Charlotte sighed. “Ten.”
“Twelve.”
“Fine,” Charlotte said, knowing Sloane was just as stubborn as she was.
Sloane lifted her glass as if in a toast, then held it there until Charlotte set her violin next to her and clinked her own glass against Sloane’s.
“Great,” Sloane said after taking a deal-sealing sip. “So. What’s everyone doing for Christmas?”
Charlotte resisted a groan but was pleasantly surprised when Manish and Elle both released their own disgruntled noises.
“Don’t ask,” Manish said, gulping back more wine.
“You and Nate aren’t—” Charlotte started, then stopped. She couldn’t remember if Manish and Nate—his on-again, off-again boyfriend for the last year—were currently together. She didn’t usually try very hard to keep up. As long as Manish did his job with the quartet, she didn’t pry.
“We are not,” Manish said, clicking his teeth together hard on the finalt. “He’s going home to Maine.”
“I didn’t think people actually lived in Maine,” Elle said.
“He didn’t invite you to join him?” Sloane asked.
“Nope,” Manish said, popping thepthis time.
“Ouch,” Sloane said.
“Yeah,” Manish said. “So I’ll be spending Christmas on my parents’ couch in Ithaca eating chocolate-covered pretzels while my brother and his perfect English wife coo and sing to her pregnant belly, and my mum most likely invites every South Asian gay man with whom she’s ever crossed paths over for dinner.”
“At least you have a place to go,” Elle said. “Mimi is taking a cruise with her new boyfriend, which leaves me here singing Christmas carols with my DoorDasher.”
“Oh, honey,” Sloane said, sitting up and frowning at Elle. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s fine,” Elle said, but Charlotte got a familiar lump in her throat. Elle’s parents lived in Illinois and were extremely conservative. They’d never quite accepted Elle’s queerness, and Elle had left home at the age of seventeen, moving to LA to live with Mimi, their liberal grandmother. They still spoke to their parents, but rarely, and they’d never spent a major holiday with them, at least as far as Charlotte knew.
“No one should spend Christmas alone,” Sloane said, still looking at Elle like someone had just run over their cat.
Elle laughed. “Slo, it’s fine. I’m used to it.”
“Same here,” Charlotte said.
Three pairs of eyes swung toward her. She hadn’t meant to say it. She’d never really shared the intricacies of her family life with the quartet, and she certainly hadn’t shared why she hated December so much.
“What do you mean?” Sloane said, her eyes wide.
Charlotte took another sip of wine to steady herself. “Nothing. Just…Christmas is no big deal to me. Just another day.”
Yet even as she said it, her throat thickened. Her body did that sometimes, rebelling and forcing her to feel something she’d really rather not.
“What do you usually do?” Sloane asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Elle said, turning on the couch so they were facing Charlotte. “Nothing?”
Charlotte sighed, looked down at her lap. While Charlotte didn’t have a bigot for a mother, she, too, spent most holidays alone. Anna Donovan was a successful thriller novelist who liked to keep to herself and had never wanted kids. When she ended up pregnant at the age of thirty-five—the result of a one-night stand during a book tour—she thought raising a human might be a fun adventure. Something new. Needless to say, the ways in which baby Charlotte fucked up Anna’s life were unexpected and unwelcome. Anna took care of Charlotte, provided for her and paid for violin lessons and music camps, but she was never reallythere. From a young age, Charlotte had always had the sense she was in the way. Her mother was constantly writing, churning out two to three books a year, had had a couple of movies made from her bestsellers, and involved Charlotte in very little of any of it.
Christmases were cold and lonely affairs, usually highlighted by a wad of cash from her mother and watchingMeet Me in St. Louisby herself in the dark, trying her best not to think too hard about the fact that December always brought with it an irremovable stain on her favorite shirt, a couple of failing grades among her usual straight As, a few slips into muddy puddles during her walk to school. She hated December, hated that it was filled with joy and lights and love for everyone, it seemed, but her.
And then, when she was twelve years old, the Fairbrook family moved to Charlotte’s Grand Haven neighborhood on Lake Michigan, right next door. They were a close crew—mother, father, and daughter Brighton, who was exactly Charlotte’s age—and Charlotte felt seen for the first time in her life.
