Page 64 of With Stars in Her Eyes
I grinned. “He’ll be the first course.”
“Unless you have something more delicious to offer me, of course.” Thea’s tongue swept over her bottom lip one last time.
My stomach pulsed. If I didn’t walk out the door right now, Iwould rip Thea’s clothes off and make her come until she saw a very different kind of stars than the ones in the photos.
“Guess you’ll find out tomorrow, won’t you? I really need to get home.”
My eyes snagged on the small air purifier in the corner that Thea had used to get rid of the smell of incense just incaseit bothered me. She’d gone to all that trouble forme.
Tears pricked my eyes, and I didn’t even know why.
My dad’s voice echoed in my head without warning.
“It’s just a little smoke, Dove. Stop being so dramatic. We need this job. Don’t make this an issue. You’re going to get a reputation for being difficult again.”
“You okay?” Thea hadn’t missed the sudden tears.
“Totally, just got a bit of dust in my eye.”
“Aw. I’m sorry. Do you need to use the sink to—”
“No, I’m good.” I forced a flirty smile that pushed the tone back to where it had been just moments earlier. Was it silly to cry just because this woman had actually gone out of her way to accommodate my migraines? That had never happened before from anyone except Sam and Nic. Not even when my parents were my managers.
After enduring a Thea Quinn hug that threatened to destroy my cool, calm, and collected resolve, I basically fled back down the stairs through the tattoo shop and out onto the sidewalk before I could do something really stupid like break down crying because I was falling for a woman who actually seemed like she gave a shit about me.
As I walked down the sidewalk, Thea’s attention from the window was a firm presence on my back and the night breeze cooled my burning cheeks.
As tempting as it would have been to invite Thea over tonight, I wanted this woman to actually like me, and the messy state of my house wouldn’t help with the whole seeming-more-together-than-I-actually-was thing.
I was still holding the photograph.
Make whatever expression that feels the most you.
Yikes.
Thea probably didn’t understand why this was difficult for me. I had never felt particularly connected to the way my face looked. I learned over time the best way to make it look pretty in photographs, but I’d had to learn facial expressions like I was an alien.
“No one wants to see someone praising Jesus looking like they’re all angry, Dove.”
“If you were really feeling the Spirit, you wouldn’t have to work this hard at it.”
The dumb reason I started playing the cello was because it gave me more excuses to look down and away from the crowds instead of making eye contact with them. I could barely make eye contact with my parents most days, and I was supposed to just look strangers straight in the eye? Eye contact felt… felt like an intense, intimate thing.
Given how much Thea seemed to like space and the stars, maybe my penchant toward feeling like an alien would work for her.
I stopped near a streetlight to get a better look at the aura photo again. Amidst the spectrum of color, my face looked slightly intense and certainly not quite “pretty.” My eyes had always been the feature of my face I liked most. They were in sharper focus than I expected compared to the other photos. My head was tilted at a slight angle so that the light caught on the new daith hoop. The almost smile on my slightly parted lips was just a reminder of what Thea had said to put it there.
Maybe sometimes thingswerejust this easy.
By the time I got home with bags of groceries weighing down my arms, my mind had wandered so far from my body I didn’t immediately see the person waiting for me on the porch. It was an unfamiliar man who had a nondescript face.
“Courtney Starling?” he asked.
“Yes.” My heart skittered to a stop.
He held out an envelope. “You’ve been served.”
The door of his sedan had slammed with him behind it before my brain and body rejoined each other. I dropped the bags of groceries and tore open the envelope.
