CHAPTER 1: Thea
While male whimpers echoed off the seascape murals, I stabbed my pocketknife into a stubborn section of packing tape. An antiseptic tang hung in the air of Squid Tattoo Shop, mixing with the tangerine scent of the cleaner I had used earlier to scrub the shelves.
A scream—an actual scream like the ones in horror movies—rang out, so startling I nearly cut off my thumb. “Dang it.” The pocketknife clattered onto the counter.
As I grabbed it, I caught my reflection next to the jewelry display. The image was strange somehow. I pulled off my sunflower-colored beanie and scrutinized what was wrong with the mirrored version of me. The long wavy brown hair needed a trim and still refused to sit nicely over my awkwardly growing-out undercut, but overall, those things still looked normal. My makeup was smudged at the corner of my right eye from the hours spent cleaning and my olive skin looked more sallow than usual, but neither was the problem. My vintage denim button-up wasn’t too dusty. My necklaces weren’t too tangled.
After another second of careful observation, I noted the persistent downward angle of my reflection’s mouth. Somehow the frown made my brown eyes duller than usual.
“Oh my god.”
Some people complained about resting bitch face, but ever since I was a sprout, I’d had the opposite problem. I had resting stop and tell me your life story even though I only said a polite good morning at the gas pump face.
Marshall had been the first one to point it out. He had spent years of our friendship extricating me from conversation after conversation with strangers whenever we went out after his college football games. I wasn’t even being hit on.
I was drawn into hyperpersonal monologues about medical problems or endless extended family genealogies. Since Marshall mainly thought in football terms, he developed a signal to run a “TNF” play—Too Nice Face play. If I did the signal, which had evolved in levels of subtlety over the years, Marshall would swoop in with all his six-foot-four NFL tight end self and liberate me.
Given that I was normally so smiley it created an actual social problem, I shouldn’t be as frowny and grouchy as I felt. Screaming man background noise notwithstanding.
Kansas was my fresh start after years of failed relationships and all the weirdness with my family obligations back in Alabama. So why did I look like I was sucking on a stale lemon drop? I should be brimming with happiness and gratitude. I had a good job and a free place to stay for a few months while I figured out a new path for my life away from constantly feeling like an outsider. I should be ecstatic.
But I, Dorothea Estelle Quinn, felt as ornery as all hell. And I had the sourpuss scowl to match. Unacceptable.
I checked my phone.
Three more missed calls and several texts. My mother was still calling a couple of times a day. The calls had started out normally, but they always ended with a barrage of I miss yous designed to make me feel guilty rather than make me feel loved. I should have expected that though. When I lived a few miles from my childhood home, Mom relied on me a lot. I had moved several states away, two months sooner than expected, so of course she was having trouble with the transition.
My attention snagged on the date on the screen.
Oh …
Maybe my subconscious was fueling my orneriness, since on this very Tuesday in March, I was supposed to be halfway between Huntsville and the music festival in New Orleans I had been anticipating for a decade. I would have been spending tonight looking absolutely adorable in the outfit I’d spent weeks searching for at thrift stores after splurging on the ticket. And then tonight I would finally, finally get to see Kestrel—mysterious cowriter of all my favorite Violet Trikes songs—perform.
Buying the ticket had been a dumbass decision given how broke I was before I got the job here. When news broke that Kestrel had disappeared from performing after some kind of drug-fueled breakdown at a concert in LA, it had seemed like an even dumber dumbass decision. Selling my ticket had covered some of my moving-related expenses, but based on my face today, I was still salty about the whole darn thing.
A louder moan from the man in the back jolted me from ornery to all-out cantankerous.
I pulled my Bluetooth speaker out of my grandfather’s old leather camera bag. I jammed my finger into the button, then paused. Normally, the Violet Trikes’ first album, Golden Hour, was my salve to a fragile emotional state, but it would probably only increase my grump level today. Instead, I selected my grandfather’s favorite classical station and cranked the volume. My typical sunniness might be a stretch, but I could aim for pleasant or tranquil or at least a little less stabby, damn it. To further my efforts away from murderousness, I set down the pocketknife I was still somehow clutching in my white-knuckled hand.
