Joey Ricther was sitting on Lizzy's chair armrest while Joe Walker sat on a chair right beside them. As he stared at them, he seemed suspicious.

Since Lizzy had been accepted in the Starkid group (on the condition that she would learn and improve her skills before getting onto stage), Joe her English had put some effort into helping her to improve. Elizabeth wasn't a native and her language skills weren't that bad, but they still needed some improvements. Like with any foreigner who suddenly starts living in a different country, it wasn't as easy as she had thought.

Because of that, both Joe and Lizzy were mostly seen together sitting side by side in a quiet corner, he helping her to decipher a text in English or correcting her pronunciation.

"Wait, say that again."

"'Tue'" she repeated, uncertain.

Joe smiled at her with fondness.

"I'm spelling it wrong, am I not?"

"Yes, you are. But it's still so adorable!" he smiled.

Lizzy ginned awkwardly.

"Correct it then."

"The correct is 'toe' but you could spell it wrong forever, in my opinion. I love it." he said, gentle.

The big problem was that Joey Richter had chosen the very same task as Joe . It was for this reason that when Lizzy took her sit for the upcoming interview, Joe sat right beside her, but Joey was smarter and sat on her chair's armrest.

The interview was about to begin. It should be very simple and it would be on Youtube in a few hours. Originally, Lizzy didn't want to participate, after all she wasn't really part of the team. She was more like a trainee in a big corporation. She was aware of her part, but the interviewer insisted that she participated and, as the team did not object, she ended up accepting it.

"You can ask me anything you don't understand, ok?" Joey murmured to her.

"Oh, right. Thanks."

Lizzy looked to her left side and her eyes met Joe's. He was wearing his usual deep blue cap, a white sleeveless shirt that valorized his well shaped chest, a leather jacket and jeans. He winked and gave her a flirty smile. He strategically pulled his chair nearer Lizzy's.

The interview begun.

"Good'ay to you miss," said the interviewer.

And so it began. Lizzie did her best to understand every word said, but there were a lot of times she couldn't get the point of the conversation. Luckily for her, Joe would jump in and save her, although he was getting harsher by the minute.

"'Tune' Lizzy, not 'tone'. We've gone through this before," he whispered.

"S-Sorry," she mumbled.

The interviewer cleared his throat. "If she can't speak English, I just don't see the point."

Lizzy's face got very red, like a tomato.

At the end of the interview the camera was turned off and, for Lizzy's bewilderment, Joe got up too fast and left the room. Joey's eyes lingered on Joe's back, but he pretended nothing weird had happened and yawned, still sitting on Lizzy's chair armrest.

Lizzy got up glancing at the direction where Joe had just walked out. Now everybody was packing and getting ready to go home. When she found him, he was tying his shoelaces.

"Joe?"

He looked up and although Lizzy was standing right beside him, he didn't answer properly. He held himself back and murmured something that sounded more like a grunting.

"So? Do you think I did it?" she asked.

"You were great." he answered sharply, avoiding her look.

Now they walked side by side on the street, heading to their lodgings. Lizzy said nothing. She begun to feel quite awkward and she didn't know exactly why. It was like her presence bothered Joe and she couldn't understand why. They had been such good friends since the beginning...

They kept walking in an unpleasant silence. When they reached Lizzy's door, Joe, who had always stopped to give her a goodbye hug, simply murmured a freezing "see you" and walked straight away, without looking at her. That night Lizzy went to bed feeling miserable because of her best friend's inexplicable apathy.

Two more days passed and Joe wouldn't talk to Lizzy. He didn't stop to study with her anymore and he avoided her as much as possible, which gave Joey the big chance to assume Joe's post as her English teacher. And he grabbed that chance very willingly.

At the end of the second day Lizzy didn't wait for Joe to join in, so she went back home alone and feeling as if the world had gone greyer. She let her mind wonder while she walked, asking herself why had Joe changed so much and so suddenly. His indifference, she thought, was worse than anger. She'd rather have Joe yelling at her, arguing and telling her what she did wrong. To be kept overhanging in that heavy atmosphere was worse, much worse.

She had barely got home and dropped her backpack on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Her heart gave a huge jump when she saw it was Joe on the other side of the door. She opened it.

