Everything Is Just Fine

Chapter 39

I don't sleep very well the night before the Rising Stars show. That morning I wake up with huge bags under my eyes and feeling very, very exhausted. I'm tangled in Toby's limbs as my alarm goes off. I've been awake for over an hour. Toby is somehow managing to sleep through the alarm. I'm so glad he was able to sleep like a baby last night while my anxiety and nerves kept me up for most of it.

He finally wakes after the alarm goes off again ten minutes later. He smiles up at me with a sleepy, blurred expression. "You look like shit."

That makes me snort. "Thank you so much." I kiss his forehead. "Get up. I need coffee if I'm going to survive this day."

"Bossy."

But even as he complains, he rolls out of bed and heads to the bathroom. The shower starts a few seconds later, and I have half a mind to join him, but my body isn't up to kneeling on the cold tile after a night of no sleep.

Instead, I pick up my phone and scroll through my socials while I wait for Toby to be done. Everyone--even people I haven't talked to since middle school--is commenting on my Nana's post, congratulating me for being entered into the show. It's embarrassing how much Nana has posted about the show since I told her. I need to tell her that she needs to keep her bragging to a minimum.

A knock on the door has me groaning and searching the dorm for a pair of shorts. When I open it, Nana is on the other side. It's eight in the morning, and she's already beaming and made up, all bright eyed and bushy tailed.

"Jess-bug!"

"Nana, what are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming until later?"

She frowns in a non-serious way. "Are you trying to kick me out?" She pushes past me into our dorm. "It's way too dark in here." Before I can protest, the curtains are flung open and sunlight assaults my eyeballs. "Get dressed, Jess-bug. I want a tour of campus."

I look down at my naked torso. "I still have to shower."

Nana clucks at me. "Still not fond of those."

She means my nipple rings. I got them when I was seventeen and she hates them the most out of all my piercings.

"I like them."

She rolls her eyes. "Where is Toby? I brought him some cookies."

"Did you bring me cookies?"

"Absolutely not." She smiles and produces two containers from her oversized bag she calls a purse. "Don't eat them all at once."

Toby emerges, dressed in his shorts and tee shirt, they're dirty and defeat the purpose of a shower, but still, I thank God. Usually, he comes out in just a towel--sometimes fully naked--and Nana doesn't need to be seeing all that.

"Nana!" he greets her, kissing her cheek. "I thought I heard you."

"The whole campus can hear her," I chime in.

Nana hits my arm. "Go take a shower."

I'm a little nervous about leaving Nana and Toby together. Sure, when Toby visited Nana's condo I had left them alone when I was getting dressed, but that was before Toby and I had started dating. The stakes were different now. Nana could tell him all about my phase of running around the house naked when I was four, or that time I fell off a horse and screamed that I broke my ass. I was ten and was punished for saying ass, but it fucking hurt.

When I come out of the shower, Toby is showing Nana how to add to her stories.

"Don't make her better at social media, you're only giving her more power."