Heartthrob ✓

fifteen

F I F T E E N

"I'M A BIT UPSET RIGHT NOW."

I sighed, running a hand through my hair because I was too. Luke was more upset about missing out on the rides because of whatever Vivian's personal drama was, but what was more upsetting was that something or someone had moved her to tears and definitely not in a good way. She was crying her eyes out back at the carnival and while it had died down when she knew well enough that crying like that on the bus was a social faux pas and that it would only make her more sad.

Now we were back at Ashton's penthouse and standing in the foyer while Vivian disappeared into her room. I was pacing the floor right now while Luke just watched me as I went.

"Should I follow her," I asked him, stopping in my tracks. When he shook his head, I continued making my way around the room. "I really think she needs some company right now, like a sisterly companion or something."

"Fiona," he sighed, "you're brilliant, but I think she just needs to ride this one out. You don't even know what it is that's making her upset."

"Yeah, I don't," I said. "But how will I find out if I don't even ask?"

With that, I turned for the doorway leading out to the corridor where her room was located. When I finally reached her door, I pushed it open to find her lying face down on her bed in the same clothes she wore out to the carnival. Her hair was disheveled and all over the place, hanging so that I couldn't see any part of her face, but I didn't have to. I could still hear her sniffling softly.

"Viv," I called out to her cautiously, testing out the nickname I came up with. "Is there anything I could get you?"

She answered my question with an indecipherable mumble. After an hour or so passed, she lifted her head up, exposing her face to me. Being Ashton's sister, I had somehow idealized her to be perfectly pretty without any heavy makeup, but all of the crying she did, there was tons of it running down her face.

"Get me my ex-boyfriend's head on a stick," she said with a hopeful glint in her eyes as if just because I was a screw-up, I was also capable of murder.

I sighed. "I guess he was one hell of a heartthrob, wasn't he? They always are."

She sniffled and nodded in agreement. "Yeah," she said in a low voice. "I guess he was, that's why it hurts so much. Your heart can only throb for so long before it finally breaks."

After that, there was a pregnant pause of silence between us. In the silence, I took it as an opportunity to look around her room. Because she didn't permanently live here, it was still quite plain, but something about it screamed out her name to me. Besides all of the basic furnishings of a guest room, the only decorations were the mountain of shopping bags from when we went to the mall, there was a poster hanging up on the wall behind the headrest of her bed depicting a shirtless young man in black and white that appeared to be part of some ad campaign. If course, I wasn't clear about what it was or who he was because roughly half of the poster was torn off of the wall, especially the face part.

"That's him," Vivian said, letting me know that she caught me looking. "David Montgomery. He wanted to be a model, so Ashton hooked him up to get a shoot when Baldwin Industries teamed up with some fancy watchmaker to produce some sexy, high tech, luxury watch."

I looked at her in awe as it sunk in that she had been with such successful men, the closest I've ever gotten to that was kissing the lead star in the school musical on the top of the bleachers during the homecoming game.

Vivian sighed and fell backwards onto the bed. "Anyway, he broke up with me because of what I did to get sent to prison. Which wasn't even that bad, just getting wasted at a party that got busted by cops."