“What?” Charlotte said. “Absolutely not.”
“Char,” said Elle, who loved to shorten everyone’s name, whether they liked it or not, “how about a glass of wine?”
“If Manish left you any,” Sloane said. Manish flipped her off.
“I don’t drink when we’re playing,” Charlotte said tightly. She was out of the elevator, but the panic remained, this feeling that she was slipping, losing control. She never let herself get to this state. Usually, she just spent the month of December hibernating in her apartment and trying not to regret turning down the invitations she’d received back in September to join a symphony’s holiday concert lineup.
She didn’t play Christmas music.
Hardly played in December at all, lest disaster strike. Her violin alone was nearly irreplaceable, and if anything were to ever befall her hands, wrists, or fingers…well, needless to say, very little was worth that risk. But this year, with the tour coming up and their album just released, she’d had no choice. The quartet had completed a small New England tour over fall break in October and played a number of smaller venues here in New York, all to packed houses. So far, she’d managed to avoid major performances in December, but that didn’t negate the need to rehearse.
“I know,” Elle said, “but maybe a few sips will take the edge off?”
Charlotte shook her head and brushed past her colleagues toward Elle’s apartment. Inside, she went straight for the northwest corner, where four mismatched chairs sat facing one another, a rainbow of color, and promptly set her violin case down on her usual lilac-hued seat.
She opened her case, taking out Rosalind, her violin, so named for Rosalind in Shakespeare’sAs You Like It. A woman who adapted, who did whatever she had to do to get what she wanted, what she needed. She’d always been Charlotte’s favorite Shakespearean heroine, thus the inspiration for her violin’s name. She’d had this violin for seven years, sincebefore, and it had seen her through some very low and dark times, her one constant. When she and Sloane met two years ago and started throwing ideas around for a quartet, Rosalind seemed like the perfect name for an all-queer group that took classic string pieces and twisted them just so, creating something new and powerful, something unexpected.
Now she breathed easier just setting her hands on Rosalind’s neck, feeling the strings under her fingers. Granted, her fingers still trembled a bit, but that would stop as soon as she started playing.
“Charlotte,” Sloane said firmly, coming up next to her and eyeing her shaking hands. “Just sit down for a sec.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I can beat this.”
Sloane frowned, glanced at Manish, who shrugged. “Beat what?”
“December,” Charlotte said. “This whole season. I’ve done it all my life and—” She cut herself off, pressing her eyes closed for a beat before lifting her violin to her shoulder, more to keep her own mouth shut than anything. She didn’t talk about the curse. Never had…
Except with one person.
She zipped her bow over the strings, then adjusted the fine tuners until all four strings sounded perfect.
“What are you talking about?” Sloane asked.
“Nothing,” Charlotte said, forcing a smile. “Let’s just play, yeah?” She turned around to beam her commanding smile at Manish and Elle as well, only to find the other two members sitting on Elle’s giant turquoise sectional, glasses of wine in their hands. “What are you doing?”
Sloane tilted her head, curls bouncing into her face. “Protesting.”
“Protest—what?” Charlotte let down her violin and met Sloane’s eyes. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Elle said, crisscrossing their jean-clad legs and patting the spot next to them on the couch. “What Slo said.”
“We’re not playing a note, love,” Manish said, “until you sit down and take a bloody breath.”
Charlotte felt her shoulders drop in defeat. It wasn’t often that her group rebelled against her—after all, her single-minded ambition had gotten them pretty far—but on the rare occasion they bucked her orders, she knew there was no moving them.
The only way out was through.
“Fine,” she said, all but stomping over to the couch and sitting on the edge next to Elle, violin propped primly on her knee. “Fine, see? I’m breathing.” She made a show of taking several deep breaths, all of which resulted in a sense of dizziness rather than calmness.
“Oh, yes, very convincing,” Sloane said, sitting down on Charlotte’s other side and pouring them both a glass of wine from the open bottle on the tufted lavender ottoman. Elle, agender and pansexual, was very into pastels. There was even a pinkChristmas tree in the corner, complete with colorful lights and sparkly silver garland.
Charlotte took a single sip of wine. It was the only way she’d get out of this intervention and back to work.
“Okay,” Sloane said, tucking her legs underneath her, “no shop talk for a full fifteen minutes.”
“What?” Charlotte said. “Preposterous.”
Sloane just lifted a brow.