After a semi-effective calming breath, I finally opened the box of after-piercing cleaning solution and tattoo ointments, checking the expiration dates and labels. After I had filled the shelves with bottles and hooked the new shipment of hypoallergenic jewelry into the display case, the shop door opened behind me.
The creator of the TNF play himself, Marshall Greene, sauntered up to lean on the desk.
“Hey, how’s your Tuesday goin— What is that? Is someone being tortured?” Marshall’s face oscillated between winces and chuckles at the various sounds the man in the back was making. He was dressed as fashionably as always, beard neatly clipped and clothes appropriate for the off-season professional football player and part-time aspiring restaurateur he was.
“It would be going better if men could more accurately assess their own pain tolerance.” I flinched as the sounds of agony hit a new volume.
“First tattoo for the guy?”
“How’d you know?”
“Hopefully something small.”
“He booked her for a full black-out sleeve.”
Marshall snorted.
“They talked him into something more feasible.” I dug my fingers into all the tense places on my scalp.
“Lemme guess, barbed wire around his bicep?”
“Infinity sign with his lovely lady friend of two weeks’ name.”
He smirked. “Should I just wait around and give him Rachel’s business card after he pays?”
“As much as your sister probably appreciates your support of her laser services, I think my boss will kill you if you start telling her clients they’re going to regret her art in the near future. I’ve already had to give her enough bad news this week about the mess the piercing guy before me left with all the expired supplies.”
“I’ll zip it then. So, I’m about to go over the books at the pub, but let me know if you want to meet for dinner later, or if you won’t have…” His blue eyes narrowed as he scrutinized me. “You seem a little … hmm … did you change your makeup? New lip stuff? Something’s different.”
“No.”
He lifted his hands defensively. “Whoa. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry for snapping. I’m just grouchy and I’m grouchy about being grouchy.” The wall clock caught my eye. “Oh, shoot, I needed to—”
Another actual, full-on scream came from the back area of the shop.
My nerves frayed like I was a supervillain who ends up shooting lightning bolts from every orifice while shrieking a death song at her enemies.
Remembering myself, I pursed my lips into what was hopefully a blandly sympathetic expression. “Well, bless his precious little heart. But screaming? Really?” I said before I could stop myself.
Marshall looked like he was trying not to burst out laughing. “C’mon. We all scream sometimes.”
“I sure don’t.”
“You absolutely do.” Marshall leaned on the counter. “Roller coasters?”
“No.”
“Horror movies?”
“Laughable.”
“The unexpected appearance of a cockroach?”
“I lived in Alabama my entire life. You think a little water bug fazes me?”
“Flu shots?”
“I’m not six years old.” I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “Or a thirty-three-year-old man baby.”
Marshall glared. “I told you that story in confidence.”
“Hey, I just felt bad for the poor nurse who tried to catch your big professional athlete butt before you fell out of the chair. I hope you brought one of the linemen with you the next time.”
His appraisal was thoughtful. “You really don’t scream ever?”
“Absolutely not. Probably one of the few things that stuck from my mother’s efforts to make me a proper lady like my big sisters. Suffice it to say the rest of it failed.” I gestured to my double nose piercing, tattooed fingers, and my overall outdoorsy-meets-edgy look that would definitely never be featured in a Vineyard Vines or Lilly Pulitzer catalog. All the reasons my mom felt the need to give a disclaimer any time she introduced me at a family function. Isn’t she so brave for living an alternative lifestyle?
“Fine. You win. You’re unflappable. What were you saying ‘oh shoot’ you needed to do before you looked like your head was going to explode about Mr. Infinity Symbol’s noisy tattoo?”
“Need to do…? Oh, right.” I swiped on the screen to my Maps app, and it stalled again. Either the Wi-Fi was still acting up or my old phone was about to shuffle off its mortal coil. “There was a message on the shop machine that a couple boxes for us got mistakenly delivered somewhere else. Have you ever heard of Menagerie—um—something.”
“Books?”
“I think that’s what the message said. I need to pick up the package before they close. If it’s far I’ve got to get gas first, so—”
“Oh, you don’t need to drive. It’s on the other side of this building. I guess you don’t usually park on that side, come to think of it. Is it a lot of boxes?”
