𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑺𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬 𝑶𝑭 𝑺𝑨𝑳𝑻𝑾𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑹
✸ 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 ───
the summer things turned shitty
🍉☀️🌸 ﾟ･ׂׂૢ࿐
CLOUD nine was nothing compared to the feeling Vivica had the next morning when she woke up. She had the day off. The memory of the night beforehand was forever engraved in the caverns of her mind. The house was quiet. Sunshine seeped in through her windows. Euphoria.
She'd slept in, but the entire time she spent getting ready for the day was like a tape on rewind. A motion picture on the screen in her head of how Jeremiah had turned a bad day into the best one.
Her parents had already been asleep when she got home, her dad snoozing on the couch instead of in their room. But after talking in the sand underneath the arm of the boy she adored, not even that could dampen her spirits.
Her parents had the most perfect love she'd ever seen, like off the pages of a romance novel, she knew they'd bounce back. Every couple had there rough patches, this just so happened to be theirs.
A call from Cam was the last thing she'd expected to get at lunch time, right before she was planning to ask if her mom wanted to go eat out with her.
She'd picked it up without any apprehension, and that alone brought a smile to her face. Because Cam was just Cam again, not some boy she had to be trip-over-your-words nervous around.
"Hello?" She chirped into the receiver. Cam's response was much less cheerful— a solemn hey that made it sound like he was taking a tour of a graveyard or something.
"What's going on?" She followed up, voice now serious and without a trace of the positive tone it had just a moment ago.
From the other end she could hear his sigh, before he delivered the news. "Belly and I broke up." He said.
Vivica used to imagine that when she heard those words she'd feel triumphant, elated by the information and ready to give him all the love that Belly had failed to provide. But instead, she felt nothing.
She just felt for her friend who'd just been dumped, inevitably for somebody else.
"Oh, Cam, I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?" She offered her services, because before anything else, she was still one of his best friends.
"Yeah, actually." He answered. She could hear the crash of waves in the background, making her mind wander and wonder where he was at. "I'd normally call JB for this kinda thing but uh, you've always been pretty good at the whole talking things through thing."
She knew what he needed before he even did.
"Where are you?"
He told her and the second it left his mouth she told him, "I'm on the way. Then we can talk all you want, kay?"
"Okay." His voice was compliant and dull, not the same happy-go-lucky Cam that she knew and had known for years. Belly had really done a number on him.
That was why it didn't take Vivica long to get to the point of the beach where he was sitting, all by himself with nothing but his bag and binoculars. Whale watching— a Cam classic.
"Hey." Vivica spoke softly, taking a seat beside him, not caring that her outfit was not fit for sitting in the sand.
She put an arm around the boy once he looked at her with sad eyes and pulled him closer in a small hug.
"How you feeling?" She inquired when he pulled away, her hand still on his arm, running up and down it in a soothing gesture.
"Bummed, that's for sure." He said with a small nod. Was that it? He'd been looking at this girl like a lovestruck puppy all summer and now that he'd lost her, all he had to say was that he was bummed?
"Bummed? That's it?" She asked, voicing her thoughts.
"Yeah, I just— I dunno." He released a loud sigh, pitching his head back to look up at the clouded-over sky. "I think we both knew it was never gonna be me— never gonna be us. Whether I want to admit it or not, there was always someone else, even from the start."
Vivica knew what he meant, everybody did in one way or another. Belly had always been in love with Conrad Fisher, and Cam didn't stop that.
"You know that has nothing to do with you, though, right?" Vivica asked. It was important that he knew that what happened wasn't his fault. "I was never really close with Belly until recently, but even I know that she's always had feelings for him. I mean— okay, that probably didn't help."
Cam offered a hollow chuckle as Vivica winced at her own words. Maybe she wasn't so good at the talking thing.
"It's fine. I think it was for the better, though. I liked her, I really did, but she was never . . ." His voice trailed away after he sounded like he was trying to convince both of them that he truly had felt something for Belly. He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence though.
Vivica had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach as he looked up at her. Suddenly, she didn't want to hear the end of the sentence anymore. Because they both knew what he was going to say.
She was never you.
Months ago, those words would've made her want to grab him and kiss him and profess her love loud enough for the whole world to hear. But not anymore. Now, the mere thought of it made her feel guilty, like she'd be disloyal to Jeremiah. He was all she could seem to think about nowadays.
