Stars Dancing [Dreams-To-Lovers Romance]

"Two and a half hours, Sam. Remember the plan," Rhoda reminded me as we took our airship seats. We'd already flown from Cheyenne to Denver. Now we were headed from Denver to Miami down a path I couldn't see.

We'd stayed up late into the night going over Rhoda's ideas and plotting the course as much as we could. She'd insisted we tell my Nanna everything. And once we'd done so, Rhoda asked my gran to watch her son Filly while we took a trip for a few days. Nanna was on board, prepared to pick up Filly from his dad's, so all was well on the childcare front.

Once we'd made our plans, we tried to get some sleep, but I was restless in the guest room, and Rhoda was sleepless in hers, so we'd both gotten up and packed her things for the trip. When it was near dawn, we'd headed to my apartment to gather my bags. Yes, I put my pad from hell in my shoulder bag, and I was rather grieved that the sight of it made me go all clammy.

Rhoda was a genius at keeping me focused and in the here and now, not flying off into everything that had been mind-shattering in recent days. The strategy for the two-hour airship to Miami was for me to recite aloud everything I could remember about Discord while Rhoda took notes.

"Keep it factual. Time. Day. Proper names. Recite the facts to me as best you can remember."

So I did. I repeated back to her how I'd read Flopper then joined Discord, met HC, and joined the Special Streams server. We re-hashed conversations, DMs, and joining the poetry contest. The weird voice chat and someone singing a song from 800 years ago.

The DM previews that led to no messages in my inbox. smack_pans sending me songs then flirting, then somehow knowing the words that would send me into a panic attack.

"Okay, do you wanna tell me about Jolene? I know who she is. She made her way through the Methodist church a while back wrecking marriage after marriage," Rhoda informed me.

"She's an ex. A bad one. The kind where you're no longer a person when she's done with you. And no, I don't really wanna talk about it, but hopefully me puking all over her in the Cowgirl lounge will keep her uninterested in me forever."

"Oh lord," Rhoda cackled. "You sure know how to make a statement, Sam. We'll move on. What about Coraline?"

I remembered to recite facts and kept my breathing steady. "I sent her a video of me playing 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow,' and then I started seeing all that shit on the servers. HC messaged a screenshot of the same thing happening somewhere else; on some other server. My name and his. Conversations we'd had in #SpecialStreamsGeneral repeated on another server, but all the usernames changed. Then I got one of those DM previews from Cora, and it said, 'Sam?' So, either HC told her my nickname, or—"

Rhoda nodded enthusiastically, "Or, it might not be HC at all! If it's part of the program, then your nickname is in the DM you sent HC Maron, so all Discord had to do was spit it out at you to throw you off kilter, Sam. It might be completely fake. Like catfishing, but more developed. Tailor-made just for you."

I shook my head, "This is so fucked up, Rhoda. So, so fucked up! How is this even happening?" I wasn't spiraling. I wasn't breathing hard; this wasn't panic.

I was PISSED.

"I dunno, Sam, but you can't be the only one. And if you're really beta reading for the real HC Maron, and he is really trying to set you up with his friend who's a musician, well, these people are public figures. They are known, Samantha Mooneyhan, and that is the best thing that could've happened. We aren't dealing with unknowns. We're dealing with popular artists who are respected, and fucking with their livelihoods is something the Arts Guild will not tolerate!"

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I nodded. She was right. Of course she was. Rhoda thought of things that didn't occur to me since she was already working with her own business trying to get into the Trade Guilds and grow. It would make sense that the Guilds wouldn't like something screwing up people's financial transactions.

Everything in the Known Cosmos was financially based. You didn't fart around with money. That was how you got yourself evicted from the Guilds and professionally demolished.

The corporate structure of the Known Cosmos'd been established on Earth centuries ago when we officially joined the Trade Guilds and the rest of the 9 Galaxies, and the organization worked.

Mostly. Financial incentives, stability, no war, and profitability had been the gains. It'd paid off, if our history lessons were to be believed. No, life wasn't perfect, but starvation, war, and true poverty didn't exist anymore.

I was at the bottom of the barrel for financial status in the 9 Galaxies, but I wasn't really in any sort of monetary duress, was I? No. There were jobs to be had. If I couldn't find something that worked, all I needed to do was look to the Community College for training programs, and the Guilds would help me find something suitable.

That's how it was everywhere in the Known Cosmos. Opportunities were there, if you could bring yourself to look for them.

And the Trade Guilds were everything. The whole financial system of 9 Galaxies was built around them, so HC Maron and CoralineAsIs would have the support of the Arts Guild. IF we were actually dealing with real people.

"So, we find out if the real HC Maron is the one who contacted me. We figure out if Coraline sent me that message, or if it was another fake out?"

"That's a good place to start, but we don't need to do it this minute, Sam. You don't have to pull that pad outta your bag and show me the message until you're ready."

"Rhoda, how are you so good at talking me out of the spiral, the blackness, when I can't breathe?"

"Hah!" she barked a bitter laugh. "I know my way around a panic attack, Sam, and it's not a good story, but I'll tell you since we have time. Why do I have paper bags handy in my pantry to breathe into? Because that was something Mike loved to do. Pick at me, twist my words, trap me with questions that had no right answer 'til my head spun, and I could do nothing else but panic."

I stared at her in horror, "Oh my god, Rhoda. I'm so, so sorry."

She nodded, "It's sick, and I'm learning now just how messed up it was. That none of it was ever my fault. That there was never, never anything I coulda said to make him stop. All he wanted was compliance, and I wasn't easily cowed, so it was a combustible situation. When my therapist pointed that out, it was honestly the most freeing thing I'd ever heard. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because it meant that he didn't win. Mike didn't beat me down, Sam. It sounds like he did, right? That I was having panic attacks, breathing into a paper bag, trying not to fall over and black out. But that was just a sign of how strong I was. I resisted his mental games. I stood up for myself. I was fighting back, and the only way to end the verbal abuse was for my body to shut down and stop breathing."

"That means I'm strong enough to keep going. To keep facing every dark memory and every miserable corner and remake myself into who I already am inside: a pillar of strength and resilience that no one will ever fuck with again."

I grabbed her in a hug, squeezing the life out of her. "Dear gods, Rhoda, you're fucking amazing. Amazing. Is this what you meant at the church about Pastor Rick's husband helping you?"

She nodded, pulling out of my hug. "Yeah. As soon as things went south with Mike, Bobby called me. We knew each other, and he said he'd always had Mike on a watch list, so he was worried about me. It wasn't violence of the physical kind; it was the mental kind. Verbal games, tying me up in knots, trapping me. It wasn't anything people could see. But Bobby'd had enough experience with Mike at work to see the warning signs. He's the one that recommended my therapist, and it's been a life saver."

"You're amazing, Rhoda, amazing."

"So are you, Sam, and we're gonna get through this— whatever 'this' is. We're gonna figure it out, and no one will ever try to mess with either of us ever again."

And she was right about that, of course.