“I don’t think so? Three, but it’s just some of the samples from that jewelry supplier I want to try. Shouldn’t be heavy.”
“Menagerie Books is Samantha Powell’s store. I think you’ve met her at a few family parties or games, and she just got married a few years ago now…” Marshall frowned at his phone. “Shit. I missed seven calls from my agent. I’ll show you the entrance on my way back to the pub if you want to grab the stuff now.”
“Thanks.” After a disheartening look at my weather app, I slid my phone into my pocket. “And don’t worry about driving out to your dad’s cabin with me tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Clouds came in faster than they were supposed to. Tonight’s not the night. It’s a lot of equipment to lug out there if it’s going to be too cloudy to see the planet alignment.”
“Once the weather gets better, you’ll get your shot at it, don’t worry.”
Stifling more grumbles that felt unfamiliar in my throat, I pulled on my coat and followed Marshall outside.
Squid Tattoo Shop was located in an enormous old brick building surrounded by giant old trees that used to be St. Clare Preparatory School. It had been converted into a mixed-use building. The dormitories on the upper floors of the school building had become apartments, but the lower floors were retail and office spaces. According to Marshall’s dad, the renovation had been featured in several magazines decades earlier. Next to the school building was a large stone church that had been St. Clare Catholic Church before it had been similarly renovated—half of which was occupied by Marshall’s pub. The other half was a plant shop I hadn’t visited yet because the lady who owned it seemed a little … well, scary, for lack of a better word.
The pub was Marshall’s post-football retirement plan, though it always seemed empty these days. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried about it. Marshall and I were living together again for the first time since college, and I didn’t want to pry too much too quickly.
The neighborhood, the set of three square blocks and the park across the street, named after the school and church, was called St. Clare Circle because of the way the sidewalk and road curved to accommodate several enormous, ancient-looking trees. There was a starkness to the place right now because just as I moved to Kansas, a polar vortex descended.
As soon as I saw the old church and the trees, my fingers itched to photograph them, but I also liked my fingers attached to my hands thank you very much. Thus, I avoided walking anywhere in the subzero temperatures when I didn’t absolutely have to.
Marshall groaned. “Agent’s calling again. So sorry. The entrance is right around the corner.” He hustled off in the other direction with his phone on his ear.
A particularly frigid blast of wind hit me. I pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders and sped up. The sign hanging down over the door swung back and forth on the hinge. It read MENAGERIE BOOKS with a few stylized animals around the letters.
A group of tweens filed out with a few parents trailing them before I could walk inside. The roaring wind muffled their chorus of thank-yous and laughter. I shut the door behind me, rubbing numbness from my arms as I enjoyed the quiet warmth of the space. The inside was dimmer and larger than I expected. It smelled like old paper and my grandfather’s office and a little like the curling steam coming off a mug of chamomile tea.
The layout hinted at a past life before the renovations as St. Clare School’s library. Brightly colored covers created checkerboards over several long tables. There was a magic to the floor-to-ceiling knotty-pine bookshelves, as if they were a structural part of the old building. Each wall had its own rolling library ladder. Twinkle lights illuminated the far space where some kind of meeting must have just taken place. A woman emerged from the shadows, stacking cushions and chairs.
This was not the Samantha Powell I had met at Marshall’s family’s events.
And hot damn …
Who was she?
I could ask. I could speak. It wasn’t like me to be struck into silence by anything. But something kept my mouth from opening. I didn’t have to see my reflection to know I was smiling now.
It was like a scene from a movie. The kind with an epic soundtrack playing in the background.
Oh … wait … there was an epic soundtrack playing in the background. That part wasn’t my overactive imagination.
I walked forward, aiming my steps toward the checkout desk at the center of the shop but keeping my eyes on the woman in the back as if hypnotized. She was climbing up one of the library ladders now. Her walnut-blond pixie cut glowed as she moved closer to the twinkle lights draping over the shelves. Every hand movement was graceful. Every step seemed sure-footed. She wasn’t dancing, but it was as if she was always aware of the music, feeling the nuances within every note. She paused her shelving at a particularly beautiful strings part, and her fingers made a few small movements before curling into a tight fist.
What was she thinking?
