Nothing. Not a single letter or call or anything back. Once more, Vince was feeling the pitfalls of suspicion and heartache. He was pacing the living room, slightly frantic. There had to be some explanation, some excuse...

"Vince!" Turtle's voice cut through the tension like a knife. "Give – it – up. Come back to earth, and get on with your life. No chick is worth this much."

"Don't say that," Vince pointed at Turtle, a manic expression crossing his pretty features.

"She's ignoring you, bro," Drama chimed in. "Has she answered any of your letters? Thanked you for your gifts?" When Vince would not answer, Johnny continued, "She has obviously gotten over you. Do yourself a favor and get over her."

Vince wanted to sit down, put his head in his hands and just think, but he couldn't. A constant state of energy compelled him to move his legs, and his limbs felt reluctant to relax. His heart – like his mind – was racing a million miles an hour. December was fast approaching, and so...

"So is her birthday." Vince had reached a sudden stand-still in the middle of the floor. The cogs were working meticulously behind his eyes, and careful thoughts were clicking into place, seeming to finish an immensely complicated mental puzzle.

"Vince, I don't think she wants something for her birthday!" Turtle yelled, hoping the loud noise might break his best friend out of the stubborn and clouded delusion.

"It's the ultimate test!" Vince threw his arms into the air. "Why didn't I see this before?" he wondered aloud, completely ignoring the peanut gallery. "It's a test to see if I'm committed."

"He'll be committed, alright," muttered Drama.

Turtle stood up and poured himself a drink, but Drama shifted in his seat, watching his brother resume his confined route of the living room. "So what if you're right Vince? What would you do?"

There was a ringing of shattered glass from the bar. Turtle was staring daggers at Drama. "Don't encourage him, dumbass!"

Drama ignored him. "Vince, what would you do to pass the test?"

Vince stopped his pacing. He looked out of the window. And he thought about it. "I'd have to get her a gift," he ticked off a finger, trailing off.

"So go to Tiffany's," Turtle suggested wryly, "get her a necklace and get this over with. You know, so we can return to normal life?"

Vince shook his head. "No, no...that would never work, Peyton's not that kind of girl."

"Not that kind of girl?" Turtle scoffed. "Every girl is a Tiffany's girl."

"No, I see your point, baby bro." Drama sat forward. "It can't be a bribe. This gift has got to mean something."

"Oh, here we go." Turtle returned to the bar and found another glass.

oOo

Peyton flopped lifelessly into a makeup chair. "Take this wig off of me, please," she begged Patricia (whom she strongly suspected used to be a Patrick).

Patricia laughed in her usual booming way and said, "First things first, sweetheart."

Peyton gazed at herself in the mirror: things had changed. Her eyes did not glimmer and, to her, they seemed a little drained of their color. Maybe it's all the crying, she thought bitterly. Her skin was pallid beneath her makeup, and her nails felt brittle. Most of all, she loathed the blonde wig that crowned her head, appearing to emaciate her face. Finally, Patricia removed it, setting it carefully on its faceless bust.

Riding home in a limo aimed a lot of attention at Peyton, but it managed to attract less attention than if she tried to take a bus or a cab. Remorseless and silent, she avoided the small glob of paparazzi that had bundled against the building, waiting to swarm her. She answered none of their questions, choosing instead not to acknowledge them at all, not caring that she would probably pay for her cold reception.

When she unlocked her apartment door, there was The Box, as she had come to call it. The Box sat tauntingly at the island, noiselessly calling to her from its perch. It was full to the brim with envelopes, their various points sticking out sinisterly in all different directions. Peyton did not want to face The Box. Instead, she made a beeline for the bathroom. She stripped, considering and reconsidering the shower, but it seemed about as appealing as the prospect of her box of fan mail. She washed her face though, over and over again, slapping on cold water from the marble sink. She scrubbed at every pore, trying hopelessly to reach a goal she didn't know or understand.

When she looked in the mirror, her face was red.

She put on a robe and meandered through the narrow, beige hall and into her bedroom. She sank into bed and flipped on the TV, foregoing the pain offered by her marked page in Gatsby. Peyton's eyes peered at a point just above the television, though, and she allowed herself to get lost in the city beyond. She felt lonely, friendless, isolated. The blaring noise of the commercial that had come on felt wildly inappropriate to her situation, so she quickly turned it off. She couldn't lie still, so she got out of bed and changed into her pajamas.

But her body still felt unnerved.