She really needed to talk to him, to clarify how she felt. He needed to know that she wanted to be with him for real.
A knot formed in Vivica's stomach once she realized that now that Belly and Cam had broken up, their plan had come to fruition. That was it— the goal had been achieved.
With a sickening twist, the knot tightened as she thought about what that might mean. Belly could be confessing her feelings to Jeremiah as they spoke, or maybe the other way around.
Vivuca had faith in Jeremiah, she really did, but could one kiss from her erase years of him harboring feelings for Belly? That was what he'd done, wasn't it?
So instead of finishing his sentence, Cam leaned his head on his friend's shoulder. She leaned into his touch, resting her head atop his.
The salt air carried the noise of the waves to their ears, the sun's warmth breaking through a couple of clouds. Things felt like they used to, before the summer started and all these people got here.
Back when Cousins was just their home and not the vacation spot it transformed into each and every summer. Cousins was nothing special every other month or season of the year, but it was homely, and it was theirs.
The peace was broken by the ring of Vivica's phone. She picked it up to find the screen filled by a picture of her and Jeremiah— the photo he'd made her take solely for the purpose of making it his contact photo.
She smiled at the image before clicking the green button and lifting the device up to her ear.
"Hey." She answered.
"Hi, sunshine." His voice flowed through the line with such enthusiasm that she was pretty sure he was the actual sunshine. "I didn't see you at work today, so I just wanted to check in. Everything all good?"
"Yeah, I just had a day off." She answered him. "Gotta say, it felt good to sleep in after staying up so late last night."
Jeremiah chuckled on the other end of the phone, "My bad."
He apologized, but they both knew he wasn't sorry. Neither of them were.
"But I wanted to talk to you, what're you up to right now?" He said, voice still light and joyful.
Swallowing her hesitation, she told him, "I'm uh, with Cam right now."
"Oh."
Shit. That one vowel told her that that was the last thing he wanted to hear.
"You know he and Belly broke up?" He asked, and the attitude of positivity and confidence was gone, replaced by a thick layer of something Vivica couldn't quite identify.
"Yeah, that's what we've been talking about." She nodded even though he couldn't see, absentmindedly chewing on her lip as she watched the waves crash ahead of her.
"Right, of course you knew." He muttered, and if they'd been speaking in persons she probably wouldn't have even heard it.
In the background, Vivica heard Belly's voice call, "Jeremiah, help me!"
His laugh followed when her distant voice cried out that her mother wanted to braid her hair, a tragedy truly worse than death, apparently.
"I've uh, gotta go." Jeremiah spoke, his attention back to the phone.
"Okay. I'll talk to you later?" She asked hopefully, for after sitting there with her thoughts, she needed to talk to him more than ever.
"Yeah." He agreed quickly, and Vivica could hear the melodic laughter of Belly on the other end of the line. "Bye."
"Bye—"
The line went dead before she could finish.
Vivica sighed and tossed her head back, taking her own turn to observe the clouds in the sky.
"Wanna talk about it?" Cam asked her, nudging her shoulder with his.
She did, just not with him.
"I'd rather not, honestly." She admitted with a head shake, pulling her head back out of the sky.
Cam nodded and instead picked up his binoculars and offered them to her.
"Whale watching, then?"
Vivica offered a quick smile and accepted. "Of course."
She lifted the spectacles to her eyes and gazed through at the empty ocean, finding no whales whatsoever.
"You're still doing it totally wrong." Cam chuckled at her, having corrected the way she did things too many times to count in the past.
"And I still don't care."
✸ ⁺. ✿ ˖ ࣪
VIVICA got home later than she'd planned, having spent the entire afternoon at Cam's side to distract him from his heartache and do nothing but be his friend.
She got home just before dinner, and when her parents didn't even question where she'd been all day, she knew something was up.
They didn't tell her until halfway through their meal, didn't even insinuate anything that could've prepared her for the discussion they brought up at the dinner table, like it was something as casual as the weather or time of day.
The news crushed that her world. That killed every positive thought she'd awakened with that very morning.
The word spun in her head and rearranged itself in every way possible. It repeated until it didn't seem like a word anymore.
She never knew one word could have so much ridiculous power over her, over them. Divorce.
She hadn't said anything in about eight minutes, ever since her father did what he called braking the news "gently" to her.
