Page 129 of With Stars in Her Eyes
Were all just another pulp fiction
Needing to stop my overanalyzing of Courtney’s lyrics before it drove me to insanity, I grabbed the book splayed open on the cold pillow beside me.
I had been reading it slowly since receiving it. This book was a contemporary romance, and it got smutty much quicker than a lot of the other books Courtney had sent. One third of the way into the book, underlining appeared.
I turned the pages faster as heat rose in my core. The next page was basically completely underlined. And for the first time there was a note in the margin. Not a note exactly, but a small doodle of a mushroom. I read on and saw exactly why Courtney had underlined the hell out of the page.
Obviously the dialogue and setup were different, but it was so,so close to a conversation we had had the night after we got back from Flint Hills.
There were other similarities as well.
Holy shit.
Okay.
I had held out as long as I possibly could.
It wasn’t just because my favorite vibrator’s charger broke this morning that I was sure I might die if I didn’t do something. ImissedCourtney more than I had ever missed anyone. Courtney was doing everything I had wanted her to. She had fought for her career, and it seemed like she had won.
When I finished the book and rolled over into the late-morning Saturday sunshine, I knew it was time for me to do a little fighting too.
The next day I walked over to the bookstore on my break before my evening clients. Billy Gibbons the bearded dragon was behind the counter, and I nearly burst into tears. This time he stayed in his carrier, so at least there wasn’t any reason to scream.
“Is Samantha here?” I asked the new hire working the counter.
“She’s in the office in the back. Right down the hall.”
I headed down the narrow hallway, and a familiar voice froze me to the spot before I could knock. It took me a few tortured seconds to recognize that it was a recording. It was one of the live streams of the Violet Trikes concerts that people had been posting.
“—yeah when I wrote that one I was still so far in the closet I was practically in Narnia. When my crazy Christian parents let me read that series, I’m not sure that was the part of the story they hoped I’d relate to.”
Laughter and applause.
Courtney cleared her throat. “Guess there’s definitely a few people with religious trauma in the audience.” More cheering applause. “That’s what this next song is about. The problem withgrowing up in a high-control religion is that it doesn’t just distort your reality in the obvious ways. There’s the surface stuff that’s obvious when you walk away from it and realize how actually bonkers most of it is. But it leaves these cracks. Like for a while I had this pretty gross idea that if I fell in love with someone, I had to be willing to sacrifice everything of myself for them. On some level it sounds poetic. It’s someRomeo and Julietshit. But when you get down into it, the best love stories end in the people falling in love and through falling in love with someone else, they learn to embrace their truest selves.”
More applause.
I sank to the ground in the dusty hallway.
“So this song is called ‘Roast Sacrificial Lamb,’ and I actually wrote it a long time before I understood what it meant when someone whosaysthey love you asks you to give up who you are. Now I know that a person who loves you would never ask you to be less than your whole self.”
The song was halfway through when the door to the office opened.
When she saw me sitting there, Samantha smiled knowingly before beckoning me back to join her.
“She’s so good.” I sat on the small office couch.
“She really is.” Samantha nodded and joined me.
We sat together listening to the next two songs, and then the live feed cut out.
“I’m glad you stopped by. I’ve been meaning to come by to see you.”
“Oh?”
“Two reasons. I wanted to ask how Marshall is doing. Haven’t seen him around, and I wasn’t sure what was happening with the pub.”
I smiled. “He’s doing good actually. Better. He’s gone right now because he’s in this business seminar in Philly. Also doing a lot of interviews with chefs. He’s getting some things fixed in the kitchen while he works out what he wants to do next.”
