Page 84 of With Stars in Her Eyes

“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’mnotgoing 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. “Definitelynot.”

“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 wasexhausting.”

“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 isnow. 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.”