Hi guys! I know it has been a while, sorry for that! But this time, I've managed to write quite a long chapter, thank god :p
So yeah, let me know what you think :D
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Stop making a big deal out of it, I thought to myself. Nothing had changed and I had to stop over thinking things. The night out with the guys had been a lot of fun. Until Dean practically dumped Aidan next to me and sort of forced him to talk to me. That was how it felt. Usually, when we were talking, it was fun and natural. But that night, it was like he didn’t want to talk to me, but didn’t want to walk away either.
It was awkward and I was extremely grateful when the bartender finally cleaned up all the glass-shards and handed us the drinks. We went back to the group and I had hoped to find distraction in talking to the others. Strangely, they had seemed to completely ignore me. Not in a too obvious way, of course. But every time I would try and start a conversation, they would talk back for a short while, and then turn to talk to someone else. Since Dean had refused to give me back the spot where I had sat before I went to get the drinks, I was forced to sit next to Aidan. Usually, this wouldn’t bother me. I really liked hanging out with him and talking to him. But this night… For some reason, I couldn’t even look him directly in the eyes.
So now I was lying on my bed in the hotel room, not willing to get up and out. Peter wanted me to do some short interviews with the actors. That meant I had to be in their trailers. My stomach turned. Oh, for God’s sake. I had to stop doing this. I didn’t know what had happened that night, but it was probably nothing.
I forced myself to get up and get dressed. Sierra immediately started barking and jumping around in excitement. She had been trying to get me out of bed for an hour.
‘Knock it off,’ I growled at her.
She lowered her ears and gave me a sad look. It was adorable. Okay, I shouldn’t take it out on her.
I sighed and scratched her behind her ear. Instant happiness for Sierra. That little weirdo. I grabbed my camera and walked to the studio. I was pretty excited for tomorrow. We were going to start shooting on location. The first location was Twizel, where the Warg-chase was going to take place.
I had been right. It was nothing. I had avoided Aidan’s trailer as long as I could, but when I finally decided to interview him, everything was fine. He was his happy, overactive and talkative self again and we were having fun like last night didn’t happen at all.
After almost two hours, I was forced to get out of his trailer, because I still had to do some other interviews. Well, mentally forced. Physically, I was being hold back.
‘Aidan, let go of me!’ I tried to elbow him in his ribs, but he dodged it. With his arms wrapped around my waist, he tried to keep me there.
‘No! You’re not done with the interview yet.’
When I made another attempt to escape, he tickled me in the side, causing me to spastically fall back in his ‘embrace’, while my stomach started to hurt with laughter.
‘I was done with the interview an hour ago!’
‘Don’t care,’ was all Aidan had to say before he managed to drag me away from the door and threw me onto the couch.
I forced myself to stop laughing and crossed my arms. ‘Fine,’ I said with a sigh.
Aidan gave an uncertain look and crossed his arms as well. He didn’t trust me and didn’t sit down, but stood there to block the way to the door.
It took a while. Exchanging funny looks, I waited until he finally relaxed and let his guard down. When he heard someone shouting outside, he turned his head to look out of the window.
I jumped up and practically threw myself through the door. The sunlight was surprisingly bright and it was almost like a scene were someone has been imprisoned for years and finally sees sunlight again. The thought of it made me laugh again and I turned to look at Aidan, standing in the doorway.
‘I win!’ I said with my arms up in the air.
He chuckled, but then gave me a threatening look. ‘I’ll get back at you for that.’
‘Was that a threat?’ I asked, feigning shock.
‘No. That was a promise.’ And with that, he closed the door of his trailer.
I couldn’t hold back my laughter and went to the next trailer. James.
James wasn’t in his trailer, but Martin told me he was hanging out in Carla’s trailer with Jed, whose beard was glued to his face with the wrong glue, so they were having a lot of trouble getting it off now.
