Page 45 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Thea

I was naked in the kitchen when the banging started—and not that kind of banging. Someone outside rapped so hard on the front door I almost spilled the water glasses I had just filled all over the counter. When I looked out the front window, I nearly dropped the glasses again.

I blinked and put the glasses on the entry table.

I rubbed my eyes and looked out again.

“Holy shit. ”

Demetrius Adeyemi, front man of the Violet Trikes, was standing on the doorstep.

“What the actual fucking fuck?”

I grabbed my phone off the coffee table where it was half-buried by the mess of dishes from our late-night snacks. On my way back into the bedroom, I banged my shoulder into the doorframe… also not the right kind of banging.

Courtney could apparently sleep through anything because she was still sprawled out on the bed. She was naked, mostly. She was wearing underwear and a periwinkle bralette I must have been too high to remove last night. I pulled the comforter up to her chin and brushed her bangs away from her eyes.

I, however, was completely naked. Which is why fleeing the person at the door was even more essential.

The only thing covering my skin was dirt and my hair, which was tangled with leaves… and twigs?

But holy supernatural fungal fever dream… last night had been…

I couldn’t even find the words yet. I stepped closer to the window again. Maybe it had been a hallucination. Maybe it was the mushrooms. Maybe I was just seeing things. I peered out through the sheer bedroom curtains.

Oh god. He was still there. Why was he still there?

I must still be hallucinating.

I backed away from the window so fast that I tripped over the mess surrounding the bed and fell on my bare buck-naked ass.

Where the hell were my shirt and pants? I’d settle for just underwear at least.

The banging at the door was loud enough to carry upstairs now.

“No. No. No. No.”

I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was still a complete disaster and one of my musical idols was outside. This was the type of nightmare you have about school as a kid when somehow you’re in social studies taking a pop quiz in your most embarrassing underwear.

I pulled blankets off the floor in a fury until my fingers snagged on the filthy jeans I had been wearing on our Flint Hills stargazing excursion.

Still no sign of anything else. I pulled them on.

Luckily Courtney had a large stock of oversized sweatshirts.

I grabbed one and yanked it on over my bare boobs, causing a scattering of detritus to land on the floor.

More banging.

Okay.

Take a breath.

Maybe it was someone else. Maybe I was wrong. I dashed to the bathroom and pulled back the curtain just enough to get an even better look at the man standing on Courtney’s front stoop.

It was definitely him.

Demetrius Adeyemi was here. In Kansas. Banging on the door of the woman who I’d spent the last two days—er—banging.

“Thea?” Sheets shifted in the bedroom. “Where’d you—”

I dashed back to the room and stood in the doorway, zipping up the jeans, a perilous endeavor since I hadn’t located my underwear, but I somehow managed it without performing an accidental labiatomy.

“Why’s a guy who just got nominated for like ten Grammy awards banging on your front door, Courtney? ”

Courtney popped up off the pillow as if I had fired a starter pistol. “What?” Her short blond hair stuck up in every direction, green eyes rimmed with shock, while her voice was even more of a sexy rasp than usual. “No. No. No…”

“Seriously, why the fuck is a multiplatinum rock star yelling your name and saying to stop avoiding him?”

Courtney froze. “Um.”

Um?

That was it. Um wasn’t a pause before a sentence. Um wasn’t an interjection. Yet it was the only answer to my question Courtney offered.

Um.

“ Um? ” I pulled my tangled brown waves up and twisted so hard I nearly hurt my neck, taming them with a clip that had been carabinered in my belt loop. “I need you to do better than um .”

When I first saw Demetrius Adeyemi out there, I thought maybe the mushrooms were still affecting my perception of reality.

But what kind of self-respecting woman hallucinated her male folk-pop-star crush the morning after nearly two full days of burying her face inside the panties of the hottest woman she’d ever fucked?

I peeked outside again. Nope. He wasn’t a hallucination.

He was, however, now pacing and checking his phone like he was waiting for something or someone.

Courtney was as still as she had been in my studio yesterday when she had fallen silent there.

How could she not tell me that he was coming, or that she knew him?

“Demetrius is an old friend.” Courtney’s expression was unreadable. Why was she just sitting there? “I didn’t know—”

“An old friend that comes knocking on your door at seven A.M. on a Sunday.”

“I’ve… I’ve been dodging his calls?”

“Why would you dodge his calls? What if he wanted to collaborate with you or something? How do you even know him?” I was still cold despite wearing a stolen sweatshirt.

