Chapter 105: Call
Vivian’s POV
It was taking a lot of emotional strength to keep going after ending things with Ryan Terrell. But Vivian was doing it and she was proud of herself.
During the day, she sang, she danced, she smiled at her kids.
She had friendly conversations with her co-workers and she reached out to Amy. Really making sure that her best friend knew that she was just fine now. That there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Life was great, and Vivian was great too... except she really was not.
During the daylight hours while she was surrounded by people. It was easy for her to keep up the act.
Smiling was easier when all that she had to do was look at her beaming students and copy them. Her lips curling upwards even when she wanted to curl them downwards and frown. Every single one of the precious babies in her class knew that she was lying. But they were still showing her the kindness of acting like they believed her. So Vivian carried on pretending.
Her act was not just restricted to smiles.
The same thing also applied when it came to her laughter. Whatever emotion other people were feeling, she just reflected it back at them and hoped they would not notice that she was being a fraud.
But in the quiet of the night when she was all alone in her apartment, Vivian did not have anyone to copy from.
There was no Amy for Vivian to pretend for by replicating her friend’s humor. She could not laugh and be carefree the way that her students were, and she could not be professionally friendly back to her co-workers.
She was all alone and all that she could feel when she looked deep into her own heart was darkness.
Deep in her soul where all of her happiness used to be there was nothing. Just an all consuming void that barely remembered what it was like to have emotions.
In the quiet of her apartment, she mostly stayed in the dark. Only ever switching on the lights when she needed to.
She barely even saw the need to eat.
The loss of appetite as far as she could tell was the only good thing to come out of the whole thing. For the first time in her life, Vivian was actually losing weight after ending things with a man instead of piling on the pounds.
It was a real miracle, but she could not even bring herself to be happy about it.
***
It was pitiful to cry over a relationship that never was. To mourn a man who had not cared about her at all.
But Vivian found that when it came to her own heart, she had very little control.
And so as she had done for most of the nights since the break up.
Vivian was holed up in her room.
As one of the little unspoken rules of the arrangement that they’d had. She and Ryan had never actually taken any pictures together. That meant that Vivian had no personal photos of Ryan, (he had only one of hers, a racy picture that she’d sent him way back).
For her the only thing that she did have that came close to that was the dick drawing that she’d made what now felt like years ago in the past.
Whenever Vivian had held the drawing, she had often been pleasuring herself. Needing to look at it in order to climax.
But now as Vivian held the drawing, there was no pleasure to be found.
Instead, tear drop after tear drop was falling onto the drawing. She had never been more glad that she’d taken the time to laminate the picture than she was in that moment. Instead of the drawing being ruined by her tears. They just flowed right over it, and made more room for others to fall there.
Staring at the dick with blurry eyes, Vivian could not help but hit herself with a difficult question.
Was the fault truly with her in this situation?
***
When it came to the whole Bryce debacle, Vivian had accepted that part of it was her fault.
She had acknowledged that Bryce would not have been able to keep walking all over her had she not kept taking him back.
But the situation with Ryan Terrell was different.
Not only would she not be taking him back, Vivian was struggling to pinpoint what she could have done to have him treat her so horribly.
Had she been too nice, too open, or perhaps too clingy?
Had she been too ’herself’ for Ryan Terrell to like?
Not finding any answers, Vivian was considering turning the light intensity from low to pitch black so that she could just sit there in the dark when her phone chimed.
Looking over, she found a message from Amy.
[Hey, come over tonight and watch some movies with me].
Just reading the text made Vivian’s entire being ache. Had she received the message during the day, she would have at least tried to save up some energy for the encounter. But since Amy was only now bringing up the possible hangout. Vivian knew that it would be impossible for her to go.
She was completely drained. There was just nothing left in her. If she went to see her friend she would not be able to pretend like everything was okay.
[So sorry Amy, I have an early day tomorrow, so I’m just going to sleep in.
Another time, okay ]. She ended the message with a smiley face, feeling guilty even as she hit send.
She knew that just like the kids, Amy was probably not at all fooled by the act that Vivian was putting on. But she at least hoped that her friend could not guess just how bad things were.
Tossing the phone aside, she turned off the lights and just stared into the darkness.
***
She must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, because the next thing that Vivian knew, she was waking up to her phone going off.
Reaching for the device, she turned it on and realized that it had begun ringing just a few minutes before her alarm was supposed to.
Her brain too sleep fogged to pay attention to the caller ID, she simply accepted it.
"Hello," She answered her voice rough from sleep.
For a few seconds there was silence, and Vivian wondered if it was some sort of prank call.
She was just about to end the entire thing and go get ready for work when there came a familiar voice from the other end.
"Hello, Vivian Rose. Can we meet up and talk?"
Too shocked to react, Vivian could only blink in confusion.
Why was Mark, Ryan’s best friend reaching out to her?
