her. Tonight, I’m afraid that all of her emotions are going to come to a boil and she won’t care who sees.
Looking at Viv, I see that her eyes have welled up with tears, and that’s it for me. I’m officially going to kick Will’s ass. But before I can, Vivian gets up, her chair skidding along the laminated floor. The sound causes everyone at the table to look up at once.
“Excuse me,” is all she manages to get out before she rushes out of Dina’s.
I turn to Will and give him the filthiest look I can come up with. “I like you, Will, but tonight I could fucking kill you,” I spit out and storm out of the diner.
The second I step out of Dina’s the cold wind smacks me, causing my hair to skirt around my face, but I don’t care. All I care about is finding Vivian.
“Viv!” I scream across the vacant parking lot. No answer. “Vivian!” I yell one more time before a figure comes out of the shadows. Vivian’s eyes have tears in them, and she’s shuddering. She left her jacket in the diner, and there’s no way either of us will go back in there, so I give her mine.
I don’t say anything to her. I don’t have to.. She promised herself long ago that she would never put up with a man mistreating and ignoring her, and I don’t blame her. I just wrap my arms around her in comfort. We begin walking to the main street, but then I hear the diner door swing open and footsteps behind us.
“Vivian!” Will yells from across the parking lot, and I see Jess is right behind him. I silently thank the gods that I don’t have to restrain both of them by myself.
Viv halts, and the next moment, she’s no longer next to me but instead storming toward Will. Shit is about to go down, and we all know it.
“You’re an asshole! Do you know that?” Viv screams at Will as more tears spill out of her eyes.
Will takes a step back, visibly thrown by her words. If there’s one thing Vivian rarely does, it’s curse, and that’s how we know she isn’t just pissed, she’s livid.
“Viv, I know I was a dick in there, but you have to see things from my perspective,” he pleads. “I know you weren’t being honest with me tonight about that guy at your apartment, and I just can’t understand why. Is there something going on between you two?”
Will is clearly hurt by the secrets Viv kept from him, but that still doesn’t excuse his behavior tonight. I’m seriously protective over Vivian, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more to earn her forgiveness.
“Something going on with him?” She lets out a fake laugh. “No, Will, you just don’t trust me,” she screams, hastily wiping away her tears.
He flinches at the heaviness of her words, and I can’t help but look at Jess. He’s staring at me with remorseful eyes.
As I watch these two scream at one another, I wonder if Jess would feel the same about me if the situation involved us. Although Jess and I are nowhere near relationship status, he’s the closest I will ever come to being in one, and I can’t shake the fear of him treating me the way Will is treating Viv.
“You humiliated me in there, Will, and I’m not going to go through that kind of shit again.” Everyone goes silent, because Vivian has indeed confirmed she has been through this before. Something seems to break in Will.
“Baby,” he whispers, voice full of remorse. He reaches out for her, clearly regretting his actions tonight.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Viv screams through another sob as she lurches backward, fear swirling through her eyes. Will stands frozen in place as Viv turns to walk toward the closest taxi. I start to walk after her, but she doesn’t even want me with her.
“I’m fine, Ellie. I just need to be alone,” she says softly as she gets into the cab. It drives away.
I walk back to where Will and Jess are standing in complete silence. I’m not sure how to process everything that’s just happened, and I don’t think the guys are either. This fight isn’t about Dean’s interest in Vivian or her denial of how they know one another. No, it’s about the fact that there are secrets between them, between all of us, and no matter what, there always will be.
“Did she think I was going to hurt her?” Will whispers, his voice cracking. “I don’t understand, Jess. What am I going to do? Why would she think that?” Will’s eyes glaze over as Jess pulls him into a hug.
Does Will genuinely believe that Vivian is afraid of him? I know that wasn’t Vivian’s intention when she said that, but Will doesn’t understand. Crying and yelli
ng is always a lethal combination for Vivian, and it brings back horrific memories for her. Realizing Vivian would never want Will to think she’s afraid of him, I know I have to tell him.
“Will,” I say solemnly. It takes him a few moments to look up at me, but when he does, he has the eyes of someone who fears that he has lost everything.