Peyton found herself steadily headed for the kitchen, her heart unwilling but her feet determined. Of their own accord, they walked her straight to the island and then put her in one of the chairs, where she was forced to confront The Box. She pulled out a letter at random, but this obviously wasn't what her body had in mind because involuntarily, she discarded it, unopened. She rifled through the letters, unable to stop her eyes from searching for that one envelope, the one with the familiar scrawl. She searched and she searched until she had reached the bottom of the box, having received more than a few papercuts. But Vince's letter wasn't there to be found.

Maybe he's finally given up, she thought, and though a large portion of her sighed with relief, a smaller but significantly louder part was extremely disappointed.

oOo

As they drove by Tiffany's, Vince was having second thoughts. His brief glimpse of the storefront displays played around inside his mind for what was left of the drive to LAX. The tiny part of his brain that was still logical begged him to reconsider the idea of giving Peyton a diamond tennis bracelet, but he manfully turned it down.

When they reached the airport and E parked the SUV, neither one of them exited the car. E took the key out of the ignition and didn't look at Vince. "Are you sure you're doing the right thing?"

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" Vince countered, knowing what the answer was.

"Not really." E had always been honest...whether or not his honesty was always correct had yet to be confirmed.

"You were the one who told me she was good for me, E." If Vince recounted the entire situation to himself, it just seemed so absurd.

"Yeah, and maybe I was wrong," he said. "She left, Vince." This time, E looked Vince dead in the face. He was silently hoping that this would turn out to be a failure and that Vince would chicken out and see how stupid and extreme this decision was.

"Maybe you were wrong," Vince conceded, "but maybe you were right. Ma' always said that doing the right thing is never easy, and...going to find Peyton? Putting in all this effort? This hasn't been easy."

"I'm not saying anything against your mother, Vince," E had turned in his seat now, "but I think she'd want to see you go on a wild goose chase about as much as I do."

Suddenly, Vince opened his door. "I'll tell Peyton you said hi," he said by way of goodbye.

At the counter, the girl who procured Vince's last-minute ticket leaned heavily forward, displaying a blouse full of cleavage that went gravely unnoticed. "Hey Vince," she said evocatively, "there's plenty of time before your flight."

"Yeah. I thought I'd take some time to relax." And he turned his back on her before she could bat another eyelash. He sat down opposite a hefty-looking businessman, whose fat index finger was adorned with a class ring. He was reading an outdated copy of USA Today. The man stirred in his seat and fluttered the magazine, and noticed Vince almost immediately.

"I know you," he said in a slow Southern drawl. "You're that Vincent Chase, you played Aquaman." A slight but happy shine rose inside the businessman's beady eyes. "My daughter adores you. She's got a poster on every wall."

Despite his nerves, Vince smiled and leaned in, offering his hand. "It's always good to hear my work is appreciated."

"Where are you headed on a Red-Eye flight? If it's okay that I ask." The fact that this man only knew Vince by dint of a daughter's celebrity crush seemed to put a damper on Vince's own celebrity. It was refreshing.

"I'm going to Chicago. Scouting out a possible job opportunity." The lie came easily but he felt a little bad about it.

"I was just there myself, for similar purposes," the man smiled. His lips were thin and his face was aging but his sincerity was no less endearing.

Vince laughed, and then an idea struck him. "You don't happen to know any good florists in Chicago, do you?"

oOo

The plane landed in O'Hare just shy of a vicious blizzard, and on his way through the terminal, Vince became increasingly aware of the fact that he owned nothing suitable to a Chicago winter. The sky was darker than usual, any hope of moonlight buffeted away by the voluminous grey clouds that billowed overhead.

Vince took a cab from the airport to the Hilton on North Michigan Avenue, and checked in to the immeasurable surprise of the night clerk. Tired and wilted, he allowed himself to be ushered up to a suite, silently. Without so much as brushing his luggage, he collapsed face-down, fully dressed onto his bed and fell asleep.

Meanwhile, on the street below, Peyton was pressing through a howling, freezing gust of wind, hardly able to see. She drew her coat ever more tightly to her body and forced through the frigid might of the storm. She turned the last corner and to her great relief, the CVS was still open. With a last burst of effort, she extracted the door from its metal frame and entered the store. It was wonderfully warm, and even more wonderfully, empty. She stepped forward and lowered her scarf, revealing her face without a care in the world. That was the thing about Celebrity: it turned you into a creature of the night. Peyton had always imagined that fame would come with its share of difficulties, but this hadn't been one of them.

It was nice, being allowed to slowly take her time through each aisle, just browsing. She had come here for something specific, but it seemed wasteful not to take this quiet opportunity. Peyton ended up purchasing more than she'd banked on: some new mascara she'd been meaning to try, a couple of bags of candy and four liters of diet Pepsi, to name a few things. Of course, she had come here for a copy of Cosmo, and as she approached the magazine rack, something caught her eye.

