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foreveralwaysanauthor · 1 month

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The Stories That Shaped Us

March 13, 2024

Notes - When I said I would be done by the end of the week, I genuinely thought it would take that long to work through everything, but here we are! I finished it all late last night, and it's finally here!

Our history is a beautiful medley of memories that has been perfected over time.

Warm, tan hands ran up and down arms covered in goosebumps, encouraging the flesh to warm as emerald eyes peered through a frost-covered window. A disgruntled sigh breathed heat against the glass, creating fog in the space that a thin sleeve had once cleared. Those same emerald eyes rolled behind rounded glasses as a hand reached up and cleared a spot on the window once more. Why she even bothered to look outside was beyond her - she would only see the same thick blanket of snow she had minutes prior. Despite this knowledge, however, tired eyes scoured for any semblance of the street underneath the nor’easter’s grip on the state the young brunette called home.

Nor’easters weren’t unheard of for February as it was still winter, but nobody in a snowy region liked to hear the word tossed around so close to the turn of spring. Two days earlier, most of the northeastern states and parts of Canada had experienced what they would all call a “winter heatwave.” However, those clear skies, temperatures just grazing sixty degrees, and people donning their favorite pair of shorts as they walked through town were long gone as thick, gray clouds kept the area cold with snow.

They had known the storm was coming days before it arrived. California had gotten nailed by not only rain but a rather ungodly amount of snow for the typically toasty state. Rain had battered the unsuspecting state, producing a layer of black ice on more than one city as the temperatures dropped and snow began flurrying to the ground. Not long after the snow had begun in her home state, Mick had called to laugh about the awful drivers who chose to brave the unusual storm, resulting in a many-miles-long traffic jam on many of the state’s biggest highways. Now, Vivien wasn’t laughing.

Typically, a nor’easter wasn’t a huge deal in many New England states. Those living in Connecticut would open their front doors hoping to see a dusting, only to find out they had at least eight inches on their hands; Rhode Islanders would laugh as they brushed off their cars and headed to work; Massachusetts residents - or Massholes as they so proudly called themselves - would start cussing at the sky before slipping on a coat and hoping the roads to the nearest Dunkin’s were open as they shoveled out their cars; people from Vermont and New Hampshire would just be grateful they hadn’t gotten as much as Massachusetts or the Maine seaboard; and those living in Maine would simply put on a thicker coat and go about their day as though nothing had happened. Small nor’easters bringing five to ten inches of snow were common, and despite everyone hating them equally as much as the next person, those living in the affected states had learned to adapt over the years.

This storm, on the other hand, was different.

The day before, while working on a quiz for her robotics class, Vivien saw the shadow of snowflakes flurrying down across her desk. She soon regretted looking up from her papers as she saw thick white flakes sailing through the air, an inch or so already blanketing the flimsy branches of the seasonally dead shrubs outside the window. By the time the bell rang and signaled her release from the prison named Winnisquam Regional, the air had turned frigid, and a few inches of thick, slushy snow had begun to coat the ground. As her father had to work late to ensure everything was locked away before they took the next week off, Vivien got a ride home from Riven. Her stay at home didn’t last long as she bagged up some clothes and said a quick farewell to her siblings before dashing back out to the Miata she relentlessly teased Riven for buying a year prior.

After grabbing snacks at Cumberland Farms and picking up his order from the pizza place across from the end of his street, Riven drove them halfway down Whipple Avenue and pulled into the driveway, parking his car in the garage with a relieved sigh. After gathering their belongings and making sure Vivien sent a text to her family’s group chat to remind them that she was spending the weekend at Riven’s house to work on some new song ideas, they made their way inside and set up camp on the living room couch.

By the time Riven’s father returned home from his job at the police station, half of their respective pizzas were gone, and both Vivien and Riven were singing along to Hamilton as it blared over the speakers. They talked for a while about the torrent of snow that had begun to attack the area before the man snagged some pizza and headed for his office to touch base with the local plow companies. After playing video games for a few hours, Riven and Vivien made their way to Riven’s bedroom, closing the door so they wouldn’t bother the auburn-haired nineteen-year-old’s father as they worked on writing songs.

A few hours went by with little to no progress - as had been the norm for their writing once the school year and winter season took control of their lives - but they found it impossible to beat themselves up over it as they had spent the majority of their time together goofing off and listening to other bands for inspiration. Around seven, a knock on the door encouraged them to leave the room in favor of joining Riven’s father for ice cream and a movie. Anthony - or Tony, as he preferred to be called - had set up a makeshift ice cream sundae bar on the kitchen counter and handed the kids each a bowl as they followed him into the room.

After watching an old Pixar movie and suffering through the ten o’clock news, Riven pulled Vivien off the living room couch and wished his dad a good night before dragging his best friend down the hall to his room, hoping to escape before the eleven o’clock news started. If they had stuck around much longer, they would have been stuck listening to the same reports for another half-hour. After a while of mindlessly playing Minecraft and taking turns annihilating each other at Mario Kart, the two fell asleep while watching YouTube videos together.

It wasn’t the first - and, frankly, wouldn’t be the last - time Vivien fell asleep in Riven’s cushy, king-sized, memory foam mattress with her head pillowed above his heartbeat. She had found peace in his presence for as long as she could remember. More than once, she had claimed Riven’s oversized mattress as her own after long, tiring practices and only left when Riven or his father dared to wake her in the morning. The pale blue house on Whipple Avenue was a place of refuge from her chaotic life - an escape from her siblings, school drama, and, well, pretty much anything. If she needed a break, she knew she could find it within the cream and teal walls.

Riven’s bedroom was his sanctuary, and as she spent more and more time there after school or practice, it became Vivien’s sanctuary as well. The pair had spent hours together there, working on school projects, writing songs for their band to work on, creating fantasy worlds for Dungeons and Dragons, and playing video games until the sun began to peer through the curtains. She had many fond memories of the Hewlett home from over the years - game nights, Nerf gun fights, late-night movie marathons, and impromptu band practices in the basement. However, it didn’t matter how old they got; their nights would still end the same - the pair passed out in bed without either one having the forethought to set an alarm for the morning.

The first thing Vivien had done when she woke up in the frigid abyss that was Riven’s bedroom was check how the outside world looked. Needless to say, she regretted bothering to look. Ice frosted the window shut, but she didn’t need to open it to see just how badly the storm had settled over their small town. Deciding to go on Riven’s computer while he slept, Vivien found the internet to be dreadfully slow, so as she used her cell phone’s hotspot as WiFi, she looked up outages in the area. Comcast, the only internet provider for their area, was down, as was most of the electricity in several states. By the time Riven had awoken, she had gone back to playing Minecraft to distract herself from the possibility of being trapped inside due to the storm.

Upon making their way to the living room to grab something for breakfast, they overheard the news reporter talking about mass power outages and the absurd amount of snow that had fallen overnight. Six inches had fallen overnight alone, bringing the total snowfall to a whopping ten inches. Closings lined the bottom of the screen, and even though her school wasn’t open that particular Friday - something about closing grades for report cards - Vivien smiled as she watched Winnisquam Regional appear alongside its elementary and middle school companions.

Swiping the fog from the living room window once again while Riven and his dad made breakfast in the other room, she snickered to herself and watched some of the neighborhood children run outside in their Michelin-Man-esque snow gear. All too soon, they would be shoving each other into the snow, building forts, or pelting each other with slushy, ice-filled snowballs. It felt like forever since Vivien had done anything like that. Sure, when Mick lived in the area during the winters, they spent afternoons in the snow at the older girl’s house with the whole extended family, and when they both had the chance, Riven would take her to the park, where they would spend hours sledding and just enjoying each other’s company. Still, nothing could beat the feeling of having a snow day and having the chance to mess around with the other kids. Nowadays, even her siblings couldn’t find the time to hang out like they used to.

Vivien sighed. In a way, she sort of missed them being practically up her ass all the time.

“Over five hundred thousand residents have been left without power as town, county, and state workers struggle to clear the streets for emergency personnel and recovery crews,” the monotonous Jack Wu - the only news reporter on their local station who seemed to never smile despite the cameras - said for what felt like the thousandth time since they had turned the television on that morning. If it had been up to her or Riven, they would be watching something else; however, it was Riven’s dad who had control of the remote as he had beaten them to the living room that morning.

Turning her attention to the television, Vivien watched as the ever-smiling Ciara Knight gestured to map behind her while she read off the teleprompter, “Parts of the coast observed wind gusts of sixty miles an hour or more. Parts of Cheshire, Hillsborough, and Rockingham Counties have the most accumulation thus far. Still, as the storm moves further north, those in the middle counties - Sullivan, Merrimack, Belknap, and Strafford - should expect to be inside for a while.”

“How much are they looking at, Ciara?” Jack Wu asked.

“Anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four inches by tonight, Jack,” Ciara answered.

Vivien rolled her eyes at the thought and forced herself to tune out the television as a clang followed by a deep scraping noise drew her attention back to the window. The thick blanket of snow would have been blinding if it weren’t for the gray clouds overhead, and Vivien sighed as she watched a plow truck shove a load of thick powder onto the end of Riven’s driveway as it drove down the dead-end street. With a frustrated huff, she mused, “Why do they always feel the need to make other people shovel up their mess?”

“Because, unless it’s their house, they don’t really give a shit,” Riven claimed as he handed his brunette friend a cup of steaming chocolate.

“Actually,” Riven’s father, Anthony, began as he entered the room with plates balanced precariously on his arms, “the head of the parks department offers to come by and clear us out every year, but I turn them down.”

“How come?” Vivien asked as she and Riven found their way to the dining table. “You always complain about the snow.”

“I clear our driveway as an excuse to help the elderly in the neighborhood,” Anthony claimed. “If I don’t help them out, they’ll try to do it themselves.”

“Plus,” Riven started with a smirk, “it gives him a reason to talk to his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Vivien echoed as a grin tugged at her lips. Anthony sighed, an exasperated look on his face as Vivien turned her attention toward him and asked, “You’re cheating on my dad?”

Riven’s father chuckled, a fond shake of his head coming with it as he recalled the age-old joke that ran between their families. What had started years prior as a misunderstanding when the two men attended a “Mommy and Me” class together to make sure they both knew how to fix Vivien’s unruly hair for performances had evolved into a running joke about the two men being in a years-long relationship. The situation was only made worse when Vivien and Riven found out that common-law marriages were a thing, and the pair subsequently resorted to teasing their respective parents on the matter.

“No, I’m not,” Anthony said before taking a sip of his coffee and leveling his gaze on his son. “And, for the record, Diana isn’t my girlfriend. She’s just Miss Patsy’s caretaker.”

“But you can’t say you don’t like talking to her when you’re over there,” Riven said as he placed his cup of hot chocolate on the table.

“I don’t have much of a choice, son,” Anthony sighed. “She practically lives with the Warrens.”

Figuring he was getting nowhere with his father, Riven turned to Vivien and said, “She comes out onto the porch and flirts with Dad while he shovels the walkway.”

“Oh yeah?”

Despite the hint of a smile beneath the man’s salt-and-pepper, Tony-Stark-esque facial hair, Anthony groaned, “Don’t encourage him, Vivien.”

Riven nodded, decidedly ignoring his father as he smiled at his closest friend, “Sometimes, she’ll invite him in for cocoa or cookies, even if the Warrens aren’t home from the senior center yet.”

“Ooh,” Vivien vocalized, turning her glittering green eyes on the older man across the table. “Get some, Uncle Tony.”

“I don’t ‘get’ anything other than what she offers,” Anthony claimed, ignoring his son’s laugh at his choice of words. “I don’t have any plans to start another relationship.”

“Because you’re still married to my dad?” Vivien asked somewhat rhetorically.

Instead of letting his father answer, Riven spoke, “No, he just turns every woman down because they’re not my mom.”

“Really?” Vivien wondered as she tossed a french fry into her mouth.

Anthony shrugged, “What can I say? I made a vow.”

“To a woman who’s been dead since I was six,” Riven tacked on. When his father sighed, Riven leaned forward and said, “Come on, Dad. We both know she would have wanted you to move on and be happy again.”

“Riven, we’ve been over this before,” Anthony said as he reached across the table to take his son’s hand. “I am happy, bud. I have you, and that’s more than enough for me.”

“But don’t you miss having a relationship like that?” Riven pressed as he squeezed his dad’s fingers.

“Not particularly, no,” Anthony chuckled. “What your mother and I had was the best I could ever hope to have, and whilst I appreciate you giving me your blessing to move on, I loved your mother far more than I will ever be able to love another woman. It wouldn’t be right for me to move on with someone I couldn’t give my heart to.”

As Anthony released his son’s hand and returned to the food before him, Vivien observed him for a moment before muttering, “I want a love that deep.”

“And I’m sure you’ll find it, if you haven’t already,” Anthony claimed with an encouraging smile.

“Speaking of,” Riven began, finally removing his gaze from his father as he turned to Vivien and asked, “how’s your boyfriend doing?”

“He’s good,” Vivien said. “We talked a bit when Mick called the other day. He said he was worried about us, but that he wouldn’t be able to Facetime until tomorrow.”

“Why couldn’t he do it today?” Anthony asked.

Vivien’s gaze flickered to her plate before lifting again as she admitted, “He got his phone taken away until tomorrow.”

Riven’s eyebrows lifted, “Are you sure we’re talking about the same Royce here?”

“Sadly, we are.”

“Since when does that boy get grounded?” Anthony questioned. “I’ve met him only a handful of times, and even I can tell that’s a rare occurrence.”

Vivien sighed, leaning back in her chair as she recalled, “Some dickheads at their school were harassing Bentley for his dyslexia, calling him names and all that bullshit. Royce overheard them and took things into his own hands.”

“What did he do?” Riven asked with a disbelieving laugh.

“One of them ‘tripped’ down the stairs, and the other one was sent to the nurse’s office with a black eye,” Vivien claimed.

Anthony hummed approvingly, nodding as he gathered his dishes and said, “Good for him.”

“I would’ve done worse,” Riven admitted.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Anthony stated as he made his way to the kitchen.

Chuckling at the older man’s statement as he disappeared around the corner, Vivien said, “I would have too, but Bentley said he saw it happen and that Royce scared a bunch of kids.”

“Good!” Riven said. “I hope someone recorded it or something because, damn, I would pay big bucks to see Royce lose his shit.”

“You and me both,” Vivien snickered. “But, anyway, even though Royce didn’t start the fight, Miles took his phone because he knew that, if Royce wanted to, he could’ve torn those kids apart verbally and sent them to the principal’s office for what they did.”

“I mean, yeah,” Riven agreed, “but what’s the fun in that?”

Raising his voice enough to be heard over the rushing water of the kitchen sink, Anthony asked, “How are they both? Royce didn’t break his hand, did he?”

