She sat up and rubbed her face, sent a hand through her tangled hair. She didn’t think she’d gotten even two hours of sleep, nerves keeping her thoughts and stomach roiling all night long.
That was all it was.
Nerves.
Proverbial cold feet.
Still, when she thought about spending her life with Lola, it wasn’t theforeverpart that scared her.
She thought about their apartment in Chelsea, how much Lola loved it. It was tiny—barely bigger than the bedroom Brighton grew up in—but it was theirs. That’s what Lola kept saying.
It’s ours.
And yet, six months into their life there, Brighton still had no idea how she was going to make her share of the rent every month. She worked at a restaurant, for god’s sake, and while waiting tables in Greenwich Village was decent money, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover her expenses, especially if she was keeping a few nights a week free for gigs.
Gigs she hadn’t booked.
Gigs she honestly couldn’t even stir up the courage to look for in earnest. She’d sent some emails to no avail, gone to a couple of places to talk to the booking manager with her demo, but she was no one, a twenty-two-year-old Michigander who was scared of the subway and had graduated from Berklee with a C average. Her biggest claim to fame so far was that she’d once held the door open for Sufjan Stevens as he’d come out of a coffee shop in Grand Haven one summer, his arms laden with cold brew and his sunglasses firmly over his eyes, hair a mess.
He’d said thanks.
So unless her old pal Sufjan could call in a favor, New York City would mostly likely keep its back to Brighton Fairbrook.
And yet…
Lola loved it so much.
Brighton had never seen Lola more alive—she’d unfurled at Berklee, sure, finally studying music properly, flourishing, excelling, winning every director’s award and landing spots in orchestras all over New England every summer. But Lola in Manhattan…it was everything Lola had ever wanted. She’d been offered a spot in the Chelsea Symphony right after graduation, had been invited to play on several more established musicians’ studio albums, and had been a guest soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of New York and the New York Philharmonic.
Lola was thriving, just as Brighton knew she would, just as everyone knew she would.
The only problem was, Brighton felt like she was drowning.
She groaned, dropped her head into her hands.
No. She wasn’t drowning. She wasadjusting,that was all. That’s what she’d been telling herself for months, what she’d told her parents when they’d expressed concern, when she’d called her mother a few weeks ago at two in the morning, quietly sobbing in the bathroom while Lola slept, and her mother had whispered, so quietly that Brighton had barely heard it.
Come home, honey.
But she couldn’t.
Lola was her home now.
Lola had always been her home.
And she’d been Lola’s.
Now the morning of their wedding was here, an event they’d been planning for a year, an event Brighton had convinced herself would change everything, make her life click into place with Lola’s.
Brighton kicked her covers back, the cold December morning biting at her bare legs. She walked to the window, pulled back the sheer curtain to let in the winter sun. The sky was clear blue, perfect, Lake Michigan all icy waves curling frozen onto the frosty sand beyond the backyard. She loved the lake in winter, loved everything about December and Christmas and the cold. Always had. It was why they were getting married in December, why they’d rented out Simone’s restaurant downtown for the day, covering the dining room in white lights and dozens and dozens of white candles in glasses of all sizes, white manzanita branches arching over the makeshift aisle and forming the centerpiece at each table.
It would be a small wedding, only fifty people or so, but it would be beautiful. A winter wonderland, the kind of wedding Brighton had dreamed of. As they’d planned it, Lola definitely had her opinions, but she’d always deferred to what Brighton liked the best, the things that made Brighton’s eyes widen, made her heart beat a little faster.
Just thinking of walking down that beautiful aisle they’d created toward Lola…it was a dream. Breathtaking.
“It’s what I want,” she whispered to the window, her breath fogging the glass. She turned to look at her dress hanging from her closet door. Sleek and white. Long sleeves and a high neck, lace covering the entire thing, fanning out at the thigh like a trumpet.
It was perfect.
