Beating Hearts

01 | Hannah

H A N N A H

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@ Hollywood_Insiderz: Thayer Hart left broken and bruised after Lily Keats, on and off girlfriend of four years, calls it quits...again - is this the last we've seen of the A-list couple?

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I curl up the piece of paper into a tiny ball and send it soaring across the living room, towards the trashcan in the kitchen. I watch from the couch as it bounces off the edge of the trashcan and rolls underneath the fridge. Great. Now it's going to haunt me there until I dig it out.

"Another one?" Mia, my best friend and roommate since junior year, asks. She's eyeing the space beneath the fridge where the fourth rejection letter this week just disappeared to.

"Where am I going to get experience, if no one is willing to hire me?" I groan, sliding down until I'm lying on the couch with my feet dangling off the armrest. We really should have gotten the three-seater.

  "If you had kept the letters, we could've saved money on wallpaper for the bathroom," she tells me, before she picks up the nearest piece of clothing – a sundress that she's already folded three times – and starts the process of refolding it. She's on her knees on the floor, an assortment of clothes scattered around her, and her new travel backpack lying open in front of her. It already looks half full – how she's going to make room for the rest of her things I have no idea. It doesn't really matter. In an hour she'll be turning the bag upside down and shaking out all its content, again.

She does this a lot – pack and unpack. Fold and refold. Clean and reclean, until she runs out of time. I bite back the urge to remind her that it would take significantly less time to pack if she only did it once.

Instead, I focus on the water mark on our ceiling that has been there since we moved in three years ago. "As if I want to be reminded of my lack of experience every time, I'm in the shower," I tell her, mocking the balled-up piece of paper underneath the fridge. I should really dig it out before it gets swallowed up by the dust down there.

"You're right. We might as well use our degree certifications at this point," she says. I look over just in time to watch her pick up another article of clothing – this one a tank top that she folds four times, until it can't possibly get any smaller, and stuffs it onto the rest of her things. I wonder how many times she'll repack before she leaves in a week – and then how she'll manage to live out of her backpack in hostels for months without the time to neatly fold everything before storing it away. "We could always start stripping," she says as she reaches for pair of denim shorts. Then she looks over at me with the same wicked grin that she was wearing the night I met her, when she held out a tequila bottle for me in the backyard of a sorority house and dared me to drink.

"Don't tempt me," I sigh, playing with the embroidered logo on my work uniform. The elaborate embroidery is supposed to make the cheap shirt look expensive, but the thin white fabric is a dead give away. "Anything is better than serving milkshakes all day, while you try not to get groped by your boss."

She frowns. "I'm guessing sleezy-Seth is still being a creep then?"

I nod, pushing myself back up into a seated position. "I've already dodged him three times this week. I don't know how much more of it I can take." I grab the closest throw pillow and play with the frill on the edges of it. Graduating college was supposed to be my ticket away from the job at the Diner, but it's been almost three weeks since graduation and I'm no closer to another job than I was a month ago.

"You could always come travel with me?" she offers again, but we both know that's not on option, so I don't even bother responding. The backpacking trip to Europe was a graduation gift from her parents – without it she would be staying at home, no doubt opening rejection letters alongside me. "I'll send you photos," she finally says. It's the same promise she's made to me ever since she booked the trip and for now that's enough. Unlike her I never had the strong urge to travel, but now that she is actually leaving, I wish I was going with her.

I'm about to tell her she better, when my phone starts to vibrate with an incoming call. I tense as my father's called ID flashes across the screen. It's been three months since the last time he called. Drunk. Just like then and the time before that, I let it go to voicemail. I learned a long time ago that it's safer that way.

"You okay?" When I look up Mia is watching me with concern in her eyes.

"It's my dad," I tell her, hoping that she doesn't hear how strained my voice sounds.

"Are you going to pick up?"

I shake my head. "He probably just wants to check in." The lie weighs heavy on my tongue. I don't remember the last time my father called to check in on me – it's been years. I can tell from Mia's frown that she believes it just as little as I do. But it's become the norm; we don't talk about my parents or the way that neither of them seem to be around the way they should. And just like that we both lie to protect ourselves, even if we don't believe it in the end. Anything is better than the truth.

She looks like she might be about to say something, but then her phone chimes with an incoming message, distracting us both. She digs it out from under a pile of denim shorts, as I eye the clock, wondering how long I have before I need to leave for work.

Mia's gasp draws my attention back to her. She's staring wide eyed at her phone, her jaw hanging open and for a second, I think she might not be breathing. "No fucking way," she exclaims. I think her hands might be shaking, but it's too difficult for me to decipher, as she starts taping ferociously on her screen, no doubt typing up a message.

"Is everything okay?" I ask, when she doesn't offer any information herself.

"He's here," she mumbles incoherently, never taking her eyes off the screen.

"Who's here?"

"He's in Portland – like right here in the city!"

"Who?"

But for some reason, when she finally lifts her eyes to meet mine, I know exactly who she's talking about. There's only one person who can turn Mia into a blubbering nervous mess like this with only a text. "Thayer Hart – he's in Portland!"

Thayer Hart - the whole world's popsinger turned asshole. At least according to the media. But to my best friend - who currently looks like she's about to scream and cry all at the same time - Thayer Hart is still the teen heartthrob she fell for five years ago.

"I didn't know he was on tour again." The last time Thayer went on tour she didn't stop talking about it for weeks before the tickets went on sale, and when they finally did, she spent two hours in an online ticket que. I can't imagine she would have kept it quiet this time around.

She shakes her head, back to typing on her phone again. "He's not. He's supposed to be working on his new album."

"In Portland?"

"No. His sister lives here," she says, still not taking her eyes off the phone. "I can't believe he's here!"

"It's a big city," I remind her, "The chances of anyone we know bumping into him are nonexistent."

"Never say never, baby," she grins.

"Aren't you quoting the wrong popstar there?" I arch an eyebrow at her.

"Semantics," she says, as she dismisses my argument with a flick of her hand. I'm about to ask her how she knows, when she presses her phone to her ear and starts to push off the floor to stand. "Did you see it?" She gushes to whoever is on the other end of the line. "I can't believe it," I hear her say as the last thing before the door to her bedroom closes behind her. Then a muffled high-pitched squeal sounds from the other side of the door.

//AN: thank you for reading this first chapter of BH - please don't forget to leave a like or a comment //