She climbed back down and stood in the center of that open space. The one brighter light wreathed her face and cast her features in shadow. I wished for my camera to capture the moment, but the only cameras I had in Kansas were back at Marshall’s.
I leaned an elbow on the counter, definitely not because watching the beautiful tomboyish Disney princess of a bookseller was making me weak at the knees. That would be silly.
A tug on my coat sleeve wrenched me from my pathetic trance. I turned, expecting to find Samantha Powell or some other bookseller who would tell me to stop gawking like a creep.
But instead, two glassy eyes stared up at me.
The eyes were attached to a head. The head of something with spiky orange scales and iridescent orange wings—actual wings?—and claws that sank into my arm as the creature crawled up onto my shoulder until those oil-slick eyes were inches from my face.
And because Lady Karma was a quick-ass mother trucker, I screamed.
CHAPTER 2Courtney
A scream nearly jolted me off the rolling shelving ladder. I jumped down and sprinted to the front to find a brunette in a bright yellow Carhartt hat cowering in the corner.
“What the hell? What the hell is it?” The unfamiliar woman’s words shuddered through hyperventilated breaths. “Holy reptilian hell in a handbasket.”
I scanned the woman for injuries, taking in every visible detail, from her double nose piercing down to the toes of her worn brown Blundstones. The woman wasn’t bleeding, but she was ghostly pale and clutching her chest. “Are you hurt?”
“Watch out behind you. There’s a—there’s a—” She pointed a tattooed index finger toward the door.
I whirled, not fully knowing what to expect. An armed assailant? A fire? A flash flood? I saw nothing at first until a small horned head popped up behind the counter.
“Oh.” My rigid muscles that had been oddly ready to do battle on behalf of this terrified brunette relaxed. “Oh…”
“Am I hallucinating? I was just standing there. You were shelving books, and I didn’t want to interrupt, and I looked down … and…”
I approached the troublemaker slowly because he was fast when he wanted to be. I grabbed hold of him and spoke softly so that only he could hear. Although my lizard anatomy knowledge was lacking, so I wasn’t entirely sure he had ears. “C’mon, little dude. Why?”
When I turned back to the woman, her mouth was open in awe as if I just charmed a cobra rather than wrangled a highly spoiled house pet. I grabbed his leash from behind the counter, where it had fallen during his escape.
“Since when does Kansas have goddamned winged micro-dinosaurs roaming its bookstores?” The woman had a hint of an accent. Southern maybe? Or possibly Texas? I could never tell the difference.
“No. No. No … He’s not … He’s a … well … he’s…”
“He’s a … what?”
Right, here was where I needed to just start actually explaining, with words. I could do this. Speak. “He’s … he’s just misbehaving.”
“Misbehaving?” The woman was still on the floor, brown hair wild beneath her mustard-colored beanie.
“I guess I’m not sure if reptiles are aware when they’re misbehaving, but his carrier must not’ve been latched right. I’m so sorry he scared you.” I held out my hand, but the woman seemed too nervous about the reptile perched on my shoulder to accept it. “Are you hurt? Did you fall?”
“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 face with 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.
“Are you okay? 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 even he knew I should be speaking. “I’m sorry—you asked— Um … what did you say?”
“I said, what is the 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 have wings? 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 Harry Styles. 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 have cats, 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.”
“Why on and off?”
Before I could answer, the shop door opened. Helen hustled in and grabbed the carrier. She handed the brunette an orange business card without preamble and then ran out the door.
The brunette’s skeptical eyes swept over the business card. “That bearded dragon has one point two million followers on YouTube?”
“Wow, really?” I said, looking over the stranger’s shoulder. Her hair smelled slightly citrusy with a hint of cocoa butter. Like the chocolate oranges Sam ate at Christmastime.
She turned the business card over and read the back. “And Billy Gibbons does birthday and hospital visits apparently. What would a lizard do at the hosp— You know what, never mind. I’m Thea by the way.”
“It’s—er—really nice to meet you, Thea.”
Thea scanned the space, taking in the shelves and then crossing to a display that held tarot decks and books on folklore and astrology. The playlist we’d had on during book club must have finished because the music was gone as silence fell between us.
I should say something. Ideally something both welcoming and extremely hilarious that would make Thea laugh again, because maybe if she were laughing, I could stifle my inexplicably escalating anxiety.
