Page 43 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Thea

We sat on Courtney’s living room couch watching the second episode of Pride and Prejudice , waiting for the psilocybin to take effect.

When the credits rolled, I shifted to face Courtney. I wasn’t sure whether what I was feeling was the mushrooms or because everything that had happened since yesterday when the wedding shower was canceled still felt like a fever dream.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Courtney grinned.

“I’m trying to know all your secrets telepathically.” I put my fingers on her temples and then moved them back to mine.

“Do I look like someone who has a lot of secrets?”

“Truthfully?” I smirked.

“Fair enough.” Courtney draped a leg over my lap so she was half straddling me.

“I think my biggest secret is that sometimes I think I hate everything that other people like. I think that’s why it’s usually so hard for me to talk to people.

Small talk is the worst. When I was growing up my parents said I just had a bad attitude. ”

“That’s something we have in common.”

“Really? But you have all those dimples, and everyone wants to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets.”

“Yes, but it’s not something I like. That’s probably why I hated all the things I was supposed to like as a good little Alabama girl. Fancy dresses. Parades, holidays, birthdays.”

“Birthdays. The fucking worst.” Courtney was giggling.

I hadn’t ever heard Courtney laugh like that.

“I do like ice cream cake though. My grandmother got me ice cream cake for my birthday once. My parents and I went to visit her and ended up staying there through my birthday. Pretty sure they just left me there for a bit now that I think about it. She had a pool too. I remember that, but I don’t think I ever saw her again before she died. ”

“Gosh, I haven’t had ice cream cake since… probably the late nineties when I was little. Cookies-and-cream ice cream cake. So good.”

“When’s your birthday, Thea?”

“September twenty-eighth.”

Courtney intertwined her fingers with mine. “I’ll bring you ice cream cake on your birthday.”

“I’d love that.”

“I really don’t think the mushrooms are doing anything.” Courtney kissed my shoulder. “Maybe they don’t affect me.”

“Just give it a little longer.”