Beneath a large spot of the latest political drug scandal, there was a minute inset of a surly-looking Vince, sitting (apparently) alone at a cafe. The emboldened text beneath it read, Vincent Chase: Suffering from Depression?

"Those assholes," Peyton swore. She had half a mind to pick up the trash rag, just to investigate, when the zitty college kid at the counter weighed in on her opinion.

"Yeah, half those political scandals are made up," he said knowingly, puffing out his chest a bit. The glass behind him rattled as the wind howled outside. Of course, his eyes had strayed at once to the larger and more glorified headline...he might not even have noticed Vince.

Peyton nodded mindlessly, placing her purchases on the counter to be rung up. The kid didn't say anything more, but he seemed to be searching her hopefully. She wondered if he knew who she was, and if so, did he think he stood chance? This guy could've looked like Brad Pitt and it wouldn't have mattered. Peyton was not in the mood.

Stepping out into the cold December air, she pulled her scarf back up over her face and jammed her hat more tightly onto her head. Halfway back to the condo, however, the wind came to an abrupt halt and the snow began to float peacefully to the ground. As quickly as it had come, the storm was over.

oOo

In the morning, the cityscape was a veritable wonderland. Snow-covered and picturesque, Chicago seemed to Vince the perfect set for a movie and it seemed implausible that he'd never been here before. The first thing he did was go out and buy a coat – a heavy one. He'd had to wait for a while, as the streets and sidewalks were heaped with snowdrifts and by the time he'd left the store (wearing his new acquisition), it was twelve o' clock in the afternoon.

He decided to walk back to the Hilton, affording himself some time to form a strategy. He did not know her precise location and he was unsure of the venue of her film set. He wished he knew the context of the movie – that would have told him just about all he needed to know. As Vince crossed a bridge over the frozen Chicago river, he felt a buzzing in his pants pocket. Sure enough, Ari was calling him. It was almost certain that E had given him away. But Vince chose not to answer, shoving Ari and the phone from his mind.

The idea came to him as he passed a traffic jam in the snow-clogged artery of North Michigan Ave. If there was even the slightest chance of Peyton's film being outside, then there would be a slight traffic jam wherever a road might be closed. It wasn't exactly a rock-solid theory, but it was something to start with. Vince stopped quickly for a cup of coffee and then doubled back on his route, bent on finding the movie set if he could.

Sitting in this traffic jam, was Peyton herself, gazing stoically out the window of a cab. The snowstorm had impeded the usual barrage of paparazzi – something she knew would never have deterred the vultures of Los Angeles. She breathed onto the window, drawing stars. Then she fogged it up again and this time made a heart. But through that cloudy heart...

"No," she whispered. She unfogged the glass completely and pressed her cheek up to it, trying to see past the line of traffic. Deciding that she'd imagined him, she turned her stare away from Vincent Chase.

oOo

Richard, the director, snatched the coffee cup from Peyton's hand and sniffed it. "Is this hot chocolate?" he asked. Under normal circumstances, he was a delightful human being, but as a filmmaker, he was shrewd and sometimes demanding. Okay, a lot of the time.

Peyton nodded, much to Patricia's irritation, and steeled herself for the lecture she knew was coming. Why couldn't I have brought water? she asked herself.

"You really shouldn't be drinking this," he said, and launched into a tirade the size of Katrina. When he had finally finished, Patricia made a clucking noise similar to that of a mother hen.

"Don't listen to him, sugar plum," she cooed, "there's a lot better tricks to makin' you look sick than actually making you sick."

"I'm not sick," Peyton insisted, gazing at her reflection as the hateful wig went on.

"Mmhmm," Patricia hummed knowingly.

Just a block from the building where they were filming, Vince fell onto a cold bench. His plan had not worked out so well as he had hoped, and he was beginning to feel as though this whole trip was a waste. You've only been here for fifteen hours, a voice reminded him. A buzzing in his pocket notified him to what must have been Ari's fiftieth phone call. As he tried to ignore it, he was struck with sudden inspiration. He waited for the phone to stop its incessant buzzing, and then he called Lloyd.

"Ari Gold's office, Lloyd speaking," he answered robotically.

"Lloyd, it's Vince."

Lloyd nearly crawled through the phone. "VINCE, do you have any idea what Ari's been putting me through just to find you? Where the hell are you!" He sounded so frantic and so stressed that Vince couldn't stop the pangs of guilt that were banging around in his stomach.

