Manish sighed happily. “God, I could write a tome.”
Lola laughed. “I don’t doubt it. Does that song sound good to you, Sloane?”
Sloane just nodded. Didn’t look at Lola. In fact, there’d been a lot of not looking between the two of them all day, Brighton had noticed.
Lola swallowed, then glanced at Brighton. She winked so surreptitiously that Brighton nearly missed it. But god, her wink was devastating. Sexy and badass and comforting all at once. Lola counted them off, and soon the most glorious sounds Brighton had ever heard filled the space. Even the quartet’s movements were like a dance, their bodies bending and working to coax their instruments into singing.
Brighton felt herself moving with them, her fingertips full-on buzzing now with energy. She hugged the guitar closer to her, hearing where she could fit this particular stringed sound into what the quartet was playing. Her heart rate was wild, pulsing in her throat, her temples, her toes.
She bent her head close to the guitar and plucked a single string, the bottom E. It was horribly out of tune, just like she had expected it to be, and before she could overthink it, muscle memory took over, her ears pressed close to the sound hole, her fingers on the tuning pegs, turning and plucking until the guitar was as it should be, each string singing like it was meant to.
She didn’t look at Lola. Didn’t look at anyone. She just listened for a second. The key was in A, she could hear that much. She formed her fingers where they needed to be, just working through the chords first. She felt dizzy, her breathing heavy, but as the quartet played on, crescendoing and then coming back down for a quiet third verse, she started playing.
Her fingers plucked at the strings, playing along with the melody at first, then creating a sort of echo to what the violins were doing. As the song curled into the fourth verse, the violins fell away.
Everything fell away except for Elle, who kept up a low rhythm on their cello, and…Brighton.
Her notes unfurled over everything else, the melody now twisting through the room, the violins and viola joining as a soft pulse underneath her. Her fingertips burned, unused to the press of the strings, but she didn’t care. Her hands flew like birds released from a cage, the motions so natural as she wove a story about love and family and friends, a story about the fucking joy of telling stories like this. She laughed out loud, even as she played on, winding her melody down softly, then joining everyone in a symphony of strings for the last chorus.
Brighton watched Lola, whose head moved to slow everyone down, then made a circular motion to cut them off.
The final notes rang through the room for a second. Brighton’s right hand hovered in the air after her last strum, her chest heaving up and down as though she’d just run a race.
“Now that,” Manish said, “was the ode to Dorian’s lashes they deserve.” He beamed at Brighton.
In fact, everyone was smiling at her. Adele reached over and squeezed the back of her neck. Brighton’s eyes stung, just a little, and she couldn’t get the smile off her face. Lola’s eyes looked a little shiny too. Brighton’s blood felt heated, like water coming to a boil—music always made her feel wild, feral, like something set loose that was always meant to be free.
Right now, she just wanted to play.
“Another?” she said, and strummed out a strong E, the chord reverberating through the room.
The next morning, Christmas morning,Brighton woke up cold. She blinked at the bright white light, remembering that she was in Sloane’s bedroom. Remembering that she’d stayed up so late, playing with the Rosalind Quartet.
She pressed her thumb to the fingertips of her left hand. They were sore, red from the strings, grown tender from so many months of not playing. She smiled at them, knowing it would take a few months to build her calluses back up. But…
She wanted to.
She actually wanted to.
She had no clue what that meant or how it would all come together, what being a solo artist even entailed or if she wanted to look for other people to play with. Then there were the Katies,“December Light,” and she knew she had to deal with that somehow too.
The thought overwhelmed her, immediately making her feel small, incapable. Like it wasn’t worth the trouble if she’d just fail anyway…
She moved her arm to the other side of the bed, searching for Lola’s warmth.
But Lola wasn’t there, her side of the bed cold, like she hadn’t been there in a while. Brighton sat up quickly, eyes scanning the room, but she was alone.
She could hear voices downstairs, could smell coffee and cinnamon, along with the salty bacon of the breakfast casserole Nina said she made every Christmas morning since the girls were born.
Just like Brighton’s own mother did every year.
Her throat went tight at the thought of finding herself in this strange bedroom, in a stranger’s house, for Christmas. She flung her covers back, needing Lola’s familiar face, needing her arms, her smile. She put on sweatpants and a long-sleeved tee before heading into the hall, ready to tromp downstairs to find Lola, but a sound coming from the bathroom stopped her.
A soft sob.
She changed course, tiptoed to the bathroom door. Laughter filtered up from downstairs, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” playing softly from Nina’s Bluetooth speaker. At the door, Brighton closed her hand around the knob but didn’t turn it. She pressed her ear to the white-painted wood.
They were faint, but she heard sniffles. A sigh. Some soft muttering she couldn’t make out, but she knew those sounds.
