She and Lola had a lot of things to work through—Lola surely had her own fears and insecurities about their relationship, about Brighton’s ability to be frank, to stay, just as Brighton had hang-ups about standing on equal footing with their careers, with their dreams, and with what fit for both of them.
And Brighton also realized that was okay.
It was okay to have things to work through. They weren’t perfect, no matter how fairy-tale-esque their story of childhood best friends turned lovers might be.
She just wanted to do that work together.
“Lola?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
Lola pressed her forehead to Brighton’s, kissed the tip of her nose. “Whatever we want, my love. Whatever we want. It’s you and me.”
Brighton breathed out. Such simple words, and certainly not a plan at all, but right now, in the middle of the night, it was enough.
It was a start.
She kissed Lola once, whispered “I love you” against her mouth, and fell asleep.
Chapter 31
Ten Months Later
Charlotte Donovan used to thinkshe was cursed. And maybe, in some small way, she had been. Cursed by her own hyperawareness on the streets of New York. Cursed with an indifferent mother. Cursed with a heartbreak the size of the Grand Canyon.
But as she stood in her small kitchen, an apron covered in rainbow candy canes around her waist as Bonnie Fairbrook taught her how to make a flourless chocolate torte for Christmas Eve dinner, she felt anything but cursed.
“And then we pour it into the molds and we’re done!” Bonnie announced. “Why don’t you do that, dear?”
Charlotte nodded, taking control of the ceramic bowl and eyeing a rubber muffin pan full of half circles. As she scooped her first spoonful of batter, her eye caught on her girlfriend.
No.
Her fiancée.
As of last night, in fact.
Brighton stood by the Christmas tree in their living room—the same tree Charlotte had knelt beside when she’d asked Brighton to marry her, while their labradoodle puppy, Pistachio, had watched with curiosity—and adjusted some ornaments with her dad with one hand, sipping on a glass of wine with the other. The aquamarine ring Charlotte had given her glinted in the sparkling lights.
Charlotte smiled.
Not cursed at all.
Lucky.
The luckiest.
Back in February, after a few days of barely leaving her hotel room, after several discussions about how they’d manage long-distance, after a lot of teary snuggles in bed, Charlotte had gone back to New York. She’d found a therapist she didn’t hate. She’d taught her classes, wrote and arranged her music. Things were very much the same, and they were completely different.
For one, Elle had left the quartet. Mimi, Elle’s grandmother, had decided to sell her apartment at the Elora and wasn’t doing all that well by herself in LA. Elle wanted to go out West to be with her. No one blamed them—the quartet knew Mimi was everything to Elle, though Manish took the break especially hard.
Charlotte kept waiting for panic to overcome her—finding another cellist of Elle’s caliber was going to be tricky, and Charlotte was, of course, famously picky—but it never happened. She didn’t even really feel an urgency to search for a fourth. Manish was officially dating Dorian and was in Colorado half the time anyway. And Sloane…well, Sloane and Wes had been reunited for all of three months before they got engaged. Wes was movingto New York to open a restaurant in Brooklyn, and musically, Sloane had been doing more and more solo work lately.
The fate of the Rosalind Quartet was uncertain.
And Charlotte was okay with that.
She was shocked by this development, having built the group herself and poured her entire soul into it for the last two and a half years. She sat with her therapist, Talia, and discussed it over several sessions.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Charlotte had said. “The Rosalind Quartet is all I’ve ever wanted.”
