Page 52 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Courtney

I pushed the last box from Sam’s car onto the emptiest of the large folding tables set up in the brewery.

My eyes kept going in and out of focus, but it wasn’t a migraine.

It was pure exhaustion. I rubbed them hard enough to see spots and blinked until I couldn’t stop a yawn from coming. My brain had been on overdrive all day.

I needed to fix shit with Thea.

But since she wasn’t supposed to be here for another half an hour, I also needed to stop looking out the brewery windows for Thea’s Outback.

After several more unsatisfied minutes with my eyes cemented to the space where she would be pulling up, I opened the first box with a sigh.

Once the first table was arranged with full rows of books, I moved on to the next.

One of Sam’s hand-lettered signs indicated that this was the designated historical romance section.

If I wasn’t an emotionally repressed survivor of religious trauma, I probably would have burst into tears while stacking seven copies of the book that Thea had read aloud while taking the star trails photo.

When every box was empty, I allowed myself to look out the window again.

She still wasn’t here.

I headed to the area where Sam was setting up checkout.

I grabbed a box of Menagerie Books canvas tote bags and hung them behind the checkout table.

One of the WE’RE ALL MAD HERE stickers was on the top of the stack of stickers that still needed to be set out.

It was a twin of the one I had given Thea all those weeks ago.

My best friend winked at me. “Still can’t believe I went from thinking you were dead to figuring out Demetrius and I were accidentally interrupting sexy time in like two min—”

“ Saaaam .”

Jeannie came up and set a plant at the register before I could say anything else. “Couldn’t help but notice a blue Subaru at your house all weekend, Miss Courtney Starling.”

I bent my head down and rested it on the counter.

“Shh… Ms. Jeannie, don’t embarrass her. She’ll tell us about her marathon sex weekend when she wants to.” Sam’s eyebrow quirked up as she looked over from the cords she had been untangling.

Jeannie measured my face. “Trouble in paradise?”

“So—”

“ Oh , I need to ask you something before she gets here.” Sam grinned. “Dinner tonight has a little birthday surprise, and I was going to invite Thea too. But I didn’t want to overstep, depending on how the weekend went. Since she was still there this morning, I’m assuming—”

“Birthday?” I fumbled for my phone to check the date.

“Today’s June thirteenth, so tomorrow is—”

“Oh right. My birthday. Got it. Right.”

“Nic’s coming up—that’s the surprise. And since Demetrius is here too, he’ll be there. And Ms. Jeannie, so for Thea…” Sam scrutinized me. “Courtney? Are you okay?”

“I think Courtney and I are going to go outside and get some air and some coffee. That okay, Sami?”

“Of course,” Sam said, her playful tone turning worried. “I’ve got this here.”

Jeannie led me outside. I didn’t ask her where we were going because I was just happy to have the cool breeze against my burning face.

“Want to tell me about it?” Jeannie asked. “Only good coffee shop near here is four blocks up, so we got time.”

“I guess.” I hung my head and twisted my fingers together as we walked.

“I didn’t tell her about being Kestrel. I told Sam I wasn’t telling her because I thought if she didn’t care it would be awkward, but I think I was lying to myself.

” The defensiveness in my voice made me want to shrivel up inside.

“Hmm.”

“What if she didn’t care? What if she did care and then thought I was an idiot for considering giving it all up? For what it’s worth, I truly didn’t think she’d have any idea who I was. I figured she knew Demetrius’s band, but if I name-dropped all that, wouldn’t that have been kind of weird too?”

“Weird for the woman you’ve spent the last three plus months half out of your mind for to know how you spent the last decade rather than doling bits of your life story out in drips and dribbles?”

“Well, when you put it like that.” I rubbed my temples. “I did actually tell a lie, but that’s kind of complicated too.”

“Most lies are. Know that from experience myself.” Somehow there wasn’t any judgment in Jeannie’s voice.

“Last night she asked me what my biggest fear was.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Losing the people that I love.”

“But that’s a lie?”

I stopped walking. Jeannie stopped too. The skies were gray today. Dim enough to make the world feel a little less saturated in color than usual.

“The first thing that came to my mind when she asked was that my biggest fear was to have my career really be over. To never get up on a stage again.” I scowled my disgust at myself.

“How shitty of a person does that make me that I’m more afraid of losing that than like losing anything or anyone else? It just reminded me of—”

“Of what?”