When I reached the trailer, I lifted my hand to knock on the door, but my phone fell out of my pocket due to the movement.
‘Shit,’ I mumbled almost inaudible. I bend to pick it up and examined it for scratches. It seemed fine, thanks to the rubber cover I’d put on it. I wiped some sand and dust off it and took off the cover to clean it all. It was then that I heard them talk in the trailer.
‘I know they hit it off right away,’ I heard James’ heavy Irish accent. ‘But the lad is just quite a few years older.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s a big boy, he can handle himself and make his own choices. Dammit, woman! You’re supposed to take off the beard, not my face.’
I heard Carla laugh and she probably hurt Jed even more, going by a series of curses.
‘I know, but maybe it’s not a good idea for him to go after someone that young.’
‘Why not? You said it yourself, they hit it off right away. Oh my god. Next time, that thing will be attached to me with cable binders instead of glue.’
‘It’s a tough job,’ James agreed. ‘And yes, I did say that, but that doesn’t mean it should become more. I just think the age difference could cause… ’ He stopped for a while. ‘With different ages come different needs.’
What the hell?
I was startled by Jed’s loud laughter. ‘Are you serious? Different needs, please! She’s twenty-two, not twelve.’
They weren’t talking about me, were they? I tried to convince myself they weren’t, but with the events going on lately, I should know better.
‘I don’t think it’s going to work out,’ James decided. ‘You should’ve seen them yesterday. Even I was feeling awkward.’
‘That’s probably because Dean forced him,’ Carla joined the conversation. ‘I’ve seen them together, and there is nothing awkward about those two.’
Oh god, I really shouldn’t be listening to this.
James laughed. ‘Yeah, well, that he deserved. He wouldn’t shut up about her, it was driving us crazy.’
My stomach turned again and I was feeling light in the head. This wasn’t really happening. Please let this not be really happening. I was dragged out of my silent pleads by Jed’s loud shouting.
‘There you go,’ I heard Carla say. Apparently, the beard had finally come off. ‘And no one deserves that. Don’t ever do that to him again.’
‘He will survive,’ James said. ‘It’s Nicole I’m worried about.’
I slid my phone back in my pocket and turned to walk away. I shambled away from the trailer, mind blank.
When I almost reached the first turn in the maze of trailers, I heard a door being closed behind me.
‘Nicole!’
No. No. Please no. Fighting back my tears, I turned around to meet James eyes. He had a wide smile on his face and came walking towards me.
‘I thought you were doing interviews today? I haven’t see you yet. Don’t wanna talk to me?’ he asked with a fake sad face.
I forced out a little smile. ‘Sorry, I’m not feeling very well. I think I’m going back to the hotel.’ And I turned again, continuing my shambling.
‘Nicole.’
This time I only turned my head. The playful smile on James’ face was gone. He knew I had heard them. I wasn’t in the mood for this. I shook my head and walked away. I hid behind one of the sound studios to wait until I wasn’t afraid of bursting out in tears anymore. Then I went to fetch Sierra at the costume department and made it back to the hotel.
I was shaking. Literally shaking. I had no idea why. This always happened to me, I didn’t know why. Did I have fear of commitment? Possibly. No, I had been in a relationship. It had gone well. Sort of. Until the lying bastard cheated on me. I had been like this before that relationship and after it. Whenever I found out a guy liked me more than ‘just friends’, I freaked out and I didn’t know why.
Curled up as a ball on the bed, I was staring out of the window. Sierra had given up her attempts to get me to play with her and was now lying next to me on the bed, sleeping.
Someone knocked on the door and I sighed, but didn’t answer. The person knocked again. Maybe I should reply. But maybe it was Aidan.
‘Nicole?’ Peter.
I felt relief. ‘It’s open.’
Peter walked in. ‘Hey, I heard weren’t feeling well. How are you doing?’
I shrugged. Shouldn’t just shrug. You don’t just shrug to Peter Jackson. Or maybe that was just what my paranoid brain was telling me. So I added: ‘Still not feeling well.’
