The Masked Truth

Chapter Twelve

I wrote 7.3K words yesterday for Nano *cheers loudly* -- hopefully updates every second day from now on :)

Chapter Twelve

I feel the warm embrace of Alex's arms before I notice the heavy metal tune disturbing my morning sleep in. I reluctantly unwrap myself from the tentacle of arms holding me against his warm bare chest. I lean across and grab his cell phone off the side table.

His co managers name flashes across the screen before fading to the missed call screen, ops. The screen then fades to a picture of us smiling happily on the beach from our trip to Australia back in the summer. I'm surprised he'd use this photo since I look half mad, but considering it's his favourite place, I can see why too.

"Alex, you've got a call."

"Let it go to voice mail." He groans as he tackles me back to the bed. With his warm body pressed up against mine, it's hard to push him away and deny the urge to cuddle him and fall back asleep – but being the responsible adult, I feel like I have this unspoken duty to wake him up.

"It's Steve-o," I say. "He's called you like, three times."

"Hmm," he mumbles something incoherent before soft snores can be heard filtering out of his mouth. I don't usually like it when people snore, but Alex has a soft cute one that somehow melted my heart instead.

Seconds later, his phone starts buzzing and playing the same screechy tune. Instead of calling his name, I poke abdominal muscles with his phone until he's irritated enough to take the deceive from my hand and answer it.

"Hello?" his sleep voice rings through the air.

I hear another voice shouting down the line which makes me wince and move back slightly. Whatever Alex has done, I certainly don't want to be in his shoes this morning. I tried to drag him to bed early, but we got caught up on watching a horror movie which played into the early morning. I knew this would happen, even though he promised it would be okay.

"You said departure would be at eleven," he grumbles with annoyance. "It's very early in the morning, stop nagging me about where I need to be so I can sleep for five minutes." He runs his fingers through his mop of black hair, which makes it stick up in different directions.

"Alex." I poke, "It's ten thirty."

"Shit," he grouches. "That late?"

No other words are spoken to Steve-o, instead he taps on the red circle which ends the call between them. Bed sheets and pillows go flying into the air as Alex scrambles out and starts scrounging for his clothing. He throws my discarded clothing up in the air before finding his black Fall Out Boy t-shirt and ribbed skinny legs tossed over a chair near by.

"Do you want a clean shirt?" I ask.

"I took all my spare shirts, remember?" Alex used to keep a spare set of clothing here in case he'd spontaneously stay at my apartment, which would be frequent when he was in town recording music but one night he threw up all over his spare clothing and never brought a set back here because he was leaving for tour.

"I have a spare pink band t-shirt," I tease, remembering our phone call from early onwards.

"That'll do." He casually nods his head.

"Really?" I ask with surprise.

"Only if you sign it with a cute message."

"You're so on!" While Alex packs up the remainder of his gear, I grab the pink t-shirt with my masked face from the bottom draw from my side table. There's already a black marker resting on the floor from where I discarded my notebook last night.