Welcome to the Family

“Alright Matthew, get back on the damn gurney. Olliver?” Mr. Isham called loudly. He sounded so annoyed and so unfriendly. Ugh. A man in a doctor’s outfit huddled near and immediately grabbed the handles of Matt’s gurney. “All ready,” he reassured the director.

“You,” he motioned toward me, “go inside that room. There’s a table with instruments. You just look at them and whatever you do DO NOT LOOK INTO THE CAMERA, understood? I believe that's something even you can do,” I clenched my fists. That guy was just so rude.
"Excuse me?" Matt scoffed, but Mr. Isham just growled angrily, "GET. ON. THE. FUCKING. GURNEY. SANDERS. We all wanna go home. It's the last scene. Now do that for me, princess, will you?"
He then proceeded to tell the Olliver guy that he had to push Matt’s gurney along the corridor and Matt, who was too pissed to even say something, was supposed to look in my direction.

“Alright, four, three, two,…” he waved again, just like he’d done with Zacky. I took a giant metal syringe and eyed it closely. Before I knew what was happening, Isham already screamed “Done. Good job. And we’re done for today. Go partying or whatever. Studio on Wednesday.” And off he went.
Matt just shrugged and we walked back to the bus in silence. Wow. There were like… five seconds of me on tape, it would probably be even less once cut, but hey, I’d probably made it into an Avenged Sevenfold music video.

“Guyyyyys, parteyyyyy!” Syn screamed in delight, sounding like a girl. “So Syn, you looking for a guy tonight or why are you sounding like someone chopped your fucking balls off?” Johnny grinned, only to be retorted with a “shut up, short shit, we all know you were born without balls anyway.”

We all started laughing while Johnny pretended to pout, but I could see he was about to grin, too. We went into the bus to change. I even got the tiny bathroom so I wouldn’t have to undress in front of the guys. Luckily, I’d brought along everything I’d bought with Michelle in the afternoon.

I decided to wear the strapless black dress with the cut outs on my back and the sexy cleavage. It had costed a fortune and I felt incredibly attractive in it.
I applied some make-up and mascara and finished my look with a decent-looking red lipstick. It had taken hours to find some red lipstick that didn’t make me look like a slut, but this one was just perfect.

When I got out of the tiny bathroom cabin, seven pairs of eyes drooled over me. Any girl would have been glad to turn the heads of the four A7X members, James the camera guy, Olliver the guy who played the doctor and Mike Portnoy, but I felt really embarrassed. Syn whistled flirtatiously and Zack repeated what he’d said earlier: “Damn Shads, you’re one lucky fucker.”

Matt just grinned broadly and offered me his arm before whispering “you know, Vicky, you do look breathtakingly gorgeous tonight.” It made my heart skip a beat. We walked toward a jet black limousine that was already parked in front of our bus, the guys all dressed in black shirts and black smoking jackets, looking handsome as always, but I just couldn't take my eyes off Matt.

We arrived at a club in Los Angeles at about half past 11. I had offered to drive since I never drank anyway, but Matt had insisted on taking a limo. When we got out of my car, there was a long queue in front of the entrance, but we just walked right past it.
A group of tall, bleached blond girls all dressed in pink, skin-tight dresses barely covering their asses started screaming the guys’ names, and I caught most of them staring at the girls’ obviously surgically improved breasts at least once, even Matt. And yes, even that made me kind of jealous, although I knew I should have felt that just looking wasn't really being interested.

The club was packed and you literally couldn’t move. It was freakishly hot, too, and the air was thick and hard to breathe. There were even more of the girls who looked more plastic than real swaying to the sounds of the pop music.

In the corners there were huge couches and some old, disgusting guys with grayish ponytails and sunglasses were furiously making out with the young slutty girls. I couldn’t help but shutter at the thought that this was the so called American Dream – going to a club and hoping to find an old, rich guy to marry and then hoping to get a green card and inherit all their money.

I shrugged and followed the guys to the bar. Zacky bought me an energy drink and they started to do one shot after another. I went to take a tour around the club as it was a very special experience to me.

