Page 113 of With Stars in Her Eyes

“Lemon Lyman Bars. And Advanced Apple-late Advocake.” Sam rolled her eyes and muttered something about an unfinished paper under her breath.

Thea stood and pulled me up to follow her. “What’s with the names?”

“He bakes to put off studying,” I said.

“What class?”

“Appellate courts and advocacy class,” Sam answered.

“Apple… Appellate. Got it. Funny.” Thea chuckled. “But lemon Lyman?”

“Watching a lot ofWest Wingtoo as background noise. Don’t worry about it.” Sam sighed. “Somehow the main skill the man’s developing in law school is the ability to make niche puns. But if you can tolerate that, you should definitely come with Courtney.”

“I’ll be there.” Thea flinched. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Sam and I said at the same time.

“I have to help Marshall with something at the pub first after this. Can I text and ask if it’s too late when I’m done?”

Sam answered without the slightest hesitation. “Come anytime.”

“Want me to meet you at the pub after I finish with book fair cleanup and then we could walk over together?” I smiled, feeling a lot lighter than I had before. I wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but I couldn’t find the courage.

Thea nodded. “That’d be great.”

“Okay, well, if you both have talked yourselves out of moping about whatever happened between you, I’m going to need you to haul ass to the brewery because I have a feral crowd of book people waiting for a kinda big event to start,” Sam said.

“We’re right behind you.” Thea grabbed my hand and hauled me into a jog back down the sidewalk.

CHAPTER 40Thea

Despite my aching feet from the busy afternoon, I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked around the giant tree, past the plant shop, and up the small stone stairs to the pub entrance. Courtney and I had flirted so hard across the room from each other that Samantha put a stop to it by putting a NSFW sticky note on Courtney’s forehead.

Things were going to be okay.

We would talk, and she would explain and everything between us would be back on track. She wanted to open up to me. She had just made a mistake at first, but now that she knew that I wanted her to open up, she would stop hiding things from me.

I reached for the door handle and my smile vanished. The state of the place was obvious even through the glass door.

The door to the pub wasn’t even latched. “Marshall?”

“Back here,” Marshall said in a broken voice that made me want to commit murder.

He was seated on the ground behind the counter with his head in his hands, but he wasn’t alone.

Jeannie was seated beside him, the expression on her careworn face somehow both sympathetic and unyielding. “Well, now you’re here, I’m gonna take off.” She pushed off the ground and gave my shoulder a little pat. “I’ll come by again in the morning, Marshall. We can talk more then.”

“Why bother?”

“Because I think this particular fresh start’s gonna hurt like a real bitch.” She and I exchanged pitying smiles.

Marshall made a watery sound that was half snort and half something sadder. “Are you going to tell my dad?”

“I reckon that ought to be your responsibility. But since your father’s off on a boat somewhere or probably waltzing with penguins or scaling a mountain or some other reckless nonsense, I think we can safely put a pin in that conversation.” She peered down over her glasses at him. “For now.”

“I’m sure he’ll catch the next flight back when he finds out he’s going to get to say I told you so.”

Jeannie went over to the jukebox in the corner and pushed a few buttons. “Well, I guess this is all I have to say about that too, then.”