‘Did you finish the interviews today?’
‘No, sorry.’ I felt really stupid and useless. I was a nobody in this world and Peter Jackson himself had asked me to make a blog for him. And now I wasn’t doing what I was hired for and was just acting pathetic over something stupid.
‘That’s okay. Do you think you’ll be there tomorrow?’ he asked with a faint smile.
I couldn’t help but smile back. He was such a good guy, I shouldn’t worry about it too much. I knew he would never get mad at me for not finishing the work while I’m sick – sort of.
‘I think I will,’ I answered. I’d probably be feeling better tomorrow. It was easy to avoid people when we were on location.
Peter nodded. ‘Okay, that’s great. Well, get some rest now.’ He closed the door and left me with my paranoid thoughts again.
I was making up scenarios in my head that could happen tomorrow. Scenarios that ended with a happily-ever-after and scenarios that had me ending up on a plane back the Netherlands. Just when I was about to start crying again, there was another knock on the door.
I quickly dried my eyes. ‘It’s open,’ I said again, hastily.
My heart skipped a beat when Aidan walked in.
‘Hey,’ he said softly. Unlike Peter, he just walked in and closed the door behind him.
My heart was beating somewhere in my throat and I couldn’t say anything. No. Please, not now. I couldn’t handle this right now. The tears prickled behind my eyes again. Aidan saw it. He sat down on the bed, next to me. It woke Sierra up and while he was enthusiastically greeted by her, I quickly wiped the stray tear away from my cheek before he could see it.
‘Now, move it, you.’ He pushed Sierra away and the dog went to drink some water.
I immediately missed the safety of having her close to me.
‘So what happened?’ Aidan asked me.
I frowned at him.
‘Apparently, you got sick. But this morning, you seemed fine,’ he explained.
I shrugged. ‘Guess I ate something wrong.’
Aidan moved away from me a little. ‘Don’t throw up on me, please,’ he said with a chuckle.
I forced out a smile back. But I really couldn’t take this anymore. The tears flooded my eyes and I managed to hold back a sob, but Aidan – of course – saw the tears.
‘Wow, hey, it was just a joke,’ he said, a little shocked, moving back to me. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled against his chest.
Not helping! I couldn’t stop the next sob and I cried in his shirt. ‘I’m sorry. Just feeling really sick.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for that. Come here.’
Before I knew what was happening, he laid down on his back, pulling me with him. I was in a bit of an awkward position, but didn’t dare to move. My shoulder and head were resting on his chest while the tears just kept coming. Aidan’s arm was now loosely draped around my waist.
We didn’t say anything. It took a long time for me to calm down, but when I finally did, I moved into a more comfortable position and the crying stopped. My heart was still pounding like crazy, so I tried to focus on his heartbeat. It was only then that I noticed his heart was beating almost as rapidly as mine. Oh, shit.
I woke up and the first thing I noticed, was that Aidan wasn’t there anymore. For a moment, I felt disappointed. But it was probably better. It was already dark and I really couldn’t have him stay the night in my room. I groped around for my phone, found it and saw that it was nine in the evening. I had missed dinner. I didn’t even care.
Just when I wanted to lay back again, I realized that Sierra hadn’t been out since I had come back from the studio. Shit. With a sigh, I pushed myself up and got out of bed. Something fell on the ground. Where the hell did that come from? I bend over to pick it up and flicked on a light to see what it was. It was a note with something drabbled on it.
I fed Sierra and took her for a walk at six. Go back to sleep.
Aidan
Oh my god. I glanced over at Sierra, who was sleeping at the end of the bed. Then I let myself fall back and pulled the warm blankets over me again, with the note in my hand. With the light still on, I kept reading it. After a while, I was just staring at it, too tired to really read the words anymore. I really had to stop freaking out. This guy was amazing in so many ways.