I still remembered that one night where I had tried to get into this very club with my friend a couple of years ago. Being underage hadn’t been the actual problem since they didn’t ask for our fake driving licenses anyway, but they’d simply sent us away by telling us it was only for a certain group of people we’d surely never belong to. And here I am, I thought.

There wasn’t much more to see except for a couple of dark VIP rooms to the right, and I didn’t really want to know what happened in those.

When I returned, I saw a tall, tanned, blond beauty standing right next to Matt, who had his hand around her waist and his beautiful signature smile on his face. A groupie, I thought, feeling my heart shatter in a million pieces. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help it. I was jealous, but I knew I had no right to be.

We hooked up once, so what? That doesn't mean I own him or that it's even going to repeat itself. I mean, I did think so. But now I know. He's so not into me. And I have to accept that, I thought. Not knowing what to do I immediately turned around and almost bumped in a tall, muscular black guy. “Look where you’re going, young lady,” he smiled, but I didn't even bother to respond.

I hoped that the blonde would be gone right after I returned from the bathroom. I washed my hands and checked my make-up. My hair was nice, but the boring mixture of dark blond and slightly lighter blond highlights definitely couldn’t compare with the other girls’, which she wore in a neatless chignon as far as I remembered.

She had a perfect face and a natural, beautiful smile. Again, I felt that my oval, freckled face wasn’t even close to being as pretty as hers.
And then, I sighed to myself, there was the body thing. She was tall and athletic, yet curvy. She wore high heels which enhanced her long, beautiful legs and made her look almost as tall as Matt.

Me? I was tiny already, but I didn’t even wear heels. Stupid me had decided on ballerina shoes. Instead of curvy I was thin as a rake and my dress hung loosely on my shoulders although it was supposed to be skin-tight. I threw myself another disgusted look before returning to the others.

Zacky the red-head was the first one I spotted, but the two of us were soon joined by Brian and Johnny, too. We danced for about twenty minutes and I almost forgot that Matt was probably busy somewhere in one of the rooms to the right with the beautiful blonde.

He didn't strike to me as that type anyway, hooking up with a girl at a party, just screwing her right in the damn club and then leaving, although that was about what had happened with me. But anyway, I had an ugly feeling in my guts that it wasn't just a one time thing.

Who knew, maybe he was interested in her for good? I couldn't stand the thought of another Valary. With Val, I'd at least known where I stood, she'd hated me from the beginning, and that feeling was mutual. But if he got a new girlfriend now, I would probably even have to act all nice.

God, I needed a shot. Luckily, Johnny - wasted as could be - was feeling generous that night. So far, he'd paid for almost all the guys' drinks. They were, of course, shamelessly taking advantage of poor drunk Johnny, and I dedided to just go with the flow.

Few minutes later, I downed some stiff drink I didn't even know the name of, but drinking wasn't my thing, so I couldn’t really enjoy myself either. The voice inside my head kept telling me to get over it and not to interpret too much into the situation since he’d probably just met her there and there was, of course, the possibility that it was just a one-time-thing.

Somehow, I convinced myself to believe that this was even more likely. That way, the pain of seeing the two of them seemingly having the time of their lives was at least a little relieved. Still, I was devastated about the fact that I cared at all.

At about half past three, Matt reappeared and joined our group. He smiled at me and that almost killed me. How could he sleep with some groupie now and then return to us and pretend nothing had happened? I felt betrayed. But then again, I had no right to say anything anyway. After about five minutes, Blondie came back with two drinks and handed one of them to Matt. He smirked and I could see his dimples, obviously enjoying the night while I was busy whining over a rock god who didn't care about me at all.

She then wrapped her arm around his shoulders and started dancing with us. I felt like someone had stabbed me. That’s probably the worst situation ever, I thought to myself. All I wanted to do is crawl into bed and bawl my eyeballs out, but instead I had to dance with my crush and the one he’d chosen for either the night or longer, and pretend everything was alright.

Notes

Oh nooooo :( We knew something was bound to happen since nothing gold can stay, right?

What do you guys think? Comments please :-)