“No,” Vivien said, shaking her head despite knowing the older man couldn’t see her. “He has some badly bruised knuckles, but that’s all. And Bentley says things have calmed down a bit. I guess the kids got in-school suspension or something.”

“Good,” the man stated.

Vivien chuckled, lowering her voice as she nudged Riven with her elbow, “Reminds me of the time you went nuts on Levi for me.”

Riven sent her a look begging her to shut up as he muttered, “First of all, I didn’t ‘go nuts’ on anybody, and, second, shut the fuck up.”

With a roll of her eyes, Vivien smiled and said, “Yeah, sure, whatever you say, dipshit.”

“Half-pint,” Riven shot back.

A look of disgust flashed across Vivien’s face as she squinted at him from the corner of her eyes. “Wrong name.”

“I know.”

“Dick.”

Riven snorted as he picked up his drink, brushing off the girl’s comment as he asked, “Why do you always react like that when I call you anything other than Pipsqueak?”

“Because Pipsqueak has an emotional attatchment to it,” Vivien explained with a shrug as she pushed out her chair and grabbed her plate. “Everything else is just you teasing me or calling me short, which, by the way, I’m really not.”

“Are too,” Riven argued as he placed his plate atop hers with a grin. “What are you again; four-eleven?”

“I’m five-eight, and you know it, dickhead. You’re just freakishly tall.”

“And you’re freakishly small, Pipsqueak.”

With a beaming smile she didn’t bother fighting off, Vivien chirped, “There it is.”

Anthony chuckled, patting the young girl on the shoulder as they crossed paths in the doorway of the kitchen, “I’m surprised you’re not sick of him calling you that, nugget.”

Glancing over her shoulder as she began spraying down the plates she had brought from the table, Vivien said, “It’s pretty much the only thing I let him call me apart from my name.”

Allowing the girl to finish the dishes he used to insist she never needed to do at their home, Anthony directed his attention to his son as he leaned against the archway between the rooms and asked, “Why do you call her that? She’s not even that much shorter than you.”

“He’s been calling me that since we were little,” Vivien answered.

“Actually,” Riven began, “I first called you that on the day we met.”

“Really?” Vivien asked as she turned off the water and dried her hands on the tea towel dangling from the oven door handle.

“You don’t remember?” Riven asked in astonishment.

“I had just turned four!”

“This from the girl who remembers watching her parents get married when she was three,” Anthony chimed in.

“Not helping, Uncle Tony,” Vivien groaned.

“Wasn’t trying to,” Anthony chuckled, placing a hand on the girl’s head as he pushed off of the archway and headed back to the living room to watch the news.

Riven stood, following Vivien as she wordlessly headed toward the hallway, and asked, “Do you seriously not remember the day we met?”

Vivien shrugged as she pushed open the door to Riven’s room, the noncommittal act forcing a disbelieving noise out of Riven’s throat. Turning back toward her friend, the brunette admitted, “I can piece together some bits and pieces here and there, but not everything. I don’t have your Doctor-Spencer-Reid type of brain, Riven. I can’t just pull memories out of my ass.”

Riven rolled his eyes as he kicked a shoe in front of the door to keep it open. His ability to recall things at the drop of a hat had been a source of entertainment in recent days due to Jade explaining that his nearly photographic memory wasn’t as normal as he thought it was, but he wouldn’t go nearly as far as saying he could compare to the doctor from Criminal Minds. Dropping into the office chair his dad had helped him buy years prior, Riven questioned, “Well, what do you remember?”

With a chuckle, Vivien said, “Punching some kid in the dick.”

Riven snickered, the fond memory surfacing in his mind as he asked, “Anything else?”

A smile tugged at Vivien’s lips as he perched herself on the end of Riven’s bed, “Meeting Coach Barlow and dragging you around with me all day.”

Smiling at his long-time best friend, Riven said, “Okay, yeah, I remember that too, but there was a lot more to it than that.”

“Well, in that case,” Vivien began, shifting so that she sat cross-legged on Riven’s bed, “enlighten me, all-knowing one.”

Hazel eyes rolled as Riven shook his head, sure the girl’s quip was meant to get a rise out of him and divert his attention elsewhere. However, as he took in the genuine intrigue in Vivien’s pine-colored gaze, Riven’s teasing remark about her height died on his lips. Allowing a fond smile to tug at the corner of his lips, Riven relaxed in his spinning chair and said, “Maybe I will.”

The Purple Finch Ice and Arts Center had not been easy to find. The fifty-minute drive from the O’Brian home to the middle of nowhere four towns over had been… entertaining, to say the least. With a practically bouncing four-year-old and two squealing two-year-olds in the backseat of their rust-speckled, in-desperate-need-of-repair 2001 Ford Explorer, the ride felt as though it took twice as long. However, as they pulled into the parking lot of the center and the children in the backseat got a good look at the large building, the car became relatively quiet, and Damien and Chelsea let out sighs of relief. After breaking the wagon stroller out of the trunk and buckling their twins into the seats, Damien hoisted their eldest daughter onto his hip and followed his wife toward the door as she wheeled the twins onward.

The car locked behind them as Damien tucked his keys into his pocket, his attention drawn to the excited child in his arms. Vivien had been begging to take figure skating lessons ever since the neighbors’ daughter, Makana, showed her a movie called Ice Princess, and now that the oldest of their children was finally old enough to be signed up for figure skating lessons, Damien drank in her starstruck expression with fervor. As though his little girl knew she was being watched, Vivien turned to her father with a brilliant smile and brought her arms around his neck before pressing a kiss to his cheek and thanking him for what could have easily been the millionth time since they told her where they were going that day.

As Damien took the door from his wife and stepped into the lobby, he watched as Vivien’s sea-green eyes flickered around the large lobby from behind her purple, sparkly glasses, scanning for every minuscule bit of information they could find. She was always fascinated by new places, something she shared with her father, and Damien couldn’t bring it upon himself to avert his gaze as Vivien’s wide, glittering eyes darted from one object to the next. As the girl’s gaze locked on a raised platform where a group of teenage girls were observing a figure skating lesson through a wall of windows, she turned to her dad with a pleading expression, a hushed question tumbling out of her mouth in a quick, nonsensical jumble.

Chuckling at his daughter’s enthusiasm, Damien nodded, lowering himself and his daughter to the ground before taking her by the hands and informing her to stay where her parents could see her. Vivien quickly agreed to the terms, wrapping her arms around her father in a quick, grateful embrace before darting off to watch the skaters. With a chuckle, Damien watched the older girls quickly accept Vivien into their watch party, a short blonde helping the small child balance on the bottom rail of the metal guardrail many of them were leaning against. With Vivien contently distracted, Damien turned his attention to the front desk, where his wife was discussing their options with the twenty-something worker behind the counter.

Meanwhile, Vivien’s eyes glowed a honeydew green as she took in the performance before her. Leaning as far over the railing as the bar against her chest would allow, her mouth fell open as a tall, raven-haired boy tossed his red-headed partner into the air, catching her in his arms only moments later. A stunned noise of surprise left Vivien’s lips, making the blonde girl behind her laugh, “They’re good, aren’t they?”

“Uh-huh!” Vivien vocalized. “Who are they?”

“Kirsten and Ryan Matthews,” another skater answered. Vivien peered up at the boy, his fluffy, onyx hair falling close to his eyes as he met Vivien’s gaze with his own dark, nearly black irises. “They’re siblings and they’re training for sectionals.”

“Like in Ice Princess!” Vivien squealed. “Are they gonna go to the Olympics?”

The blonde keeping Vivien from falling - Cleo or Chloe, Vivien already couldn’t remember - laughed, “Only if they’re really good.”

“They still need a lot of work to make the Olympics,” the boy said dismissively. “After Kirsten’s fall last year, she’s been struggling to land her jumps properly.”

Vivien looked up at the boy on her right, her nose wrinkled in frustration as she snipped, “What are you talking about? They both looked great.”

The blonde behind her snorted, patting Vivien’s bony shoulder as she smiled, “Jake’s just talking about what the judges will say. When you try out for the Olympics, you need to be perfect - the judges will see every little misstep they make and take points away for them.”

“That’s not nice,” Vivien muttered as she watched the skaters on the ice converse with their coach.

“Sadly,” the brunette skater standing on Vivien’s left began, “the judges aren’t paid to be nice to us, half-pint.”

The blonde quickly jumped in, finding Vivien’s gaze with a smile as she spoke, “Don’t let that stop you from trying, though. If you put in the effort and find that you love skating, it won’t matter to you what everyone else has to say.”

“Says you, Chlo,” the brunette said. “How many trophies in that case have your name on them, again?”

“That doesn’t matter, Ava,” Chloe sighed. “All that matters is that we love what we do and we put our hearts into our performances.”

Vivien glanced between the three skaters, taking in Jake’s resigned shake of his head and Ava’s teasing grin before tipping her head back to look at Chloe as she asked, “Can I see your trophies?”

“They’re not all mine, Vivien,” Chloe said with a grin, “but yeah, knock yourself out. They’re over there by the dance studio.”

Following the girl’s manicured fingers toward a glowing case filled with various trophies and medals, Vivien thanked the blonde before jumping down from the railing and slipping away from the group. Glancing down the hallway to ensure nobody would run her over, Vivien bolted across the hall to the trophy case, keeping her fingers away from the glass as she looked over the awards from various competitions. Despite only being able to make out a few of the words on each award due to her father teaching her how to read early, Vivien found herself enamored with the display. As her emerald eyes scanned over pictures of large groups of hockey players and figure skaters alike, a pair of barking laughs drew her attention away from the display case and onto a door labeled Studio 2.

Vivien took a curious step toward the door before glancing back over her shoulder at her parents. Finding them occupied with boring adult conversation as her dad talked with some people she couldn’t see beyond the counter and her mom dealt with her younger siblings, Vivien figured she would only poke her head into the room before returning to their sights once again. Making her way to the room, Vivien slowly opened the door and poked her head inside, finding a small room filled with mirrors and ballet barres. The room was nearly empty, apart from the three boys still lingering inside, and Vivien figured they were just messing around, but just as she was about to close the door once more, she heard one of the boys laugh again, drawing her attention back to them.

The youngest of the group, an auburn-haired boy who looked to be around the same age as Vivien’s friend and neighbor, Mickie, jumped, grabbing for something in the tallest boy’s hands, “It’s not funny, Gabe! I need those!”

The elder two boys - a brunet and a blond who had to have been at least ten or eleven - laughed as the tall blond stretched his arm as high as it could go and taunted, “Then, why don’t you grab them yourself?”

“Or get your mommy to buy you a new pair?” the brunet boy teased, laughing as his friend tossed him the item. “Oh, wait,” the boy began mockingly, “nevermind.”

The smaller boy looked up at them with wide eyes, hurt flooding his face as he took in the boy’s words. However, he didn’t get the chance to argue as the blond boy cackled, “It would be kind of hard for her to send you anything from heaven, wouldn’t it?”

The brunet tossed the object to his friend as the younger boy jumped with a gasp, allowing Vivien to catch a glimpse of the item. Her eyes widened as she realized they were tossing around the younger boy’s glasses. As the auburn-haired boy jumped once more, scrambling hopelessly for his glasses as the older boys threw them back and forth out of his grasp, Vivien shoved the door to the dance studio open and marched inside, pushing her glittery glasses further up her nose bridge and pushing the sleeves of her Care Bear sweater up to her elbows. She had already been ready to step in when she heard them teasing the boy about his mom, but she couldn’t just stand by while they were throwing around his glasses. She knew how upset her mom had been when she broke her glasses on the playground months prior; she didn’t want the boy’s parents to be upset with him if they broke, and it hadn’t been his fault.

Just as the blond tossed the younger boy’s glasses to his friend, Vivien swung her leg around and sent a swift kick directly into the older boy’s shin, forcing him to bend over and grab his leg with a howl of pain. As the brunet caught the glasses, his taunting smile quickly disappeared as Vivien’s rage-filled, emerald irises turned on him, and her tightly wound fist came into contact with her target. As the boy’s moment of shock and confusion culminated in a high-pitched, pain-riddled shriek, Vivien snatched the glasses from his hand and grabbed the auburn-haired boy’s hand, pulling him behind her as she scurried toward the door. Once she was sure the boy had left the room behind her, she tugged him toward where her parents and siblings were sitting around a table, signing paperwork.

Pushing him under the lip of the table, behind the cover of the wagon her twin siblings were playing in, Vivien met the boy’s wide, hazel eyes with a grin as she scooted into the gap between him and her dad’s chair. After giving his glasses a thorough inspection for cracks or scratches and wiping the lenses on the fabric of her shirt, Vivien placed the boy’s glasses on his face and pushed his hair away from his eyes before saying, “There you go. All better now.”

Bewildered, the boy glanced between the girl’s eyes before softly stammering, “Thank you… I-I think.”

“You’re welcome,” Vivien chirped before settling back into place beside the older boy. Realizing she never properly introduced herself, Vivien held out a hand, her handmade friendship bracelet from Mickie glistening in the fluorescent lights above as she spoke, “My name is Vivien. I’m four.”

“I’m Riven,” the boy admitted, hesitantly latching onto the girl’s tiny hand and allowing her to shake it. “I’ll be seven next month.”

“That’s cool,” Vivien mused. As the toes of her shoes tapped together, sending flashes of pink and purple across the soles of her sneakers, Vivien looked up at her newly acquired friend, “Why were those boys being mean to you?”

Riven’s eyes fell to the floor, minutely following the lights of Vivien’s shoes as he said, “’Cause I don’t have a momma anymore.”

Vivien’s head tipped to the side, “How come?”

“She went to heaven,” Riven claimed. “She was hurt in a car crash.”

“Oh,” Vivien said with a nod. Though she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, she took his hand in hers and smiled reassuringly as she said, “I have two mommies. Now that we’re friends, you can borrow one if you want.”

Riven found Vivien’s eyes before leaning forward to look between the girl’s parents in confusion. “Wait, are they not your parents?”

“They are,” Vivien said, “but my mommy couldn’t have me, so my auntie had me and gave me to her as a present.”

Finding himself smiling despite his confusion, Riven asked, “Like, for Christmas?”

“No, silly! For my birthday,” Vivien giggled. Then, after a moment of thought, she said, “But my daddy says I’m a gift from God, so I guess it’s kind of like Christmas.”

“Does that make you baby Jesus?” Riven asked with a snicker.

Appearing thoroughly miffed at the suggestion, Vivien’s nose scrunched as she argued, “I am not a baby!”

“No, but if it’s like Christmas, and you were the baby,” Riven began, “that makes you baby Jesus.”

Riven watched in amusement as Vivien’s face contorted, shifting from confusion to astonishment at the revelation to thoughtful. Then, he fought the urge to laugh as Vivien grumbled, “I hope they didn’t put me in a horse’s feed box like they did to baby Jesus.”

