Page 15 of With Stars in Her Eyes
“Definitely.”
“Ah. Okay. So… I have a theory.”
“Hit me with it.” My fingers kept failing at peeling apart two stickers that were stuck to each other.
“You’ve got an insta-crush. On Thea.”
“Donot.” After several more attempts, I passed the stubborn stickers to Sam, whose nails made quick work of the problem. “I’m just coming down with a cold. All those tweens and their germs.”
“You developed symptoms in two hours?”
“It’s a very aggressive virus.”
“You certainly have something very aggressive going on if it’s got you this flustered.”
“I’m the epitome of chill.”
“You’re so chill I think you might be a running a fever out of sheer horniness. Were you like this over there with her? You’re practically vibrating.” Sam snickered. “How’d she get you to stay still enough to poke you with a sharp object?”
“I wascompletelystill. She even commented on it. I barely said a word.”
“Sounds like your attraction provoked a perfect fuck, flight, or freeze moment,” Sam said through chortles. “Now just answer me this. If, hypothetically, she had said you were agood girl, what would you have—”
“Stop.” I scowled at my sticker piles. “We are not, absolutely fucking not, in a romance book right now. I don’t hook up with people when I’m here. It’s just too complicated.”
“You certainly haven’t in the past.” Sam grabbed a seltzer and popped open the can. “How many times do you estimate you said the wordclitorisduring that first conversation? Because I stopped counting after six.”
“It’s very rude to eavesdrop.”
“I was just shocked because I’ve literally never heard you talk that much toanyonein the store until you’ve gotten to know them for a fewmonths.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Hey.” Sam held up her hands defensively. “Just making an observation. You’resurethere was no more discussion of anatomy?”
“Not unless you count the where-to-poke-me-with-the-sharp-object conversation.”
“Poking. Dirty.”
“Samantha.”
“Fine. I’ll shut up about it.”
After a few more minutes of stacking and restacking stickers until they might actually be more disorganized than before, I gave up, mixed them all together, and dumped them back in the case. I’d fix them in the morning. “Right, so Imighthave said something after she was done doing the piercing aboutscreamingthat, in retrospect, could’ve been interpreted a couple of different ways.”
Sam snorted seltzer bubbles, sending her into a fit of half-coughing, half-hysterical laughter. “Back up. Tell me exactly what happened duringthisconversation.”
We spent the entire time closing up the shop doing a thorough postmortem of the short conversation at Squid.
When Sam opened the door for us to walk home, we were almost blown backward. “Fuckthat’s frigid. I should’ve driven.”
“Ugh…” I pulled on my hat and mittens.
Sam frowned as she wrapped her scarf around her neck several times. “Will you seriously be okay this weekend? It’s supposed tosnow. I hope it’s not going to be bad, but I don’t have to go to the conference. I wouldn’t have signed up if I thought Fran would already be out with the baby.”
“You’ve been excited about the conference for months. I can handle it.”
“And your head’s going to be—”
