EVERGLOW

III. How some mornings could be

The sun was slowly creeping up the horizon, when two phones rang shrilly in the silence. Shen Yue's head shot up from the pillows. She was barely conscious as she grabbed both phones on the side table and hit the glowing square on the screen. Damn alarms.

Her head felt heavy as she drifted back to sleep. She had barely laid the phones down on the mattress beside her when they rang again. Damn two alarms!

Yue groaned and raised heavy puffy eyelids. Her throat felt scratchy and she remembered all the crying she had done last night. She squinted at her phone screen and suddenly sat up in a panic before she remembered she was off today. It wasn't her alarm. It was Yang Jin, her manager, who was calling. She glanced at Dylan's phone and saw it was Hao Ge. Why are they both calling us at the same time?

She peered down on the floor beside the bed and sure enough, Dylan was still in his usual daily comatose, blissfully wrapped up in his comforter. Every time he had her over, she stayed in the guest bedroom. The first time the whole gang was there though, he had flatly refused to let her sleep anywhere else but in his room. Even when Jia Qi logically offered to be her roommate in the guest room and that he can keep all the boys locked up in his. And that had been their sleeping arrangement ever since.

She had apologized profusely to Jia Qi as Dylan pulled her along, but Jia Qi just laughed it off saying she didn't mind as it would mean she'd have the whole bed to herself. Dylan had unfolded three other mattresses for the guys. When she reproached Dylan for leaving Jia Qi alone with the boys he had merely shrugged and said Caesar wouldn't let anything funny happen. Whatever that meant.

Before she even started to worry about sharing a bed though, he had unrolled a mattress and promptly slept on the floor by her side. He had done it since the first day and she had always been grateful he hadn't made her ask. She trusted him enough but it said a lot about how he looked at her that he didn't even ask her if he could sleep on the same bed.

She slid her foot down from under the covers and nudged his waist with her toes as she tried to shake off the sleep from her head. She might have better luck waking up a rock.

"Hello, Jie. Good morning." She heard the early morning gruff in her voice and cleared her throat.

"Yue, I'm sorry for calling so early. But the agency is calling in an emergency meeting. Can you make it here in thirty?"

Her eyes widened, remembering her tearful stint the night before. "But Jie...I look like a mess..."

She squinted at the digital clock on Dylan's side table. It was 6:03 in the morning. She groaned as she thought about Hao Ge trying Dylan's phone, before she realized it had stopped ringing. Good. Maybe she didn't need to take on the herculean task of waking him up.

"Uh...I don't really think that matters right now, Yue." The urgency in her manager's voice made her heart skip a beat. What was it about now?

Mind suddenly alert, she frantically recalled her activities over the last week and came up with nothing that could trigger any scandal. So why the early morning summons?

"Okay, okay. Just let me get ready, I'm only five minutes away. I'll be there as soon as I can." She got up from the bed, and even though she knew it was unnecessary, she tiptoed around Dylan as she got her toiletries and clothes from her backpack.

"Good. We're already waiting."

"See you." She started to hang up but she heard Jin's voice saying something and hurriedly place the phone back to her ear.

"Oh, and Yue? Wake Dylan up. He needs to be here too."

Yue's eyes widened at her manager's words and sputtered out a wordless reply. But Jin had already ended the call. She froze in panic for a few seconds, and stared at the missed calls from Hao Ge showing on Dylan's screen.