Vivien watched as the boy beside her snorted, a laugh forcing its way through his lips before he quickly smothered it with a hand. Glad she had been able to make him laugh, Vivien joined him briefly before he asked, “So, Vivien, what are you here for?”

With a shrug, Vivien claimed, “I’m gonna be a figure skater like Casey Carlyle.”

“Who’s Casey Carlyle?” Riven wondered aloud.

“She’s the Ice Princess,” Vivien claimed as though the boy should have known better. “I want to dance on ice in pretty dresses like she does.”

Although the girl’s response hadn’t actually answered his question, Riven found himself nodding, “I’m a figure skater, but I don’t wear dresses.”

Vivien looked the boy up and down before meeting his gaze with a blank stare, “Good.”

“What; you don’t think I’d look good in a dress?” Riven joked, nudging the girl’s arm with his elbow.

“No,” Vivien shook her head adamantly. “It’s just that you don’t sit like a lady, so you’d have to wear shorts under your dresses all the time.”

Riven glanced down at his criss-crossed legs and the brunette’s before saying, “You’re not sitting like a lady either.”

Vivien’s legs quickly straightened, one ankle placed over the other as she looked up at her friend with a cocky smirk, “Now I am.”

Chuckling at the younger girl, Riven stuck his tongue out at her, watching as her eyes widened, and she followed suit, blowing raspberries his way. The pair stopped as Vivien’s father peered under the table curiously, but as the man smiled and briefly joined them, the pair lit up, sharing wide-eyed smiles as they realized the adult didn’t mind their antics. However, as Vivien’s parents pushed out their chairs and stood, the young duo put their conversation aside and crawled out from under the table, Vivien dusting off her pants before taking Riven’s hand and tugging him along behind her parents as they followed a tall man through the lobby.

Riven didn’t miss the way the girl’s eyes flitted around the room, scanning for any sign of the two boys from earlier, but he was quick to reassure her in a hushed voice, “They won’t bug us anymore.”

Vivien’s gaze shifted away from the hallway and onto her new friend, a look of concern evident in her eyes, “How do you know?”

“We’re with grown-ups,” Riven said, brushing off her concern with ease. “They won’t mess with us if we’re with grown-ups, or else they’ll get in trouble. Plus, you’re here. You’ll protect me, right?”

“Yeah, I promise,” Vivien nodded, taking in the boy’s words as she began swinging their joined hands between them. “I’ll stay with you forever.”

The pair followed the adults down a long hallway of doors with various labels, Riven pointing out different rooms to Vivien in a hushed voice as the brunette looked around with genuine interest. After passing a set of locker rooms at the end of the hallway, Vivien’s father ushered his daughter and her new companion into the chilled skating arena before closing the door behind them. As Vivien looked around in wonder, Riven smiled, lightly guiding her toward where his dad was talking amiably with his coach. Taking his father’s hand in his free one, Riven introduced his new friend, smiling as his dad crouched before them and held out a hand to the small girl.

His coach was quick to follow suit, kneeling on the padded floor with a smile as he shook Vivien’s hand, “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Vivien. My name is Coach Barlow; I’m Riven’s teacher.”

Vivien smiled as the man released her significantly smaller hand, “Are you gonna be my teacher too?”

Riven’s dad spoke up, “You’ll probably be with the younger kids, sweetheart.”

Riven was quick to shake his head as he argued, “No, she’s staying with me, Papa.”

Coach Barlow chuckled as he found Riven’s hazel eyes, “Oh yeah? Is this your new skating partner, Riven?”

Riven dutifully nodded, “Yup.”

The two adults shared a look before Coach Barlow glanced up at Vivien’s parents and spoke once more, “I’m sorry, kiddo, but you’ll have to start out in the beginner class. I teach the six-to-nine-year-olds.”

“But I know how to skate already,” Vivien argued, “my Mickie taught me how. Besides, I promised I’d stay with Riven forever.”

“You did, did you?” Riven’s father asked with a grin tugging at his lips.

Vivien nodded, but before her parents could step in to steer their daughter from the idea, Coach Barlow looked between the children and smiled as he said, “We’ll have to see how much you know, but Riven, are you sure you’d like her as a partner in the future? She’s just a pipsqueak compared to you.”

“Yeah,” Riven said with a shrug, glancing between his coach and his new friend with a proud smile, “but she’s my pipsqueak now.”

A smile tugged at Vivien’s lips as she took in Riven’s peaceful smile from her sprawled-out position on his bed. After adding her limited recollection of that day, she had allowed Riven to tell the story as he remembered it, letting him drift back and forth between the faithful storyteller and the boy who couldn’t help but add his thoughts on different things as he spoke. Though she couldn’t recall their little origin story in its entirety, snippets of memories came to her as her best friend retold their first meeting. Meeting her friend’s hazel eyes, Vivien said, “I remember that.”

“You do?” he questioned in return.

Vivien nodded as she hummed, “That’s the only reason I still let you call me ‘pipsqueak.’ If it hadn’t been for that day, I would have told you off years ago.”

“Really?” Riven asked.

Again, Vivien nodded, “Yeah. For a little while, I couldn’t stand it.”

Riven sighed, standing from his chair and maneuvering so that he sat beside Vivien’s head. As the girl rolled onto her back and smiled up at him, he brushed a few stray hairs away from her face and said, “You could have told me it bugged you. I would’ve stopped.”

“I know,” Vivien breathed, “but I didn’t want you to stop altogether, I was just sick of the rest of the older kids picking on me for being short.”

“They picked on you because of me?” Vivien shrugged, brushing off the question, but before she could say anything, Riven asked, “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter now, Riv,” Vivien chuckled as she pushed herself onto her elbows. “It was years ago, and they gave up when they saw it didn’t bother me. Besides, most of them don’t even skate anymore.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Riven pressed. “I could have made them stop sooner.”

“Again, I didn’t want you to stop calling me your pipsqueak just because of a few assholes,” Vivien admitted. “I mean, we’ve been through so much shit together since then that I can’t imagine you calling me anything else.”

Riven sighed, but as Vivien reached up, pushing the corners of his mouth up with her fingers, he allowed himself to smile. He shook his head and chuckled, “We have been through a lot, haven’t we?”

Vivien hummed, nodding with a smile, “Concerts, break-ups, competitions.”

“DnD campaigns, summer camp, exploring abandoned places,” Riven added.

With a breath of a laugh, Vivien added, “Don’t forget the operations, surgeries, and car accidents.”

Letting out a heavy sigh, Riven rubbed subconsciously at his left side. Though it had been years since he and Vivien had been thrown from his moped on their way home from band practice, the memory of that day still bothered him. It wasn’t often that he found himself unable to protect Vivien - something he liked to pride himself on - but when those rare moments occurred, he found it impossible to let go. Warm fingers pried Riven’s hand from his shirt, dragging his attention away from his thoughts as Vivien tucked her fingers into Riven’s hand.

“I’m sor-”

Vivien’s empty hand landed over Riven’s mouth as she shot him a knowing look, “No.” Riven gave a muffled apology through her fingers, and Vivien shook her head. “You’re not allowed to be sorry; it wasn’t your fault.”

With his free hand, Riven took Vivien’s wrist and brought it away from his mouth so he could say, “It was, and I’m allowed to feel bad about it.”

“No,” Vivien said in return. “I mean, yeah, you can feel bad all you want. I can’t tell you how to feel, but you’re not allowed to apologize for someone else’s poor judgment. The only time - and I mean the only time - I’ve ever let you apologize for something that wasn’t your fault was when I broke my wrist, and that was because you wouldn’t let me stop you.”

Taking in a breath as the memory of Vivien’s fractured wrist came to the forefront of his mind, Riven released her wrist with a wince, “I’ll never forget that day.”

“I’m sure you won’t, Doctor Hewlett,” Vivien said as her arm fell back to the blankets, hoping the remark would steer her longtime friend away from any lingering regrets he might have held from that day. Despite Riven’s minuscule grin, Vivien found herself frowning. “You know,” she began, “I think I was more upset that you kept your distance from me afterward than I was about the broken wrist.”

Riven’s brows lifted as he peered down at his friend, “You were?”

With a scoffed laugh and a roll of her eyes, Vivien nodded, “I wouldn’t have showed up in the middle of a thunderstorm if I wasn’t.”

Edwin Barlow wasn’t an easy coach by anyone’s definition. He pushed his skaters harder than most because he knew they had potential, knew they had it in them to do great things. Many skaters had come through the doors of the Purple Finch arena looking for him, but few stuck around through his grueling hours of training. Though he was great with children and helped shape them into adequate skaters for other coaches, it wasn’t often he found ones that he felt confident enough in to push toward greatness. Students came and went over his twenty-three years of teaching, but very few had Olympian-level potential.

That was until he found Riven Hewlett and his young partner, Vivien O’Brian.

From his first few weeks of one-on-one training with the boy, Edwin knew Riven could become something worth gold medals. The six-year-old had practiced with his parents since he could walk, skating on homemade rinks in their backyard or down at the frozen pond behind the playground at the elementary school, and his years of amateur practices had paid off. By the time Riven’s mother and father had signed him up for lessons with Coach Barlow, he was already capable of a handful of novice jumps and spins. For the first time in a long time, Edwin found himself wondering if there was a chance he was training a future Olympian.

Riven had been the coach’s pupil for just shy of a year before Vivien and her family came into the arena looking for a trainer. Initially brushing off the thought of adding the four-year-old to his ranks, Edwin found himself surprised by not only Riven’s immediate attachment to the child but also the girl’s skill on the ice. Riven pushed him to give the girl a chance, and while he was glad that he had, he hadn’t expected to see half of the talent he had. Vivien’s parents told him about how the girl had learned from an older child who lived down the street from them, but his attention was solely on the small girl who glided over the ice as though she owned it. Glancing down at the boy who had brought Vivien to him, Edwin knew then and there that he had a match made in heaven.

Truthfully, he hadn’t quite anticipated just how well the two would work together. As time progressed and the pair grew from nervous little children too hesitant to push outside of the routine that had been ingrained in their minds to pre-teens with creative choreographic ideas of their own, Edwin found himself bragging about them to anyone who would listen. The pair were still young, yes, but their skills on the ice far surpassed many others in their age bracket.

Just a week after Vivien’s tenth birthday, the duo approached their coach with an idea - switching their discipline from ice dancing to pair skating. Upon questioning their reasoning, Riven excitedly told their coach that they had found videos of the Sochi Olympics on YouTube and wanted to learn how to do lifts and throws like Russian gold medalists, Volosozhar and Trankov. Initially, Edwin was reluctant to allow the children he had grown to see as his own try anything more than the jumps and spins they had already worked so hard to perfect, but as Vivien’s pleading, puppy-dog eyes teamed up with Riven’s soft, hopeful smile, the coach found himself agreeing.

He started them off small, training them off the ice in simple, Group 1 lifts where Riven would lift Vivien with one hand under her armpit and the other holding her hand while she braced herself on his shoulder for balance. It didn’t take long for the pair to move onto the ice, perfecting the movement with ease before a half-hour had passed. Though they worked their way through different variations of the lift over the next couple of weeks, it became evident that Vivien and Riven could easily make their way onto the next type of lift.

By the next month, they had moved onto Group 2, where Riven would lift Vivien by her waist and hold her as high as he could while she held onto his wrists for support. Though Riven made it obvious that the lift was incredibly easy - their at-home efforts behind their coach’s back making it exceedingly easy for him to lift her above his head on the mats surrounding the rink - Edwin was wary about putting them on the ice. It was one thing for them to perform the lift on dry ground, but adding the harsh ice and the potential for other skaters to get in their way gave Edwin pause. The ten-year-old and her loyal, twelve-year-old companion were capable; they had proven that time and time again, but he just wasn’t quite sure if they should advance so quickly.

However, on the sunny afternoon that was the eleventh of October, he found he wasn’t given a choice in the matter. Edwin had left the children on a bench just outside of the rink to take a call in his office, telling them to practice a segment of their newest routine while he was out. There were plenty of others around - coaches, students, observant parents, people he knew he could trust to watch the children if need be. What he hadn’t accounted for, though, was the determination of two children who had been left to their own devices.

Once the door closed behind their coach, Vivien turned to Riven and tugged him to his feet, “Come on, let’s go!”

Grateful he had finished lacing his skates before his friend began yanking him toward the ice, Riven laughed, “Why are you in such a rush? We don’t even have our music ready yet.”

“Megalovania can wait,” Vivien brushed off with a wave of her hand, the video game music turned orchestral suite the pair had picked for their next competition being pushed aside for something far more entertaining. Turning to her friend as she stepped onto the ice, the brunette grinned mischievously, her braces gleaming in the fluorescent lighting surrounding the arena as she spoke, “Now that Coach is busy, we can finally practice our lifts on the ice.”

Riven seemed to hesitate as he glided toward his beaming friend, his eyes flickering toward the doorway through which their coach had disappeared. He knew deep down that if they were caught doing the one thing he asked them specifically not to do, they would be in his office quicker than they could utter an explanation. However, as his attention was drawn back to the girl before him, Riven found himself drawn to her excited smile and her piercing, emerald eyes, making it nearly impossible for him to argue. Instead, as Vivien reached out a hand, he found himself latching on with a smile, “Alright, but only once. I don’t feel like getting reamed by him or our parents.”

“Deal,” Vivien giggled, eagerly tugging her best friend further out on the ice and away from the group of four-to-five-year-olds who were training for a group performance they were going to be doing for the Christmas showcase.

The pair glided with ease across the ice, evading areas that the maintenance crew would be repairing at the end of the day as they found an area large enough to practice. After receiving a nod from her best friend, Vivien began skating backward toward him until Riven’s hands came to her waist. As Vivien pushed into his grasp, Riven began the loop lift they had practiced, bringing Vivien off of the ice and into the air as he extended his arms. Once he was sure of his grip, he pushed into the spins they needed to perform in order for the lift to qualify in a competition.

Entering into the second turn, Riven’s eyes caught a glimpse of a small child skating far too quickly in their direction. Letting out a noise of surprise, Riven stumbled as he tried to come to a halt, nearly tripping over the child as Vivien let out a shriek of surprise, her nails digging into Riven’s wrists. As one of the coaches yelled for the kid to stop, Riven stepped around them, his toe pick catching on a sharp divot in the ice that had been left by the high school’s hockey team. With a shout, Riven released his hold on Vivien’s waist as gravity claimed him, hoping the girl would be able to catch herself faster than he could. However, as he slammed to the ice, a dull thump followed by a groan echoed nearby, and Riven knew that his efforts had been in vain.

