3.1 Vivienne

No matter how bad her mood was, there was nothing like freshly made breakfast food to perk a girl up from even the direst of situations. Sometimes Vivienne thought the only thing standing between her and the short edge of a very steep cliffside was a cheesy omelet and a cup of steaming hot java.

Vivienne curled up on her bed, carefully balancing the mug on the edge of the bedside table while she ate her eggs on toast. Normally she was never up this early, but she hadn’t been able to sleep during the night. Every creaking sigh of the wooden beams, every gnawing squeak of the furniture, every rasping hum of an engine outside the window terrified her with the dire possibilities. What if there was still someone inside the house watching her? News and story forums were full of tales like that. Horror anecdotes of strangers living in the gaps between the walls of someone’s home. Perverts boring holes through plywood ceilings to peek at unknowing women. Some even picking the locks of apartments to hide inside open cupboards and empty bathrooms while the owners weren’t paying attention.

Shuddering, Vivienne tried to get her mind off the fearful thoughts, but all that did was remind her of her other problem: Marcus. Marcus Riviera, her brand new bodyguard downstairs.

A shifter, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped an arm around them for comfort. He seemed…nice. Quiet and gruff, but nice. It could be worse, she decided with a sip of her drink. At least Liam was doing something about the threat. Vivienne wasn’t sure what she would have done if Liam had ignored the issue and told her that she was just being hysterical.

A rush of chimes from her phone drew her attention to where she had tossed it on the bed, and Vivienne picked it up to check who was texting her so early in the day.

Melanie’s name popped up on her screen, followed by a heart and flowers. Ah, of course. The woman’s sleep schedule was all over the place, and that got even worse when she was in the middle of a project. Smiling to herself, Vivienne swiped her phone open and read the ribbon of messages that were still rolling in.

Melanie: ???

Melanie: I just saw the news? What the fuck is going on??

Melanie: GIRL do u need me to kill your husband?

Melanie: type 1 for yes, type 2 for yes please

Melanie: type 3 for yes and I want to pick out the flowers to plant on top of the grave

Melanie: VIVI I SWEAR IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND I WILL RIOT

Melanie: hold on wait it’s 7 a.m.

Me: Yes, it is. Good morning to you too.

As soon as the words were sent, her phone began vibrating furiously in her hand. Rolling her eyes, Vivienne accepted the call and held the mobile to her ear. “Hello.”

“Don’t you hello me!” Melanie hissed through the speakers, clearly exhausted and yet still managing to sound absolutely spitting mad. “I get out of a project spiral to find that my best friend is being threatened by some cowardly little creep? The sun isn’t even up right now, and this is what we’re dealing with on this fine day?”

“Mel, the sun has been up for a while,” Vivienne glanced out her window at the lovely blue sky streaked with wispy clouds. “Please set an alarm go outside for once in your life.”

The responding snort was so loud that Vivienne had to shift her head away from the phone while she giggled. “Oh, those are some BOLD FUCKING WORDS coming from you! Little Miss Good Girl wants to play coy and act like you’ve never so much as laid eyes on a shot glass before. Bitch please.”

Vivienne’s cheeks pinkened at the words. “Stop it. You know I don’t do that stuff anymore. It was all a long time ago.”

“It was two years ago,” Melanie refuted sharply, and they both knew why she’d stopped. The memory sank heavy claws into Vivienne’s shoulders, weighing her all the way down to the mattress. Through the phone, Melanie’s accented voice came softer. “Whatever happened to those days, huh? You used to record music in your free time between shifts, I’d help you with the mixing, and then we’d both laugh about the background noises we couldn’t remove because neither of us could afford any of the good editing software.”

Studio, Vivienne snorted a laugh. That was a nice word for what had essentially been the tiny cupboard in her apartment with Styrofoam pieces glued to the walls and a sweater jammed into the gap in the door left by the last tenant. She’d had to do the recordings in the evening because the shifts at the bar where she worked lasted almost 12 hours, and Melanie was such a light sleeper that even an off-key warble would have woken her up, and no amount of audio filtering was able to remove the pervasive sound of car engines roaring through the streets. High rollers and luxury taxicabs rushing to and fro, their lights forever lighting up the walls of Vivienne’s bedroom almost like theatre spotlights.