“Of my parents. That’s how they were. Single-minded. Focused.” And didn’t give a shit about me.

Jeannie considered me. “Does being with Thea remind you of Jeremiah?”

“ No .” My eyes snapped to hers. “Why would you ask that ?”

“Because the last time I heard you say you were worried about turning into your parents and wanted to give up your music because of that, it was when you left him.”

I was lucky there was a bench nearby because I practically flopped onto it. “Oh.”

“Stay here for a minute.” Jeannie patted my shoulder.

Several minutes later, Jeannie sat beside me and passed me a coffee. “How did that asshole’s words get all up in your brain again? It’s been years, hasn’t it?”

I shrugged and warmed my hands on the cup. It was warm out, so I didn’t know why my fingers suddenly felt so chilly.

Had some small part of me been punishing myself by not playing all those months?

Had I been trying to prove to myself that I could stop playing if I needed to?

I could help Sam. I could live a normal life here and give up my career to protect Demetrius’s chance at getting the awards he deserved.

The funny thing was that I had almost never been just “Courtney Starling.” I had been Dove then Kestrel. Courtney Starling felt like a stranger.

Thea knew me. She knew Courtney Starling.

The real Courtney Starling who had finally cut off all her hair like she had been wanting to for years.

Courtney Starling who felt the most herself in pants and T-shirts and finding that elusive balance between touches of femininity and the level of androgyny that usually felt most right.

Thea never teased me for not smiling more or cared when I was quiet.

But I hadn’t known how to be both Courtney and Kestrel at the same time.

The more I thought about it, the more intentional all the omissions felt.

The longer I spent in Kansas the clearer it became that Kestrel was another costume.

It had been another way to split the parts of who I was and hide the ones that didn’t seem to fit onstage.

“Courtney?” Jeannie’s voice was gentler than usual.

I sucked in a small sip of coffee. “I think somehow I fell for a person who knows the real me better than anyone, but now she’s pissed at me because she didn’t know who I really was.”

Jeannie exhaled with a sympathetic shake of the head. “That’s quite the ironic pickle now, isn’t it?”

My brain hurt. How could I explain any of this to Thea?

Jeannie elbowed my ribs.

I followed the wisps of steam curling from my coffee.

She nudged me again.

I looked up at her.

“ Hey .”

It wasn’t Jeannie who had spoken.

My reaction to the unexpected closeness of Thea’s voice could best be described as an overcaffeinated squirrel that had darted into traffic and then couldn’t figure out how and if it should flee. This was going great.

Sam and Thea stood in front of me, both of their expressions unreadable.

“So glad we found you. Ms. Jeannie, there’s an issue with a few of your plants back at the brewery,” Sam said with as much subtlety as a charging rhinoceros in a window warehouse.

Seeming satisfied to play along, Jeannie allowed Sam to lead her away.

Thea remained unfazed through this mortifying exchange, although a whisper of amusement tugged on the deepest of her dimples. She took Jeannie’s place on the bench beside me. “Can we talk? If you’re too busy, I—”

“No.” The question was so frank and open and mature sounding that it caught me off guard.

“I mean, no I’m not too busy. Of course.

I’d love to talk. I wanted to talk too.” Sam and Jeannie had stopped at the other end of the block.

Sam noticed my attention and mimed gestures that either indicated something very pornographic or blowing out birthday candles.

When Thea turned to see what I was looking at, she found Sam innocently tapping on her phone. “What were you—”

“Uh… a bird was acting weird in the reflection of the glass. It’s gone now.” I cleared my throat.

Thea’s eyebrows pulled together for a moment. “How long until the fair starts? I think my phone’s in my car, and I have no idea what time it is.”

I checked my phone. “Fifteen minutes-ish?”

“Okay…” After a moment, she took the coffee from my hand and took a long sip. The gesture was so intimate and girlfriendy that I could have broken down crying with relief right then and there. “Well, then I think there’s time for this.”

I braced for the storm. I would deserve all of it, for sure. But I knew it would hurt anyway. I had just enough of an evangelical instinct toward self-flagellation that I focused all my attention on her gold and chocolate irises.

Thea blew out a breath. “First, I wanted to apologize.”

“To me ?” My head shook in a gesture of shock mixed with disbelief.

Where was the yelling? Where was the making me feel guilty for my mistake? Where was the punishment I deserved for fucking up so badly?

“Yes.”

“No…” I shook my head. “ I’m the one that should apologize. I should’ve told you about my career.”