Pushing himself back up, Riven checked on the child, who had already taken off to their teacher, before sliding across the ice to Vivien, who had silently pushed herself onto her knees. Vivien stared blankly at the ice, seemingly unbothered by the patches of snow on her clothes and in her hair, and Riven frowned as he took in how her right hand gripped her left wrist as her left hand pushed against her shakily rising chest. Apart from her panicked breathing, reddened cheeks, and a faint, pink scratch on her forehead, Vivien appeared to be fine. Placing a hand on her shoulder as he knelt before her, Riven said, “I’m sorry, Pip. I would have run that kid over if I kept going, but I thought you would’ve landed if I let go.” Vivien shrugged minutely, more of a twitch than anything, as she sucked in a shuddering breath. Riven’s eyebrows knitted together as he leaned into the girl’s line of sight and asked, “Are you alright?”

Finally lifting her gaze from the ice, Vivien shook her head as she met Riven’s gaze. As Vivien removed her right hand from where it gripped her left wrist, Riven felt mildly relieved to see no gaping wounds or pooling blood, but his relief quickly dissipated as the ten-year-old breathed, “I can’t move my fingers.”

“What?” Riven breathed.

Vivien’s eyes flickered between her best friend and her limp wrist as she explained, “I tried to catch myself instead of just letting myself hit the ice, and when I fell, I heard a crunch.”

“A crunch?” Riven repeated slowly, a weight settling in his chest as realization sank into his skin.

Vivien’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded, “And now I can’t move my fingers.”

Riven instinctively reached for her arm, but stopped himself before his fingers graced her arm, taking her free hand instead, “Do you think your wrist is broken?”

Vivien shrugged, her mouth opening and closing a few times before she finally settled on shakily whispering, “I don’t know.”

The weight in Riven’s chest dropped to his stomach like an anchor, and as he looked around for an adult, a coach, someone more capable of handling both Vivien’s injury and his own rising panic, he found himself swallowing the thick lump that had begun to settle in his throat. Spotting Coach Cheryl Knight - a formal professional skater turned one-on-one coach for Vivien’s friend, Alexis Warren - Riven yelled out for the woman, stumbling over his words as he explained the situation and pleaded for her to find their coach as Vivien might have broken her wrist.

As the young coach took off, others began to swarm them, and Alexis was the first to take up the empty space beside Vivien as the young brunette held herself together far better than anyone seemed to think possible. It didn’t take long for Coach Barlow to rush into the arena, Coach Knight and both Riven and Vivien’s fathers close on his heels. Time seemed to fly as the growing crowd was pushed aside to make room for those in charge, but Riven refused to move as Vivien’s right hand clenched around his fingers, keeping him as close as their coach and fathers would allow.

Before long, Vivien’s arm was stabilized in an elastic bandage, and she was ushered out to the O’Brian family’s minivan. Riven, who had carried the girl’s belongings along with his own, helped her change out of her skates in the backseat, trying to listen to both their fathers’ hushed worries and Vivien’s soft singing as the radio played One Direction’s You & I. While he wanted nothing more than to listen to Vivien’s calm singing throughout the duration of the ride to the hospital, he couldn’t fight the urge to hear everything being divulged in the front seats. However, as they neared the hospital and Vivien softly asked him to stay with her, Riven found himself focused on helping his best friend as much as she would allow him to.

The emergency room was, thankfully, fairly empty, but they were still forced to sit in the waiting room until a nurse in kitten-covered scrubs called for Vivien to follow her. Riven pushed himself to his feet, ready to follow closely behind his friend and her father, but was stopped by his dad before he could get too far from the hard, plastic chairs. Vivien glanced over her shoulder at her friend, disappointment evident in her gaze, but it was quickly replaced by joy as her father asked the nurse if her brother could join them.

The nurse spared a quick glance toward Riven, her quick response dying on her tongue as she took in the boy’s expression, forcing her lips into a small smile. After receiving a nod, Riven dumped his belongings into the chair beside his dad and propelled himself toward the door, latching onto Vivien’s awaiting hand as she pulled him through the hallways of the hospital. Despite Vivien’s attempts to get something other than a nod or shaken head from her best friend, Riven remained silent as hospital staff came and went from the room they were brought to. When Vivien was taken to have some x-rays done, her father tried to reassure the boy that all would be fine and that Vivien was a tough girl, but Riven could only give short answers as he took in all that had happened.

Throughout the process of Vivien’s wrist being set and wrapped in a cast, Riven was silent yet allowed his best friend to keep his hand hostage as the nurse wrapped her arm in violet. Not long after, they were back in the parking lot, Vivien digging through the glove box of her parents’ minivan while Riven silently slid into the back seat, his eyes glued to the back of the driver’s seat headrest where he and Vivien had signed their names in Sharpie during a road trip to a competition. Vivien’s mom had tried for a week to get the writing out of the upholstery, but despite her best efforts, the childlike handwriting remained. Staring at the tiny stars replacing the dots in Vivien’s signature, Riven couldn’t help but feel like the worst best friend in the history of friendships.

Friends don’t break each other’s arms.

As the adults climbed into the car and Vivien settled into the bench seat beside Riven with a huff, muttering something about her cast under her breath, Riven felt his chest clench. For the next six or so weeks, Vivien would be stuck in a cast, and it was all his fault. As the car started, Vivien’s head slumped onto Riven’s shoulder, the girl’s chocolate hair pushed into Riven’s cheek as she asked her dad to play the One Direction CD she knew he kept in the car’s radio just for her. Riven peered down at Vivien in surprise as the girl began singing along to the music - how was she so calm?!

As the car pulled onto the street Riven and his father lived on, Vivien lifted her head from Riven’s shoulder and smiled, chirping excitedly about how many signatures she was going to get on her cast during the following weeks. The brunette’s voice faded into nothingness as Riven watched her ramble. It wasn’t until they pulled into the Hewlett family’s driveway that Riven realized, to his surprise and mild frustration, that Vivien seemed far from upset with him. If anything, she seemed almost happy to have fractured her wrist. Why was it that he was more upset about it than she was? She was the one with the broken wrist, yet she was smiling away while the person who hurt her sat beside her, fearing the possibility of hurting her more than he already had.

As his father pulled the sliding door open, Riven said a hasty goodbye to his skating partner and her father before hefting his bag of belongings onto his shoulder and practically running toward the front door of his home. He dug the spare key out of the mail slot by the front door and pushed his way into the house, closing the door behind him as his father stopped to talk to the people Riven left in the van. Stumbling through the house toward his room, Riven tossed his bag on the floor by the couch and sucked in a shuddering breath.

Throwing the door to his room open, Riven all but collapsed onto his mattress, running his hands through his hair until the icy digits came to rest against the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure how Vivien could be so calm; he was barely holding himself together, and he wasn’t even the one injured. If anything, Vivien should be wary of him, but instead, she was just as blasé about the injury as she had been when she attacked his bullies on the day they met.

It wasn’t long before Riven’s father came in with his son’s bag, depositing the duffel on the floor by Riven’s closet before sitting beside his son and placing a hand on his back. “She doesn’t blame you, y’know,” Anthony reassured his son, rubbing light circles on Riven’s back as he watched for some kind of reaction.

“She should,” Riven muttered, refusing to lift his gaze from the wooden floorboards he hoped would open up and swallow him whole. “I broke her arm.”

“It’s nobody’s fault that her arm broke,” Anthony contested softly. “You tripped trying to avoid hitting a kid, and both of you went down; there’s nothing to blame you for.”

“If I had seen the kid before-”

“Riven,” Anthony interrupted with a sigh as he knelt before his son, taking the twelve-year-old’s hands in one of his before placing his empty hand on his son’s cheek. “There was nothing you could have done to stop it. You are not to blame for this, and I am not about to let you beat yourself up for it.”

Riven searched his dad’s sea-green eyes before silently asking, “Why not?”

Anthony smiled, leaning over and pressing a kiss to his son’s forehead before saying, “When your mom passed, did you let me beat myself up for it?”

Slowly shaking his head, Riven breathed, “No. You didn’t kill her.”

“Exactly,” Anthony stated, cupping his son’s face in his hands. “Vivien knows you aren’t to blame - we all know it. You just need to take the time to figure that out for yourself.”

Riven tried not to scoff as he asked, “How long will that take?”

Without missing a beat, Anthony chuckled, “Knowing Vivien, not long.”

A part of Riven knew his dad was right, but as the man stood and made his way to the kitchen to put together something for dinner, he couldn’t help but feel the knot in his stomach grow bigger as his eyes landed on a picture on his wall of himself and Vivien at a nearby go-kart track. Would he ever be able to allow himself to be that comfortable around her again? Was he ever going to able to make up for hurting her? Could he truly be considered a good skating partner after this? Would she ditch him? Would they remain friends even if she did?

It took all of a week for Riven to get his answer.

A week of radio silence, a week of solitude, and a week of pent-up frustration boiled beneath Vivien’s tan skin. She understood that they were unable to talk during school hours as neither of them had cell phones, and they went to separate schools, but they normally talked after school until either Vivien’s dad needed his phone for something or its battery died. Vivien had tried calling more than once a day after being let out of school, but had always reached either Riven’s father or the home phone’s voicemail.

Although she didn’t appreciate being stone-walled by her best friend, Vivien knew to give him space. Riven was the type to take things to heart and think things through to the point he physically couldn’t think of anything else, whereas Vivien liked to talk things out immediately and clear the air so there was no tension. She wasn’t good with silence, while Riven needed silence to process things. As much as it ticked her off, she gave him space.

Well… for as long as she could handle it.

When Monday rolled around, and she still hadn’t heard anything from Riven, Vivien began to concoct a plan that would make it impossible for him to avoid her any longer. Her first idea came to her in Homeroom while Mr. Alderman was busy trying to help a group of kids from her science class with their homework, but it was quickly brushed off as publicly dragging the chief of police’s son from the school to her dad’s minivan probably wouldn’t go over too well. Vivien’s next plan of action spiraled from a conversation on the track with Alexis, her friend from the arena. However, the thought of pretending to be injured to gain Riven’s attention was quickly pushed aside in favor of what became her master plan.

As soon as the bell rang that afternoon, Vivien made a mad dash across the parking lot and into the high school, bursting into the principal’s office while the poor secretary at the main desk hastily tried calling her father to let him know of his daughter’s arrival. Upon filling her bewildered father in on a portion of her after-school and borrowing a couple of dollars from him for the bus fare to the next town over, Vivien headed out to the parking lot and ran across the street to the bus stop by the gas station. While she waited for the bus to arrive, it began to rain, and one of her classmate’s parents pulled up beside the bus stop, asking if she needed a ride home. Vivien was quick to graciously decline, explaining she was going to Laconia to visit a friend and had gotten permission from her father to take the bus.

Once they left to pick their son up from school, Vivien only waited a few minutes before the local bus pulled up to the stop, its rusty brakes screeching as it slowed. After stepping aboard and handing the driver some of the money her dad had given her, Vivien collapsed into the closest seat to the front, digging into her backpack to inspect the homework she had been given as the bus pulled away from the stop. It didn’t take long for her to finish the math homework she’d been given, but as she struggled to read through her history assignment on colonial times, the words jumbled on the page like a bowl of alphabet soup, the driver slowed to another stop.

Looking up from her migraine-inducing history book, Vivien quickly pulled her rain poncho out of the front pocket of her bag before shoving the rest of her belongings into her backpack and hauling it onto her shoulders before rising from her seat. As the bus stopped at the covered bench outside of the Laconia police department, Vivien made her way out of the bus, thanking the driver for the ride before pulling her poncho on over herself and her backpack and stepping out into the rain. As the people waiting at the bus stop rushed onto the bus, Vivien scanned the police station parking lot for the black Silverado she knew Riven’s dad would have taken to work. There were a few trucks in the lot, but the sticker of the local high school’s mascot on the tailgate of one told Vivien all she needed to know.

With a grin, she waited for traffic to clear before dashing across the street. Not wanting to deal with the cracked, uneven sidewalks that she almost always rolled an ankle on during the summer, Vivien walked up the length of Cross Street on the side of the road. Avoiding the occasional pothole as she jogged across the intersection of Cross and Fenton Ave, Vivien used her uncasted hand to swipe water from her glasses and push them further up her nose before tugging the hood of her poncho back into place.

The walk from the police department to Riven’s house was maybe five minutes on a good day, three if they ran, and potentially ten if it had snowed, but Vivien hated walking in the rain most. Her soggy sneakers squelched as she jogged up the porch steps, reaching for the key she knew they hid in the mailbox, yet Vivien found she couldn’t care less about the circumstances as she pushed the slightly curved key into the lock. Opening the door, Vivien silently made her way inside, discarding her sneakers by the heater vent and hanging her poncho on the coat rack before pulling her backpack from her shoulders and dropping it onto the nearest couch cushion.

She knew from the damp hoodie by the door that Riven was home, but he wasn’t in the living room or kitchen, and as she peered into his bedroom, Vivien frowned as she realized he wasn’t there either. As she glanced into Riven’s dad’s office, unsure where her best friend could have gone, the sound of steady drum beats drew her attention to a door by the end of the hall. The typically locked basement door was unlatched, and as Vivien nudged open the door, she could see that a light had been turned on. Making her way down the stairs, Vivien found the sound becoming more clear with every step. As she turned toward the music with a smile, Vivien found her best friend messing around on his father’s old drum set.

“You know,” she began after watching him play for a moment, making him jump as he realized he wasn’t alone, “I thought with your dad being the chief of police, he would have found a better spot to hide the spare key.”

Riven’s eyes widened as he found Vivien leaning against the railing at the bottom of the stairs. As his eyes flickered between hers, the purple cast on her arm, and the drum set before him, Riven asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Watching you rock out, apparently,” Vivien claimed as she inched further into the room. Taking a look around, she smiled and said, “This place would be great for a band to play in, but it kind of reminds me of that new show I’ve been begging you to watch with me.”

“Stanger Things?” Riven asked as he set down his drumsticks.

“Mhm,” Vivien hummed. “They play this game called DnD in the basement. If you put up some decorations and move the boxes and stuff around a bit, this would be a cool place to start a campaign.”

Against his better judgment, Riven grinned as he nodded, “I’m hoping to join the DnD club at school next month.”

“You should suggest having a meeting here or something,” Vivien suggested as she pulled a folding chair open and sat down. “It would be cool.”

Riven hummed thoughtfully before his gaze fell on her arm once more. Quickly averting his gaze, Riven asked again, “So, what are you actually doing here?”

Sucking in a breath, Vivien sighed, “I miss my best friend. He’s been ignoring me for a week now and I can’t take it any longer.”

Riven’s gaze lifted from the drum set before him as he asked, “How can you still call me your best friend after what I did to you?”

Vivien shrugged, “You ignored me for a week, that’s not a dealbreaker here, Riv.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Riven stated with a shake of his head.

