Page 54 of Starstruck

Just as quick as the rain started pelting on the window, Rory jumpedup from her spot on the bed and bounded over to my side, wrapping an arm over my shoulders as she did. “Oh, Souci,” she sighed, which I’d learned was French for ‘Marigold’. “You know we’d never judge you, or do anything to make you think we aren’t here for you. And we like Tristan, he’s funny.”

Daisy shrugged. "Doesn't hurt that the boy can write a damn good song too."

I nodded, making a mental note to finally listen to some of them when I had a moment alone today.

Cora sat up, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I swear he's been obsessed with you since that night at the Moody Sundays concert. I see it every time we’re all together.”

What?

“Wait… really?”

Daisy threw her hands in the air, the green in her eyes sparkling. “Are you kidding? It’s like you’re the only thing in the room!”

I let that sink in, my heart skipping at the thought.

Does he really look at me like that?

But even if he did… did it matter? I could almost see a version of us that could work—a fleeting glimpse of what might be if I squinted hard enough and let my imagination take off down a path it had never explored. Yet, with that dare came a flash of reality. Our dreams felt like different songs playing in the same space—pretty but never harmonizing.

There was no way our paths would ever cross if this wasn’t pretend.

I had to hike my smile back up as I looked back at the girls. “Well… surprise! We’re a thing.”

Rory smiles like a loon as she stands up, her fluffy socked feetsliding her to the worktop. “God, it’s so cute. Girl who never had a chance to fall in love before finds love in the one place where she knew she was meant to belong? Oh, what's that? I think that’s Hollywood calling because that’s a movie right there.”

I shook my head and smiled, watching her as she grabbed a waterfrom the mini-fridge. “You’re forgetting that it was Hollywood who was partly to blame for the whole ‘never had a chance to fall in love before’ thing.”

“Speaking of Hollywood,” Cora announced, her voice beating theheavy rain against the window. “How about a film? That cinema down the road does half-price tickets for Liberty students. And I really need some escapism before that ridiculous influencer event with Bashful tomorrow.”

"If it's ridiculous then why did you agree to go?" I asked, but the way Cora's demeanor shrunk made me want to take it back.

"Because not going isn't a choice right now." I'd never heard her voice so mellow, and for someone who wasn't afraid to let her accent be as rigid as it was, I couldn't help but let the questions stack up in my mind. But before her words could settle, she shimmied herself, her bob swaying. "But it's fine. Jamie will be there. And I'm seeing my sister afterwards, and then I get to close up at Flo's. I've got things to get me through it."

You might wonder what someone like Cora, who had more followers than there were stars in the sky, was doing working a part time job at a bakery. I did to, but when I asked her over the summer, when I'd wander into Flo's whilst getting used to the city and solidifying this friendship, she confessed that it was of how normal it made her feel.

And as a girl who was still searching for that herself, I admired her for that.

"So," Cora announced. "Cinema trip?"

I sat up. "Ooh, or they just opened up the ice rink down in Central. We could grab some hot cocoa on the way?"

Cora barked a laugh. "Absolutely fuckin' not." We all looked to her. "Unless they have those penguins that the kids use to stop them from going arse over tit, then it's a no from me."

A laugh flew through my nose, before I turned to the others. "Rory?"

She smiled. "Oh umm…" Hesitation wrapped around her smile. "I haven't skated in years, I'm sure I'd be no good anymore."

Cora perked up. "But what about those medals under your bed—"

"I vote the movies." Rory interrupted, her smile the forced kind we'd never seen from her. "I'd commit a felony for a cherry Icee."

Daisy leans back on her bed, her knees tucking into her chest.“Wait, I thought we were going to the Lions game tonight?”

“No!” Rory shouted from the other side of the room, mine, Cora andDaisy’s faces all confused at her raised voice. Her brows eventually softened. “I mean… I’m just not in the mood to be around them right now.”

Cora cleared her throat to cover up the way she mumbled, “Themor the blonde one you’re madly in love with—” She didn’t hide her mumbles very well, she never did, which was why a pillow from the end of my bed met the side of her face before she could finish her sentence. “Oi!”

We all cast our eyes to Rory, the one who’d launched the pillow,whose eyes were probably the saddest I’d seen them. “Can we not talk about it? He turned me down, I’m embarrassed, let’s just forget it ever happened.”

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