Page 79 of With Stars in Her Eyes

“Jesus,that sucks.”

“Jesus sure is a bummer.” Courtney smirked.

“Were you playing cello again while you were in New York? It seemed like you didn’t really want to talk about it in your emails.”

“Some. Just in studios. Prerecorded stuff with small audiences. And some meetings with lawyers. They want me to go back to performing live in front of crowds, and I’m just not sure I can.”

I tried to imagine this version of Courtney. She would probably be dressed in black and sitting in the front of a massive orchestra as a wild-haired man conducted with one of those batons. I couldn’t wait to hear her play for the first time.

“Why don’t you think you can play live anymore?” I flinched. “But you don’t have to answer if it’s too—”

“My migraines aren’t exactly like a lot of people’s migraines. I get slurred speech and balance issues. Basically, it looks like a stroke, so I’m telling you if it happens I’m not actually having a stroke, so please don’t call nine-one-one or anything. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

“It kind of sounds like a big deal. I hate to be this person, but… you’ve had scans and—”

“Literallyevery kind of test imaginable. Chronic migraines can be a lot worse than I knew, and I let it get really out of control. I hid that it was getting worse.”

“Is that why you want to stop performing? Because you’re worried about it happening onstage—”

“It happened to me onstage for the first time in a really big performance when I was supposed to introduce a song. I really fucked everything up. Second-worst night of my entire life.”

“Whoa… That sounds traumatizing.”

“It sure fucking was.”

“When did that happen?”

“Right before I came back here. It took me a while to be able to even leave the house.”

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine having something like that happen so publicly.” I squeezed her hand. “But for context, I threw up the only time my mom tried to put me onstage.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh, I did. Ruined a pair of her favorite shoes, but my mom never tried again.”

Courtney laughed, adjusting her position beneath her seat belt to be angled toward me.

“But this migraine onstage only happened once, and you’ve been playing since you were a peanut, right? Whendidyou start?”

“I think I was onstage for a paid performance for the first time before I was five.”

“Five?” I frowned. “Is that even legal?”

“Probably wasn’t.”

“Do… do you honestly actually want to quit playing or do you just think you can’t do it anymore? I’m not judging or anything. Shit, I’ve quit more things than you could possibly imagine.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Like five careers. Before that I switched my major three times before graduating with a general studies degree. A sorority. A local bowling club.”

“You werenotin a sorority.”

“Alabama’s a weird place. But a house full of hot girls with enough of us in the closet at that point, it made some nights very interesting.”

“Oh my god, really?” Courtney snickered. “I want stories. Or I want to see photos.”

“Absolutely not.”