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“I’m not always good at that,” she answered quietly.

“Me either,” Lizzie murmured.

“Are you feeling better?” Ali asked, knowing there had been a reason Charlotte rushed out of town in the first place.

“Yeah.” The sigh that followed landed soft, but Ali wasn’t convinced. She waited, giving Lizzie time to open up. “You have to get used to losing patients. Kids are as resilient as they are fragile. Sometimes—I just… don’t see it coming.”

“That…” she searched for the right word but came up empty, heart aching with empathy. “Sucks.”

“Like a bag of dicks,” Lizzie tacked on.

Ali snorted, laughter bursting free. The tension in her chest loosening.

It was easy to talk to Lizzie. Different from the gravitational pull drawing her toward Charlotte, less charged, more companionable. And as they chatted and shifted between topics, Ali came up with a hundred reasons why she would never mix the two women up ever again.

24

CHARLOTTE

Being who she was, Charlotte couldn’t resist opening Slack the moment she was in her usual radius of Compose headquarters. One glance told her the office had fallen into chaos as the flu had flattened half the staff. The acquisition was moving at a crawl, as hardly anyone in C-suite remained.

So her first stop was to Imani’s apartment, restocking her supply of soup, cough drops, electrolytes, tissues, and with assurances that she bore no hard feelings about the office catching the plague. After that, she put all of her attention into something within her control… planning a date for herself and Ali to make up for bailing on their previous plans.

She first booked a reservation at the most obscenely fancy restaurant in Boston. Somewhere only Boston’s elite were able to afford. An hour later, she transferred the reservation to Lizzie and Sasha. Ali really wasn’t one to be dazzled by her wallet. She was sentimental, thoughtful, and endlessly caring. The type of girl who saved ticket stubs and fortunes in a jar. She was an artist and almost always covered in paint and charcoal. Charlotte doubted a Michelin star would mean as much to her as something unique to them.

So by the time evening rolled around, Charlotte settled on a different plan that involved recreating their first “fake” date at Bella Amore and turning it into a real one.

What better place to rewrite their beginning and ask Ali to be her girlfriend?

An hour later, Ali burst out of her apartment with a smile so luminous it knocked the wind straight out of Charlotte. Those dimples struck like lightning every damn time. Ali climbed into the passenger seat, and Charlotte was already leaning across the console, cupping her cheeks, thumbs pressing over those dimples as their mouths met.

“I missed you,” Charlotte murmured, voice dropping into a low, husky rasp she couldn’t control as their lips brushed together again.

“Really?” Ali breathed, dark eyes framed in crisp black lines were wide.

Charlotte mapped the freckles speckled across her face and answered by kissing her again, humming her affirmation against Ali’s lips.

“I’m honestly looking forward to the bachelorette getaway next weekend. You’ll get to see me in a bikini.”

“I’m not ready,” Ali gulped.

“We get to cuddle in bed and not think about acquisitions.” Charlotte murmured, pressing her lips over the deepest dimple before pulling back in time to watch the sunny smile fade away.

“I can’t believe it’s already here.”

Ali’s movements were heavy as she buckled her seatbelt, a far off look in her eye.

“It’s an all out sprint, isn’t it?” Charlotte noted, wondering where Ali drifted off to so suddenly. “Joint bachelorette weekend, your birthday, the wedding, and your solo show to finish it off.”

“Time flies,” Ali’s voice thinned out, her bright spark dimming right before Charlotte’s eyes.

Charlotte replayed the conversation, every word and shift in her expression and tone, trying to pinpoint what flipped the switch. There wasn’t a thing that should have pulled Ali’s light inward.

Well, other than the unclear path forward and the worry Charlotte herself carried.

I can fix it.

Her voice was petal soft. “Hey…” her fingers brushed a few copper strands behind Ali’s ear, flecks of dried paint hid amongst the waves. “We don’t have to go out.”