Assistant manager- [M.S]

36

Alyssa Wilkins

June 27.

Hotel hopping isn't fun.

Just when you feel like you're getting comfortable and situated, your time's up and it's onto the next.
That's what happened this morning.

I forgot we were leaving early, and luckily my mom knocked on my door to wake me up, otherwise I would have stayed put in Tennessee while everyone else took off to Charlotte, North Carolina.

It took quite a few hours to get there, and driving through the day sucks because it's not as easy to sleep through it, but we're here now, preparing for the show tonight while I sit in my new hotel room, folding laundry.

I have learned to take advantage of the laundry services in hotels, because without it, I would have no way to clean my clothing throughout these few months.

So that's what I'm doing now - washing, drying, and folding just about everything in my suitcase.

If it wasn't dirty, it was probably touching something that was, so I'm better off cleaning it all. It took a while, but I feel better now that I got it out of the way.

This hotel's laundry service is much better than some of the others I had to use.

I thought this old woman back in Chicago was going to bite my arm when she saw my clothes didn't dry all the way and I had to restart the machine, causing her to wait longer than she was hoping.

Then I came back down to do more laundry, because I'm living out of a suitcase so all my laundry is right here with me, and I swear she wanted to smack me senseless.

Turns out she was staying in the room next to me.

Just my luck, right?

In television shows, they make it seem like living in a hotel is the best thing in the world. Like in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, they were having the time of their lives. I'll have to admit, I was expecting to feel the same way when I agreed to come on the tour, but to be fair, I'm doing a lot more hotel hopping than they are. I also am doing this as a job, and I'm dealing with a guy who struggles to share his emotions and feelings when they are the most necessary.

When I hear knocking on my door, my mind immediately takes me back to last night at Matt's .

He's the last person I want to see right now.

But when I open my door, I'm greeted with no other than Matt Sturniolo himself. Normally I would be extremely pleased at the sight, but thinking about how last night went for us, I'm not too thrilled.

He doesn't look like he is either, but he's here anyway.
I shake my head at the sight of him standing in the hallway with both hands in his front pockets.

"I'm really starting to figure you out," I say to him, and his face scrunches in confusion.

"What?" he asks, hoping that I will elaborate.

"I said yesterday that I was sure you would be back at my door, and I was right," I remind him, tacking on the fact that I predicted his next move correctly.

He ignores my comment and my killer prediction skills.

"Alyssa, we need to talk," he says with his voice low.

I kind of assumed that's what the plan was, considering how closed off his body language is and where we left off last night. It didn't seem like we would just pick things right back up this time around.

"Where has that gotten us before?" I ask, and he bites on his bottom lip as he takes in my question. "We step a little further, then it all comes to a halting stop. I don't like this between us - this distance when we both want more."