Page 41 of With Stars in Her Eyes
“Okay, I compromised and said I’d come and take photos atthis big pre-wedding shower-slash-reunion thing they were having instead. And before that I have several more events and a heinous country club fiftieth wedding anniversary thing, butthenI’m really done.”
“No…”
“It seemed like a great compromise at the time.” I covered my face with my hands. “It was a whole thing. I’m really, really great at quitting things usually… unless my mom is involved and crying.”
My stomach growled embarrassingly audibly.
“Have you eaten lunch?” Courtney asked.
“No, I’ve been back-to-back since I got in this morning, so I’ll probably run out soon and—”
“Ah.” Courtney pulled out a bag she’d been holding on her shoulder. Before I could muster the energy to protest, she had split her sandwich and dumped half a bag of chips onto the wrapping and pushed everything toward me.
“Are you sure?”
Courtney gave me a look that clearly saidDo you even need to ask?
I took a bite, and it was either the best sandwich I had ever eaten or I was starving.
Courtney snapped a chip with her tongue in a very distracting way. “Were there any good parts of the weekend?”
“Yes.” The sandwich really was giving me a newfound burst of happy energy. “I got some reading done this weekend. I read the book I bought the other day, and then I started reading a Jane Austen from my mom’s shelf. It was either that or an Amish romance, and I wasn’t ready for that.”
“Which Austen?” Courtney sorted the chips in her small pile using an organizational method I didn’t understand.
“Persuasion.” I wiped my fingers clean of any potential sandwich grease and picked up a book from the pile Courtney had set on the desk. It was a clinch cover with two women in each other’s arms. “You know what I like the most about these historical period romance books?”
“What?”
“No one is dissecting the number of exclamation marks in a text message. It’s letters or”—I cleared my throat—“or stopping in to call,” I said in a British accent. “Everyone reading‘half-agony, half-hope’knows exactly what Captain Wentworth was saying. Honestly, it makes my approach to dating feel validating.” The last sentence was more mutter to myself than anything.
Courtney’s eyes narrowed. “Your approach to dating?”
“Yep. It started a few years ago and it basically cured my anxiety.”
“Now I feel like you really have to explain.”
“You know how I said I’m good at quitting things?” I flipped through the books one by one.
“I know yousaidthat.”
“So, in relationships in my twenties it tended to be the opposite.”
“What?” Courtney looked aghast.
“People quit me.”
Courtney blinked and crumbled a chip between her fingers into potato dust.
I shrugged. “And usually, they didn’t tell me they were doing it. It’s more of thetext messages space out further and further until they stopkind of thing. Or worse, we finally get close and then they just ghost me completely.”
“Dickwads.”
I shrugged. “It started making me really anxious about my phone and gave me an unhealthy addiction to having it on me and being available all the time. So, after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to channel my best skill in a new way.”
“Your best skill?”
“Quitting.”
