Grace was no longer in the mood, occupied with the possibility of a bruise on her neck. Matt was lucky he'd moved quickly, or else she'd have shoved his face back in front of everyone, and that would have caused them to have another fight which wouldn't look too good in front of his boss --
and Grace went very very still as Matt and his boss exchanged words. She didn't want him to lose this job too, not when things were starting to fall so well for them...
But then he turned and gave her that smile that always melted her heart and she relaxed. The boys had started up on their cars again, the show was over, and they were relatively alone for now.
Alyssa felt a strange impluse to run her hand down his arm and lace her fingers with his - but that was all wrong, Grace and Matt weren't the kind of couple that held hands in public. Were they?
Don't lose the thread. Keep it steady. Alyssa did not usually have to think to become someone else - she just had to decide to. It was both a trained and natural talent, and she knew out of experience that considering 'What would Grace do' was down the way to failure...
...but that didn't explain why Karl was just so damn good at this. "You're a filthy habit," he'd said and - she didn't even know that Karl knew How to talk like that or to make it sound so natural and --
--now was very much not the time to be thinking about this so Grace jammed her hands in her pockets and prowled after Matt. "So it's mostly just in this one room?"