The Layers of His Mask

How Does That Phrase Go Again?

Day 1

Alex's POV

"Repeat the gist of it one more time?" I request, whisking together the ingredients of my vanilla bean pancake batter.

"Okay...they planned the whole thing, Alex. Hannah told Vi all the stuff Laura had been plotting for weeks. So they devised a plan of their own to catch her. And Tim was in on it too apparently with the voice recording. He said he planned to have us sue if you couldn't convince her not sell that video to the media." Good thing it didn't come to that. She places another glass cup into a box on the floor, stuffing and covering it with old newspaper articles.

"Wow. So how did you know about the recording?"

"They told me about it when I went in the living room yesterday. I supposedly wouldn't have been able to have been in on the plan because of my frequent outburst when I see red." She grabs another glass, repeating the process.

"When you get angry you do say whatever is on your mind. That's why I love you my little rebel." I ladle four round circles of batter onto the electric griddle.

Her once mellow expression falls. "That's one part of myself I'm not proud of to tell you the truth. I love that I'm able to speak my mind in those moments, it's just the way in which I say them that I dislike." Her eyes are staring at my hands while I flip the pancakes.

What she did is done and now in the past, she can only work on it and move forward. "We could put you in anger management?"

"I do not need anger management," she laughs, shoving my shoulder. "I just have panic attacks and bad nerves."

"Is that why you take Lexapro?" I ask, turning our talk humorless.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"You left the bottle on the bathroom counter this morning. Have you ever thought about getting off of them?" I place turkey bacon on the griddle next.

"I have. I'm just afraid of how I will be when I'm not on them. I don't want to go back to how I used to be, Alex. Feeling empty day in and day out is not something I want to relive."

"I don't want you to relive that past either, it pisses me off just thinking about it. But you aren't supposed to take them with alcohol you know."

"I know. I haven't taken them in the past two days, or when I drink for that matter. My doses have been all over the place." she reaches over and picks up a pancake, ripping off a piece and eating it. She winces and removes the piece from her mouth.

"How do you feel now?" I remove the bacon and separate the food onto two plastic plates.

"Eh..." she shrugs, "not bad. I don't feel as hyperactive. I am crying a lot more though. It freaking sucks..." she follows me to the dining room table with a jug of orange juice and two glasses.

We sit down at the table, Becca pours us both a glass of orange juice. She takes a drink from her cup, jerking her hand up to cup the side of her cheek. "Ow!"

"Are you okay?" I ask, my worry making me suddenly lose my appetite.

"I don't think so," she mumbles, shaking her head. Her hand is still clamped on the side of her face. "I just got a sharp pain in my tooth," she mumbles again. "And now it's throbbing...oh my God."

"Uh oh." I tug my phone from the pocket of my basketball shorts, rummaging through my contacts for the number of my dentist.

"Uh oh, what?"

"I think you have a cavity." My phone is at my ear, a woman picks up after the third ring.

"Thank you for calling Dr. Eddington's office, my name is Marbella, how can I help you?"

"Yes, I need to make an emergency appointment for my girlfriend."

"Has she been to us before?"

"No."

"Okay..." she pauses, tapping the keys on her keyboard. "We have an appointment available, but it's for two o'clock this afternoon. Will this be okay?" Marbella asks cheerfully.

Becca's face is scrunched up in pain. Oh, f**k. "You don't have anything earlier?"

"No sir, just the two o'clock."

"We'll take it, thank you." I put my phone down, preparing to give her the somewhat bad news.

"Sooo?"

"Well," I breathe, tapping my fingers on the table. "the good news is I got you an appointment."

"And the bad news?"

"...it's not until two o'clock."

"Oh my God..." she groans again, shutting her eyes. "You don't have any pain killers?"

"None babe - well, wait I have Advil? I don't know how much it will help. How bad is the pain? Scale of one to ten." I walk to the kitchen and grab the bottle of Advil from the top cabinet.

"About a f*****g nine. It's pretty bad, the pain has gotten worse," she mumbles. I return to the dining room and hand her the small, white and blue bottle. She takes it and opens it quickly, pouring three into her palm.

"Those are extra strength." I sit down beside her.

"Yes, that's why I'm taking three."

