Page 25 of With Stars in Her Eyes
“Ha.” Sam snapped her fingers in victory.
I glared at my best friend. “No—wait, I meanyes. Gah. That was a confusingly worded question.”
She made a little curtsy. “You’re welcome.”
“And again, for the last time, that wasaccidentalsexy talk.” I picked at a fingernail I’d broken while wrangling Baxter during the storm.
Jeannie went around to water all the plants in the bookstore, leaving Sam and me to have an emotional but thoroughly nonverbal exchange of facial expressions about what I should be doing about Thea.
When Jeannie was in the back of the store checking on a snake plant, Sam gave me a puzzled look. “Why do you look terrified right now?”
“Getting a crush when I’m here… it’s just not a good idea. Even if I’m…”
“Even if you’re what?”
“Never mind.” I slipped off my stool and grabbed the next box of new releases that needed to be set on the front table. After Jeannie left and my coffee kicked in, I faced my best friend. “Thea’s literally gorgeous and carefree and put together. I truly do not understand people like that and how they move through the world.” I swallowed. “Basically,she’sfucking terrifying. I’m just trying to figure out my life right now, so it’s probably not the best time to—”
“I’m sorry did you say she’sterrifying? The woman with a face that looks like it was created to see how many dimples could fit on a human face? The woman who looks like the human embodiment of sweetness?” The worry lines on Sam’s face smoothed into humor again.
“Oh my god, the dimples. They should come with those warnings they put on high-sugar foods in California. Not even mentioning the tattoos. Hazardous.”
“Hazardous?” Sam doubled over with laughter. “I love her tattoos. They give her a little edginess. The ones on her fingers are new since I saw her at Marshall’s game last year. She has some other cool ones on her arms too if I remember right. Not that anyone has been able to have bare skin on display with how cold it is.”
“The ones on her arms are pretty. I saw them when I got my daith done.” I touched the new hoop. “And yeah… I like the finger tattoos too.”
“Yeah, you do.” Sam said this in the exact instigating tone of the friend in a 1990s raunch-com.
“God, you’re such a bad influence.”
“You’re welcome for that too.” Sam grabbed her phone; the alert on the screen lit up her face with a smile so wickedly elated, it should come with a danger warning.
“Oh my god.”
“What?” I braced myself.
“Guess who just joinedyourbook club?”
As Sam pushed the phone in my face, the alert from the sign-up program displayed the name on the screen in bold purple letters.
Historically Hot and Bottled new member form received from Thea Quinn
“Frick.” My words were getting garbled in my mouth, and this time it had nothing to do with a migraine. I rubbed sweat from my forehead and batted away Sam’s hand when she tried to pretend to take my temperature.
“Having another completely unexplainable hot flash like the other day, friend?”
“I’m—ugh—I’m totally fine. Totally fine. Calm.”
“Good, because isn’t that Thea outside and about to come in here?”
I did a completely not-ridiculous-looking-at-all whirl around to look out the window. “Double frick.” I tried to ignore Sam’s laughter echoing off the bookshelves behind her as the bell over the doorway rang. Sam was down the hallway to the office before I could inflict her with a withering stare.
“Hey.” Thea smiled as she pulled off her hood, the dusting of white snow on it immediately melting into a glistening sheen of water.
“Hi,” I said in a slightly chirpy voice that was nothing like my normal one. I coughed a little and lowered the pitch. “How’s it going?” Okay, that was too low-pitched. Now I sounded like an eighty-year-old who smoked a pack a day in between the shifts worked in the coal mine since age eight. I cleared my throat in a final attempt at speaking like a human. “Good to see you, Thea.”There. That was my normal voice. “How was the rest of your weekend?”
“It was good.” Thea was kind enough to smile with only the barest hint of mischief and not verbally acknowledge the humiliating vocal-pitch modulations that had just taken place in the last ten seconds. She glanced around the cages and the floor. “No more Baxter?”
“His owner picked him up yesterday morning after you left.”
