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Chicken and sausage jambalaya piles high on our plates—Daddy’s favorite and mine, too. I’m not even hungry, but I’ll eat with them anyway.

Always.

We wait for Mama to sit with her plate before Daddy reaches out and links us together in prayer.

“Father God, we thank you for this food. We thank you for the opportunities you have blessed us with. We thank you for keeping us through the storms and keeping your mighty hand of protection over us. We thank you in advance for how you have and will show your grace and mercy within our community and throughout the world. We thank you and we praise you. Amen.”

Mama and I murmur “Amen” at the same time, but I keep my head down for a moment after they start digging in.

I’m so blessed. I’ve always known this, just like I’ve always known my mission in life is to walk in my purpose and help people.

Starting with my family and my community.

I look back at my mom, who holds her fork in one hand and my daddy’s hand in the other. They have eyes only foreach other, smiling softly like there isn’t a beautiful, devastating world outside these walls.

As I shovel a bite of the rice dish into my mouth, I make a promise to myself.

No matter what happens, I won’t let anything distract me from my mission.

“They were doingcoke in the bathroom, Shae!” Ezra’s voice is animated in a way he rarely expresses, but I suppose seeing one of Hollywood’s most famous up-and-coming stars doing a line of coke off a man’s dick in a bathroom stall will do that to a person.

“Everything would have been fine and we could have stayed to enjoy the premiere if you could have just been cool, Ez,” Yenn says, sighing loudly from her place on the couch.

I fold my legs beneath me as I sit on the floor, taking up the limited space between our entertainment center and the coffee table opposite Yenn.

Despite Yenn’s father owning the building as part of his real estate portfolio, Yenn pushed back on his desire to put us in the penthouse. He didn’t want his daughter “slumming it.” It was bad enough she was rooming with Ez and me, even though I’ve known her—and her father, Dr.Nedrick King Jr.—forever.

Still, Yenn wanted an authentic college experience, so when her father refused to allow her to live in a dorm room, this apartment was the compromise.

“Help me out here, Shae,” Ezra says, looking at me with a pleading gaze. His dark eyes are a little unfocused, probably because he and Yenn have been baked since way before I walked in the door at ten p.m. When I hold my hands out in theuniversal sign for “what do you want me to do?” he groans and flops back into the armchair, running his broad palm over his crisp fade.

Instead of sitting upright like a normal person, Yenn has her legs on the back of the sofa and her feet planted on the wall. Her long auburn locs pool on the designer rug, and her forehead is too close to the sharp-edged coffee table for my liking.

“I was shocked, Yenn!” Ezra exclaims at the same time I say to Yennifer, “Isn’t the blood rushing to your head?”

She gives Ezra an exasperated look before turning her attention to me. “That’s the point, Shae.”

Okaaaay.

I turn back to my spiral-bound calendar, thumbing through all the syllabi laid out before me so I can plan out the semester.

A semester in which I’ll have to deal with the likes of Storm Sandoval.

A shiver goes down my back at the thought of him.

Storm Sandoval is a carbon copy of many other guys who roam the Asheford University campus. He probably comes from a rich family and doesn’t have to work too hard to get ahead.

Plus, the fact he’s hot doesn’t hurt at all.

Stop thinking he’s hot, Shae.

“You all arereallydistracting, you know. The whole reason we’re in here is to get organized.”

Yenn and Ezra share a look.

It’s been three days since the start of the semester, and except for Professor Hansen, it took a few days for my other professors to send out their syllabi. Which had been stressful.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.