Vivien looked down at her cast and sighed, “I know.”

“I’m sor-”

“It was super rude of you to not sign my cast, but I still forgive you.”

Riven’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion as followed Vivien’s eyes to the purple wrapped around her hand and forearm. Scanning over the material, Riven realized nothing had been written on the girl’s arm. “What happened to getting everyone in your class to sign that?”

With a smile, Vivien said, “You’re my best friend, Riven; you get the first signature. Everyone else can wait their turn.”

Confused and exasperated by Vivien’s avoidance of the topic at hand, he asked, “I’m the reason your arm is broken in the first place; why on earth would you want me to sign it?”

“First of all, no, you aren’t,” Vivien said, “and, second, I already said it’s because you’re my best friend.”

“If I hadn’t dropped you-”

“You didn’t drop me.”

“Vivien,” Riven huffed, “you can deny it all you want, but if I didn’t drop you, your arm wouldn’t be in a cast.”

“It wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t insisted we practice lifts while Coach Barlow wasn’t around,” Vivien insisted. “We could play the blame game for hours, but none of this is anyone’s fault.”

Riven held Vivien’s gaze for a while before heaving a sigh, “I don’t know how you can see it that way, but I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”

“Even though I don’t blame you for it,” Vivien began slowly as she stood from her chair and moved closer to Riven, “saying that I forgive you doesn’t change that, does it?”

With a small smile and a shake of his head, Riven said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have a reason to be,” Vivien stated with a roll of her eyes, wrapping her arms around Riven’s shoulders and tucking her face into his shoulder, “but I forgive you.”

As though a weight had been taken from his shoulders, Riven sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes as his arms came to close around Vivien, tugging the girl impossibly close as he muttered, “I’m never dropping you again, I promise.”

“And you haven’t since,” Vivien said with a proud smile. "At least, not on accident."

Riven chuckled as he rose from his seat and grabbed his songbook from his desk, “I wouldn’t break a promise like that.”

As her friend grabbed his acoustic guitar from its stand by his window, Vivien pushed herself up into a seated position and asked, “What’re you doing?”

Riven sent her his usual, lopsided grin as he tossed his songbook toward her and made himself comfortable on the mattress once more, “Practicing the music we said we were working on this weekend.”

Vivien was quick to examine the book, following her auburn-haired friend in sitting cross-legged as she looked over the lyrics they had worked on the weekend before. Riven’s chicken-scratch writing filled the page with hastily written notes and potential lyrics for their band, but of their band’s four members, Vivien was the only one who was able to decipher his atrocious handwriting. Smiling as Riven began strumming random chords on his guitar, Vivien held up the notebook and said, “Your handwriting is still just as shitty as it was when I met you.”

“Well, you’re the only one who reads it anymore, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Riven asked with a chuckle.

Vivien rolled her eyes, but laughed, “Remember when Erica and Jade joined us for the first time and I just handed this to them?”

Riven snorted, “Poor JJ looked ready to cry when she couldn’t read it.”

“And Erica bought you a kid’s handwriting practice book for Christmas because she was sick of your shit,” Vivien added. As Riven laughed and began softly humming the lyrics to the song he was working on, Vivien wondered, “I still can’t believe that those two got together. They were so polar opposite when they first became friends.”

“Yeah, but they work well together,” Riven commented. “Do you remember when we first got them to join the band?”

Vivien smiled as she nodded, “Yeah. Erica joined us the same week I started dating Lexi.”

“And what a trainwreck that was,” Riven huffed. With a smirk, he added, “Both our first practice and the whole Lexi thing.”

“Yeah,” Vivien sighed. “Middle school me really should have thought things through first before jumping into a relationship.”

“Not to mention what a manipulative, emotionally abusive piece of shit she was,” Riven grumbled as his grip tightened on the neck of his guitar, the mere memory of Lexi’s treatment of Vivien igniting something in him that begged to throw hands with the girl who now lived a few hours away.

“She wasn’t always like that and you know it,” Vivien stated. “She was my friend.”

Riven’s gaze lifted from his guitar once more, finding Vivien’s eyes with a look of incredulity, “She threw a skate at your head. If that qualifies her as your friend, what does that make me?”

Vivien’s answer was quick, “My brother and faithful companion.” At Riven’s serious expression, she sighed, “Okay, I get it. My relationship with Lexi wasn’t great and I learned a lot from it, but I moved on a long time ago. Regardless, I love the relationship I have with Royce even though it’s only been a couple of months. I don’t see us breaking up any time soon.”

“Good,” Riven said with a nod. “You two seem really good for each other.”

“I think so too,” Vivien admitted, a fond smile tugging at her lips as she wondered just what her boyfriend was up to at that moment. Looking back up at Riven as she absentmindedly flipped through his book of songs, Vivien said, “You have to admit, though, the song Erica helped me write about Lexi was a banger.”

“Only because you two bashed the shit out of her,” Riven snorted. Reaching across the space between them to take Vivien’s hand, Riven pleaded, “Look, I know you say that you and Royce are in it for the long haul, but please, promise me you’ll never get into a stupid relationship like that again. I don’t think any of us would be able to handle it if you clammed up on us again.”

Squeezing Riven’s hand, Vivien took in a breath and smiled as she said, “Only if you promise to listen to me when I tell you something is off about the girls you go out with.”

Riven chuckled, nodding as he agreed, “Touché. How about we just promise not to date anymore shitty people? I think we’ve been through enough of those.”

Vivien laughed, “Tell me about it!”

Vivien had always been the type to have a few close friends but be friendly toward everyone around her. Many people at her school knew her as the social butterfly who flitted around the cafeteria and hallways, making sure everyone was doing well and that, if they weren’t, they knew she was there for them. She was an outgoing, enthusiastic girl who had a variety of interests so vast that everyone she came across seemed to have something in common with her.

Even at a young age, Vivien had a way of making those around her feel welcome in her presence. It didn’t matter if the people she interacted with were older or younger than her; she just liked making people feel loved the way her grandparents had taught her to. Spending time at her grandparents’ summer camp over the years had encouraged Vivien to welcome all she came across with a smile and an eagerness to befriend them.

If her bubbly yet calm personality wasn’t a magnet to random strangers, her passionate support of her friends and family members was. Vivien had never been one to silently show her love. Not only did she wear her heart on her sleeve more often than not, but she had a fierce sense of loyalty and love for the people she kept near and dear. Whether it was hurling harsh words at those who emotionally or physically hurt those she loved or the way she showed up to every game, recital, and performance, those around her knew they were cared for and loved by the warmhearted brunette.

Perhaps that was what attracted Alexis Warren to her in the first place.

They had become friends when Lexi began skating at the same ice rink Vivien and her siblings attended. Offhanded compliments about the younger girl’s hair or outfits being accepted with brilliant smiles as they passed each other in the locker room. Over the course of her first year at the rink, Lexi found herself being inexplicably drawn in as seven-year-old Vivien stood up to one of the pre-teen girls who chose to pick on one of Lexi’s friends. Vivien didn’t even know the kid, but the rage in her emerald eyes glowed like hellfire as she verbally ripped the older girl a new asshole. Once the threat was gone and Vivien was alone with Lexi and her friend, Dakota, Lexi found the gravitational pull surrounding the younger brunette too strong to ignore.

Maybe it was her smile, her friendly reassurance, or her protective tendencies, but frankly, Lexi didn’t care what it was; all that mattered was that there was something there. Something now linked the two of them together - a string tied loosely around their wrists that tugged them closer than they had been before. From then on, Vivien was a part of Lexi’s life whether she liked it or not. Despite her initial eye rolls at the girl’s questions about her well-being and how her family was, Lexi found herself genuinely smiling at the younger brunette every time she sidled up beside her to pester her before practice. It only seemed to get worse when Lexi’s adoptive parents moved to Sanbornton for work before the next school year, forcing Lexi into the same school as Vivien since the older girl had been held back a year before being adopted.

Now that Vivien considered her a friend of sorts, Lexi found it to be damn near impossible not to see the brunette. Every morning, as their buses rounded the loop by the front door of their school, Vivien would run up to her new friend and take her by the arm, excitedly gabbing with Lexi as much as she could before entering the building and turning off at the library where Lexi continued onward. For longer than she cared to admit, Lexi would find herself thinking about Vivien every morning, wondering why the younger girl had taken such an interest in her. It wasn’t like she was special or anything.

Before summer vacation that year, Vivien cornered Lexi on her way out of the gym, dragging her to the nearby bathroom before asking the older girl if she had any plans for the break. When Lexi hesitantly admitted that she wasn’t sure what they would be up to, Vivien reached into the pocket of her overalls and pulled out a clearly hastily folded paper, unfolding it before handing it to her friend. The page had clearly been printed from the school’s library computer - half of the ink was colorless while smudges of greens and blues streaked down the paper. However, Lexi could still make out the writing. Vivien quickly explained that her grandparents ran a local summer camp and that she wanted to extend the invitation to the camp to only her closest friends. Before Lexi could press her for more information, though, Vivien let her know the website was written on the back of the paper before pushing a glittering object into the pocket of Lexi’s hoodie and scurrying back into the hall to find the rest of her classmates.

Bewildered, Lexi stood in the bathroom for a while, looking between the paper in her hand and the handmade, beaded bracelet Vivien had given her. After a few minutes, the bell rang, and Lexi hurried to her next class, tucking the paper into her hoodie and pulling the bracelet onto her wrist just as she reached the door to her classroom. Later that day, when her family’s minivan pulled into the parking lot to pick her up after school, she handed her parents the paper and asked if she could go to spend the summer with her friends. By the end of the week, Lexi had her answer and had begun packing her belongings.

She had been welcomed into the camp’s makeshift family relatively quickly - Vivien’s grandparents and aunt making the transition feel like visiting family in another town instead of a summer-long stay away from home. Being in the same cabin as Vivien for the summer meant the pair grew closer than Lexi thought was possible, but neither seemed to complain as they spent their days attached at the hip, wandering around camp with their hands intertwined. For most, it was obvious that the two girls had become inseparable, but for others, the bond they shared was a bit more… blurred.

It wasn’t until the ending performance of The Wizard of Oz that anyone dared to voice their thoughts. Sitting together behind the scenes of the show, watching Vivien’s aunt, Hayley, and the woman’s girlfriend, Charlotte, keep everyone in line behind the stage, Lexi and Vivien laughed quietly among themselves as their friends from over the summer ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Then, all at once, the laughter stopped as their cabin’s counselor, Ashley, and her two friends, Bella and Sarah, sauntered over. Thinking they were about to be reprimanded for laughing, the eleven-year-old and thirteen-year-old quieted, sending wary looks to each other before focusing their attention on the girls before them.

Then, without hesitation, Ashley asked, “Are you two dating or something?”

“You’re always together,” Bella chimed in. “If you guys were just close or something, we wouldn’t ask, but where you two are practically inseparable and only ever spend time with the rest of the cabin if you have to, it sort of makes it seem like you’re dating.”

“Which is totally cool and all,” Sarah said with a gentle smile. “We just wanted to know if it was okay if we ship you two or not.”

Bella hummed, “It would be totally awkward if we shipped you two and you weren’t dating.”

Ashley nodded, her barely contained ponytail of curls bouncing precariously as she asked, “So, are you two a couple or what?”

Confused by the question, Vivien’s head tipped to the side like a confused pup, and Lexi watched with surprised eyes as time slowed around them before the younger girl turned toward her and asked, “Are we?”

As she took in Vivien’s genuine curiosity, Lexi felt as though a puzzle piece that had gone missing years ago finally slid into place, slotting itself right into the only spot left open in her mind. At that moment, she realized that the answer had been right in front of her for a long time. Hoping to appear as nonchalant as possible despite the blood rushing to her cheeks, Lexi shrugged as she replied, “We can be if you’d like to be.”

Vivien giggled - the magical sound that occasionally drove Lexi up a wall - and smiled up at the counselors before replying, “In that case, yeah, we’re dating!”

Then, as the lights from the stage flickered toward their spot backstage, Vivien’s metal-filled smile shone, and Lexi felt her resolve disappear altogether. She knew, right then and there, that she would do anything Vivien asked her to. That day - August 25th, 2017 - would be ingrained in her memory for years to come. That was the day she knew she’d been permanently changed by one Vivien Harley O’Brian.

People in Lexi’s immediate circles took the information far better than she initially expected them to. Liana and Nathan - she still wasn’t entirely ready to call them Mom and Dad - adoptive parents were accepting and supportive, telling her that they were simply glad she was happy. Her adoptive older siblings - Sean and Isla - showed their approval in their own ways; Isla took her out to the movies and on a girl’s day to make sure Lexi knew she had someone to turn to if she ever needed it, whereas Sean joked about being grateful he could finally talk about girls with someone relatively close to his own age before letting her know he was genuinely happy for her. Even the new foster kids in their family - the biologically orphaned siblings, Ian and Tessa - had taken the news well after Liana and Nathan explained the situation.

Vivien’s family, on the other hand, had only one problem - her mother, Chelsea. Despite the woman’s sister and Vivien’s biological mother being a proud lesbian who was dating a bisexual woman, it seemed that the idea of one of Chelsea’s children being anything other than straight was world-ending. Vivien’s dad, Damien, on the other hand, took his daughter out for ice cream to hear all about the girl’s relationship away from her mother’s influence, making sure his eldest child knew how loved she was before bringing her and her siblings to their grandparents’ home for the weekend.

Her father had returned to their home to gather some clothing for the weekend to find the house empty, but he brushed it off as her blowing off steam and returned to the cabin after calling Riven’s father to explain the situation and phoning his sister-in-law to see if she could stop by her parents’ house if she had the time. Of course, Hayley and her girlfriend took time off to spend the weekend with family at the Hill House, spending the majority of their time spoiling the crap out of the eleven-year-old girl who suddenly found herself having more in common with her aunt’s girlfriend than she thought would be possible.

That weekend, Lexi found herself on the phone with Vivien more often than ever before, using what little time they had left before the start of the next school year to spend conversing with each other as, for the next school year, Vivien would be in the middle school, and Lexi would be up in the junior high. They would be on different bus schedules, different class schedules, and lunches together would be nonexistent, making their time together slim to none. However, when school started a few days later, Lexi still fought to call Vivien after school, resulting in more than one uncomfortable talk with the girl’s mother until Vivien picked up the call in another room.

One thing that remained a constant in their otherwise frenzied lives was their time at Purple Finch. Despite Vivien’s training time with Riven and Lexi’s drill instructor coach keeping them on the ice at different times, there was still time in between lessons where they could talk to their hearts’ content. Whether their meetings were in the locker room or in the hallways or during ballet training with the old lady teacher who, according to some of the older skaters, looked like she had been using the line between life and death as a jump rope for the entirety of their time at the rink, Lexi and Vivien found time to sit around and talk.

