Chapter 161) Eclipse

To have felt too much is to end in feeling nothing.

Dorothy Thompson

Once back home after her Selvadorada vacation with Liam, Vivien threw herself into music making.

She had been songwriting since she was 14, and had written several new pieces all through college, whenever she had some spare time, now with her father Blaine’s help she was working them up and recording them, all instruments played by herself and her father, Vivien doing the lead vocals, Blaine and sometimes Scarlett singing background.

The first few releases under her stage name ViVa, a short of the first two letters of her first and last name, instantly made the charts, so despite their music genres being quite different, Blaine took her along on his tour as an extra act in addition to his already booked opening act, just to get her feet wet performing on the big stage. Initially timid, she quickly learned how to act and move on stage and how to captivate the audience.

The grand finale of every show was a performance together, a duet, the show closer and crescendo, a song written and composed by Vivien, emotionally and enthusiastically performed with her father, it became an instant chart topper, and got her nominated for an award at the Starlight Accolades Hall later that same year.

So her career began to take off at lightning speed, the first invitations to interviews soon followed, for now, together with Blaine to make it easier for her to learn to avoid the pitfalls.

Vivien was ecstatic about her quick progress, her family bursting for pride – and then it happened.

That moment a lot of us encounter at least once in our lives, the one that starts out harmless and unassuming, like any other day, but without warning turns into a life-altering key point in a person’s life. Vivien’s moment also opened an old wound for Blaine, reminding him of a similar situation he had once been in, as he found himself having to watch his daughter’s heart getting ripped out of her chest and trampled on right in front of him and Scarlett.

It started just like any other Saturday, late morning, Blake was waiting for some magazine to arrive, so unlike usual, he had been glued to a window, waiting for the mailman, then ran to the mailbox to bring in the mail and not wait for their housekeeper to bring it when she arrived as usual.

After whirling through the stash and finding what he had been waiting for, he dumped the rest of the mail carelessly on the kitchen counter and took off.

“Hey klutz! Thanks for the mess! You know mail goes in the office not the kitchen!” called Vivien after him, while Blaine and Scarlett were waiting for coffee to run through.

“Soooorryyyyyy …I’ll get it later!” came her 16 year old brother’s voice from the stairs he was hurrying up to get to his room.

“Judging by the hurry that kid’s in you’d think the boy ordered himself some actual pussy, not just a porn mag.” Blaine quipped.

“BLAINE!”

“Dad’s that’s nasty!” mumbled Vivien as she leafed through the mail, bored.

“Did you girls think he would be in such a tizzy over a copy of TIME magazine?! If that wasn’t a smut magazine he was circling the mailbox for like a vulture, then you can wax me up, shave my head and use me for a surfboard! If he makes such a fuss about the Del Sol Valley Telegram, he ain’t no son of mine!” Blaine defended himself unimpressed, grinning, acknowledged by a defeated sigh by Scarlett.

Suddenly Vivien froze.

“What the ACTUAL fuck!?” she muttered while pulling something out of the stash, staring at it.

“Vivien, you and your father with that potty mouth! We still have younger children in this house! Please watch it!”

“MOM! DAD!” the level of sheer terror in Vivien’s tone caused both Scarlett and Blaine to go to Vivien right away and then, there on the counter they saw it. All three just stared at the magazine title page in shock.

On it, a close up of Malik’s face, the headline promising juicy details of his relationship with Blaine Cameron’s daughter, and her alleged sex addiction.

Before any of the three could even recover from the initial shock, the family’s youngest, 7 year old Chase, yelled from the family room upstairs.

“MOOOOM, DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD, Viv’s on TeeeeeVeeeeeeeeeeeee! Come quick!”

“Why would I be on TV?” wondered Vivien suspiciously, while already suspecting the answer.

The three ran up the stairs and on the huge screen saw Malik being interviewed, the ticker below promising a juicy no holds barred tell-all about his relationship with rising star ‘ViVa’, Vivien’s stage name, the daughter of world-renown legend Blaine Cameron. The voice-over already touched on some details that sounded like some terrifyingly irrational socialite with countless quirks and bad behaviors, like a stranger to Vivien, who stood there, frozen in place, mouth agape staring at the TV screen like a nightmare come to life.

Scarlett scrambled to grab Chase and Celeste to shoo them off to their rooms so they wouldn’t have to listen to Malik’s proclamation of their older sister’s alleged kinky sex addictions, multiple men at the same time, which according to Malik, he endured until she started messing with unnamed family members.

“It’s not true. Dad, none of that .. I never … Daddy!” stuttered Vivien, in apparent shock.

Her heart felt like it was literally breaking in two right inside her chest. Despite the nasty break up, his bad behavior, and the news about him having a new girlfriend already, up until this very moment Vivien had secretly harbored hopes that Malik was wasting away in his room, reminiscing about the wonderful times they had together, planning how to win her back with some romantic grand gesture. Never in a million years would a betrayal like this even have make her radar.

“Shhh, I know, princess. We all know. Let’s turn this shit off, and I’ll call Kai! We’ll sue that motherfucker into oblivion and he will learn not to mess with my little girl ever again! We’ll make an example of him and teach anyone to not even try shit like this!” Blaine comforted his daughter, who was shaking in his embrace, before she suddenly just collapsed.

“Fuck! Scarlett, call 911!” Blaine’s voice rumbled with worry, terror and helplessness.