Page 53 of With Stars in Her Eyes
I grimaced before I could stop myself.
Thea flinched. “Sorry, I should have asked before looking—”
“No, no. It’s okay.” I almost downplayed it. I almost shut down the conversation completely about why hearing the name Dove made my skin crawl a little. But Nic was right. If I liked Thea, I needed to let her in.
Based on how much I missed her when she was gone, I knew what I wanted, and this was a reasonable place to start to “open up” like Nic suggested.
“For the record, my parents insisted they’d never heard of Hole. They did however mainly call me Dove for my entire childhood.”
“They called you Dove? Just Dove?”
“Yep. Because Doves are so meek and quiet and godly.”
“Gross.”
“Quite. Give me one sec.” I tapped out numbers on my laptop and submitted the online form. “Done.”
“Your reading taste is hardly meek.” Thea picked up a book from the featured romance table and then set it back down. It was one of the ones I had loaned her. “This one had me blushing.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m still confused about the logistics in that last scene.” Thea flipped through the pages of the book, then set it down.
“Pirates are very flexible.”
“From all the swashbuckling.”
“Exactly.Swashbuckling.”
“Fuck, I don’t even know what you’re implying that means, but it still sounds so dirty.”
I laughed. But before I could make the flirty reply I wanted to, the BookTots group arrived in a chaos army of strollers and baby carriers for their lunch story time, so I kept the conversation less laced with innuendo.
Thea pulled a bag from my favorite local sandwich place outfrom her bag. “Any chance you have time? I should have called here first, but I got excited when I saw you walk by outside Squid earlier.”
“It’s actually kind of crazy here today, but—”
“Definitely go eat,” Sam called out from where she was corralling the toddlers and their mothers in the children’s section. “Darla just punched in, so she can watch the counter during story time. But I think Rhonda’s still on a call with a publisher about an event in the office. Why don’t you go eat in Thea’s little storage space?”
I was torn between exasperation and gratefulness at Sam’s low-key meddling, but Thea seemed pleased. “Perfect.” She folded the top of the sandwich bag.
We headed outside, around the building, and up the little stairway.
She unlocked the door and led me around the stacks of boxes to a futon by the window. “Sorry it’s still a disaster. I’ve been mostly working in there.” Thea pointed to the door that led to the space that once was the janitor’s closet. “But I did find this thing at a thrift store on my drive back last weekend.” She sat and patted the seat beside her.
Thea dragged over a box and unwrapped the sandwich. I grabbed my half and then pulled off the peppers and placed them on Thea’s half of the wrapper.
“I’m sorry. I asked for no peppers on half, but I didn’t check it.”
“This is great. If you do that, how would you get your extra peppers?” I grinned. “And I like the little flavoring from it but hate the texture.”
“I guess this arrangement works perfectly, then.” Thea dumped half the bag of kettle chips on her half of the wrapper and the other half on mine.
“I guess it sure does.”
After a few bites Thea studied my face. “So what’s the deal with your parents? I feel like all the hints and now the Dove thing I’ve gotten have been just making me want to know more.But I don’t want to pry if it’s too personal or too hard to talk about.”
I straightened my shoulders like an Olympic athlete about to take the plunge off a high dive. “It’s just a long story.”