Over the course of the next year, they hardly ever went on anything Lexi’s older siblings said could be considered dates. They would hang out at the local arcade, go see movies, or go out to eat at the diner with at least one of their parents present, but that was usually the extent of their time together outside of practice and hanging out at each other’s houses. Though Lexi knew by then that what her siblings were saying was true, she really didn’t want to believe them. Sure, her relationship with Vivien wasn’t anything like her brother’s flings with girls on the high school’s various sports teams or her sister’s relationship with the captain of the debate team, but whoever said that their relationship had to be like anyone else’s, clearly didn’t know them well.

So long as they enjoyed being together, that was all that mattered, right?

As the school year came and went, the chilly winter and early spring were soon replaced by the warmth of the summer sun, and Lexi found herself in the presence of Vivien’s close family once again. Despite being in a separate cabin from Vivien that year due to their relationship, Lexi enjoyed her stay. The pair ate meals together at a table in the far corner that always got a glaringly bright amount of sunlight every morning, and, despite their polar opposite thoughts on seeing the sun so early in the morning, Lexi put up with having to squint in order to see her plate every day to appease the excited girl she sat across from.

Her fourteenth birthday came and went, and as the camp season came to a close shortly after Vivien’s twelfth birthday, Lexi found herself actively dreading the upcoming school year. Although Vivien was now in seventh grade and would be joining her at the junior high, Lexi was conflicted. She had been reasonably overwhelmed by the amount of people flooding the halls of the regional junior-senior high school but liked to keep to herself and the small handful of people she knew from the previous year. Vivien, on the other hand, was a social butterfly whose mere presence attracted strangers like moths to the flame. Initially, she worried whether or not Vivien would still be able to find time for her with the younger girl’s influx of new friends from the surrounding towns. Not long into the school year, however, Lexi realized she didn’t have much to worry about as Vivien made sure she had enough gaps between classes to meet Lexi somewhere in the building.

However, good things seemed to only last so long in Lexi’s life, and it didn’t take long for her to realize just that. On a chilly afternoon in late November, her parents sat Lexi and her siblings down, telling them that they had recently received a call from her dad’s parents about his mother’s health failing. At first, Lexi was as worried about the woman she had only met a handful of times, but as Nathan explained that they would need to move to Maine to help take care of the elderly woman, a high-pitched buzzing filled her ears, and the rest of the conversation was drowned out. Her older siblings seemed to have issues with the idea of leaving behind their jobs, and their newly adopted siblings were upset about having to move only months after finally feeling like they had found a permanent home, but they all seemed to calm down significantly once their mother explained that it wouldn’t be for a couple of months and that the chances of them staying in the northern state for long were slim to none.

Lexi’s first instinct once she reached her bedroom was to call Vivien and tell her what had happened, but when the girl answered the phone, excitedly telling her girlfriend all about the Titanic project she had finally finished with the help of her biological mother, Lexi found herself sitting silently, unable to string together a simple sentence. Although she didn’t want to ruin Vivien’s excitement with the news of her family’s move, she knew the girl would have to find out eventually. Swallowing her emotions and plastering a smile on her face, she piped into Vivien’s excited ramble, asking her to tell her all about her project.

As December crept into the picture and stacks of zip-tied moving boxes began to take up space in the coat closet by the Warren family’s front door, Lexi tried multiple times to bring the topic of their move into a conversation with Vivien. However, her attempts were in vain. Whether it was just that she had no time to get the news out or if she couldn’t bring herself to drag Vivien’s mood down in the midst of her parents’ marital issues, Lexi just couldn’t find a way to bring the topic to light. It wasn’t until after Christmas, when her family had begun pushing her and her siblings to pack their belongings, that Lexi felt the urgency of the situation hit her like a brick wall.

Winter break had extended into the second week of January due to a particularly nasty blizzard, and with school out until the roads could be sufficiently cleared, Lexi found herself swimming in her thoughts. Despite her reluctance to pack, her parents had set a move-out date for the end of the month, forcing her to rip the bandage off far quicker than she had hoped. Her younger siblings had gotten over their initial upset about the move, raving to their friends about the new school they would be attending and making sure to share phone numbers before the end of the month. Even her older sister, Isla, had a boyfriend who was willing to wait for her - the same boy on the debate team that she’d gone out with since Lexi was ten.

On the other hand, her older brother failed in his mission of maintaining his relationship through the move. Sean’s girlfriend, Olivia, admitted she wasn’t up for the long-distance thing, and as she would be moving out of her parent’s place for college soon anyway, she had planned on letting him go gently. Although Lexi knew they had broken it off civilly, she had seen her brother sulking for long periods of time. Watching him trudge around the house had only made Lexi’s already high levels of stress skyrocket.

That Friday afternoon, Lexi managed to find time between her after-school dance practice and Vivien’s meeting with her coach to pull the younger brunette aside. Upon dragging her girlfriend into the locker room by the showers, Lexi urged her to sit on one of the wooden benches across from her and watched as Vivien’s leg bounced against the seat. As though the situation wasn’t already hard for her, Lexi could see the faraway look in Vivien’s eyes and watched as the girl’s brows furrowed, the inside of her cheek tugging into the gap between her teeth - all telltale signs that Vivien was already deep in thought about something that had begun worrying her.

Lexi tipped her head to the side and asked, “Are you alright?”

Vivien shrugged, her shoulders shuddering as she took in a breath. Her concerned, emerald gaze found Lexi as she sighed, “I’m just worried about Riven; that’s all.”

Riven? Lexi internally rolled her eyes. What could possibly be wrong with the daddy’s boy Vivien often referred to as her older brother? He had a nearly perfect life; why would Vivien need to be worried about him? Forcing herself to push her intentions aside and understand that Vivien had looked up to the boy - in more ways than just physically - for far longer than she, herself, had known either of them. Taking in a breath, she asked, “Why, what’s wrong with him?”

As though Lexi had just cursed her entire family, a wounded expression glazed over Vivien’s eyes as she asked, “Have you been listening at all when we talk at night?”

To be honest, Lexi hadn’t truly been paying attention since her parents sat her and her siblings down on Thanksgiving break. Everything since then had been a blurred mess consisting of her half-assed attempts to tell Vivien all that was going on in her mind, the whirlwind that was clearing her room of all her belongings, and the emotional rollercoaster she had been riding for the last month and a half. As much as she hated to admit it, Lexi found her gaze drifting to the floor as she realized she hadn’t exactly been the most attentive person in recent days.

“I’m sorry, Vivi,” Lexi apologized. “It’s been a rough few months.”

“For all of us,” Vivien huffed under her breath. Lexi glanced up, catching the tail end of Vivien’s eye roll as the girl continued, “Brooke is trying to get Riven away from me and the band. I mean, I get that she’s Riven’s girlfriend and deserves to have some of his attention, but it’s like no matter how hard we try to accept her or get her to hang out with us as a group, she throws a fit and won’t stop until he goes to spend time with her alone. I just don’t get what her deal is.”

Since when had Riven gotten a girlfriend? Lexi had honestly thought the guy was gay for quite some time since he never had a girl around, but Vivien’s statement made it pretty obvious that the older boy just had incredibly poor taste in women. With a nod, Lexi offered, “Maybe she’s just worried about him spending so much tim with a bunch of girls.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Vivien sighed. “She was friends with Jade and Erica before she even started dating Riven, so I can’t help but feel like I’m somehow the issue here.” Vivien found Lexi’s eyes, a frown taking over her face before she looked away with another shake of her head. Lowering her voice to nothing more than a whisper, she added, “I just feel like there’s something more to this that I’m not seeing.”

Lexi waited for a moment, watching Vivien’s eyes flicker around the room as her mind raced with thoughts Lexi would never be able to follow. After a while of silence, she spoke, “Speaking of something more…”

Vivien sighed, sucking in a breath before finding Lexi’s eyes with a smile the older girl could tell wasn’t entirely genuine, “Right. You wanted to tell me something?”

Nodding, Lexi slowly spoke, “I’ve been struggling with this for a while, but I’m running out of time, so I figured now would be a good time to get it out in the open.”

“Alright,” Vivien breathed. “Shoot.”

Vivien’s quick response gave Lexi pause. Couldn’t she tell from Lexi’s tone that something was wrong? Clearing her throat, Lexi said, “My dad’s mom - you know, the one from Maine? - well, I guess she’s pretty sick.”

“Oh no,” Vivien muttered. “Do they have any idea what’s wrong?”

Lexi shrugged. Despite the multiple times her parents had discussed the issue, she hadn’t been fully paying attention, having been more caught up in her thoughts than anything. “I’m not sure, but I think my mom said it was MS or something.”

“That sucks,” Vivien said with a thoughtful nod. “My Nonna’s friend, Miss Cathy, has MS. Her daughter and son-in-law take care of her.”

Lexi nodded, “Well, my grandma’s health has gotten worse in the last couple of months, and her husband isn’t able to take care of her on his own, so my parents are planning on moving up there to take care of her.”

“Oh,” Vivien let out, realization flooding across her features.

“Yeah,” Lexi sighed. Vivien’s eyes drifted as she began to get lost in her thoughts once more, and in a desperate attempt to keep the girl’s attention on the topic at hand, Lexi began rambling, “Look, I’ve tried to tell you since I found out back in November, but you were always busy with school or family stuff or dealing with your parents being on the edge of divorce, and I didn’t want to make it worse, so I kept it to myself until I could find the right time to tell you.”

Vivien remained silent for far longer than Lexi would have liked. At first, she thought it was due to the girl’s need to process everything in her own time, but then, as Vivien’s gaze met her own, she realized the younger brunette was simply seething in her own emotions. Piercing jade eyes sent incredulous daggers at Lexi as Vivien huffed, “And you chose today, of all days?”

Lexi scanned through her mental calendar, making sure it wasn’t anyone’s birthday or a holiday before slowly asking, “What’s wrong about today?”

“I told you three weeks ago, Lex!” Vivien exclaimed, disbelief evident on her face. “It’s all I’ve been talking about since then!” When Lexi’s confusion refused to melt away, Vivien huffed a sigh, rolling her eyes as she explained, “Riven and I qualified to be in the Big Apple Skating Exhibition in New York this weekend. We’re leaving in a little bit to catch our seven o’clock flight.”

Realization and dread settled in Lexi’s stomach like lead. She could recall fragments of their late-night conversations, offhandedly listening to Vivien jabber on and on about some routine she and Riven had been perfecting. Hoping Vivien wouldn’t pick up on how little she actually knew about the event, Lexi plastered a small smile on her face and said, “I forgot that was today. You guys are doing Rolling in the Deep, right?”

Vivien’s head shook as her eyes scrunched shut, and a heavy sigh left her, “We talked about it last night, and no, we’re doing Skyfall.”

“Oh,” Lexi said, praying her uncomfortable cringe wasn’t as noticeable as it felt.

Never one to mince words, Vivien met Lexi’s eyes once more and said, “You know, I’ve been talking with my dad a lot lately and I sort of came to realize that, since we left camp last summer, our communication has been in the toilet.”

“What does that even mean?” Lexi wondered aloud.

“You barely talk to me anymore, Lex,” Vivien acknowledged, pushing herself up from the bench and taking a step away. “And, when you do, you redirect all the questions onto me so that I do all the talking, but you hardly ever listen.”

“I listen!” Lexi argued.

“Do you?” Vivien pressed as she leaned against her locker. When Lexi nodded, Vivien crossed her arms tightly over her chest and asked, “Why did I call you last night?”

Lexi weighed her options before slowly offering, “You wanted to talk about the skating exhibit?” Vivien snorted, shaking her head faintly as she looked away, and Lexi felt something deep in her chest clench. If it had been so obvious that Lexi was hardly paying attention to their conversation the night before, why did Vivien bother asking? Did she want to be disappointed? “I’m sorry, okay? I’ve been really worked up about telling you about the move recently, so I wasn’t listening. What happened; did your puppy learn a new trick or something?”

Despite the mention of her new Saint Bernard, Loki, Vivien swallowed thickly, staring up at the fluorescent lights in a vain attempt at forcing her emotions down as she said, “My parents got into a nasty fight last night, I tried to break it up, and my mom screamed at me for intervening in ‘an adult conversation’ because I’m just a kid.”

As though she’d been slapped, Lexi winced before standing, “Sorry, Vivi. So, what happened?”

Vivien shrugged, her already crossed arms tightening around her middle in a sort of self-embrace, “My dad made her leave for the night to cool off, but she’s talking about divorce again. I think she’s staying with Nonna and Grandpa George until things blow over, but I know they aren’t happy with her either.”

“Well, shit,” Lexi breathed.

“Yeah,” Vivien sighed.

The door to the locker room creaked open, and with a hand covering his eyes, Riven’s head poked in as he said, “I’m not looking, but is Vivien in here?”

“Yeah, Riv, I’m here,” Vivien replied. “What’s up?”

“Coach wants us to do a quick run of our routine before we leave,” Riven stated. “I tried pushing it further back, but we’ve only got the ice for the next fifteen minutes before Coach Knight needs it.”

Vivien sighed, glancing down at her outfit before bringing her gaze back to her teammate, “Alright. Tell him I’m getting dressed and I’ll be down in a few.”

Giving a mock salute to the girl, Riven ducked out of the room as he spoke, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Once the door was closed once more, Vivien took in a deep breath before meeting Lexi’s gaze and sighing, “Lexi, I know this whole conversation has been a bit much to unpack before I leave but this whole lack of communication thing has been bugging me for the last two weeks.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Lexi tried, resting a hand on Vivien’s tightly crossed arms. “I was just trying to find a way to talk about the move. It’s a shitty excuse, I know, but it’s the truth. We can work on getting better once you get back.”

“That’s just it,” Vivien began, her eyes flitting back to the floor before lifting once again. “We had time to talk it over and figure things out, but you weren’t talking and I felt like I was getting stonewalled every time I tried to figure things out.”

“Yeah,” Lexi mumbled as she looked down at the rink’s logo on Vivien’s jacket. “Sorry.”

“Like I said earlier,” Vivien started, “I’ve been talking this over with my dad, my aunt, and Riven, and, while I know this probably isn’t what you want me to say right now, with everything that’s going on, I think it would be for the best if we go back to being just friends until everything settles and we can focus on our communication more.”

Almost as though she had been pushed into the nearest shower and blasted with cold water, ice flooded Lexi’s veins as the world slowed around her. Her head spun dizzily, swirling nonsense around her as her hands shook. Not trusting her voice, Lexi took a step back and softly asked, “What?”

Vivien’s arms slowly uncrossed, her hands landing on her waist as she spoke, “Between your move and my parents fighting almost every either day now, I don’t think either one of us is in the right headspace to keep this going. We’re not focused on this relationship at all and, while I understand both of our reasonings, it’s not fair for either of us to keep this going if we’re not happy.”