There was nothing gentle about it. It was sharp and harsh and ripped into her in every way it could. It clawed at her with razored pincers and dug its way in.
Her vision was blurred by tears just by the very sound of that word. She heard the explanation, but she didn't care.
She knew they'd been fighting a lot more, but she never imagined this. It wasn't possible. No. Maybe for some people, but not her parents. Not for Crestviews.
They were the town's sweethearts, and had been for over twenty years. What changed?
"I don't understand." She mumbled, her voice thick with tears. "You— you guys love each other. More than anyone I've ever met, what—"
"Sometimes things change, sweetheart." Anika said, her voice back to its regular softness, lacking the edge it gained when fueled by alcohol. "People change."
She didn't like the way sweetheart sounded coming from her mother's mouth. Like it was a pitiful and poisoned word, not a butterfly-inducing and blood-rushing one.
"What changed?" She exclaimed. Her tears had fallen down her face now, dropping down and soaking into the napkin by her plate.
"And what— what's gonna happen to me? Are we gonna move? What— holy shit, what about school?" She rattled off question after question.
Vivica felt like she couldn't breathe. The room was filled with invisible smoke that everyone in the room was immune to but her.
They were so unbothered as they answered each of her questions, answers that fell upon deaf ears as nothing more than blurred words.
How were they both so okay with this? Her world was crumbling and instead of trying to help pick up pieces, they were taking sledgehammers and smashing them even further.
She needed to get out of the room. Out of the house. Out.
She got up from the table without saying a word, something that before tonight she never would've dreamt of even doing. It should've come with parental consequences, but it didn't.
She rushed to the front door and pulled on her shoes.
"Where are you going?" Her mother called. She didn't even put in the effort to get up from the damn table and follow her only child.
"Anywhere." Was Vivica's answer. It was scarce and probably disrespectful, but she didn't care. "Anywhere but here."
She wished that Jamie was there. If he was, she could've run into his arms and he would've held onto her until all of her tears were gone and she'd laughed too hard to remember why she was upset in the first place.
That's when she realized why her father came to town that specific weekend. So Jamie wouldn't be there. So he wouldn't know.
She was halfway down the road when she came to that realization, and when it dawned upon her, it made her walk even faster away from her house.
Opening her phone, she sent a message to the only person she could think of, asking if he was home. He seemed to be the only person she could talk to anymore.
Jamie wasn't there, and Conrad had been dodging interactions with her all summer, even when she was in his house. Maybe she wasn't so important to him after all.
She found that she'd memorized the path to the Fisher's house without meaning to. Every bend on the road and every pebble underneath her shoes, her body recognized it more than it did her own house.
Vivica knocked on their door without even considering that some other member of the household might answer, tears falling down her face all the same.
Of course, the factor that she hadn't thought of was the one she'd been given.
The door opened to reveal Steven, whose face had been overcome with a look of surprise and concern when he found Vivica on the other side of the door.
"Vivica?"
His voice spared no more shock than it would've if she'd busted down the door and walked in. Her name sounded foreign and unfamiliar to her ears when he said it like that.
"Shit. Steven uh—"
She swatted at the tears on her face, but she knew it was no use. The damage had already been done and there was no hiding it.
"Are you alright?"
"Is Jere here?"
They asked their own questions at the same time, both in very different tones.
"I'm fine." She mumbled, rolling her eyes at her own voice crack. She was clearly not fine, and even Steven could see that.
"I think Jeremiah's uh, out back." Steven told her, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. "But you're clearly not fine. Come in here."
She didn't argue with him, she didn't have it in her. So she walked in and let Steven lead her to sit down on the couch.
She and Steven were friends, but they had never been more than surface level with one another. But right now, he could see right through the barricades she put up everywhere she went. They weren't barricades anymore, they were windows that let anyone see through as they pleased.
"Look, I don't mean to like, overstep or anything, but . . "
"I get it," She sniffled. Pushing her hair out of her face, she took in a deep breathe. She didn't know why Steven was helping her, why he didn't just run out back and leave her sorry self to Jeremiah, but she didn't oppose.
Steven Conklin just had such a big and caring heart. He wasn't going anywhere until he knew his friend was okay, even if she didn't want him to be there. Because he was stubborn too.
"Not for me to overstep, but . . . your parents are divorced, right?" She asked. He nodded, portraying that there was nothing wrong with her question and urged her to continue. "How'd you uh, deal with that? I mean, it's such a big change. Did it ever feel like it was all—"
"My fault?" He guessed her next words. Because yeah, he'd had this conversation a million times, just with himself. "Yeah."