It was too early to take such a morose trip down memory lane. “That’s not important right now,” Vivienne. I guess you saw the letter?”

“I think everyone with working eyes and a screen saw that letter,” Melanie replied shortly. Her voice softened after those words, riding on a disappointed sigh. “That rat bastard. I knew he wasn’t good for you. It was so obvious, and I should have said something all those years ago. I should have made you turn him down when he first approached you at the bar.”

Vivienne was already shaking her head before her friend had finished speaking. “I wasn’t a child, Mel. If anyone is at fault, it’s me for falling for his lies.”

“It’s not,” Melanie refuted sharply, her voice exploding statically through the speakers. “We were practically starving Vivi. Rent took up all our funds, and we were barely living off good tips from the really nice regulars. If we’d stayed any longer, we might have ended up whoring ourselves out for somewhere to sleep once the landlord got tired of all the missed rent deadlines.”

Slowly, Vivienne took a sip of her drink, careful not to let the hot liquid spill over and burn her fingers. The coffee in her mouth was smooth, and devoid of the gritty aftertaste that was often so endemic to cheap brands. Once upon a time, she used to have to sneak paper cups of the dregs left behind in the mornings when she was supposed to be opening the lounge, and now she could afford to sip Fair Trade coffee from handcrafted stoneware mugs. Anyone who looked at her now would assume that she was living the most charmed of lives. A veritable rags to riches, pauper to princess, cinders to Cinderella type story.

They didn’t know that the copious cylinders and jars of foundation and concealer hid more than just dark circles and acne.

“So, what are we going to do now?” Melanie asked. “Have you gone to the police? Asked the security guards around the office?”

Vivienne couldn’t help the fondness that washed over her at Melanie’s words. As though her problems were automatically their problems. A unified issue that she didn’t have to face alone. It was a lovely thought.

She shook her head dismissively, as if her friend could see the motion through the microphone. “It’s fine,” Vivienne said with forced casualness. “Liam already…took some steps. He even hired me a bodyguard, can you believe it?”

“A bodyguard?” Melanie echoed blankly. “Like, a legit human person in a suit and black sunglasses?”

“Well,” Vivienne cast her thoughts back to Marcus in his casual shirts and loose-fitting vests. Heat crept up her cheeks as she recalled the deep grooves of his abdominal muscles, damp and shiny with sweat, revealed so dispassionately when he had wiped his face. It spoke of a confidence that Vivienne envied. To be so wholly assured of oneself that irrelevant opinions simply never registered in the mind.

From the moment that Vivienne had stepped foot into Los Angeles, she had never been able to separate herself from the perceptions of others. How did they see her? Did they like what they saw? What did she have to do to make them like her more? It was a mindset that had worsened once she’d begun a career on the screen, especially when paparazzi existed purely to dig up the worst of everyone and paste it front and center for the whole world to see.

“Well, what?” Melanie’s voice burst impatiently through the speaker, jolting the woman out of her thoughts. “You suddenly went silent, and I thought something had happened! Is he a dick? You said Liam hired him, right? I swear Vivi, if you don’t feel safe you can come and stay with me, alright? You can have my bedroom; I’ll pull out the couch and extra blankets. It’ll be just like old times!”

Vivienne giggled at the thought, hiding how much she wanted that even though it couldn’t happen for a myriad of reasons. For one, Melanie lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and Vivienne had seen the interior. In the living room, scant furniture fought for limited tile space, and the bedroom was a cacophonous riot of fabric strips, paint swatches, large canvases, mannequins, Styrofoam models, and every other art medium that Melanie used to create her works.

Once Vivienne had put down one of her hairclips on one of Melanie’s shelves and hadn’t seen the accessory until six months later. On TV. Decorating one of the props Melanie had been hired to create for a TV show.

The woman shook her head with a wry smile, picking delicately at her meal. “No, he’s fine. He’s perfectly nice, very polite. It’s just, well…he’s not a human­-human person.”

“Vivi what the hell does that mean?”

“…he’s a shifter.”