Fireworks 1 and 2

Jungle: Chapter Seventy-Three

    Mia woke up to text messages. A lot of text messages, back to back. Quotes from articles. Screenshots from gossip pages. Her notifications were blowing up. She rubbed her eyes and turned to glance down at Drake, who was sleeping like a baby.

    Clutching the sheets to her chest and holding her cell phone with one hand, she sent quick responses to the text messages from people who mattered most to her. Her aunt, Bri, Desirae, a few friends from college. The other messages, she left unanswered for the time being. There was no way she could respond to them all. After sending in those few short responses, she clicked on a few of the articles mentioning her name. The articles were all in agreement that she'd stolen the show from her boyfriend the previous night. Some of the articles went so far as to provide user submitted video clips of her performance.

    She covered her mouth with one hand to smother a squeal.

    Drake stirred in his sleep, and rolled over onto his stomach.

    She dropped the sheets and stood up from the bed, her eyes scanning over another article. It was one thing to experience a measured amount of success. She'd gotten to share the stage with Drake at his OVOFest show, which was incidentally where she met him for the first time. She'd gotten to write with him for his album, and record vocals for one of the songs on his album. Those experiences had been amazing. There were a lot of people in this world who would kill for just those two experiences.

    The result of collaborating with Drake, and her status as his girlfriend, was that most people in North America knew who Mia Thomas was. They knew what she looked like and knew the sound of her voice. But all of that...all of that seemed like it was leading to a medium level of success, relatively speaking. Not quite struggling songwriter, and not quite megastar status, but somewhere in between. Any artist would be fortunate to live a life where they could reach a medium level of success. She felt fortunate to have reached that level.

    However, after last night, the entire world bore witness to the fact that she wasn't just worthy of co-writing lyrics, or providing backup vocals, or performing as a featured artist on a track. Last night, she'd proven that she was worthy of being a solo artist. She'd proven that she possessed what it takes to make it as an artist who tours, performs on award shows, and hopefully snag a few awards along the way.

    She paced back and forth while reading articles and checking her social media account. It wasn't even quite twelve hours since the minute she'd taken the stage at Madison Square Garden, and she already had five hundred thousand more followers than she had the previous day. This time, she couldn't suppress it. She squealed and did a little dance in front of the bed, while holding her cell phone to her chest.

    Drake raised his head and looked back at her. "What is it? What happened?"

    "They love me," she said, walking over to her side of the bed and setting her cell phone down. "My name...it's everywhere. People are following me. People are tweeting me. They're writing articles." Still naked, she jogged into the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush from the sink counter. After applying a generous amount of toothpaste to the toothbrush, she flipped up the water faucet. "They're calling us the power couple of the year. They're saying I stole the show. From you!"

    "That's great, babe," he called out in a sleepy voice.

    She held her toothbrush under the cold water for a few seconds, and then started to brush her teeth. Unable to stop herself, she continued to do little happy dances while brushing her teeth. She hopped out of the bathroom, grinning with the toothbrush stuck in her mouth.

    He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're silly."

    She turned back into the bathroom, spit out the toothpaste, and rinsed out her mouth. Then she set her toothbrush down on the counter and ran into the bedroom at full speed. She jumped back into bed and bounced on her knees. "At this rate, I need to start working on an album," she said breathlessly. "Wouldn't Oliver say to strike while the iron is hot? You know what - that's what I should do. I should call Oliver." She leaned over to grab her cell phone.