“Vivian’s stepdad… he wasn’t a good guy.” I pause, afraid to even say the words myself. “He hurt her, Will. Hitting and screaming was all she knew as a kid, she won’t go through that again,” I whisper.
As if being punched in the chest, Will slumps to the ground. He seems as if he has lost the ability to breathe.
“I didn’t know, Ellie,” he whispers. “I swear, I didn’t know.”
After we’ve finally convinced a devastated Will to head home and not race over to my apartment, Jess takes him back to their house, with both of us promising to text the other with updates.
I’m planning to take a cab home, but Claudia and Wren graciously offer to drop me off. The car ride back is in silence, and I’m thankful for that. Even though I’m sure they both have a million questions, they keep to themselves and don’t pry. I really like them as a couple and separately. Although I don’t know Wren that well, he seems to be a really decent guy, and from what I can tell, he thinks Claudia is the greatest thing on this planet. Through my conversations with Claudia, I can tell she’s very shy at first, but the more I get to know her, the more I like her. She’s incredibly kind and genuine and not at all judgmental.
As we pull up to the curb of my apartment, I thank them both for everything. Claudia makes me promise to text her so she can be sure Viv is okay. As soon as I open the door to our building, I rush upstairs to our apartment as fast as I can. From the hallway, I can hear the faint sound of Jeff Buckley coming from our apartment. This is a very bad sign.
About a year after Viv and I met, she got a call from Winona saying that her mother and stepfather had been in a car accident. They were both drinking and ran a red light, where an SUV T-boned them. They died on impact. Even though Vivian hated her stepfather and resented her mother for never leaving him, she couldn’t help but mourn the loss of the mother she’d once had and the mother she would never get.
After finding out, she played Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” on repeat for three days straight. Finally, on the third day of hearing the song, I pulled her out of bed and forced her into the shower. She cried in my arms for an hour as the hot water streamed over the both of us and our saturated clothes.
It wasn’t until a week later that I found out why she only played that one song. She told me that when she was eleven, her father and she had listened to that song on vinyl and it had brought tears to his eyes. He told her that there was no other song in this world that held the emotion that this one did. It managed to understand grief, love, depression, and finally death. Two weeks later, when Vivian’s father died from a sudden brain aneurysm, the only thing she could do was play this song. Her mother was so destroyed by his death that she took to the bottle permanently, and that’s when she met Viv’s stepdad.
From that moment on, she told me, it became her song. Whenever she was feeling extreme sadness or grief, she would play it and it would feel as if the lyrics were written for her. She told me it was one of the only things that kept her mildly together when the world around her shattered.
As I turn my key in the lock, I hear Jeff singing in my ears and fight back the lump forming in my throat. Pulling myself together, I knock on Vivian’s door and then slowly open it. There she is, just lying atop her bed in fetal position. The usually glamorous Vivian has makeup down her face and her hair disheveled around her head. Instead of her vibrant self, she looks as if someone has shattered all of her light and just left the shell behind.
“I ruined it,” she whispers.
My forehead creases with confusion as I sit next to her. Sensing she will continue when ready, I pull off my shoes and take her head into my lap. I begin stroking her head, like a mother would for a small child, and wait for her to continue.
She begins to speak, but her voice is only a faint whisper. “I love him, Ellie, and now it’s all over. And it’s all my fault. I can never be fully honest with him because I know it would ruin everything, yet by not telling him, I’ve ruined it anyway. I mean, how could anyone ever truly love someone with my baggage?”
I know what she means because I feel the same way. It’s the same fear that keeps me from ever pursuing a real relationship with anyone. Yet, when I hear Vivian say it, it doesn’t seem true in regards to her. She’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met, and any guy would be lucky to have her, regardless of her past or job.
“Tonight I was upset because I realized that I had been fooling myself for years. I can’t escape who I was, who I am. Then, in the parking lot, I just lost it. I would never in a million years think that Will would hit me. I know he’s better than that, but everything was just too familiar. I had to get out of there, and I was just so angry at myself for thinking I deserved more.”
“Bullshit,” I say, cutting in quickly. I’m done with just listening, because Vivian has this whole thing wrong.
Vivian looks at me, sad eyes and all, but I can’t let her think these things of herself.