“I am happy,” Lexi contested, placing her hands on Vivien’s shoulders. When Vivien refused to meet her gaze, Lexi felt her heart drop into her stomach. “Is this- are you not happy?”

Vivien was always direct and to the point, never one to hold back. Lexi had always liked that about her. However, as Vivien’s eyes met hers and she realized just how upset the girl before her was, she found herself hating Vivien’s blatant honesty. “No,” was the brunette’s simple reply.

Buzzing filled Lexi’s ears as Vivien continued speaking, and while she only found herself able to make out a few words, the ice flooding her system spread until it had blocked her emotions from taking control. Leveling her gaze on the emerald-eyed girl before her, Lexi removed her hands from Vivien’s shoulders, took a step back, and nodded. “If you want a break, then fine, we’ll take one, but there’s never a guarantee that we’ll get back together afterward.”

Vivien sighed, reaching a hand out to comfort her friend, “Lexi.”

“It’s fine,” Lexi spoke, stepping out of the girl’s reach and forcing herself to appear calm as hurt-fueled anger slipped through the cracks of her icy exterior. “With the move and everything, it’s only natural that we break up. Long-distance relationships don’t really work, right?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Vivien declared, a poorly concealed roll of her eyes joining her words in ripping a hole in Lexi’s chest. “I just think we need to work on our communication for a while.”

“So, instead of talking it over and working things through as a couple, you want to do it as, what?” Lexi asked rhetorically. “Friends? That will never work.”

“I literally just said we could stay friends for a while!” Vivien snapped, gesturing behind herself as though their relationship was already something she had put in the past. “It’s not like I’m saying we can’t come back to this at some point down the road. I just think we should work on ourselves for now and try again later.”

“And leave our relationship behind,” Lexi scoffed.

“For now, yeah,” Vivien nodded. “We’re just kids; who says that, when we’re older, we can’t come back and try again?”

Lexi shook her head, her disbelief apparent as her fierce brown eyes glared into Vivien’s soul, and she said, “We’re kids, yeah, but we’re in a long-term relationship. I’ve had nothing but love for you since we got together.”

“I know, but-”

“Did you ever even love me, Vivien?”

Vivien stilled, her aggravation dissipating ever so slightly as she breathed, “That’s not fair.”

“You never said it,” Lexi claimed. “Even when I told you time and time again that I loved you, you never once said it back.”

“I’ve told you that I don’t like to throw that around,” Vivien explained with a hurt look in her eyes.

“We’ve been together for almost two years!” Lexi exclaimed. “If you can’t honestly tell me whether or not you’ve ever loved me, why were we even together in the first place?”

“It’s not easy for me to tell people that I love them and you know that,” Vivien said coldly.

“Your commitment issues aren’t my fault,” Lexi barked, a scoff escaping her as she watched Vivien’s expression shift between disbelief, hurt, and anger. Good. Maybe she’d finally feel the way she made Lexi feel. “You should have outgrown them by now.”

“My grandparents died!” Vivien hissed, shock and disbelief filling her tone. “How do you grow out of that, Lexi?”

“That happened years ago,” Lexi said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s not something you can use as an excuse to push love out of the picture.”

Vivien’s eyes narrowed as she glared at the older girl, strained silence filling the air like a cloud of thick smoke. Finally, Vivien swallowed thickly, shaking her head as she looked away and said, “I can’t believe I ever dated you.”

“Vivien-”

“No,” Vivien said simply. “I’m done.”

“Done?” Lexi repeated. “What do you mean, ‘done’?”

Vivien sucked in a slow breath and allowed herself to settle before speaking, “I’m done fighting about this.” Allowing her gaze to land on Lexi once more, she said, “You’re right. Us being friends in the meantime would never work.”

Lexi stilled, her gaze flicking between Vivien’s startlingly emotionless eyes as she hesitantly asked, “What do you mean?”

“You deserve someone who can actually love you the way that you need them to, and I deserve someone who is willing to work things through with me without barking down my ideas just because that’s not what they want,” Vivien stated calmly, her voice unnaturally cold as she stepped back. “We can stay friends, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back into a relationship with you.”

“Vivi,” Lexi began, taking a step forward that Vivien matched with another step back, “that’s not what I wanted. I want us to stay together.”

“And I already told you that I don’t,” Vivien replied sharply, her quick statement making Lexi’s outstretched hand flinch back. “We’re not good for each other and haven’t been for a few months. Like I said, I’m alright with us going back to being friends, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.” Silence stilled the air briefly, and once she was sure Lexi wouldn’t speak again, Vivien said, “Now, I’m all for talking this through more once I get back, but I have to get going.”

Lexi took in a quick breath and schooled her expression before meeting Vivien’s eyes and nodding, “Okay.”

Vivien nodded, confirming to herself that the issue was over for now as she began making her way to the door. Turning back as she pushed the door to the hallway open, Vivien said, “I’ll see you when I get back on Monday.”

“Yeah,” Lexi muttered. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Vivien replied before leaving the room.

The door shut, and once she was sure Vivien had gotten far enough from the room, Lexi slouched onto the bench behind her. Just like that, the fire that had kept her pushing through life had been blown out. Her fingers trembled as she realized that her bond with Vivien had crumbled like a stale cookie in her hands. Numbly reaching into her duffel bag and pulling out her skates, Lexi began to get ready for her private lesson. It wasn’t until she had pulled off her ballet shoes and set them aside that she realized her eyes had begun filling with tears.

Wiping the hot, salty tears from her face and forcing herself to swallow the thick lump of emotions in her throat, Lexi felt her anger building as she began unlacing her skates. The first one had come out with ease, but the laces on the other had knotted together at some point between her last practice and that morning, making Lexi’s frustration only build. As the thought of simply cutting the laces and asking for replacements crossed her mind, something within her snapped. With a screech of frustration, Lexi gripped the skate and stood, throwing it at the wall with as much force as she could muster.

It wasn’t until after the skate had begun its flight that she realized with a sickening jolt that she wasn’t alone in the room. As though fate was out to get her that day, the skate sailed into the wall, narrowly avoiding Vivien’s head as the girl jumped back with a shrill shriek, tripping over the trash can near the wall and slamming to the floor. Lexi moved as though she competed on the track team, kneeling beside Vivien and asking her if she was alright. However, Vivien was quick to push her away, her eyes glazed over with fear as she scrambled to her feet and rushed back to the rink without another word.

Lexi sat still for a while, staring at the door Vivien had left through with wide eyes, but she soon grabbed her skates and tugged them on before following Vivien to the rink. However, by the time she arrived, Vivien was in the middle of her routine with Riven, and her coach tugged her away before she could pull the younger brunette aside. By the time Lexi had a break, Vivien was being piled into the bus that was taking a handful of their skaters to the airport. With her time to talk now gone, Lexi tried texting the cellphone Vivien had gotten for Christmas from her aunt, explaining that it was an accident and that she thought Vivien wasn’t in the room when she threw her skate.

For the rest of the evening, Lexi’s messages went unanswered, something she had attributed to the flight and Vivien having to get settled into her hotel room, but when Vivien refused to reply for the rest of the weekend, she knew the girl wouldn’t be forgiving her anytime soon. When Monday came, Vivien refused to talk in person, making sure to keep a distance between herself and Lexi. After talking it over with her older brother, who had gone through a similar situation not long before, Lexi decided to give the younger girl space. A week went by with no conversation, then two. Then, before she could find the chance to talk to Vivien face-to-face, her family was packing their belongings into the back of the biggest U-Haul truck they could rent. Stepping aside after helping her younger brother carry his bureau outside, Lexi tried to call Vivien one last time, and although Vivien refused to answer, Lexi left her a voicemail, letting her know that she would be leaving that day and apologizing once more.

A few hours later, as her brother pulled into the first gas station they had come across since entering the state of Maine, their mother’s SUV and the moving truck pulled up to the pumps while he parked on the side of the building, Lexi’s phone dinged. Pulling the device from her pocket as her brother climbed out of the car to get some snacks, Lexi’s eyes widened. Unlocking her phone and eagerly opening her messages, she found a short paragraph from Vivien in her unread messages.

‘I hope you enjoy your new home. It’ll be hard at first, but you’ll be fine. You always are. I hope you make friends at your new arena. Try not to throw skates at anyone this time and you’ll have no problems! Thank you for the apologies, btw. I get it was an accident, but it’ll take me a while to work through everything before I can fully forgive you. Sorry.’

Lexi took in a breath, glancing up from her phone as she took in Vivien’s message. While most of Vivien’s message had been nothing but kind words, encouraging her to find something to be happy about, she couldn’t tear her mind away from the last few sentences. She had hoped that, after a few weeks of keeping quiet, Vivien would have worked through her issues and been ready to move on, but now she knew that wasn’t the case. With a roll of her eyes, Lexi huffed, slumping further in her seat as she tossed her phone onto the backpack by her feet. If Vivien wanted to be stubborn about things and go back to radio silence, fine! She’d find out sooner or later that Lexi could be just as bad, if not worse.

Meanwhile, in the basement of a small, two-bedroom house on a dead-end street in Laconia, Vivien’s eyebrows scrunched together in focus as her knuckles whitened over the drumsticks in her hands. Over the last year, Riven had been teaching her everything he knew about the drums his father had allowed them to use for their makeshift basement band. She was a quick learner, thankfully, and Riven had quickly shifted their lessons away from the basics and onto popular songs Vivien picked up relatively quickly. With the addition of Riven’s friends, Erica and Jade, their band had begun to improve and create songs of their own.

Erica, their songwriter and bassist, had given them a couple of her samples to work on, encouraging them to try to find a good rhythm for their instruments before she began working on the sheet music she would be sending to Jade. Riven and Vivien had gotten through only two of the songs in the last hour, struggling to find a good beat that worked for both of them. Riven blamed himself in between breaks, stating that his lack of sleep the night before was dragging his attention span into the dirt. Vivien played along, of course, but the only thing was that her mind wasn’t entirely focused on the drum set before her either, something she knew Riven would pick up on far quicker than she could come up with an excuse.

Riven began strumming his guitar with a smile, and, without much hesitation, Vivien began thumping along on the drums, her anxiously bouncing foot pressing on the pedal for the bass drum and sending an unintentional thump bouncing around the basement walls. Vivien fought to keep her frustration to herself and quickly lowered her eyes to her drums as Riven glanced her way, a questioning look in his eyes as an eyebrow lifted toward his hair. She knew he was worried about her - he had been since she told him about her breakup with Lexi near the start of the month before - and while she was sure that if he knew what had happened that day, he’d be even more worried, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

Riven began singing the lyrics to keep himself in time, the fifteen-year-old’s voice sending a wave of serenity through Vivien as she hummed along. She had always found peace in Riven’s calm demeanor, but his voice had a way of making all the darkness in her mind disappear. She could be drowning in the middle of the Atlantic, and his voice would be her life preserver, keeping her afloat even in the roughest of conditions. Though she would never admit it to him, Vivien knew that Riven knew how much he had helped her over the years. After all, it went both ways.

Riven had admitted to her in one of their half-asleep confession sessions when they found themselves on the brink of sleep, muttering their deepest thoughts to each other until they passed out, that he had found her to be a sort of grounding force who kept him anchored to the earth. In the morning, when she had asked him what he meant, he sheepishly explained that, apart from his dad, she had been the only constant in his life since his mother’s passing and that he considered her to be a constant reminder that everything would be fine. Then, after a few minutes had passed, they went right back to teasing each other, with Riven threatening to annihilate Vivien on Rainbow Road as he opened Mario Kart on his Wii.

Despite the pair constantly picking on each other, messing around, and occasionally acting as though they couldn’t stand the other person, they were inseparable, and everyone close to them knew it. The two years and nine months between them in age did little to split them as they found many of their interests to be similar over the years. Over time, they told each other nearly everything, keeping very few secrets for the duration of their relationship. Maybe that was why it was so hard for Vivien to admit that she had withheld the truth about how her relationship with Lexi had ended.

Riven’s strumming stalled midway through the song, dragging Vivien out of her thoughts as she followed suit, allowing her cymbals to clash their way to silence as she lowered her sticks. Meeting his gaze, Vivien asked, “What’s up?”

Wary hazel eyes lifted from the frets on Riven’s guitar as he sucked in a breath and admitted, “I can’t take it anymore.”

Swallowing thickly, Vivien struggled to remain calm as her mind raced. Had he found out? Had someone told him? Maybe Lexi had texted him, asking him to get Vivien to forgive her. Pushing her frantic thoughts to the back of her mind, Vivien cleared her throat and asked, “What can’t you take?”

“I hate to admit it, but,” he cut himself off with a heavy sigh, shaking his head as he continued, “I’ve been keeping something from you for the last week or so.”

Grateful he wasn’t talking about her, Vivien let out the breath she’d held. Then, as his tone and the weight of his words hit her, she asked, “You have?”

Riven nodded as he pulled a folding chair over and dropped into the seat. “I know,” he huffed, “I’m sorry. We never keep secrets from each other - especially ones like this - but with the whole Lexi situation, I didn’t want to make you feel worse.”

“Worse?” Vivien echoed. When Riven nodded, she rhetorically asked, “What could possibly be worse than having a skate thrown at your head after a breakup?”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t want to add onto your stress or anything,” Riven began rambling, “especially when it’s not directly about you, but I-” Riven froze, Vivien’s admission echoing in his mind. Hazel eyes slowly widened as Riven finally found himself able to meet Vivien’s gaze, rage saturating his words as he asked, “I’m sorry, what?”

Finding herself unable to tear her eyes away from Riven’s piercing stare, Vivien admitted,

“She threw a skate at you?!” Riven bellowed, rising from his seat in shock. When Vivien silently nodded, her eyes wide as she swallowed thickly, Riven brought his hands into his hair, his mind racing as he began to pace the concrete floor. Sounding more hurt than angry, Riven asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Vivien allowed herself to shrug anxiously as she watched Riven walk back and forth in front of her drum set, “It wasn’t on purpose, and I didn’t want you to get upset while she was still here, so...”

Riven stilled, taking in a thoughtful breath as he found Vivien’s tentative yet observant eyes and finished her sentence, “So you waited until she was on the road.”

“She should be in Maine by now,” Vivien admitted softly, her voice little more than a whisper.

Watching with a frown as Vivien’s gaze faltered, Riven rounded the side of the drums and knelt on the floor beside her, placing her drumsticks on the top of her snare drum before taking her hands in his as he said, “I get it, Pip, I really do. You were just trying to protect your friend. But at the same time, that keeps me from being able to protect you. If she had actually meant to hurt you or tried to come at you again, it could have ended really badly.”

“I know,” Vivien sighed, squeezing Riven’s hands. “I just didn’t want you to get all pissy toward her when she would only be here until the end of the month.”