"Do not tell Ari where I am, Lloyd," Vince told him. "But I think you already know."

"I should tell him, Vince...but I won't." Vince could hear sympathy in Lloyd's voice. "Have you found her yet?"

"No," Vince answered somberly. "That's why I called you. Did you say you had the limo records?"

"I did," Lloyd said smoothly, pulling them from his desk drawer.

"Where was she taken from the airport?" the urgency almost burned his throat.

There was the soft, secretive sound of papers being filed through, and Vince's heart was tiptoeing along the edge of a very dangerous plummet. Lloyd muttered to himself a little as he searched, but finally he came to what he was looking for.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, sending Vince's heart jumping next to that vicarious edge. "It says here she was taken to 1147 Lake Shore Drive. That's –"

"Even I know where that is. Thanks so, so much Lloyd."

"You're welcome, now get off the phone before I change my mind," he threatened, Ari losing his mind (and his voice) behind him.

Vince walked silently in the direction from which he had come. People occasionally would stop to look at him, but it wasn't the pandemonium of LA, where people could be certain it was him. He was out of place here, which meant more time to walk by before the initial wave of recognition hit passerby.

It wasn't a long stretch from where he'd been to The Drive, and so before long he found himself making long strides up and down the snowy sidewalk, examining the building numbers. At long, long last, he spotted it. And 1147 turned out to be pretty intimidating. A lofty high rise, it extended endlessly upward into the grey sky. The entire front appeared to be made of nothing but steel and glass, less like an apartment complex and more like a business establishment. Vince looked straight ahead at the entrance, where a friendly-looking doorman waved at him, smiling.

Vince waved back, but he couldn't make himself go in. Not today.

oOo

Fwump. Peyton fell into bed, exhausted. Richard had insisted on several hours' worth of chase and reaction scenes, and being in character for such a consistent time period often left her feeling depressed and waspish...not to mention starving. She struggled soundlessly through the dark, pushing off her jeans and untangling herself from her tee shirt. It took an abnormal amount of time to extricate herself from her bra, as her fingers were painful and defiant. Ultimately, Peyton curled up beneath the chic down comforter and was lulled by the sounds of traffic and her own sense of entitlement.

The clock in the living room struck midnight, and Peyton groaned. How loud or how soft it was, she couldn't know. The next day, December third – a Friday – would be her twentieth birthday. Graciously, Richard had offered to only shoot the scenes they didn't need her in, to give her a break, but she had maintained that she come into work. Peyton was what her mother had always called a doer. She went out and was busy, or she found ways to stay busy at home. She was happiest and most relaxed when she had something to do, provided she could do it on her own terms.

And besides, it was exponentially easier not to think about Vince when she was pretending to be Valicity Hall, the anorexic, homewrecking heroin junkie.

Peyton turned onto her side and stared at the wall, lit in odd places and cast with strange shadows from the many city lights outside. A rare patch of moonlight had sprung up as well, as a clearing had appeared in the tremendous amount of storm clouds.

In exactly twenty-four hours' time, Peyton would be twenty years old. She would be twenty years old, wealthy, but still without another letter from Vince.

She would have given up sizable portions of her bank account just for one of his letters.

oOo

Ari sat in silence, which E was going to take as a bad sign. Sure enough, when he spoke, it was in a low, cascading growl. "When is Vince coming back, Eric?" Ari didn't look at E, in the event he might throttle him.

"I don't know," E said. His voice was steady but inside he felt like there was an earthquake taking place.

"Why did you let him go to Chicago, to chase down a girl?" Ari asked, louder this time.

"I don't know," E repeated. "But would it have mattered if I tried to stop him? This is Vince we're talking about here."

"I know who we're talking about, Eric." Ari was on his feet now, and E had to fight not to cringe into the back of the couch. "So," he said at last, pinching the bridge of his nose, "What're we gonna' do?"

E didn't even need time to think about this. "We're gonna' have to wait, Ari," he murmured.

"Wait?"

"Yeah. We're going to have to wait for Vince to find Peyton and either get back together with her or fall on his face. Either way, he will come home."

"Well," Ari said, reaching for his phone, "there's no harm in speeding up the process." Vince's phone rang, and rang, and rang, and –

"Yes, Ari?"

"Vinnie!" Ari put on a very good show indeed. "Long time, no see," he teased, hoping to stay on Vince's good side, as the last time they had spoken, he'd seemed suspicions.

"Um, yeah...it might have something to do with the fact that you shipped my girlfriend out to a whole other state without warning me first." Vince's voice was like a jagged piece of glass, creating more tension than reassurance.