"Hi" she said, faking disinterest.

"Hi. Can I get in?"

"Sure"

He entered the small living room and Lizzy closed the door.

"Do you want to take a si-"

"I'm ok where I am."

Lizzy had no answer to his rudeness. Maybe she should have been waiting for that, shouldn't she?

Joe dropped his backpack near Lizzy's, and then he crossed his arms and stared her right in the eye.

"What's going on between you and Joey?"

Lizzy glared at him stunned before she could find something reasonable to say. Nevertheless she asked him another question:

"What?"

Joe rolled his eyes.

"My question was clear. What's going on between you and Joey?"

"Joey Richter?"

"Is there another one?"

Stunned and starting to shiver, Lizzy stuttered before answering:

"No-nothing. There's nothing happening between us."

Joe laughed mockingly.

"There's no reason to fool me. It's clear you're having an affair!"

"We are not having an affair! And if we were, how's this your problem?"

Joe mockery laugh came once again and he begun to walk from one side to the other, his hands on his waist. Lizzy was starting to get angry.

"You come here after almost three days without talking to me, only to accuse me of having an affair with Joey, is that so? And how dare you laugh at me? What's happening to you, are you going insane?"

Joe stared at her stared at her; fury in his eyes for the first time.

"No, I'm not going insane." he said sharply.

"Well, that's not what it seems!" her voice raised an eighth. "Suddenly I don't know what you're thinking and you simply stop talking to me, avoid my presence, stop helping me with the English lessons and then, in a damn rainy evening, you decide to show up and accuse me of having an affair with one of your friends!"

Joe approached her and she could see his flared nostrils.

"I came only to listen to the proof to what I already knew" he whispered dangerously.

"Gosh, what the heck are you talking about?"

Joe seemed to try to swallow the words he was just about to say, but he couldn't help himself.

"I thought... I thought we were having something going on!" he yelled, his face getting very red.

"What...?" her jaw dropped in surprise.

Lizzy finally understood it. She smirked and tried to speak, but now Joe had begun babbling and it'd be hard to make him stop.

"But I was wrong, wasn't I? Soon you decided that Joey's help was better than mine, you preferred him instead of me! I had always cared about you and you... you..."

He didn't finish the sentence. Lizzy's mouth opened and closed as he spoke.

"That interview day" he went on, "that was the last straw! He sat on your chair armrest, put his arm around your shoulder as if you were hugging, and there you stayed, switching confidences!" he snapped the last two words at her as if they had a bitter taste.

"We weren't switching confidences. Joey was only helping me with the words I didn't understand."

Lizzy said that with a gentle smile, with the intention of calming Joe down, but it had the inverse effect - He thought she was mocking him and got even angrier.

"I know that! I was there by your side, in case you didn't noticed! I was there to help you! But of course you didn't notice me because you had Joey Freaking Ricther next to you!"

Lizzy sounded choked when she snapped:

"Joseph Walker, stop acting like an eight year-old!"

Joe huffed, crossed his arms and walked to a wall where a mirror slung.

Lizzy approached him.

"Well, as I could understand so far, we have here two points disturbing you. The first one is that you think that Joey and I are having an affair. I do say we're not." Joe motioned to interrupt, but Lizzy forced him to listen: "and it'd be really nice of you to believe me."

"He's into you!" he spoke it in a blaming tone as if Lizzy had responsibility.

"But I'm not into him and that should be enough!"

"You use your charms to seduce him!"

"I don't! Stop imagining things!"

Joe did not respond. He kept looking at himself in the mirror. Lizzy took advantage of his silence to continue:

"The second point is that you thought we had something going on."

Joe looked at her through the mirror said nothing. She went on:

"...and I think this the most important subject we should talk about." she concluded, her heart beating furiously. It took a moment for Joe to finally speak, sounding cold:

"Well?"

"Doesn't this explain a lot?" she smiled.

Lizzy softly touched Joe's arm. He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the warmth of her touch, but then he gave her a cold shoulder.

"I don't know you are talking about." snapped.

Lizzy rolled her eyes and threw her arms upwards.

"It's impossible to talk this way, you know!"

"Great!"

Looking even madder, Joe got his backpack and threw it over one shoulder.

