Page 7 of With Stars in Her Eyes
“No, I’m okay.” After pushing up to standing, the woman brushed dust bunnies off her coat. “I might not be an expert on lizards, but I didn’t think any real ones had wings.” She took off her hat and ran fingers through her wild hair, exposing what looked like a partially grown-out undercut on one side. The lights had been turned down for the book club, so as she stepped forward, I could finally see her face.
My fingers slipped on the leash, nearly dropping it as my stomach somersaulted. I had been about to say something, but it vanished out of my mind. And not in the way words sometimes vanished during a flare. Or in the way I normally felt when trying to talk to strangers while visiting Kansas and trying to be “Courtney” after spending months as Kestrel.
I had randomly lost my train of thought. Lost it somewhere around noticing the stranger’s soft curves covered in worn denim and aged whiskey-colored leather, the piercings up the shell of her ears in addition to her nose piercings. Her eyes were so dark you could fall into them. She had a round, pink-cheeked facewith at least four dimples around a mouth that seemed like it was created to smile. I didn’t even know it was possible for a mouth to have four dimples.
“Areyouokay? You look like you glitched.” The brunette’s gaze flitted from my eyes and the creature on my shoulder.
The animal claw-kicked my neck as if evenheknew I should be speaking. “I’m sorry—you asked— Um… what did you say?”
“I said, whatisthe animal on your shoulder? Also, why’s it in a bookstore? And I also asked if you were okay.”
“Oh, right. Uh—it’s a bearded dragon. And I’m—er—fine. Just zoned for a sec.”
“A bearded dragon. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. And it’s in a bookstore… why?”
“It—uh—he, I guess. Right. Well, he comes to the middle-grade book club.”
“To provide astute literary critique?”
“More like its mascot.”
“Sure. Sure.” Her brown eyes were fixed on my shoulder. “Do bearded dragons typically havewings? Is this one experiencing some sort of hitherto unknown mystical metamorphosis we should report to the local wildlife department?”
“One of the kids 3D printed them this month and painted them to match him. They’ve been reading the Wings of Fire books the last few months. Helen thought they were funny. It latches to—”
“I’m confused. Is Helen the dinosaur’s name?”
“Helen’s a vet tech next door, but she’s also Billy Gibbons’s owner. Billy Gibbons is the—”
“Billy Gibbons… Like Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top?”
I pointed to the name tag on the carrier. “She named him that because of his ic—”
“Iconic beard,” the brunette and I said in tandem.
“Bearded dragon. Ahh. I get it.” Her lips angled up. “Why not.”
“She just recently got a horny toad lizard and named it HarryStyles. But he doesn’t like people, so she never brings him to book club.”
The brunette’s bellowing laughter filled the entire room.
After coaxing Billy Gibbons back into the carrier, I double-checked the latch. “I guess if she ever got a frilled lizard, the ones with the neck-fanning-out thing, she’d have to name it… hmm…” I squinted. “Oooh—”
“William Shakespeare?” Again, we both said the same thing at the same time. Our eyes must both have caught on the collection of large antique volumes in the glass case at the same moment.
In direct light, the woman’s eyes were a lighter chocolate brown color. Her eyeliner wings were so perfectly sharp it looked like she’d used a ruler to create them, except for a small smudge on one side. Her lips were full, the bottom one protruding slightly.
Those skeptically twinkling brown eyes fixed on Billy Gibbons’s carrier latch. “You know, bookstores are supposed to havecats, not roaming reptiles.”
“This bookstore pretty much has everything except cats.” I looked anywhere to avoid more eye contact until I realized that this probably seemed rude.God,why can’t I just fucking make eye contact with people?I cleared my throat. “Or rabbits. Sam—Samantha—she’s the owner—she’s allergic.”
“Allergic to cats?”
“No, rabbits.”
“Wait, so then why not cats?”
I shrugged. “That’s a great question actually. I’ve worked here on and off for ten years, and I’ve honestly never thought to ask.”
