Page 106 of With Stars in Her Eyes
Nic had showed up at Jeremiah’s Malibu house the day after. Jeremiah was still so pissed, and I wanted to protect Nic from this mess I had made of my life. I printed out five pages of MapQuest directions because I didn’t want to take any chances on Jeremiah tracking my phone and following me and Nic to the only small corner of the world that had ever felt completely safe.
By the end of our drive to Kansas, I had written a notebook full of songs. After all, even as a child, it was in the moments of irrepressible hyperfocus I felt the most me. The hours when my need to create and play and experience music in every atom of my being felt like an addiction. It was inthosemoments, even when I was still so indoctrinated, I found the burnt-out scraps of my true self beneath all the masks. The songs that might end up sabotaging Demetrius’s chance to get the recognition he deserved after five years of being snubbed. I had to figure out a way to stop it.
A text came in before I could block the number.
If you don’t stop people from talking about this, I will release everything I have from the hospital. I will release everything I have on you. All the photos and the letters. No one will believe you. I will release everything I have on Demetrius too, and it will be all your fault. You have forty-eight hours.
CHAPTER 38Thea
My hair was still damp because I hadn’t had time to dry it after showering. I blew a few wild pieces out of my face while I gently lowered the last part of the aura camera into its box. Something itched at the back of my neck, and I reached back to find that my sweater was inside out with the tag flipped up the wrong way. I had thrown on the first book fair–appropriate outfit I found in my closet and sped back over to the studio.
I scanned the room to see if I had missed anything, but I kept getting distracted. The photos from the road trip to the Flint Hills were still hanging everywhere.
This meant that the woman I was tryingnotto think about was literally staring at me from every direction. The woman who was secretlyKestrel. This would not work.
I had never heard Kestrel speak, but now I knew that Courtney was Kestrel the voices fit. Courtney’s low speaking voice was raspy and velvety just like Kestrel’s singing voice. But I had always imagined that Kestrel was British like Demetrius. All the bios on the website said she had joined Demetrius on the UK leg of his first tour and had been playing with him for ten years. It didn’t even mention her YouTube covers, which were how most of her early fan base found her. Her hair was so long back then it covered her face. It was amazing how the makeup and sunglasses made her face completely unrecognizable from the woman I met in the bookstore.
I pulled down the last of the prints and stared at it. It wasn’t one of the photos of Courtney with star trails. It was one of the golden-hour photos. The one with Courtney pretending to playher cello. She was almost a silhouette, her face haloed with the last beams of sun before the light became dusky purple. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth slightly downturned. It was the natural set to her mouth, but it wasn’t a frown. It was like she could hear the music she was pretending to play. It was like when she was playing, it wouldn’t truly have mattered whether we were alone in Flint Hills or if she was on a stadium stage in front of thousands.
It wasn’t the lovely lighting or the background that made the photo more than just a pretty scene, it was Courtney’s intensity as she pretended to hold bow and instrument.
How could Courtney really be considering giving it up?
Even as I processed how devastating her quitting would be, my old fears emerged from the shadows, shaped into new doubts about the alternative…
When I held on to people too tightly, theyalwaysleft me. Even with my family, I always became the odd one out. I watched all my oldest friends find partners and grow out of being my friends. My siblings did the same.
I had thought Courtney and I were building something real. She had people here. It all seemed like it was working. We had taken it slowly, and I hadn’t moved too quickly in a relationship.
But now… what I offered Courtney seemed pitiful in comparison to the world open to someone with her talent.
It was ironic really. I had always loved taking snapshots of the universe. Those glimpses of galaxies captured in light through a lens were magical. Seeing the grand vastness had never made me feel small. The more I saw of the mysterious expanse, the more connected I felt. Like distance wasn’tjustrelative. Like both miles and light-years were all illusions hiding the epic enmeshment connecting everything to everything else.
It was truly strange to find myself in proximity to a person like Courtney without even realizingwhatshe was. I’d slept bare body to bare body with a person so clearly destined for a life of brightlights and epic acceleration, and I hadn’t even noticed. No matter how well I could map the constellations from memory, I could never, ever fit beside a star.
But…
The idea of losing Courtney dueled with the pain of realizing Courtney was considering throwing away a piece of herself. I had only known Courtney a few months, but I would be damned if I didn’t tell the woman to try again.
I dropped the photo onto the stack with the others.
These photos definitely couldn’t stay here if I was going to try to make a rational decision about what to do next. I searched the space until I found an empty photo box. I dropped the stack of photos into it and closed the lid. The film strips hanging behind me caught in a sudden draft. The movement caught my eye, and as I turned, I saw one photo I’d missed on the counter.
Courtney beneath the star trails.
I had planned on framing that one eventually. Maybe I still would.
I traced the outline of her face.
Yep, these photos needed to be somewhere else.
I set the star trails photo on top of the box. After a five-minute hunt for where I had set my keys, I grabbed the box to take it down to my car.
In my state of total distraction today, I’d left the dumb door to my studio completely unlatched. I muttered curses at myself. As I pulled it open, I found a tall man wearing a baseball cap behind it. He had one hand raised like he had been about to knock, but his face angled down toward his phone in the other.
The sudden appearance of a person when I hadn’t expected to find one there had me stumbling backward. I caught myself on the arm of the futon, but the box of photos slipped out of my hand. It hit the ground at the wrong angle and bounced slightly, which sent the photos flying and floating to the ground in every direction.
“Ohshite,” the man said in an ominously familiar, hypnotic British accent. He tipped up his hat, and before I could stop him, Demetrius Adeyemi bent to help me clean up the mess I had just made. “So sorry I startled you. The door was open, and I was knocking. I didn’t think you could hear because of the music—good song by the way. One of your colleagues at the tattoo shop sent me up here because…” His dark eyes widened as he took a closer look at one of the closer-up shots of Courtney. “These are… they’re quite remarkable. There are also—er—rather a lot of them. Remarkable though.” The way his mouth quirked up into a smirk snapped me out of shock.
