And for the holidays, they covered every single tree, plant, and flowering shrub in lights.
“Holy shit,” Manish said as the group stepped out of the car in the small parking lot. The space was already packed with cars, and plowed snow was piled on the sides like tiny white mountains.
Charlotte had to agree with Manish’s assessment—the scene before her was like something out of a Hallmark movie, yes, but also Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks all rolled into one. Honestly, she very nearly considered getting her sunglasses out of her bag—it was that bright.
The garden entrance was guarded by a pair of giant nutcrackers covered in red and blue and gold lights. A lit sign arched between the two soldiers, the words “Barstow Gardens” glittering in every color. Beyond that, a sort of sugar-shocked glow filtered over everything—flashes and blinks and sparkles, and happy holiday music echoed through the luminaria-lit pathways. Lights curled around every tree branch in sight, creating snakes of color against the black sky. There were more subtle signs of the snowstorm here, but the sidewalks were clear, and the fresh snow only added to the winter wonderland vibe, the lights glinting off the mounds of white.
Normally, Charlotte wouldn’t step foot in a place like this. First, there was the saccharine nature of the entire gig, and second, she could absolutely imagine herself somehow getting tangled in a strand of lights, or knocking down a partridge in a pear tree and sending a disastrous domino effect through the entire “Twelve Days of Christmas” display.
But.
Brighton slipped her gloved fingers through Charlotte’s, and somehow everything looked different. Felt different. Tasted, smelled, sounded different.
When they’d returned from Greenbriar Ridge, freshly released from their snow prison, a kind of shyness had overtaken Charlotte. In front of everyone, with Manish’s sly smiles and Sloane’s curious glances—particularly in light of Sloane’s declaration the day of the storm about Charlotte andrealness, which the two of them were apparently pretending hadn’t happened—she wasn’t sure she knew how to act or what to do. She’d never been with anyone in front of her quartet before, never held someone’s hand, never smiled at someone the way she couldn’t seem to help smiling at Brighton.
Hell, she probably didn’t smile this much at all around her quartet, postcoital glow notwithstanding.
But then, Brighton had made it so easy. Taking her hand as they stood around the kitchen talking about the storm with Nina. Leaning her arm against Charlotte’s at lunch. Lying her head on Charlotte’s shoulder while they read on the couch. With those tiny movements, Brighton took them back years, like New York had never happened—no ruined wedding, no ruined future—and they were simplythemagain. Easy and natural and right.
Brighton had a knack for making overwhelming things—okay,feelings—seem manageable. Always had, from the very beginning. Whenever Anna skipped out on a parent-teacher conference, an end-of-year concert, a holiday, Brighton would simply take her hand, dance her around on the beach, like everything was made of light and air and water, even as she admitted things sucked.
That was just the way Brighton was.
She was light and air and water, while Charlotte was the solid earth.
Charlotte still couldn’t believe the entire last twenty-four hours with Brighton had really happened. She had no idea what it meant, couldn’t even really process that it washer, Charlotte Donovan, who was in bed with Brighton Fairbrook after all they’d been through, kissing her, touching her, gazing at her with actual stars in her eyes when Brighton wasn’t looking. It was as though some foreign invader had taken over her body.
Or, rather…it was as though she’d come back to herself. A Charlotte she’d forgotten. A Charlotte she’d lost so long ago, she felt like a stranger to herself.
Lola.
Still, as Brighton stood next to her in the Barstow Gardens parking lot, that red plaid coat buttoned snug around her body, Charlotte couldn’t help but want to be reintroduced, even if she couldn’t quite see how Lola could function in the world Charlotte had built in New York. How she’d ever see over all the walls she’d constructed brick by brick.
After.
A terrifying word.
A word she knew Brighton must have been thinking about too, but neither of them wanted to bring it up. And maybe, right now, she didn’t have to. Right now, she just wanted to be Lola.
“You okay?” Brighton asked her, shoulder pressed into hers.
Charlotte smiled and nodded, then kissed Brighton’s forehead, her knit hat fuzzy and tickling Charlotte’s lips. She breathed Brighton in, cold air and citrus from her face cream.
After they approached the nutcrackers and paid their fee to a pair of teenagers with matching lavender hair, they collected their hot toddies and started off down the path as a group.
But Charlotte didn’t want a group. Selfishly, she wanted Brighton all to herself for as long as possible—for as long as they could keepafterjust a concept and not a reality looming on the snowy horizon. She wanted to kiss her between lit-up trees, get lost in the display of poinsettias, daydream about what this place looked like in the spring, brimming with real color and life.
“Come with me,” she said, tugging Brighton off the main path and onto an almost cave-like walkway, illuminated by what seemed like a billion blue-white lights that looked like icicles dripping down from the trees above them.
“Wow,” Brighton breathed, her face like a twilit evening as she gazed upward.
“Beautiful,” Charlotte said, but she wasn’t even looking at the lights.
Brighton caught her eye and laughed. “I forgot how romantic you can be.”
“Did you?” Charlotte asked, pressing a kiss to the back of Brighton’s hand.
Brighton laughed. “Okay, no. I haven’t forgotten anything.”
