Charlotte grabbed a forest-green towel covered in embroidered candy canes from a brushed-nickel ring and dried her face. She stared at herself in the mirror, her mascara now a bit smudged but her red lipstick still perfectly in place.
No.
She couldn’t leave, couldn’t do that to Sloane, not after traveling all the way here. Plus, with her December luck, a blizzard would blow in right before she boarded her flight, effectively stranding her in a Colorado airport with no way to escape. Here, at least, she could practice some good old-fashioned avoidance.
Leave the room when Brighton entered.
Hole up in her and Sloane’s room and work on arrangements. There was a desk in there, room to practice.
Smile politely when she and Brighton were forced together.
Yes. There was no reason whatsoever she’d need to actually speak to Brighton. Not with so many people in the house.
She could do this.
Shewoulddo this.
Charlotte rolled her shoulders back and smoothed her hair into a fresh ponytail, then cleaned up the black shadows under her eyes.
She took one deep, fortifying breath.
She and Brighton Fairbrook didn’t matter. They weren’t anything. Not anymore. Brighton was just another person, a stranger.
She nodded to herself, then turned to get her violin case. She paused, only for a second, before her fingers were flipping the case’sbuckles and lifting out Rosalind, but not to play her. She held her instrument carefully, then opened the tiny velvet compartment right under the neck rest. She kept her rosin in here, extra strings.
And there, at the very bottom, wrapped in a dustcloth she never used, was a perfectly smooth, heart-shaped piece of beach glass. She didn’t touch it. Simply stared at it, still hidden by the cloth, and wondered—not for the first time, not even for the thousandth time—why she couldn’t seem to make herself throw it away.
Chapter 6
Brighton knew Lola hated chili.
And yet here Brighton was, sitting across from Lola at Nina’s large farmhouse dining table, watching her ex-fiancée scoop beans and beef delicately into her mouth.
Granted, five years was a long time. Maybe Lola had tried different kinds of chili in Manhattan and learned to like cumin, which was what Lola always said she couldn’t stand.
“So you hate tacos too?” Brighton had said when she first discovered this information years ago when they were in ninth grade, sitting in their school cafeteria on chili day. “How can you hate tacos? No reasonable human hates tacos.”
“You don’t like cake,” Lola had said back, smiling as she popped a chip into her mouth. “Who’s the unreasonable human now?”
But she was right—Brighton didn’t like cake. It was too spongy, the icing too sweet. She much preferred denser desserts, like brownies or even cake pops, the icing already baked in andcreating a rich, buttery sponge. For her birthday, Lola would always—
Brighton shoved a spoonful of chili-soaked cornbread into her mouth to get her brain focused on something else. Memory Lane was a dangerous road, which she always knew, but it was nearly atomic while Lola sat there acting like they were complete strangers.
Brighton couldn’t stop the hurt from billowing through her like smoke. She knew she had no right, that of the two of them,shewas the asshole here, but still.
They were Lola and Bright.
Despite what she’d done to them five years ago, Brighton couldn’t stop the swell of happiness at seeing Lola, the way her heart strained for her friend, reaching, reaching, reaching like it had since the day they met.
And it crushed her that Lola wasn’t reaching back.
Lola had always reached back. Always reached for Brighton, reached forthem. Brighton’s thoughts flew back to their final year at Berklee and the last Christmas they’d spent together in an apartment they had off-campus, a year before their wedding. A huge snowstorm was headed for the Northeast, and Michigan had just been pummeled, completely cutting off any transportation into and out of the state and most of the Midwest.
Which meant Brighton couldn’t get home for the holidays. She’d been looking forward to it so much—to getting out of Boston, away from constant talks with Lola about moving to New York that spring—that when the airports shut down, she’d spent an entire half hour sobbing in the shower, which she’d hidden from Lola at the time. She’d felt so silly crying for her mommy when the love of her life was on the couch by the roaring fire in their living room—a gas fire, but still. It was warm, and Lola waslovely, and she was already talking about what they could do on Christmas Eve instead of Bonnie’s usual feast of roast duck and fresh green beans and parmesan mashed potatoes and sour cream and sweet potato pie.
But Brighton hadn’t wanted anything else.
By Christmas Eve, the storm had angled north, but Boston was still covered in white, just not enough for the restaurants to close. Brighton hauled herself to work to pick up a lunch shift, since she was in town and needed the money. She served glazed turkey and mulled wine and eggnog that cost more than her rent to patrons who kept oohing and aahing over the snow and howbeautifulit was. Howpicturesque. Howperfect for Christmas.