Riven let out a snort, bringing a smile to Vivien’s face as he admitted, “Alright, you got me there.” As Vivien let out a giggle, Riven smiled and said, “It’s almost like you know me.”

“I sure hope I do,” Vivien snickered.

“Oh, yeah?” Riven asked rhetorically. “And why would that be?”

“You’re my brother, you ass,” Vivien retorted, pulling a hand from Riven’s and shoving his shoulder with a smirk. “If I don’t know you well enough by now, some rando will take my place, and we can’t have that.”

Riven shook his head and smiled, “We both know that nobody could take your place.”

“Not even Brooke?” Vivien teased, a hint of genuine curiosity in her tone despite her attempt to play her question off as a joke.

With a sigh, Riven’s face fell as he admitted, “Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Curiously, Vivien’s eyebrow lifted toward her bangs as she nudged her glasses further up her nose bridge and asked, “Okay, what’s up?”

“We broke up.”

Vivien stalled for a moment as her brain struggled to process the simple sentence her best friend laid out before her. Then, as her expression settled into one of confusion, she shook her head, believing she had misheard him as she asked, “I’m sorry, what?”

Riven let out a breath of a laugh and began, “You know how you told me that I should do whatever it takes to make things work because I was happy with her?”

“Yeah,” Vivien agreed slowly, nodding as she recalled their conversation. “I told you to make sure your communication was good and that you should give her what she wants if you want to make her happy.”

“Well, while that was good advice, and I thank you for it,” Riven started, earning a nod of gratitude from Vivien, “what she wanted, was for me to stop hanging out with you. She was jealous that I was spending so much time with you between band practices, skating, and hanging out after school.”

Again, Vivien felt as though her brain had short-circuited as she let out a laugh, “Seriously?” Riven nodded. “That’s ridiculous; you’re my brother!”

“I know.”

Warily, Vivien asked, “What did you tell her?”

“Exactly that,” Riven stated. “I told her that we’re longtime friends - which she didn’t exactly take kindly to - and after trying to talk it over and getting nowhere with her, I told her that she wasn’t worth leaving my little sister over.”

Vivien thought for a moment before slowly saying, “But I thought you were happy with her.”

With a shrug, Riven claimed, “And I’ll be happier with someone else. I don’t need to be with someone who can’t stand the fact that I like spending time with other people.”

Sensing Riven had already moved on a bit from the relationship, Vivien let out a soft chuckle and said, “I can’t believe she saw me as a threat.”

“I know, right!” Riven laughed. “You’re about as threatening as a bunny, half-pint.”

“Wrong name,” Vivien scolded lightly, a frown tugging her brows together. “And, for the record, I am very threatening.”

With a roll of his eyes, Riven pushed himself from the floor and snickered, “Sure you are, pip.”

“I am!”

As he folded his chair back up and returned to his guitar with a smirk, Riven teased, “You and your noodle arms are about as fearsome as that girl from Sky High who turns into a hamster.”

“First of all, she was a guinea pig, not a hamster,” Vivien fired back as she picked up her drumsticks and pointed one at Riven accusatorily. “And, second, I may have noodle arms, but I’d still kick your ass.”

Riven let out a bark of laughter as he adjusted his guitar strap over his shoulder, “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Vivien snorted as Riven’s fingers stilled, allowing the gentle acoustics to settle into a comfortable silence, “You know, I could still beat your ass.”

“You could, but you won’t,” Riven stated knowingly as he wrote out a few notes for Erica. Despite having moved on from the song they were supposed to have been practicing and allowing his fingers to drift between songs he knew well enough to play without notes, he had a short stack of mental notes he wanted to scribble out. Looking up from his notebook, Riven grinned as Vivien huffed, blowing her bangs away from her eyes. “You love me too much for that.”

“Sometimes I wonder why,” Vivien muttered. Riven nudged her with his foot, and with a roll of her eyes, Vivien relented with a smile, “Yeah, okay, you’re right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I could potentially kick your ass if I needed to.”

Amused yet bewildered, Riven laughed as he asked, “When on earth would you need to kick my ass?”

“If you did something stupid,” Vivien shrugged. “Y’know, like jump off a bridge, join a cult, shave off your eyebrows, or, I don’t know, try to find another skating partner, or something.”

Riven scoffed, setting his guitar against one of his pillows as he said, “That’ll never happen.”

“Never say never.”

“Don’t quote Just A Beaver.”

Appearing mockingly scandalized, Vivien pressed a hand to her heart and gasped, “Don’t disrespect Justin Beiber in this house.”

“It’s my house!” Riven retorted. Taking the overstuffed, patchwork pillow Vivien had made for him years prior during her embroidery and sewing phase, Riven half-heartedly tossed it toward her head and quickly pushed himself off his bed while Vivien attempted to look offended by his attack. With a snort, Riven shoved her shoulder and said, “But, seriously, you don’t have to worry about me ever finding another partner.”

“I know,” she replied with a grin.

“Good,” Riven spoke, pressing a kiss to Vivien’s forehead on his way toward the disorganized chaos that was his bookshelf. “You’re my one and only, Pippi Longstocking.”

Vivien snorted, shaking her head at the play on his nickname for her as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Meanwhile, Riven scanned over the shelf with keen eyes, his hazel irises flicking past his collection of books and video games that littered the IKEA stand he and Vivien had painted one summer. Searching through his stacks of movies, his eyes scanned over some that he had recently bought from the discount tech and entertainment shop his dad frequented.

Peering over his shoulder at his friend, who was smiling giddily at her phone, Riven abandoned his initial question and asked, “What’re you so happy about?”

Glancing up from her phone, Vivien turned the device’s screen toward Riven and said, “Miles just sent me a bunch of pictures of Royce and Bentley. I guess their school was let out early, so they’re spending the day on the beach with some friends.”

Riven looked over the photo, scanning through vaguely familiar faces before pointing toward one and asking, “Who’s the guy who looks blitzed out of his mind?”

Vivien turned the phone back and laughed, “That’s Ethan Dombrowski; he’s Miles’ resident stoner friend.”

With a chuckle, Riven said, “He looks like he sounds like either Shaggy from Scooby Doo or Fillmore from Cars.”

Snorting, Vivien laughed, “I can tell you from firsthand experience that he doesn’t sound like either, sadly.”

“For some reason, I don’t believe that,” Riven claimed with a smile. Preparing his best impression of the aforementioned hippie bus, Riven cleared his throat and quoted, “‘Respect the classics, man!’” When Vivien began laughing at her friend’s poor attempt at mimicking not only Fillmore but also Ethan, Riven teased, “See, you’re laughing, so I must be right!”

Fighting to catch her breath in order to argue, Vivien coughed and shook her head adamantly, “No, no, no!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Riven beamed. Allowing Vivien to catch her breath, Riven let the topic go and instead turned back to his DVD collection and offered, “Now, while we’re on the topic of hippies, I just got a stack of old movies from Tom’s, if you’d like to watch something with me. There was a huge stack of them for twenty-five cents apiece, so I got a few hippie classics and some of those beach movies that elderly people go crazy over.”

Riven could practically see the excitement on Vivien’s face as she replied, “I love those old beach movies.”

Never one to back down when he saw the possibility of teasing his pseudo-sister, Riven smirked, “That’s understandable since you’re old and crazy.”

The bed creaked as Vivien rose from it, “What does that make you, then? An antique?”

“Precisely,” Riven agreed, turning back to Vivien as he pulled some movies down. “Where are you off to?”

Turning back to her friend as she neared the doorway of his room, Vivien gestured to the hall and said, “Making popcorn, moron. Heh, that rhymed!”

With a fond shake of his head, Riven gestured to his collection and said, “Well, I’ve got Beach Party, Ride the Wild Surf, Pajama Party, and then some. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

“Not really,” Vivien shrugged. “Surprise me, I guess.”

“Alright,” Riven shrugged. “Could you please add-”

“Enough butter to sink the Titanic and so much nacho cheese flavored seasoning that the whole bucket turns a radioactive shade of orange?” Vivien cut in with a proud grin. “When don’t I?”

As Vivien turned on her heel and left the room, Riven called out a thanks before chuckling and turning back toward his movies. Vivien had known his popcorn methods for years, and though he knew she would still make it the same way they always did when they had movie marathons, he still liked to ask as it would be rude of him not to. Smiling to himself, Riven pulled his new collection from its shelf and brought them over to his TV, his dad’s old Blu-Ray player perched on the edge of his dresser beside the Atari console he had rescued from a tag sale over the summer. Flipping through the cases, he discovered a blank case with a sleeve of white paper tucked inside. Written on the front was the title of the movie, the year it came out, and a small flower that had, from the look of it, been hand-drawn.

The DVD on the inside of the case was white and had the name written on it in the same handwriting from the paper tucked into the plastic on the outside of the case, but after a quick search on his phone, Riven found himself scrolling through the cast list for the old movie. Despite most, if not all, of the actors’ pictures appearing more recent and elderly, the names of the characters still sent a wave of deja vu through Riven. He couldn’t quite place where he had heard the names before, as some of them were bizarre, but others were fairly common, and he brushed those off with ease. Switching tabs, he found the trailer and began watching it, his smile from the initial moments of the video beginning to fade as he took in the familiar faces on his screen.

Pausing the video midway, Riven glanced at the cell phone Vivien had left on his bed before looking toward the hallway. He was never one to look at other people’s phones - an invasion of privacy he felt was a breach of trust in any kind of relationship - but as he turned Vivien’s screen on, he realized the face on his phone matched the girl’s lock screen. Riven stared between the images until Vivien’s phone screen turned black once more, taking in the pictures before him with scrutiny.

How was that possible? Could the boy Vivien was so fond of actually be the same person as the character in the beach movie? While it wasn’t likely, Riven went back to his Google search and found Royce’s name in the character list above the actor’s name. Scanning through the list once more, he found the names of Royce’s brothers, Mick’s fiancé, and a few vaguely familiar names he had heard from Vivien over time. He quickly selected the tab with Royce’s name and was brought to a screen dedicated to the actor, letting Riven see just how the man over his time in the spotlight. Sure enough, a photograph of the same young, curly-haired, freckle-faced teenager he knew appeared. Though the actor could have been a distant relative of the boy, a quick search through the actor’s page told him that the man had passed away at only twenty-two while serving his country. The chances of him being a grandparent or great-grandparent to the boy Riven knew were practically nonexistent.

Riven jolted, nearly dropping his phone as Vivien called out to him from the entrance of the hallway, “Do you want a drink?”

Hoping his voice didn’t sound nearly as started as he felt, Riven rose from his seat and called back, “Yeah, please.”

As Riven scrambled to close his searches and send his tabs to his desktop, Vivien responded with another question, “Dr Pepper or Sunkist?”

“Dr Pepper, please!” he called back quickly. Hoping to hide his discovery until he could find solid evidence one way or another, Riven closed the DVD case and brought it over to his desk, tucking it between the notebooks he had left out before hastily slipping them into his dresser underneath some of his T-shirts. Wanting to appear as normal as possible before Vivien returned, he pulled a random disk from the pile of DVDs and slipped it into his Blu-Ray player before setting the rest aside.

Moving his guitar back onto its stand by the window, Riven tossed his songwriting notebook onto his nightstand and snatched his remote before climbing back onto his bed and laying on his stomach with a huff. He knew he would have a lot of research to do once Vivien clocked out that night, but for now, he had to push his thoughts aside and focus on spending time with his best friend. Vivien was the closest thing he had to a little sister, and he didn’t want her to know that he was looking into something that she might not have known herself. He trusted that she would tell him if her boyfriend was, in fact, some time-traveling teenager from a sixties beach movie, but at the same time, if it was true and she knew about it, would he have believed her if she told him? It would be quite a bizarre claim, and she knew that Riven liked to know as much about a topic as possible, getting all of the facts he could find before coming to a conclusion on his own time.

Would he have believed her initially if she had come right out and told him the truth? Riven thought for a moment before mentally shaking his head. Sadly, he probably wouldn’t have believed her initially, but he would have wanted to. He had a deep trust and belief in Vivien, trusting her to tell him what she believed was truth, regardless of facts. But, if she had come to him with something so outlandishly wild as time travel or alternate realities, he probably would have had to fend off a bark of laughter before diving into it with willing curiosity.

Screeching his train of thought to a halt as Vivien entered the room with a few bags of popcorn and some bottles of soda, Riven plastered a smile on his face and took his things from her with a quick thanks. As Vivien climbed onto the bed, mindlessly blabbering about how his dad should invest in a microwave that wasn’t some dial-operated, Panasonic nightmare from the 80s, Riven chuckled. Just like that, he was back to worrying about burnt popcorn and shaken sodas as Vivien clicked the play button on the DVD’s main screen, the sixteen-year-old teasing him for picking Elvis Presley’s 1967 movie, Clambake, when Frankie Avalon was clearly the “It Man” of 60s beach movies.

However, as the movie started and Vivien quickly grew absorbed in the film, Riven found himself lost in thought. The plot of the movie was lost on him as his mind dragged him back to the information on his phone. How would he find out whether or not they were the same people without telling Vivien? It wasn’t like he could confront the boy or his brothers; the whole family was in Florida, and he didn’t have their numbers. Besides, even if they were time-traveling people from the sixties, would they tell him the truth or just brush him off? It wasn’t like he knew them all that well. He had only met Bentley a handful of times since he and Vivien met the boy on Halloween, Royce had become a constant topic in his conversations with Vivien since around the same time, and Riven sort of knew Miles from the summers he would spend at the Birch family’s house over the last few years, but they weren’t exactly close. The chances of them honestly telling him whether or not his findings were true, were slim.

What would he even do if he found out it was true? It wasn’t like he could bring himself to prevent Vivien from dating Royce. After all, the boy made her happier than he had seen in years, and it seemed as though they had a bond nobody could break. She adored not only Royce but also his brothers and friends, and she had been invited to spend her upcoming vacation in April with them in Florida. It was all she could talk about since the invitation had been extended to her, and Riven had heard all about the things she wanted to do and see over the nine days she had in the tropical state. Riven couldn’t ruin any of that for Vivien - not when he knew it would break her heart if she didn’t already know.

Sparing a glance at the brunette as she tossed a handful of popcorn into her mouth and leaned her head against his shoulder, Riven found himself pushing aside his thoughts of time travel and sci-fi-esque, otherworldly exploration and allowing himself to focus on the movie once more, hoping the old movie would keep his curiosity at bay until he had the time to think things over. After all, she didn’t need to know until he was sure he had figured everything out. If her boyfriend and his family were from an old film, so be it, but he was going to make sure he did his research. So long as Vivien was happy, he didn’t care what the outcome was, but for now, he was content with relaxing and watching the movie alongside his best friend.

#one-shot #character deep dives

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