Page 137 of With Stars in Her Eyes
I drowned the rest of the sentence in a kiss that seemed to brighten the stars above us. “I’ve spent the last four months loving you while you were away from me, so I’m not sure why you think I’d stop now.” After kissing a tear from Courtney’s cheek, I leaned on Courtney’s shoulder.
Courtney told me all the plans she had been making. Small venues. Limited tours. A backup band of women she thought deserved more attention in the industry.
A house in Kansas with the hope of someday adopting a potbellied pig.
The calls of night birds punctuated the symphony of swaying trees and cicadas in the strengthening wind.
Neither of us spoke for a long while.
My voice was hoarse when I found it again. “You dreamed about coming home to me?”
“It wouldn’t be coming home if it wasn’t to you, Thea.”
EPILOGUEThea
MAY 1
Inexplicably, I stood behind the counter of Menagerie Books wondering how I’d ended up herenow. I checked my watch again. If I didn’t escape soon, I would be late.
I had been browsing the dollar bins after giving Samantha a list of potential books for future book club meetings when some kind of foghorn alarm had gone off on Samantha’s phone. Samantha had said she needed to run out because of an emergency, and pushed me toward the counter, assuring me that the new part-time bookseller would be there soon to take over.
I knew the store well enough by now that I peeked around the register and scanned all the surrounding areas before stepping behind it. There were only two animals in cages at the moment and both cage doors seemed securely closed, but I couldn’t be too careful.
A few minutes passed and still the store was empty.
My phone was off because it had been blowing up since the label had released the first of the promo shots for the next Violet Trikes album. A couple of big magazines were bidding for an exclusive of the rest of the images that wouldn’t be used for the album. Demetrius’s publicist had been sending me updates on that process, and the entire thing had been a little overwhelming.
In a few more minutes, I would need to turn it on to text Samantha though, because the book club was using the still-closed pub as a meeting space tonight. I didn’t want to be late the first time I was leading it. Marshall had been using the pub as a meeting space and a pop-up for local food trucks, and he had arranged one of my favorites to be there tonight for the book club. Neither Courtney nor I knew what was happening between Marshall andDemetrius, but Marshall at least seemed stupidly happy all the time now. He might not have a plan for the restaurant, but seeing him with so much hope had given me some more of my own despite missing Courtney so much I could barely breathe sometimes. She had been home for a week at a time here and there, and I visited her on tour sometimes, but it was never enough time. Hopefully book club would be enough of a distraction to get me through the last days of long-distance.
I checked my watch and tapped out the seconds on the counter.
At least planning the book club had been a distraction from counting the days until Courtney would come home.
The watch hands had only moved millimeters since my last check.
Courtney would be home in four days, sixteen hours, and eight minutes if her flight was on time.
The book club, however, was in one hour and thirteen minutes.
And I would be late to meet the food truck person if I didn’t leave soon.
“Well, what am I going to do now?” I asked aloud, vaguely directing the question at a chinchilla named Winston in the nearest cage.
The back door down the hallway from the office chimed as it opened.
I stacked books neatly behind the counter. “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here. Samantha ran out because she had an emergency. I was going to get the books I’m stacking here with the preorders, but I’m going to have to come back later because—”
A book smacked on the counter behind me.
I froze.
“Hey.”
I whirled around. My hands gripped the counter as I blinked over and over again, struggling to clear my vision, so I could be sure I wasn’t imagining things.
Courtney’s pixie had grown out, and she swept it to the sidein the front. She didn’t look like the wan bookseller I met over a year ago. Her cheeks were pink and her grin was all impish mischief. “I brought you something.” Courtney tapped the book with a small nod that I should take a look.
My hand shook with an inexplicable tremor as I lifted the book. The cover featured two women posed in an elegantly dreamy clinch, both in elaborate Regency dresses with one woman’s sleeve falling down over her upper arm as she looked back toward her lover. I flipped through the pages with my thumb and forefinger like I always did with books, but there was something stuck in the center causing my thumb to slip inside.