Up until now when I had worked at Menagerie Books during touring breaks, I had handled seasonal inventory or did administrative work in the back office. These jobs involved spreadsheets and meticulous data entry. Never small talk, for good reason. But last week, after months of wallowing through my “emergency medical leave” after the disaster in LA by doing audits and whatever else I could do virtually or after hours, I surprised myself by jumping at the chance to fill in for one of Sam’s managers who went out on maternity leave earlier than expected. I had been working regularly since I was five years old, so I had to do something. Before taking this job, I had only left the house for neurologist appointments or the occasional quiet walk with Sam or my cousin Nic. I had ignored calls from everyone in my other life, so I was even less practiced at talking to people than usual. If I was really going to spend the next three months in a managerial, customer-facing job, I needed to learn how to fucking talk to people like a normal fucking human.
And, oh god. Thea was looking at me again. Had she said something? No, I don’t think so? Had I said something? No. Then why was she looking at me? Having a sexy, artsy woman staring back in such a frank way gave me a rush of the gut-churning, chest-galloping stage fright feeling I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager.
“Did you glitch again?”
Speak, damn it.
“I—I—” I cleared my throat, choked on my own saliva, and had a coughing fit.
Nailed it.
“You okay?”
“Totally. Just breathed in some dust. I wanted to say again I’m really sorry he scared you.”
“It’s really okay.” The warm glow of Thea’s smile seemed to unlock something inside me. “Only my ego suffered a bruising.”
“I would’ve screamed too if an unfamiliar lizard with 3D printed wings popped out at me and crawled up my arm.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Thea’s upturned nose wrinkled. “I don’t think I screamed, exactly.”
“My mistake.” Amusement pursed my lips. “You just made a very loud, terrified, slightly high-pitched sound with your vocal cords.”
One of Thea’s perfectly maintained eyebrows arched in surprise at finding me a worthy verbal sparring opponent. “It was an appropriately measured yelp, if anything.”
“If you say so.”
The door to the back hallway opened and Sam appeared, phone on her shoulder. “Did someone scream? I was finishing up a call.”
I attempted to hide my snort with a little cough, but Thea wasn’t fooled and glared. “That’s actually up for discussion … apparently.”
“I think it was really more of a surprised—uh—”
“Squeal?” I supplied.
Thea’s only response to me was a miffed sniff. She ignored my barely suppressed laughter in favor of focusing on Sam. “I’m not sure if you remember me, but—”
“Oh my god. Thea? Marshall’s Thea.” Sam’s eyes widened.
“Yes. Hi.”
God. Thea’s full smile was somehow brighter than any spotlight I had ever performed under.
Sam juggled her phone and notebook and rushed to give the brunette a one-armed squeeze. “Marshall didn’t tell me you were in town visiting. But I haven’t been to the pub in forever, so I guess—”
“I just moved here to live actually. I took the piercing job at Squid. Staying with Marshall for now since he’ll be back in Miami for football season.”
“That’s amazing. We have to catch up.”
She’s Marshall Greene’s friend? Like, was she a friend friend? Or friend? Marshall was a professional football player and probably knew people all over. I didn’t know Marshall particularly well even though Sam’s family and Marshall’s family were old friends. I had met him at a lot of family events over the years, but I was never comfortable around male strangers. Kestrel could deal with them professionally. Courtney Starling could not. This was my own fault for the same reason it was hard for me to talk to any strangers … even beautiful ones who were potentially queer.
“Wait, so why did you scre—er—squeal?” Sam looked from Thea to me.
“Billy Gibbons Houdini’d himself out of his carrier and tried to make a new friend,” I said with a grimace.
Sam shook her head. “Little stinker.”
The muffled elevator music from her phone cut to a person’s voice, and Sam scrambled to get it back up to her ear. After greeting the person on the other end of the call, she looked back at Thea. “Sorry. Having an issue with a shipment, and I’ve been waiting on hold forever. We’ll catch up later.”
Thea gave Sam an emphatic nod in response, and Sam hustled back toward the office.
This left me alone with Thea again. “So I’m guessing you didn’t stop in here to be harassed by a dragon. Can I … can I help you find something?”