“What Will did tonight, that was crap. Yeah, we have some secrets, Viv—so what! So does the whole damn world. How many times have you told me that my past doesn’t define my future and that I should put myself out there more? You know that we both deserve a hell of a lot more than what we were subjected to as kids. That shit wasn’t our fault, and we both deserve to be happy no matter what.” I pause and take a breath before I continue.
“Tonight was an utter shitshow, and it was everyone’s fault. It was our fault for lying about Dean, but it was also Will’s fault for acting like an asshole about the whole thing. Vivian, Will loves you, and I think that was why he acted the way he did tonight. He knows how special you are, and the fear of losing you made him act like an idiot, which I know for a fact he regrets. And I can guarantee that if you called him right now, he would be over faster than the Flash with roses in hand.”
Viv slowly sits up and wipes the remaining tears out of her eyes. Her sobbing has reduced to the occasional hiccup, and her breathing has evened out.
“Even if I wanted to call him, the way I acted when he touched me… He probably thinks I’m a total psycho.” Her gaze drifts to her pale-pink comforter, and she pulls it over her bare legs.
Realizing I still need to tell her about Will knowing about her stepdad, I take a deep breath. “Viv, there is one more thing I need to tell you, and I really hope you won’t be mad about it.”
She pries her gaze away from the comforter and looks me in the eyes.
“Once you left, Will, well, he was really torn up. He thought you were afraid of him, that maybe you thought he would hurt you.” Vivian gasps at this revelation, and fresh tears spring to her eyes. “I knew you would hate for him to think that, so I told him about your stepdad, and I think he understood. I’m so sorry for overstepping, but I thought you would want him to know.”
I brace myself for a potential slap but instead am greeted by a hug. Vivian leaps from her corner of the bed and smacks right into me.
“Thank you, Ellie,” she whispers. “I needed to tell him, but I don’t think I would have had the strength. So thank you.”
We stay like that for a while, just taking comfort in each other’s arms. Vivian eventually falls asleep, and I take that as a good opportunity to text Jess.
Sensing that Vivian could use the comfort of Will’s arms over my own, I let Jess know they can come over now if they want. Not even fifteen minutes later, they’re at the door.
“Hey,” I whisper as they enter my living room. Will looks like hell and Jess, well, he looks like Jess.
“She’s in her bedroom, if you want to see her,” I say to a very nervous Will.
“Thanks, Ellie,” he whispers as he walks towar
d her room. “Thank you so much for everything.”
Will slowly enters Vivian’s room and then closes the door behind himself, leaving just Jess and me in the living room.
“They’ll be all right,” I say as I turn to a worried-looking Jess. “I’m sure of it.”
Jess wraps his arms around me and pulls me close to him. I rest my head on his chest and let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
“It’s been a crazy night,” Jess says.
“You can say that again,” I say with a hollow laugh.
“You and Vivian, you both keep a lot to yourselves. Especially about your families.” His remark catches me off guard and I tense. Although Jess and I are extremely close, we’ve never discussed my family, or Vivian’s for that matter. After the night of the kickback when I told him I didn’t talk about my parents, he’d left it at that.
Unsure of how to respond, I decide it’s best to be honest with him. Well, partially honest at least.
“Vivian and I both dealt with a lot of shit growing up. Neither of us talk about it to anyone, and we rarely talk about it with one another. That’s just how it is with us, Jess. What I said tonight about Vivian’s past, it’s something I would never usually share, but it needed to be said. I know that Vivian would have wanted me to.”
“I’m not criticizing, Els. I get how your past can be something that needs to stay in the past. It was just an observation.”
He pauses before continuing. “Els, I may not know a whole lot about where you came from or who you came from, but I want you to know I would never define you by it. No matter what happens, you will always matter to me, and I will never look down on you for something you or someone else did in the past.
“Trust me, I get what it’s like to struggle with talking about things, especially family. My dad left my mom when I was just a kid, and no matter what I did, I was never good enough for him. It seemed as if he had this preexisting notion of who I should be, and I never lived up to it. It was only in the past few years we’ve reconnected, so I get how hard it is when it comes to family. I’m not saying I know or understand anything that has happened to you, so if you never want to tell me about your parents, that’s your prerogative, but if there ever comes a time when you do, I will always be here.”
Brief Encounters_The Encounters Series Page 9
