The New Girl

[November] - New Relationships, New Feelings? (1)

"I really don't understand why he can't just stay at a hotel," Joe sighed as he watched Dianne flit around the flat, dusting every surface and moving all their stacks of junk around from surface to surface before giving up and starting to dust again.

"I told you," Dianne rolled her eyes, "He was kind enough to let me stay with him for a night when you guys were in Scotland, so I'm just repaying the favor."

"But he's an actor," Joe replied dubiously, still watching her seemingly burn off nervous energy. "He's probably loaded. Plenty of money for a hotel for a few days."

"Maybe he wants to spend time with me, ever think about that Joe?" Dianne straightened, turning to shoot daggers toward Joe with her eyes.

Biting back the words that were on the tip of his tongue, Joe decided to just nod and avert his eyes, not wanting to get into this right now. This, being the standard argument that seemed to crop up between him and Dianne whenever her new boyfriend was brought up.

He had to swallow back the irritation he felt at even hearing the word "boyfriend" in relation to the man Dianne had been spending time with for the last month. Gorka, of all people, had introduced her to a friend of his - an actor named Andy - who spent most of the year filming out west. Apparently the two of them had hit it off at a post-Strictly party, and before any of them had realized it, Dianne was in a full fledged long distance relationship.

Joe had only met Andy once - and though he had seemed nice enough, he couldn't stop being annoyed every time he was mentioned. Especially now that Dianne had invited him to stay at their flat for the weekend while he was in London for work.

"He won't even be here much, I'm bringing him with me to Strictly and then he has that premiere to go to," Dianne rolled her eyes as she slid past him into the kitchen to dispose of the dust rag. "But if you didn't want him here, why didn't you say that when I asked you guys?"

Joe stifled a sigh, knowing she was right and he had nothing to stand on in this argument.

"Just stay up in your studio if you really don't want to see him," Dianne muttered as she stormed past him again on her way to her room, no doubt to get it ready for Andy's impending arrival.

Unable to respond with anything useful, Joe decided to follow her instructions as he trudged up the stairs to his work space, trying to ignore the feeling of dread that was currently rising up his chest.

---

"I can't believe you've been on that show so long," Oli stared at the tall, muscular actor in awe as they all gathered in the kitchen, eating pizza straight out of the box. "Is it hard to do the dramatic scenes? Where you have to like, cry?"

Joe watched Andy smile ruefully as he shook his head, "Nah mate, you just sort of get used to it."

"I'd reckon it's the sex scenes," Caspar grinned wiggling his eyebrows, "Those have to be hard."

"Er, there's nothing hard about them, if you catch my drift," Andy smirked. "Always awkward though. I don't like doing them. Even before I had a hot girlfriend."

Dianne giggled, and Joe resisted rolling his eyes as he turned to the fridge to grab a beer.

"Oh, do you mind grabbing me one, mate?" he heard Andy ask in that overly friendly tone of his. Stiffening slightly, Joe continued on as if he hadn't heard him.

"Joe," Dianne's terse voice cut into his feigned deafness, causing him to cringe. "Grab Andy a beer, please."

Unable to withold the eye roll as he gazed into the fridge for an extra few seconds, he finally grabbed five beers, passing them out to everyone.