Thea scanned the space behind me. “So … the cages and tanks…”
“The shop fosters exotic pets sometimes. Samantha’s grandfather owned the vet hospital before he retired. It’s a long story, but it fits the theme.”
“The theme—oh, Menagerie Books. I get it now.”
“Usually, if we don’t have real animals, we have some stuffed ones we put there for the kids, but I cleaned the cages yesterday and haven’t had a chance to put them back.”
“This place is a little bit weird.”
“We like ‘a little bit weird.’” I fixed the crooked stack of book club flyers.
Thea’s eyes sparkled with amusement. Her full smile showed off an impossible fifth dimple. “Me too.”
I rubbed a spot on my sternum to remind myself to breathe.
Thea picked up one of the new bright orange book club flyers from the stack in front of the register and then put it back. Her hands glinted with silver rings, some of which held mini crystals. Her nails were as short as mine but painted midnight blue. Black stars, moons, cups, and swords were inked along each of her long fingers. My mouth went dry.
Fuck me.
“Right, so there was a message on the machine at Squid that some boxes were delivered here instead of there.”
“Ah.” Seriously why won’t my cheeks stop burning? “Sam said something about that … One sec.” I dug through the pile of deliveries next to the desk and found the three boxes.
“Do you need some help getting them over to Squid?” This was an incredibly absurd question since none of the boxes were big or heavy.
“I’ll be fine.” Thea extended her hand over the stack of boxes between us.
“I didn’t catch your name.”
Right. Because I didn’t say it, did I? “I’m…” I swallowed away that silly, split-second instinct to say Kestrel. “I’m Courtney.” I shook her hand.
Thea’s short nails scraped across my palm as she pulled away. “Pleasure to meet you, Courtney.”
“Likewise.”
Thea adjusted her heavy coat and hat before picking up the three boxes.
I shuffle-stepped around the counter. “Hey, wait.”
Oh shit.
I asked Thea to wait. Which meant I had to have a reason for asking her to wait. You couldn’t just tell a beautiful woman you just met that you don’t like the idea of her walking away from you for absolutely no reason. Especially since based on how this conversation was going, I should be relieved she was leaving. Why did Thea’s carefree, slightly witchy elegance make me feel so inexplicably on edge?
“You okay there?”
“I’m—er—fine. I just … talking. Sometimes. You know?”
Thea clearly did not know. Probably because there didn’t seem to be a socially awkward bone in this woman’s body, whereas absolutely nothing coming out of my mouth made any sense. My twitching hand hit the stack of flyers. “You were looking at our book club flyers.” My hip banged painfully on the counter as I grabbed one for her.
“Thanks.” She shifted the three boxes under one arm to take it. “Which do you recommend?”
“What do you like to read?”
“I don’t really know. I was in school for a long time and got burned out on textbooks and research. I used to steal my older sister’s thrillers sometimes. They were okay.” She paused. “Generally, not a big fan of men who write one-dimensional oversexualized women though … just as a rule. You know … like … no seemingly sentiently heaving areolas or prehensile clitorises manufactured by dudes who have obviously never seen a vulva in the wild let alone given anyone with one an orgasm.”
I blinked once, replaying Thea’s words to make sure I’d heard them correctly before I burst out laughing. I laughed until the corners of my eyes were wet. Thea’s subtly genteel Southern lilt combined with her deadpan delivery was a lot for my hyperliteral brain, so it had taken me a second.
Thea sighed ruefully, clearly relieved. “Shit, sorry. That was a lot. It’s been a while since I’ve been around new people, and at home people were used to my off-putting sense of humo—”
“No. No. No.” When was the last time I laughed this hard? “It’s fine. You’re just really funny.”
“I thought I’d completely mortified or offended you.”
“Happy to say I’ve never been offended by anything having to do with vulvas. Believe me.” My hand clapped over my mouth. “I think that came out wrong,” I said through my splayed fingers.
“Better than not coming at all though, right?” She winked, and I nearly died right there. “So tell me about Slaughter and Spice? Ominous.”
Somehow we’d moved from lizard names to vulvas and orgasms and now to murder kink? My head spun, but not in a bad way … “Slaughter and what?”
“The club?”
