Page 37 of With Stars in Her Eyes

“I’m glad.” I swallowed against a thickness forming in my throat. “I know it’s weird when people say ‘I get it’… but in this case I get it, I think. The whole quitting-before-you-can-fuck-it-up thing.”

“Is that what you’re doing with performing…?”

“Oh… um…” My eyes closed.

“I’m sorry. That sounded judgier than I meant for it to. I’m probably just biased because I want to hear you play.”

“I’m not going to stop playing cello. I did stop for a few months while I was recovering. I’m just considering not doing it on a stage anymore. I took a break before in my early twenties. It might be the right time for another.”

“Why’d you take the last break?”

“After I dropped out of college.”

“ Oh…”

I looked up at the stars, trying to remember all the ones I had memorized as a child. “By then I had been performing for so long, I needed the break.”

“Were you a prodigy, Courtney Starling?” It wasn’t the question I was expecting after that small bombshell.

I snorted. “ Definitely not.”

“You have to have some of that prodigy-ness to perform so young.”

“I had talent. I’m not saying I didn’t. But I wasn’t suited to the life my parents wanted me to have. I’m not a performer like that. I could fake it, but standing up and smiling like a robot was never me. It was exhausting .”

“How did you end up at Yale with Samantha?”

“Luck. And Nic’s mom had some connections there. I had a really good audition. But it was hard. I’d never done school like that before, but I really did love being there even if my pathetic GPA meant I was on and off academic probation most of the time.”

“Is that why you dropped out?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s pretty embarrassing.”

Thea scoffed. “Hey, so I once fell in love with a TA and then flunked out of a class because of it. Trust me, the details of that situation are definitely more mortifying than you can possibly imagine. Telling you that so you know I won’t be judging you.”

“I got married. It’s a long, embarrassing story.

” I inhaled sharply so I could get it all out in one go.

“My ex-husband, then fiancé, saw my grades and convinced me I was wasting my time and would probably lose my scholarship, and I should come out on tour with him instead. Samantha was getting an apartment with Abbott that year, and basically, I freaked out.” I coughed, choking on some dust or pollen.

“And then I let Jeremiah have really terrible sex with me, and because I was still really religious back then, I felt so guilty about it I married him over the summer. I stopped playing. That tour never actually happened. The marriage sucked, and I left him and the church a year later and figured out I was a lesbian.”

“How old was he?”

“Who? Jeremiah?”

“Is Jeremiah the asshole ex-husband I want to murder?”

“Um—when I got married, I was twenty-one. He would have been thirtyish?”

“How old was he when you started dating him?”

“Twenty-five. And I guess given that your degree is in physics you can probably do the math…”

“Holy child bride, Batman.”

I barked a laugh.

“Where in god’s green earth were your parents?” Thea said this in the voice of a meddling auntie.

“My mom was telling me he was a great godly man, and I was lucky he liked me? My dad… basically never forgave me for abandoning my Christian pop career, and his drinking was pretty bad then. And yeah, I really do get how fucked up it all is now . Not least of which because I would prefer to never ever touch another penis ever.” My shudder had nothing to do with the chilly breeze whistling over the grass.

“I hope his dick shrivels up.”

“It was fairly unimpressive as it was.”

Thea’s laugh carried across the space between us, making my chest lift.

“After the messy divorce, I just wanted to disappear from that world. Before then I mostly sang, but cello was better. Easier to fade into the background as an instrumentalist.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever faded into the background for one second of your entire life, Courtney Starling.”

My heart skipped a beat.

Silence fell between us.

I looked up, wanting to see what Thea was seeing.

The more I watched, the more I understood how the night sky felt like a living symphony.

Those intense points of light with their subtle differences in color.

Warmer or cooler. Blue, red, orange, yellow.

The swaths of translucency. The pockets of absolute darkness.

The occasional dart of a shooting star. And the perplexing perception of movement when in reality our own tilted planet was the rotation point, creating an illusion that the galaxies were dancing to a dirge across the horizon.

Thea shifted her weight, and something fell off her chair, interrupting my silly thoughts.

“What was—”

“Just the book. Forgot it was there.” Thea flipped through the pages. “I keep forgetting to ask what you thought of the ending?”

“So embarrassing. I think I have fifty pages left. The New York trip interrupted my reading. Literally the worst book club leader ever.”

“Ooooh, but some of the best scenes are in the last fifty pages.”

“The best scenes or the best scenes ?” My suggestive inflection on the last word hopefully made my meaning clear.

“Both. In fact.”

An idea popped into my head. “Well, given that we just had a superserious conversation about really intense life stuff… I think you should read me the rest of the book to keep me entertained for the next hour I’ll be sitting here.”

“Are you sure you want me to do that?” Thea’s tone was inscrutable.

“You said you could use a red light and it won’t affect the photo.”

“I mean because no matter what I read to you, you have to stay there until the alarm goes off on my phone.”

Something slightly competitive rose up inside me at the challenge. “I think I can handle it.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we.”