"Are you going to eat anything first?" I ask her cautiously. "At least eat the bacon, I'll give you mine as well." I learn over and drag my plate across the table, taking from it the bacon and leaving the pancakes. "Eat," I demand, kissing her forehead. "Just don't chew on the side that hurts."

"Yes, dad," she chuckles lightly.

****

"Is all this paperwork really necessary?" Becca asks me, the pen in her right hand furiously swiping over the paper on the clipboard. She's been in a bit of a mood since we left my apartment. "And also, why does the dentist office have to smell so damn weird?"

Despite the Advil taking away the bulk of her discomfort, she's still in an irritated state. Becca had been practically pulling her hair out over the different potential sources of her pain when she Googled toothaches. She began searching WebMD, inputting all her symptoms.

During her not so extensive hunt for answers, the site had come up with: tooth decay, abscessed tooth, tooth fracture, a damaged filling, repetitively chewing gum, and infected gums. None of these had the desired effect that I had been initially hoping for to ease her anxiety. If anything, it raised her paranoia level from thirty to the full one-hundred percent.

"Babe...you'll be fine, don't stress," I reassure her, rubbing her back. She looks over to me and smiles, leaning over in her chair to peck my cheek.

"I've always wanted to ask you something," she confesses, looking down at the clipboard resting in her lap.

"And what would that be?"

"What do you look like without the beard? Don't get me wrong, I love it. Major turn on. But, I want to see your face without the beard covering most of it. It's almost like it's your mask."

"Do you know why I grew this out?" I ask her, touching the hair on my face.

"No."

"It was a bet, in high school. That's where Tom and I met actually. We were at senior prom and he challenged me to a dance off when he saw me breakdancing in the middle of the dance floor. Long story short, I lost. It was basically a popularity contest, and the girls loved that Tom does these random hiprolls that they find oh so attractive and he does this lip bite thing while doing it. I hated him for that, but a bet was a bet. He told me for my losing I had to grow out my beard for a year. I could cut it to maintain it, but never completely cut it off."

"So you kept it for..." her question lingers in the air.

"Because it grew on me. And it makes me look ten times hotter. Or at least that's what my girlfriend tells me."

"Your girlfriend has great taste," she whispers, slowly running her hand up my thigh, nipping at my ear. "My boyfriend tells me that my ass is pretty amazing." she growls in my ear.

I take her hand in mine, placing it over the bulge in my jeans. "Your boyfriend told me to tell you that if you don't stop teasing him, he's going to take you in the back seat of his car."

"My boyfriend doesn't have a condom." Dammit, she's right. Her lips trail along my jaw then around to my lips, keeping them there.

"Aren't you on birth control?"

"I skipped a couple doses, not risking it."

Someone clears their throat next to us. Becca scoots away from me and giggles, apologizing to the man for our extreme PDA. "No one told him to watch. That's why our heads were made to turn."

"Well I couldn't get over the disgusting lip smacking in my ear," the man retorts, folding up his copy of Sunday's newspaper.

I shake my head. "I'm sorry. What's your name?" I ask kindly, leaning over Becca, extending my hand to him.

As if I actually care...

"Steven," he replies, taking my hand and shaking it curtly.

"Guess what Steven? You see that door over there?" I ask him, pointing to the white painted door on the left side of the room with my free hand.

"Yeah?" he answers, his countenance marginally confused.

"Exit."

"Go f**k yourself," he fires back, snatching his hand from my grip.

"Don't make me hurt you," I warn him.

"Well stop talking to me." He glances down to the magazine he picked up off the coffee table.

"Baby..." Becca places her hand on my chest, pushing me back down in my seat. "Ignore him."

Images of me punching him in the jaw pop into my mind. I'm mentally satisfied when his smart ass mouth finally stops.

"Fucker..." I mutter to myself. Becca laughs her light, bubbly laugh and it calms me almost instantly.

"You're so great at making friends," she laughs again, leaning her head on my shoulder.

"I know right? Can we kiss one more time to piss him off? Make it extra noisy."

"Why the hell not," she responds with a shrug, bringing my lips down to hers.

****

Rebecca’s POV

I enter the toothpaste, sanitary smelling room. I sit on the large, plastic chair and the dental assistant comes in to ask me about today’s visit.

I tell her that I’m having pain in my tooth and that I have a slight lump on my gums that hurts as well below that tooth. She tells me okay and then inserts a round plastic piece into my mouth - attached to a large machine, taking x-rays of my teeth.

