Behind The Scenes

Chapter 11 (Part Two): New Realities

Matthew stopped on his room's door and turned around, remembering that he wasn't the one sleeping there anymore. Alyssa was living in his apartment for two days, since she got back from the hospital, and they were getting along really well, acting like friends from years; but avoiding at any cost, obviously, bringing up what happened in the hospital. He felt a shiver down his spine whenever he thought about talking about that.

He told himself many times that they were too emotionally unstable. He never would have acted that way if it wasn't the heat of the moment. She never would have let him do it, right?

Fuck, he'd love to stop thinking about it, for a change. He never seemed happier to know that he had to shoot the next day and that he would spend the entire day away from home, not finding out new and ridiculously adorable things about his girlfriend.

To make it all better, Shane, Luke and even Lexi had been abducted, turning living together with Aly much bigger and straight forward thing. The last day, he had forgot he wasn't sleeping in his room anymore and opened the door just to see her in her lingerie, applying some strawberry lotion on her skin. She squealed so loudly the devilish dogs started to run behind him around the apartment.
Wonderful. It wasn't enough they destroyed the furniture, now they hated him.

The door was ajar, and Crawford let out a low laugh, thinking if he could get a timing as perfect as the day before. Well, that whole situation was weird enough, but at least he could take some advantage of it.

He put the nose inside the room, squeezing his eyes, already prepared for the dogs to bark, but nothing happened. His eyes took a little longer to adjust to the dim light coming from the lamp, and there she was, completely fallen asleep before eleven PM, with her reading glasses on her face and a book resting on her belly. Before he even realized, he was inside the room, walking foot by foot to the bed, in an inhuman effort to not wake up the two hell guards.

He took the book, revealing the half-uncovered belly by the t-shirt that was all crooked. He touched on her glasses and winced as she growled, and felt his heart beating on his ears, ready to leave running, but she just moved. He leaned the two objects on the bedside table, and covered her with a blanket thrown in the armchair.

That's when he realized he was smiling and almost touching the girl's hair and jumped behind, speechless.

"That's just what I needed," he whispered, with widened eyes, feeling his face burn.

He ran off the room, desperate to breathe.

Great.

He needed to find himself a girl urgently to fix that, because this whole almost married game was killing his neurons, one by one.

***

Alyssa heard Lexi's loud laugh before even turning the key in the door, and giggled alone. Matthew had spent the day shooting, but she had gotten a few days off, and was feeling deeply bored. She went out to do some grocery shopping, and after that, she decided it was time to get back to yoga, before her lack of effort with her diet started to get much clearer than the foreseen.

When she entered the room, she bumped into Lexi and Matthew, laughing their asses off. They greeted her together, in unison:

"Hellooooo!" They said, with their drunken voices, and Aly arched an eyebrow.

"Hi." She replied, staring at the scenery one more time.

Matthew was only wearing his underwear, laying on the couch. His hair was kind of wet. Lexi was fully clothed tough – in a very small dress, but still. Her head was on Crawford's lap, which meant she was too close to the... general.