the fourth roommate » alex ernst

TWENTY

"You look hot," Josie smiled, the second hour in to my hair and makeup. We were in an air conditioned tent on a private beach in Hawaii and Josie had followed us to get me ready. The company I was working with said they had a makeup person, but I knew Josie needed money so I convinced them to pick her up for my trip. She had done a fantastic job, keeping everything natural looking but still caked on, even while I was ranting to her about Alex. "Your little boy toy is gonna be shaking in his boots."

"Let's snap this," I stood in the black bikini they placed on me first, posing in the tall mirror and posting it to my story with the captions "hawaii vibes". It looked nice, enough to make some people respond. "I cannot wait for him to see that."

"You gotta get over it, baby!" another girl on set, one of the other models named Tatiana, yelled from across the tent where she was getting dressed. "I know you've still got the relationship and you want it to work, but we're in fuckin' Hawaii, bitch. We don't wait on boys to see our snapchat story. We either snapchat them first or we go outside and have fun in the ocean."

The tent grew silent, waiting on my response.

"Let's go have some fun, y'all."

And we did.

We took pictures for three or four hours in the hot sun, taking breaks every thirty minutes to ease the sweating. After a couple hours of dry shots, we actually got to get in. Tatiana, another model named Kristen, and I messed with each other and swam and took pictures and it was amazing. For a late lunch, we got fresh poke (which absolutely changed my life) and then went back to take more pictures. Overall, my first day was a great one and the second and third were even better.

I posted a picture Josie took on my Instagram of me laying on the beach and being cooled off by four people.

@.masonbelle: this is the life

David, of course, had to comment because why wouldn't he?

@.daviddobrik: "david modeling is actually a super hard job you dont know how much work i do"

I actually liked the girls I was with a lot. We bonded at night, since we were all staying in the same hotel. We ordered pizza and sat by the pool and talked about all of the crazy shit in our lives. They were very interested in the whole "my entire friend group is filled with Youtubers" thing, so I showed them some videos.

"That's Alex?" Kristen asked when we watched the video where Alex took my makeup off. "He likes you."

"We haven't talked since he went to Minnesota and said he didn't love me, so I don't think that's true," I admitted, feeling shy all of the sudden. It was embarrassing to talk about. I hadn't even attempted to contact Alex since the argument; usually he commented on all of my Instagram pictures but he hadn't liked any of them since the eighth. I didn't even tell him happy birthday.

"He probably thinks you're still mad. Maybe you should make the first move?" Tatiana proposed. She had a point, but I would feel humiliated to text him and have him ignore it. "I mean, how bad could it go? The kid's obviously in love with you."

"But is he?" I argued, leaning back as I shoved a slice of pizza into my mouth. "Because when he says he isn't, I have to doubt that."

"No, you don't," Kristen disagreed, scrunching her eyebrows up at my words as if I was insane. "You don't have to doubt anything. The only reason he said that is because he was hurt you didn't say it back. He didn't want to feel like he was all in and you weren't, so instead he acted like he was all out."

"But he can't do that!" I complained and raised my voice a little. The very conversation was frustrating me, and I had to go home the next day and see these people once they came back from Vegas. It was going to be torture. "He can't be so flipfloppy and expect me to be okay with it! That's not fair."

"But he's not flipfloppy, when you really think about it," Tatiana raised her fork to me like she was proving some amazing point. I couldn't believe they were both taking his side. Was anyone in my life sane?

"How?" I furrowed my brows, pursing my lips in disbelief.

"Well, what he says to you directly isn't always how he feels, it's how he wants you to think he feels," Kristen perked up, and I immediately knew people had complimented her on her relationship advice before. She seemed ready to give me everything, which I appreciated. "It's not about his words as much as his actions. You said yourself you think he cares about you. You told Josie he flew to Georgia no questions asked to be with you when your grandma died. He took off your makeup and rubbed your back. One of those videos said he never yelled at you like he yelled at everyone else, and David didn't know why. He forced you to buckle your seatbelt when you got in the car. He's constantly defending you against creepy guys. He has stuck by you even when you flirted with Todd the entire time you were hanging out, and don't say you didn't, because I watched the videos. He refused to pull that prank where he had to pretend to get mad at you because he liked you too much. He acts the same to you on and off camera. And did you see that slide? That was the cutest shit I've ever seen." she was referring to one of the many times David had scared me. I was wearing no makeup, but that day my dark circles were a lot worse and I didn't want to be filmed. I had Alex delete the footage for me and instead of replacing it with more footage, David put in a 3 seconds slide that said This is where I scared Mason but Alex deleted the footage for her so now I have nothing. It was a very touching moment to the two girls, while I thought it was just something Alex would do. "Your fucking grandma said he was the one and you're questioning it?"

"Grandma knows best," Tatiana chirped.

"Exactly. He has shown you he loves you."

"Okay, so say I believe you, why would he say he didn't and intentionally try to hurt me if he loved me?"

"That's easy," Tatiana shrugged like it was no big deal. "He wanted you to feel how he felt when he didn't say it back."

It was like the clouds parted and a ray of light shined over me. I was too busy holding the grudge against him that I didn't even realize he was trying to teach me a lesson. Was it wrong? Yes. Did he mean for it to be so hurtful? No.

"You're right. I'm gonna text him. Wow, you're so right." I pulled out my phone and formulated the message, hesitating for a second before finally clicking send.

mason: happy late birthday alex i miss you

And we waited. It was two o'clock in the morning there, but Alex was never one to go to bed so soon. It was ten minutes later before we finally got a text back.

alex my baby: thank u mas i love you and miss you so much

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:-) how sweet i love my babies

This is more of a filler til the end, i kinda wanted to gain her relationships w other people and also kinda show how her life works plus i didnt write a lot of the things that have happened, she spends every second of most days with these people so its kinda hard to include every story/cute thing that wouldve happened by now, so the big paragraph is just showing how cute alex actually is

anyways THANKS FOR READING VOTE AND COMMENT YES THANKS I LOVE U