Page 10 of With Stars in Her Eyes
Oh shit.
I asked Thea to wait. Which meant I had to have areasonfor asking her to wait. You couldn’t just tell a beautiful woman you just met that you don’t like the idea of her walking away from you for absolutely no reason. Especially since based on how this conversation was going, I should be relieved she was leaving. Why did Thea’s carefree, slightly witchy elegance make me feel so inexplicably on edge?
“You okay there?”
“I’m—er—fine. I just… talking. Sometimes. You know?”
Thea clearly didnotknow. Probably because there didn’t seem to be a socially awkward bone in this woman’s body, whereas absolutely nothing coming out of my mouth made any sense. My twitching hand hit the stack of flyers. “You were looking at our book club flyers.” My hip banged painfully on the counter as I grabbed one for her.
“Thanks.” She shifted the three boxes under one arm to take it. “Which do you recommend?”
“What do you like to read?”
“I don’t really know. I was in school for a long time and got burned out on textbooks and research. I used to steal my older sister’s thrillers sometimes. They were okay.” She paused. “Generally, not a big fan of men who write one-dimensional oversexualized women though… just as a rule. You know… like… no seemingly sentiently heaving areolas or prehensile clitorises manufactured by dudes who have obviously never seen a vulva in the wild let alone given anyone with one an orgasm.”
I blinked once, replaying Thea’s words to make sure I’d heard them correctly before I burst out laughing. I laughed until the corners of my eyes were wet. Thea’s subtly genteel Southern lilt combined with her deadpan delivery was a lot for my hyperliteral brain, so it had taken me a second.
Thea sighed ruefully, clearly relieved. “Shit, sorry. That was a lot. It’s been a while since I’ve been around new people, and at home people were used to my off-putting sense of humo—”
“No. No.No.”When was the last time I laughed this hard?“It’s fine. You’re just really funny.”
“I thought I’d completely mortified or offended you.”
“Happy to say I’ve never been offended by anything having to do with vulvas.Believeme.” My hand clapped over my mouth. “I think that came out wrong,” I said through my splayed fingers.
“Better than notcomingat all though, right?” She winked, and I nearly died right there. “So tell me about Slaughter and Spice? Ominous.”
Somehow we’d moved from lizard names to vulvas and orgasms and now to murder kink? My head spun, but not in a bad way… “Slaughter andwhat?”
“The club?”
“Club?”
Thea’s blue nail hit the name of a book club. “This one.”
Understanding hit. “Oh right. Yeah, so that one alternates between horror and romance. I think it’s all women authors though. Samantha picks those books, and she has amazing taste.”
“Does it come with a mascot like the middle-grade one? I shudder to think what it could be…” Thea’s wry lips compressed.
“Not that I know of. You could suggest that to Samantha though, because she runs it.”
Thea’s eyes flicked up to mine again. “Doyourun one? Your name’s not here.”
“I’m filling in leading this one that meets the first Thursday of every month. Ellen’s on leave right now.”
“Are there—”
“Absolutely no sentient areolas or prehensile clitori—or no, it’s clitorises? Obviously, it’s not like octopus and octopi, although isn’t that actually octopussies—puses. Octopuses, I mean. I’m sorry. I think I lost the thread there.”
Thea, of course, hadn’t lost the thread. Nor did she seem fazed by anything I had just said. “I think the plural of octopus is actually either octopi, octopuses, octopodes, or just octopus, strangely enough, and to explain how I know that would involve an existential debate about invertebrates as singular organisms versus a collective, and probably makes more sense knowing I once went out with a marine biologist for a week. But I do know for afactthat the plural of clitoris is definitely clitorises.” Her tone remained shockingly academic.
“Clitorisesdoesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?”
“I guess that depends on who you ask.”
My mouth fell open in a stunned expression Thea seemed to thoroughly enjoy.
“Imeant…”I gave Thea a mock-glare. “I meant the word is weird… because of the multipleesssounds. Not that I have a problem with a plural amount of clitori—Fuck, I did it again. I meant clitoriseses.Clitorises.” I gulped a steeling breath, trying to make the next few words deliberate and strong and hopefully with correct word-pluralization. “I mean I amgoodwith there being more than one clitoris in a situation. Clitorises are great. Tongues too. But, again, for the record, absolutely none of them in that book are prehensile.” My hand smacked my forehead.
