A Series of Firsts (A Matthew Gray Gubler FanFiction)

The First Hope

Pizza was eaten over light-hearted conversation and laughter. The deeper stuff was put on hold for a moment. Alex had always cherished these times with him. He made her laugh, laugh so hard her stomach would ache and she'd have to beg him to stop. His eyes would twinkle as he told joke after joke and the slice of pizza on his plate started to grow cold as it was forgotten in his elaborate story telling.

She missed his voice. She missed his smell. She missed the way he would use his hands for inflection. She missed his excitement and his infectious enthusiasm. She was curled up in the corner of the sofa, her eyes not leaving his face. He continued telling her about something that had happened on the set of one of his recently completed movies when his phone started to vibrate again. She watched as he glanced at it quickly, and then went back, his hands moving faster as he neared the climax to the adventure. Her eyes left his and glanced over at his phone. A picture of a woman flashed across the screen as the vibrating continued.

"You want to get that?" She pointed at the table where the phone was scooting across the wooden surface.

He shook his head, "I'm here with you right now and whatever this is," He reached over and grabbed the phone, hitting the ignore button and then switching it over to silent, "Can wait until I'm done."

"Are you finished?" She reached for his plate and took it from his outstretched hands. She stood from her comfortable position and walked back into the kitchen. "Do you want another beer?" She shouted out to him.

"Please," He stated before going back to the tale of mishap. "The things I can get them to do but I have to say the dance off was probably my favorite moment." He accepted the offered beer and Alex crawled back onto the couch next to him.

"So, besides story telling over dinner, I've been doing most of the talking tonight. Umm...don't you think it might be a good idea if you told me your side?" Alex was nervous while asking him, but she knew that this entire night wouldn't have been completely productive if she didn't fully understand what she had put him through.

Matthew took a swig of his beer, his eyes not leaving hers. He pulled the bottle away from his lips, turning it slowly between his long fingers. "What exactly would you like to know?"

"Well..." Alex stopped, thinking about exactly how she wanted to phrase this question. "When I came back and I thought that everything would just go back to normal, you were still super distant and well, well, you didn't stop hanging out with her. Why?"

Matthew closed his eyes, reaching over and setting the bottle down next to his phone. "I've thought about why a lot, especially after you left and honestly, I'm not sure. I think I really believed that things wouldn't go back to normal. I had convinced myself that you weren't the same person and that you weren't in love with me anymore."

Alex squinted at him, "See, where would you have gotten that idea?"

Matthew shrugged his shoulders, "You were the first girl I'd ever fallen in love with but all of the fighting, the fact that you were so far away, it just all changed. At least, at the time that's what I thought and she, well she gave me all of the attention that I wasn't able to get from you. When you came back and expected it all too just go back to normal, I panicked. What if I failed? What if I wasn't the guy for you anymore? So many questions plagued me and I just turned to the one person who had been there the last few months. She became that emotional support for me. Oh shit!" He stopped talking and couldn't look at her, his eyes scanning the wall behind her head again.

"What?" Alex crawled up on her knees, reaching over and grabbing his head.

"In a sense, I guess I did cheat on you."