She turned on the faucet, splashed some cold water on her face. Then she opened up her makeup bag and pulled out her red lipstick. Popped the cap off, twisted up the waxy tube. She stared at the fire-engine color, her eyes blurring on the bold crimson.
She twisted it back down, put the cap back on.
Covered her mouth with a clear gloss.
Let her hair down, silver-and-brown strands curling over her shoulder.
She straightened her black sweater, smoothed her hands down her black jeans, and left the room, turning to knock on the door right next to hers.
“Sancerre, s’il vous plâit,” Sloanesaid to the woman tending the hotel bar.
“Moi aussi,” Charlotte said.
Silence spilled in between them. Charlotte told herself she was waiting until there were two perfectly pale glasses of white wine in front of them, and then she was waiting until they both took a sip.
Really, she was gathering courage. Forming words and sentences in her mind.
“Jesus,” Sloane said, holding her glass up to the light. “Everything is better in Paris.”
Charlotte laughed nervously, nodded, and sipped again. The winewasfantastic, but she had to force herself to even notice it. Sloane sat next to Charlotte on a stool, her forearms on the lacquered bar top, her eyes forward, as though she were completely content to let Charlotte buy her alcohol and never say another word.
And at this point, she just might be.
But Charlotte wasn’t.
And knowing that, knowing that she actuallywantedto connect, was a pretty huge thing for Charlotte Donovan. Best to dive in, start simple.
“Sloane, I’m sorry,” she said.
Sloane angled her chin toward Charlotte, looking at her askance.
“I messed up,” Charlotte went on. “I’ve been messing up for two years now.”
Sloane turned on her stool, her body now facing Charlotte. Still, she didn’t say anything. She waited, sipped her wine.
Charlotte took another drink herself, thinking through her next words. She didn’t want to make excuses, but there were certain truths about her life—about her past, the effect it’d had on her present life and relationships—that she needed to explain.
That she needed to face herself.
“I’m not good at love,” she said. “At any of it. Believing in it. Accepting it. Giving it.”
Sloane tilted her head.
Charlotte’s fingers pressed into the condensation on her glass. “My mother is…well, she’s not a great mom. She had me as a sort of, I don’t know, experiment? Then she didn’t like motherhood all that much, I guess, and that’s pretty much how my childhood went. She clothed me, fed me, but that was it. We didn’t have any other family.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed slightly, her chest rising with a deep breath.
“And then Brighton Fairbrook moved in next door,” she said. And even saying her name, recounting that monumental moment in her life, on the beach at twelve, the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen calling her Lola, Charlotte couldn’t help but smile.
She told Sloane their whole history, every important moment from then on, the way the Fairbrooks had taken her in as their own, how she and Brighton had played music together. She told Sloane about how her friendship with Brighton had turned intosomething more—kissing for the first time on the paintball field, prom, deciding to go to Berklee together, New York.
The wedding.
“She really just left you there?” Sloane asked. Her voice was soft, her expression the same, and they were both on their second glasses of wine.
Charlotte nodded. “But it wasn’t all her fault. I didn’t…I didn’t know how to love her the right way back then. I was too scared.”
“Of?”
