right now (a gracie abrams au)

chapter one

when the weight of the world
feels so close, it's only me, me, me
'hard to sleep' by gracie abrams

It truly was a dream come true, almost a month into touring with Taylor Swift. It's late April, and if Gracie is perfectly honest - she's counting down the days until Abby finishes college and will be touring with her. A big, exciting road trip with her best friend.

The brunette is sitting in an empty hotel room, her knees up to her chest, feeling more alone than she'd usually let herself feel. This is what happens when she actually lets herself pause, letting the big feelings run wild in her mind. It's especially bad when she's not with Abby or Audrey, when there's no laughter to pull her out of the darkness. To remind her of the sunshine in the palms of her hands, rather than the scars from the days turned into nights where her fists were clenched at her sides.

She ran her thumb over the half moon imprints on her right hand, from where her nails were too long and they dug in too deep. Sometimes they were the only thing that kept her grounded. Her anxiety had been so bad as a young girl - she's been doing this as long as she can remember. It just comes so naturally to her. Gracie wonders if it is a habit that she would eventually have the control over to break completely - but she has her doubts. It's rooted so deep in her now that she feels like it's probably a lost cause. Sometimes fighting the anxiety was a lot more draining than living with it.

She misses Weenie - misses him waking her up in the morning, misses his sloppy kisses or even the way he'd chomp on her toes in the middle of the night. She's been away from home before - she's not new to this whole thing... but something about being away from it all this time was heartbreaking. She's in her early twenties - but she still misses the comfort of home, of her childhood. She feels so far away from everyone and everything. If she was brave enough to admit, it felt like she's gone from having a village to support her... to just having phone calls and text messages. She has Taylor, but Gracie wouldn't even think of bothering her with the stupid thoughts going on in her head. Taylor is way too important, way too special, to dampen her with the spiralings of her mind.

Six days. Six days until she's back with Abby and she's able to make sure that her chosen sister is okay and that she hasn't been forced to go to church or get a fucking exorcism by her boyfriend's heavily religious parents. Six days and there will be a piece of home with her again, for the whole entire summer. Something that's living and breathing, who shared a childhood with her and actually remembers it all. Something that's not the special blanket her mother made on her sewing machine when Gracie had strep throat in high school and has traveled with her everywhere since that very day.

Gracie is awoken from her melancholy haze by her phone ringing. Her boyfriend, Rhys. They'd met at a bar one night in their hometown. They'd both been using fake ID's back then. She still gets butterflies when she thinks of that night, of the way he'd bought her a drink and told her she was pretty, even after all these years. Gracie smiles when she sees his name pop onto the screen, relieved that there's now a distraction from the isolation in her head.

"Hi!" Gracie smiles, her hands unclenching as she adjusts herself on the bed. She feels better already, just to have that contact from someone outside room eleven on the third floor of a random hotel she didn't even know the name of. "How was your day?"

It feels like there are a lot more than miles between them. Here she is, sitting on a hotel bed in Atlanta, and he is probably sitting in his quaint little one-bedroom apartment back home in Ohio. Talking to the love of her life on the burgundy comforter just didn't feel the same as cuddling each other in the middle of the night, or how he'd always kiss the palms of her hands when she was stressing over some minor detail of her life. Rhys seemed to get her, but the week apart from one another was far too long. And a reunion isn't looking to be within reach. It was no one's fault - it was just the way his work schedule was.