She leaves, but not before telling me that the doctor will be in after he finishes up with another victim to this cruel industry.

It's going to be bad news, I can already tell.

What if I lose my tooth? I'll be toothless. What I they have to numb me up to scrape away at a cavity? I hate needles. Worse... what if I have to get a root canal surgery done? I've heard horror stories and they aren't pretty. While using Alex's method of Googling just about everything, I happened upon a story where a woman said it was the worst experience of her life and it caused her a lot of pain. I don't know how much of that story was fabricated and how much was true, though I don't want to find out.

"Becca?" Alex calls, sauntering over to me and sitting on the dentist chair next me. He must have seen the wheels turning in my head. I frown and I want to cry. I don't have any money for this appointment and I definitely don't have money for a root canal. I'm practically mooching off my boyfriend as my only source of income. He tells me it's okay but I know it's not.

He takes my hand in both of his and throws on a boyish grin. "Yes," I squeak.

"Remember when you asked me how come my mother calls my father Matthew instead of Richard?"

"Yeah," I reply. I know he's trying to distract me, and I'm thankful that it's already working.

"Do you want to know why?"

"I do," I answer quietly. I really do want to know because it confuses the hell out of me as to what to call him.

"My fathers middle name is Matthew. When he and my mother first met, he told her his name was Matthew because he said it sounded a lot cooler than Richard."

"And she stuck with calling him that after all these years?"

"Yep, because it makes him happy. And then he proceeded his story by going into excruciatingly painful details about how he calls her Bernice during s*x. I ran away after."

This story gives me a tickle. I love his family to death and I wouldn't mind it at all to permanently be a part of it. If Alex wants me to be, that is. "I love your family. And I still want to meet Ariel by the way."

"How about we take a road trip and you meet her tomorrow?" he suggests. His puts on his serious face and I know he's not kidding. But I love his spontaneity as of late. Makes my life seem a bit more interesting than it actually is.

"Alex, I can't have you spending all of this money on me. I hate feeling helpless and dependent on others. Besides, you already offered to pay for all my dental work after seven hours of me refusing it."

"That's what you do when you love someone Becca, you help them. I also may have a lot more money than you think I do," he cooly mentions with a shrug.

"What do you mean, a lot more money?"

"I may or may not own half of Romano's. And I will continue to until the day Laura decides to f**k up again." So this is what he meant when he said they built it from the ground up. I thought he just helped with the food aspect. Looks like he helped with all the other business parts as well.

"Should I be mad that you own something with her and I don't? Or should I be happy that you will continue to take half her cash?" I ask him, confused on my feelings about all of it.

"Happy, definitely happy. Just think of it as... me blowing her money on you. She wouldn't like it very much if she knew I can tell you that."

"Well then I'll take happy for five-hundred, please."

****

"Okayyy, Ms. Daniels," Dr. Eddington sings, walking over to me and taking back his plastic covered stool. My hands are looped together in my lap, knees shaking while I nervously bite the inside of my cheek. He's looking at photo x-rays of my teeth the dental assistant took earlier.

Please don't be bad news. Please don't be bad news. Please don't be bad news.

"It's not a cavity," he tells me. I take a breath and sigh deeply. Relief. "You do however have an abscessed tooth. Basically what that means is your nerve in that tooth is infected, that's what's causing your discomfort. My suggestion to you is to schedule a root canal for next week when you finish off all your antibiotics."

"I've heard horror stories about root canals and I don't like needles. Is there anyway at all you could put me under during?" I beg. Please say yes.

"We don't do unconscious sedation, we do, do conscious sedation. You'll remain awake in a sense that you can respond to questions and such, you just won't really care about it at the time. You have a choice between laughing gas and IV." Jesus, all of this just sounds expensive.

"How much will all of this cost with sedation?" I ask him. My stress headache is already making its way back to its permanent place in the middle of my forehead.

He asks his assistant to bring in the papers with the affordable dental plan on them. He then explains to me all the details of the procedure. I can't wrap my head around all of them. I heard the words shaping and crown and automatically freaked out internally and externally.

"Do you floss regularly?" he asks, hands feeling around in my mouth. He touches the lump beneath my tooth and I nearly jump from my seat.

"Yes I do," I reply, holding the side of my face, glaring at him. "Floss and brush after every meal."

"Do you eat a lot of sugar or candy?"

