“A fake girlfriend,” Adele said abruptly, pulling her hand out of Brighton’s and snapping.
“What?” Brighton asked.
“You can’t fake date me, so make up some hot piece back in Nashville. A daddy. Swoopy hair. Wears ties. Excellent with their fingers.” Adele waggled her eyebrows and made a gesture with her hands that was so Adele—sexy and completely unassuming all at once.
Brighton laughed, but then her throat went unexpectedly tight at the thought of actually inventing someone to love her. “I can’t…” She swallowed, tried to get ahead of the surge of feelings in her chest. “I can’t lie to her again.”
Fuck, she was going to cry.
Adele set her glass on her nightstand, then took both of Brighton’s hands in hers. “Baby girl. When did you lie to her the first time?”
Brighton just stared down at their entwined fingers, let the tears drip down her nose. “Every day. For months. When I didn’t…when I didn’t tell her the truth about what I was feeling, about New York, the wedding. Everything.”
“When you didn’t knowhow. There’s a difference.”
Brighton could only shake her head.
“You know what I think?” Adele said. “You need to forgive yourself, that’s what the fuck I think.”
Brighton didn’t say anything. And maybe Adele was right, but Brighton didn’t know how to even begin untangling the knots ofguilt inside her. They were easy enough to ignore with a thousand miles between her and Lola, but here, with Lola mere feet away—
“You still love her.”
Brighton snapped her head up at Adele’s question—no, it wasn’t a question. Adele’s intonation was flat and even.
“I don’t,” Brighton said.
Adele pursed her mouth, narrowed her eyes. Didn’t push the matter. Still, Brighton didn’t think she’d convinced her.
But she didn’t still love Lola.
She was just…
It wasLola.
Tears swelled again, but she pushed them back, reached over and downed the rest of Adele’s bourbon to keep herself in check.
“Okay,” Adele said after Brighton had slammed the glass down on the nightstand, empty. “If you’re not going to go about this the romantic or sexual way, let’s try another tactic.”
“What do you mean?” Brighton asked.
Adele got up and opened her closet door, stickers all over the white wood—cats, rainbows for various queer identities, women of different races and ethnicities surrounded by flowers and stars with their fists held up, and a Tracy Chapman poster, just in case anyone doubted Adele was a lesbian. She disappeared inside for a few seconds, and when she emerged, she held Brighton’s worst nightmare in her hands.
“Hell no,” Brighton said.
“Come on,” Adele said, holding out the guitar. The wood was pale-colored and cheap-looking, and it was probably horrifically out of tune.
“Why do you have that?” Brighton asked. “You can’t even hum on key.”
Adele flipped her off. “Like every queer teen hoping to woo their way under a girl’s bra, I wanted to learn.”
Brighton laughed.
“I sucked, as you already guessed,” Adele said. “Plus, part of my motivation might have been to keep up with my insanely talented little sister, which didn’t work out in my favor.”
“It’s not going to work out in your favor now either.”
“It’s not kryptonite.”