"I thought you two weren't a couple," Ari said, unable to help himself. E dropped his face into his hands and sighed. This was not going to work.

"I changed my mind." All was quiet for a moment, and then, "What do you want, Ari?"

"I want to help you, Vince."

The background noise lulled, suggesting that Vince had stopped moving. "Help me?"

"Yeah, I was going to tell you that she's in building 1147 on Lake Shore Drive, that's –"

Vince forced out a barking laugh. "I know where she is Ari, I figured that out already. Anything else before I hang up?"

Ari's brain was working furiously, trying to judge the best course of action. Eventually, he resigned himself to the inevitable. "Her apartment is just below the penthouse floor. There's only two suites – hers is the one on the right." Ari sighed, defeated. He had hoped to hide her and had failed miserably.

"Thanks Ari." There was a muffled click, and Vince was gone.

After a while, E looked up. "Ari," he said, "you did good."

"Yeah? Save it, Michael Collins."

oOo

The following day seemed at odds with itself: somehow, December third managed to elongate into a protracted and agonizing collection of hours, and yet simultaneously combust into shortened, tiny pieces. Just as she had planned, Peyton woke up and went to the set, though Richard had scheduled simple and relatively painless shots that day. He even kept mum while she ate thirds of the gargantuan birthday cake the crew had given her. They'd even arranged for a female stripper, whom Peyton had enjoyed, despite herself.

Unfortunately, her cab ride home, when posed in comparison to her time on set, thew into sharp relief the strange and isolated way of life she had become accustomed to. She rested her head on the window, not bothering to fog up the glass.

"For someone who's just turned twenty?" The cabby said, surprising her, "you sure look glum." His ebony reflection observed her from the rearview mirror.

"Excuse me?" she almost whispered.

"You're Peyton Leigh, from "Easier Than Love" right?" He watched as she nodded. "My wife loved that movie."

"Oh," Peyton replied, still stunned. "Tell her I said thank you."

"Oh, I can't wait to tell her I drove you home. She'll be so thrilled..." and then, Peyton stopped listening. She couldn't help it. Easier Than Love...it had been about Carlie and Dane who fell in love, but who treated one another as casual dates. The boy was a commitmephobe and the girl was scared to love – a fine setup for a blockbuster romance-comedy, but disturbing to think that it was taking place in real life.

By the time the cab pulled up in front of 1147 Lake Shore Drive, Peyton had wiped the thought from her mind.

"You have a lovely birthday, Miss Leigh," said the cabby.

"Thank you," was all she managed before he drove away. She stepped into the lobby and the sound of her high heeled boots clacking away at the marble floor made her feel safe, secure. She entered the elevator and it was empty, so she hummed to herself the whole way up.

Standing outside of what must have been Peyton's door, Vince leaned against a polished oak table, a bouquet of gardenias pressed into his hand. I called her my girlfriend, he thought, and it felt good. His ears perked as he heard a familiar voice singing a familiar tune.

"Happy birthday, dear meeee –" Peyton gasped and her purse clattered noisily to the wooden floor. Vince rushed forward to help her but she waved him away, choking, "I got it." When she had finally recovered her things, she straightened up and faced him, red-faced but beautiful as ever. "Vince," she gulped,"what are you doing here?"

"Um, well," he acted sheepish, hoping it would buy him brownie points, "I'm here to wish you a happy birthday, and to give you these," he presented her with his flower arrangement. "And, um, I was hoping we could talk."

Peyton seemed frozen to the floor where she stood, but after another stiff moment or two, she walked forward and unlocked the door, allowing him to come inside. She accepted his flowers and put them in a vase in the kitchen to be removed to her bedroom later...but he didn't have to know that.

"I thought we could share some cake and conversation," he continued, "and then I can go back to my hotel, and uh, we can go from there." Reality was slapping him hard in the face. Something ambiguous, something about the state of her apartment spoke to him, telling him that she really had left him back in Los Angeles. But at the same time, something about it told him how sad she was without him, that she had, in fact, been missing him.

"You're staying in a hotel?" she asked blithely, sitting across from him. "How long have you been here?"

"A few days, at the Hilton."

Peyton studied Vince. She cocked her head and blinked a few times, just watching him. "You can stay here if you want," she offered unexpectedly, "but you should really sleep on the couch."

Vince was taken aback. "Well, it would be easier." He watched her pull some cake out of the fridge and lay out pieces on two plates, then pour some champagne. "So," he said, "tell me about this movie."


the usual rule applies: reviews will bring another chapter. thank you so very much, I hope you've enjoyed this one