Vivian’s POV

While Vivian had now gotten used to most of her nights being spent with Ryan, she still enjoyed spending time with Amy. That evening, Ryan just so happened to be out of town. And Vivian had seized the opportunity to spend an uninterrupted night with her best friend. Which was why the two of them were parked on her couch, each woman with a bowl of noodles on her lap, their eyes fixed on the screen.

Next to her, Amy, who was slurping down on her noodles, paused every once in a while to mouth the words of the movie that they were watching at the same time that the character was saying them.

"Do you think that we have watched this movie too much?" She asked after narrating an entire scene without getting a single line wrong. Vivian immediately shook her head.

"Of course not. We have watched it just the right amount of times," Amy laughed and Vivian turned to her noodles, slurping them down before she reached for the glass of water on the table and chugged it down. When that didn’t help she poked out her tongue and began fanning it with her hand. "Why do we always make these so hot?"

"The extra heat makes them even better to eat," With the sting now fading, Vivian had to admit it was true. Going back to watching the movie, she was content to remain in silence, but Amy spoke up.

"Guess who I saw today?" Putting her chopsticks down, Vivian looked over at her friend.

"Was it a celebrity?" Shaking her head, Amy picked out a single noodle, raised it and then let it fall back into the bowl.

"Bryce Walters," She said the name like it was something nasty, and Vivian felt her own expression turning to a sneer.

"What did he want?"

Amy shrugged, "Supposedly to check up on you and see if you were okay, he said he was worried about you,"

***

Hearing those words, Vivian could not help but laugh out of pure disbelief.

"That man knows very well that I am fine. He saw me just a few days ago," Fingers suddenly shaking, Amy put her food on the table and turned all of her attention to Vivian.

"What? He came to see you!" Vivian nodded and Amy’s shoulders slumped.

"Please tell me the two of you are not talking again. That guy is just so-so,,," Unable to even finish her own sentence Amy let out a growl instead. Her hands curved like claws in front of her as she cut at the air.

"I am not entertaining him. You would not believe the excuse he gave when he came here,"

Her anger visibly reduced( the fact that she was no longer trying to fight the air a clear indicator of that), Amy leaned in a bit more. "What did he say?"

" He said he was here to return one of my markers,"

"What?" Amy’s snorted loudly, and Vivian could not help the brief laugh that escaped her.

"I know! It was an awful excuse and he actually seemed to expect me to let him in. I locked him outside and waited until he gave up and left," By the end of her sentence, Amy was beaming at Vivian like a proud mother hen. She held out her hand and Amy gave her a high five. Their palms making a loud sound when they collided.

"You go girl!" Amy cheered, and just like that they went back to eating and watching their movie. The atmosphere in the room feeling much lighter.

***

As though his ears had been burning when they had been talking about him earlier that night.

Bryce tried to reach out after Amy left and Vivian was in bed. He must have realized that she had blocked his calls because instead of trying to talk to her through that, she scrolled through her social media and found that he had liked a few of her posts.

[Looking good Viv. Let’s chat sometime]. He had actually written under one of the posts and Vivian found herself scoffing. Normally reading such a thing from him would have made her heart flutter.

Being with the man had left her so desperate for even the smallest of compliments that his casual words would have been enough to make her consider letting him back into her social circle. But that night as she read his words, Vivian could only feel irritation. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Which was it? Did she look good like his message said, or did she need to take better care of herself as he had implied when she had seen him in person?

She was sick and tired of the roller coaster that Bryce liked putting her on with his words. After staring at his comment for a while longer, Vivian did something that she should have done the day that she had blocked Bryce from being able to call her. She went through all of her social media profiles and made sure that he would not be able to get into contact with her through them.

Deciding to add an extra layer of caution, she also made all of her social media profiles private. She did not want to risk the man leaving malicious comments behind while pretending to be someone else, it might have seemed like an overreaction. But Vivian knew Bryce, when he was hurting the man could be very mean and she just did not want his meanness to be her problem anymore.

With the man completely blocked on every platform that she was on. Vivian settled down to go to sleep. Her very last thought before consciousness left her did not have a single thing to do with her ex. Instead of thinking of him. Her thoughts were instead on the billionaire

Ryan Terrell. She was wondering what he was doing at that current moment and if he was missing her the same way that she was missing him.