"No-"

"Yes," Alex completes for me. "She lives off of Starburst and Airheads." I glare at him too and slowly shake my head.

"There's your culprit," Dr. Eddington says, turning off the overhead light above me. "I'm going to prescribe you some antibiotics to get rid of the infection and some pain killers. I expect to see you back here after all those antibiotics are finished." He smiles at me then shakes my hand, exiting the room shortly after he and Alex discuss the p*****t situation.

****

Alex and I rode down to Publix to fill and wait on my prescriptions. The antibiotics were free - thank God - but the high dose ibuprofen was ten dollars. I told him that I would pay him back for all of it, he told me to stop being stubborn.

We drove over to his parents house next. Alex and I are going to let them know that we will be visiting his grandparents sometime this week. His parents weren’t home when we arrived, just his sister Anna and her husband Aaron. Alex and I slipped off to his bedroom after a little while because I was too distracted to converse.

We're standing in his old bedroom. "I can't believe this. I take such good care of my teeth," I say out loud, holding the side of my face, zoning out.

"You do. But you also eat a s**t ton of sugar. It'll be okay though, you won't even feel a thing," Alex says, trying desperately to convince me of the truth.

"But how do you know, Alex? I'm going to have a fake tooth that I will have to continue to get maintenanced for the rest of my life."

"I just know, trust me. It won't be for your entire life, just until your teeth fall out and you get dentures."

"What?!" I screech. "How was that supposed to make me feel any better?!" I place my hands on my hips.

"It wasn't. It was supposed to make you angry, my little rebel. Now hush." Spinning my body around to face his, he kisses me deeply. I let go, furling my fingers in his hair, tossing the root canal issues aside for now.

"Would it be wrong if we did it in your parents house?" I ask him, already trying to remove my shirt.

"If you're quiet they won't even notice," he responds, hastily unbuttoning his jeans.

"Deal." I break into a smile with his lips still on mine.

He picks me up, tossing me onto the bed. I laugh and have him help me with my leggings. He turns me over on to my stomach, tugging my black leggings the rest of the way down my legs. We finally have every article of clothing removed. He sets himself at my entrance and just when he's about to bury himself inside me from behind, someone knocks on the door.

"Who is it?" He yells, panting down the back of my neck.

"It's your mother, Alex. If you're having s*x I can let you finish, but it's about your father."

"Go," I whisper, rolling onto my back. He hops off the bed and sprints the short distance to the door, hopping into his boxers. I cover myself with the blue and white sheets on his childhood bed.

Yanking the door open, he answers with a frantic "what is it?!"

"He's fine, Alex," his mother Janet tells him. "He's really great actually. We just got back from his appointment. His body is slowly healing itself and the doctors don't even know how it's possible. We don't know how it's possible." I hop up from the bed at the mention of this news, gathering my clothes up from the floor and throwing them on behind the cover of the shadows.

"That's amazing!" I add in, walking up to hug Janet.

"It's a miracle Rebecca, truly a miracle. I wasn't ready to lose him just yet - neither of us were.” she takes my hands. “God has truly answered our prayers." my parents practically raised Tim and in a church. The power of prayer is something our family has been big on. I prayed for his father everyday since Alex broke the news to me. I even had the pastor do a prayer at my last bible study.

As of recently, I haven't stepped foot inside a church in weeks. I did however continue to pray for him. To pray for Alex. It looks like my prayers were finally answered and things are finally looking up for them, for us.

During church there’s a phrase that has always stuck out to me during certain times of struggle. How does that phrase go again? “Sometimes things must get worse before they can get better.”

“Huh?” I mutter, looking up to Alex.

“That’s the phrase you are searching for right?”

“Yeah...how did you -”

“You told to me one time. It’s what I used to get through the low points of us and my life.”

“I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” his mother Janet tells us with a smile, closing to door behind her.

“You actually remembered it?” I ask him, closing to small gap between us, wrapping my arms around his bare chest and back.

“I remember everything you tell me. I’ve told you this a million times babe, there isn’t one thing that you tell me that I won’t remember.” He did tell me that one time, I never realized how true it was until now. I love him so much. I never understood how it was possible to love another person this much, but now I do.

I always thought of it as one of those in a million chances. I have become so enchanted, so captured by the person in front of me.

He has now become a part of me, and I, a part of him.