"If it's impossible to talk, because you don't want to talk, then I'm leaving!"

"I don't want to talk?" I?" she shrieked, incredulous.

But Joe pretended he didn't hear and slammed the door behind him, yet he could listen Lizzy shouting:

"You're now really throwing me in Joey's arms, you know!"

Joe stopped in the middle of the hallway. His brain assimilated what Lizzy had just said and he suddenly realized what he had done. He came back the exact three steps he had taken, opened the door again and saw Lizzy standing still two meters from him.

He closed the door, now in his normal sense and breathed deeply. He opened his mouth and gesticulated as if he had something to say, but the words didn't come out. Lizzy walked to him and resumed the civilized tone of the conversation.

"You seem to have something important to say, so just spit it out. It won't be nice for us to part with words left."

"What do you mean by 'us to part'?" he asked fearful.

"You understood. You go home and we don't see each other again."

"But we're going to meet again tomorrow, aren't we?"

"Yeah, I believe so. But it won't be the same." she crossed her arms, looking tired. "So, go on. Say it."

Joe took another deep breath, reuniting courage. He looked at Lizzy right in the eye.

"The truth is that I'm into you. I'm so god damned into you! And to have seen you in Joey's company drove me mad, you know. I expected you would confirm you both were having something so that I would have a real reason to hate you forever." he breathed, "I think about you day after day, night after night; I countdown the minutes to meet you at rehearsals; I get myself planning new things to teach you; I imagine us together and alone and nobody to stop us... I... I'm so into you that it hurts!"

Lizzy's expression was positively surprised when Joe looked at her and, feeling like an idiot, he glanced at the floor and murmured:

"I never thought I'd say this to a woman. I'm such a jerk."

Lizzy approached him and touched his arm. He looked up.

"You're adorable, Joe." she smiled gently.

"No, I'm a jerk. This isn't how I had planned." he hesitated, "I planned to whisper those confessions in your ear when we were alone studying but never, never after an argument."

Lizzy said nothing but caressed his face.

"So it all means that you like me."

"Too much."

"You had everything planned out."

"Yes."

"But you have been betrayed by an outburst of anger."

He nodded timidly.

"I'm an idiot. I shouldn't have yelled at you, but I... I..."

"You often get jealous of me, Joe?"

"All the time."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Not only when I'm talking to Joey?"

"When you're talking to Joey, to Brian, to Dylan, with anyone but me."

"Do you get really jealous?" she asked, smirking.

"A lot."

He confessed those things like a kid that had nothing else to lose. Lizzy, however, gave him a bright smile and Joe smiled back awkwardly. Getting encouraged by her smile, he asked:

" If you and Joey aren't together, then does it mean that we do have something going on?

Lizzy's smile got wider but she didn't say a word. She grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him full in the mouth. Surprised but immensely pleased, Joe kissed her back, grabbing her so tight by her waist that he took her feet off the ground. When their lips finally detached they kept holding to each other so tight that Joe could feel Lizzy's heartbeats.

"Does it answer your question, Joseph Walker?

He laughed and grabbed her nape tight and gave a gentle pull on her hair, kissing her again as if he had never touched Lizzy before, as if all the kisses he saved for her must be given at the same time. They threw themselves on the sofa among the pillows, snogging as if they would never see each other again. Joe was almost lying above Lizzy's body when she finally could save her breath to ask:

"Did you really think I was with Joey?"

"I did."

"I can't believe you had such an imagination!"

"I didn't know I was that jealous until I saw you cling to him."

"I didn't cling to Joey…"

"Whatever." he shrugged "It made me wish to get you away from him and smash the guy."

Lizzy cuddled with Joe. He was staring closely to her, his eyes devouring hers, giving the impression he could stare into her soul.

"You look like a wild lion. I must confess I feared you would smash me today." she grinned.

"I attack anyone who tries to take you from me, mark my words."

Joe smelled her neck and kissed all its way long to her chest. Her skin bristled.

"You're mine now." he spoke in a husky voice.

Lizzy felt like some animal inside her stomach had just purred at his words. She held him tight, passing her legs around his waist, and Joe searched for her lips once more, now completely lying over her body. They did not part until the next morning.

8