“I’ve got it, Nina,” she heard Brighton say. “It’s my fault.”
Then she felt someone take her hand—Brighton, she knew, from those callused fingertips, though they were a little softer than Charlotte remembered—and pull her out of her chair.
“The restroom is just through there,” Nina said, and Charlotte let herself be led to wherevertherewas, as she really didn’t have a choice here. She even had glitter in her mouth, the taste too sweet with a plastic undertone.
A true delicacy.
“Here are some towels,” Nina said, and Brighton said thanks. Soon Charlotte heard a door click shut, the conversation that had started back up at the event now muffled.
“Over here,” Brighton said softly, guiding her forward. Charlotte heard the squeak of a faucet followed by the sound of water, the soothingwhooshof it slowing her pulse a little.
Then the warm glide of a damp towel over her closed eyes. Brighton held Charlotte’s face with her other hand and wiped gently. Charlotte could hear Brighton’s breathing, slow and steady, as though she were making an effort to keep it that way. The breadth of her touch changed, a towel-covered fingertip carefully working the glitter from the corners of her eyes, her lashes.
Charlotte held perfectly still, worked on her own breathing. The air between them was charged, like lightning about to strike at any second. Her chest felt tight, packed with emotions she didn’t know what to do with.
You’re the one who couldn’t see what was right in front of you.
She curled her fingers into her palms, breathed in slowly. Defensively, she wanted to ask Brighton again what she’d meant by that…but deep down, Charlotte knew.
Maybe she’d always known.
“Do you remember Senior Day?” Brighton asked softly as she moved the cloth up to Charlotte’s eyebrows.
Charlotte smiled without meaning to. “Of course I do,” she said softly, a whisper. She didn’t open her eyes, even though Brighton had moved on to her hairline, her temples. Somehow, shutting off her sight—the vision of Brighton in front of her, taking care of her like this—felt like the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces.
“I think this is worse,” Brighton said, scrubbing at whatseemed to be a particularly stubborn piece of glitter near Charlotte’s ear.
“Worse than paint in my hair?” Charlotte asked.
“At least that was washable.”
Charlotte laughed, keeping her eyes closed as her memory drifted back to Senior Day at Grand Haven High, an event every spring where the school rented out the local fairgrounds and hosted a small carnival for the seniors, including rickety roller coasters, games with giant polyester stuffed animals as prizes, and a labyrinthine paintball course constructed from old rubber tires and shapeless inflatables. Charlotte and Brighton had banded together with some other orchestra kids, trying fruitlessly to take down the school’s championship-winning baseball team.
Not that they’d ever expected to win against a group of athletes, but they’d given it their best shot. The battle itself wasn’t what was memorable, even though both Charlotte and Brighton had gotten so much paint in their hair that it had taken days for all of it to wash out completely.
No, what Charlotte remembered most was the final showdown. Only Brighton and Charlotte had been left standing, and when Brighton had gotten caught at the end of Kyle Peterson’s paint gun, Charlotte had flung herself in front of Brighton, taking all of his fire, red and purple and blue splatters to the chest.
Of course, he nabbed Brighton in the shoulder as soon as Charlotte fell, but it was the gesture that mattered. The sacrifice. They both crumbled into a heap on the paint-stained grass, Brighton flailing dramatically.
“I’m hit, I’m hit!” she yelled as she went down next to Charlotte’s already prone form. Laughing, she leaned over Charlotte, slapping her cheeks gently. “Lola! Lola, talk to me! Don’t tell me this is the end!”
Charlotte tried her best to lie still, even stuck out her tongue and let it hang limply from her mouth.
“No! Lola!” Brighton screamed, wailing at the sky and clinging to Charlotte’s shoulders. “It can’t end like this! I won’t let you die for me. You can’t die, you hear me?”
Charlotte released a giggle then but managed to stifle a full-blown laugh.
“The horror!” Brighton continued to lament. “The indignity! The unfairness of life! Why? Why, goddess, why?”
She shook Charlotte, then sobbed at the heavens until Charlotte finally lifted her head.
“Know that I loved you,” Charlotte whispered, her voice strained from her dying breaths. She drifted her hand over Brighton’s face.
Gently.
So gently that Brighton’s dramatics stopped abruptly, her smile fading into something like wonder. Charlotte’s hand felt electrified, and what started as a silly declaration, a touch of theatric flair, suddenly felt charged, the five years since they met culminating into this one moment.
“Yeah?” Brighton asked, leaning closer to Charlotte.