As I rubbed heat into my arms, a pout appeared on Courtney’s face like she had just realized I wasn’t naked anymore and didn’t like it one bit.

That adorably sulky pout transformed into a smirk with the apparent recognition I was wearing one of her sweatshirts.

But my brain didn’t let me enjoy these micro-reactions. It leaped forward a few steps.

“Shouldn’t he be going back on tour right now? I’ve got a bone to pick with that dude anyway. I got tickets for that big festival in New Orleans back in March but then Kestrel left the… left the…” I turned and blinked at Courtney.

Understanding hit me like a meteor that causes a massive, cataclysmic prehistoric extinction event.

The timing.

The flyer in the book.

Courtney’s disastrous performance.

It wasn’t while first chair in some stuffy symphonic orchestra.

No. It couldn’t be…

“No.”

I saw Courtney Starling with new eyes. I imagined her with waist-length hair streaked with that shade of blue. I added sunglasses and a flowy, gauzy dress, and a black electric cello and a microphone. “No…”

Courtney must have read the brimming realization on my face because she took a careful step forward. “I can explain.”

I backed away so quickly my back hit the wall behind me. Being trapped between drywall and a hot woman had never seemed so utterly unpleasant. “Y-You told me you played in a… wait. You told me—”

“Everything I told you was true.” Courtney exhaled, her breasts lifting and lowering beneath that periwinkle-blue bra.

If what I thought was happening was actually happening, I would probably leave here and that periwinkle bra would probably haunt me forever like some lacy lingerie-style white whale.

I would end up ruined like every other shriveled-up sex-deprived sailor thinking a manatee was a mermaid because I was that desperate for sex that even blubber could be mistaken for breasts.

I had reached the blubber-breasts phase of spiraling.

A bad sign.

“You might’ve left out a few mighty massive details here and there, Courtney Starling.

Starling… that’s a bird too. Is that where the name ‘Kestrel’ came from?

The bird thing. Holy shit. People on Reddit are saying you cowrote half of the Violet Trikes’ next album.

There are all these rumors you finally have an album coming out.

Everyone’s trying to figure out where you… Oh my god, I’m such an idiot .”

“Thea…”

“I listened to goddamn ‘Gilded Shadows’ a million times the days after it dropped. I know every word, and—”

An unexpected hint of a smile tugged at a corner of Courtney’s mouth.

No. I was not in the mood to make her smile. I was pissed. I’d hummed the cello solo part of that song when I was sad for months after it came out. Now it turned out the cellist/songwriter/singer was a foot away from me, and for some reason I was absolutely livid about it.

“Thea, I—”

“How did you not tell me? Where’s your electric cello? Why haven’t I seen it? Why do you just have the other one downstairs?”

“The regular one fits in better with my overall vibe here.” Courtney reached toward me.

“Jokes? Really?” I shook off her touch even though part of me still craved it and looked out the window again. I couldn’t see him anymore. Good. Maybe he left.

“I had no idea you even knew who Demetrius is or Kestrel was.” Courtney’s eyes were wide. “Last night though… Please, I can exp—”

“ Is .” I pulled away.

“What?”

“Who Kestrel is. Because you’re her and she’s you and—” I jolted as a muffled, incomprehensible voice called from down the hallway.

“Oh, fuck.” Courtney flinched.

“How’d he get in the house?”

“Shit. Sam must be here. She probably let him in. We all went to school together.” She gripped her head. “Fuck.”

I was torn. Seeing Courtney so stressed sent a sharp pain in my chest, but I was still too angry at all the omissions and possible lies to hang around and process exactly how oblivious I had been.

Luckily, there was another window on the far wall in Courtney’s room that opened to the side of the house with a conveniently placed tree.

“You go talk to him.”

“You should stay so you can meet—”

“I’m not meeting Demetrius Adeyemi looking like someone in one of those shows where the characters have been lost out in the woods for two weeks, eating tree bark.” I unlatched the window with a flick of my fingers that broke one of my nails.

More voices.

“He can wait. Please let me explain.” Courtney wrapped a blanket around herself. I opened the window. The temperature had apparently dropped forty degrees overnight because Kansas weather was a shit show.

Courtney closed the window. “Fuck, it’s freezing out, Thea. Why’re you—”

“Have you ever lied to me? It’s a yes-or-no question.”

Her eyebrows knitted together, mouth tightening around an admission hiding behind pouting lips.

“That looks like a yes.”