“Club?”
Thea’s blue nail hit the name of a book club. “This one.”
Understanding hit. “Oh right. Yeah, so that one alternates between horror and romance. I think it’s all women authors though. Samantha picks those books, and she has amazing taste.”
“Does it come with a mascot like the middle-grade one? I shudder to think what it could be…” Thea’s wry lips compressed.
“Not that I know of. You could suggest that to Samantha though, because she runs it.”
Thea’s eyes flicked up to mine again. “Do you run one? Your name’s not here.”
“I’m filling in leading this one that meets the first Thursday of every month. Ellen’s on leave right now.”
“Are there—”
“Absolutely no sentient areolas or prehensile clitori—or no, it’s clitorises? Obviously, it’s not like octopus and octopi, although isn’t that actually octopussies—puses. Octopuses, I mean. I’m sorry. I think I lost the thread there.”
Thea, of course, hadn’t lost the thread. Nor did she seem fazed by anything I had just said. “I think the plural of octopus is actually either octopi, octopuses, octopodes, or just octopus, strangely enough, and to explain how I know that would involve an existential debate about invertebrates as singular organisms versus a collective, and probably makes more sense knowing I once went out with a marine biologist for a week. But I do know for a fact that the plural of clitoris is definitely clitorises.” Her tone remained shockingly academic.
“Clitorises doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?”
“I guess that depends on who you ask.”
My mouth fell open in a stunned expression Thea seemed to thoroughly enjoy.
“I meant…” I gave Thea a mock-glare. “I meant the word is weird … because of the multiple ess sounds. Not that I have a problem with a plural amount of clitori—Fuck, I did it again. I meant clitoriseses. Clitorises.” I gulped a steeling breath, trying to make the next few words deliberate and strong and hopefully with correct word-pluralization. “I mean I am good with there being more than one clitoris in a situation. Clitorises are great. Tongues too. But, again, for the record, absolutely none of them in that book are prehensile.” My hand smacked my forehead.
“Very, very good to know.”
Okay, this is a complete disaster. Sam should fire me immediately.
“I’m sorry. Like I said I’m not good at peopling. Never have been. When I’ve helped Sam—Samantha—out with the store before it was less of this part of it.”
“The talking to people part?” With an unfaltering smile, Thea adjusted her earring from where it had gotten caught in her beanie, her rings glinting as she did.
“Yes. Exactly.”
Despite Thea’s obvious amusement, I wouldn’t be surprised if steam was spurting out of my ears. I was nervous enough about leading the book club without thinking about this stunning, classy yet enigmatically artsy and tatted-up goddess coming—not coming, stop thinking about coming—rather, attending the book club.
I had spent years performing. Years being able to speak and sing and play multiple instruments in front of crowds of thousands, and somehow it was always the one-on-one conversations with strangers in totally normal situations that defeated me.
“Well, you make a really solid pitch for the book club.” She slipped the flyer into her coat pocket. “But I am in and out of a lot for the next few months, so I’ll have to look at my calendar. I’d better get back.”
“Can I get the door—”
“I got it.” She pushed the door open, the bell above it jangling. “Nice to meet you again, Courtney.”
“Same. And sorry again about Billy Gibbons.”
Thea’s departing snort of laughter made my heart play hopscotch against my chest again.
The door to the office creaked open. Sam’s head poked out from the hallway like a vaudeville actor who had just been pulled offstage. “I tried to come out when my call ended but then I heard you bantering about genitals. Figured I shouldn’t intrude on that…”
“Thanks a lot.” I twisted the top of my water bottle and gulped down electrolytes to avoid the question probably written all over my best friend’s face.
Deflect.
I rubbed my eyes. “Did you know that octopodes is a lesser used but acceptable plural of octopus?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Me either.”
“So … do you want to fill me in on what happened in the last, I don’t know…” Samantha checked her watch. “… fifteen minutes since book club ended?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Despite this, I was on the verge of spilling the rest of the details of the conversation when an alert pinged on my phone. It was a calendar reminder for an appointment I really regretted making right now. “Oh fuck.” I passed the phone to Sam.
She chuckled. “Well, that should be interesting, shouldn’t it?”
WITH STARS IN HER EYES. Copyright ©