"But," He began, making her eyes pull away from the ground and to his. "It gets better. I promise. You start to realize that you're not your parents, and their mistakes aren't your own. It takes a while to readjust to things, but it eventually starts feeling okay again."
She nodded along with his words, hanging onto every last one of them. His voice was like honey, soothing and comforting.
"We can't always control the people in our lives, but what we can control is how we deal with the hand we're dealt." He added.
He had a gentle smile on his face that matched perfectly with the softness of his eyes. Vivica gave him an appreciative attempt at a smile in return.
"When'd you go and get all wise, Conklin?" She asked him, trying and failing to accompany it with a chuckle.
"You underestimate me, Crestview. I am wise beyond my years, always have been." He replied back in a dramatic and humorous way— an attempt to make her smile. It worked.
When her laugh died, she gave him the sincerest look she could. "Thank you, Steven. Seriously."
"It's nothing. I'm here if you want to talk about it." He offered. She hadn't outright said anything, but she knew that he knew what the conversation meant.
"I can go get Jere if you want—"
The back door opened and closed, followed by footsteps. No need.
"Never mind," Steven quipped, and turned around to look at the kitchen. He called, "Hey, Jere?"
"Yeah?"
His voice carried through the house from the door, blessing Vivica's ears with a foolish reassurance.
"Can you come here, man?"
His request was followed by the soft sounds of Jeremiah's footsteps, and then the boy appeared in the room.
His hair was wet and a towel around his shoulders, wearing a pair of swim trunks and nothing else. He'd just gotten out of the pool. Belly hadn't come in yet.
His face fell for two reasons when he saw Vivica . The first being because of the tears stains on her flushed cheeks and the delicate look in her eyes. The other was the fact that he'd just kissed Belly.
It had just happened, without intention or meaning. She was just right there. And she'd initiated it, not him, but he didn't do anything to stop her.
The whole time all he could think of was how he didn't feel anything. He'd waited all summer for that moment, and when it finally came he felt nothing.
It didn't matter now, because it had already happened and he couldn't undo it, no matter how much he wished he could.
That was a problem for later. Right now, the girl sitting on the couch with his best friend and in a puddle of her own tears was what mattered.
"Viv," He breathed out, ushering to the couch. Steven swapped placed with him and left them be after giving an encouraging fist bump, which Vivica appeared to find amusing.
"Why aren't you at home? It's late." He asked, his hand finding hers. "Not that I don't want you here."
"You're just the only person I could think of to talk to." She sighed, feeling the flood of tears from earlier coming back in a new tidal wave. "Steven really helped me, though. But um . ."
She went quiet and wouldn't look at him. It killed him a little that she wouldn't look at him.
He knew it wasn't because she knew what he knew, but a part of him felt like it was. Like she could somehow see through to his memories and pull them right out of him. Like she knew every mistake he wished he never made.
"But?" He urged her on. When she still didn't look at him, he ducked his head down so that she'd have to. His eyes met hers, and he saw the curtain of tears that separated them. "Viv?"
"They're getting divorced, Jere." She whispered, like if she didn't say it loud enough it wouldn't be real. But it was all real, too real. "My parents."
Jeremiah's heart clenched as her tears dropped down onto his hand.
"Oh, sweetheart." He sighed sympathetically. The name sounded so different when it was rolling from his tongue. It was comforting and sweet, like a droplet of the sun itself was flowing over her.
He didn't say anything else, just pulled her into his arms and let her cry. She curled up into him in the security of the couch cushions, her head buried in the refuge of his neck.
Her touch felt like a thousand suns kissing him over and over, and he couldn't think of anything better. Nothing could even compete with this feeling, no matter what it was that tried.
For what felt like hours she rambled off her doubts and he replaced them with whispered sweet nothings and reassurances.
But the entire time, guilt ate away at Jeremiah. He wanted to go back in time and correct his mistakes, redo the whole day. He wanted to be the one that opened the door, to have never gone and visited with Belly in the pool.
Things would've been a lot less complicated that way.
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calypso's notes!
supriiiiise shawtays
it feels so weird writing for tsitp in mid october 😭 but i missed my babies jivica <3
also i apologize for making cam even more sad
#justiceformymancam