PRESENT DAY
My mother sees me in these pages, and final pieces snap into place. Tori Rose felt all of this. She felt like I did, stuck between a town that raised her and the road that promised her more.
Except, if I took the road she wanted, the path she desired, I could have the love too. I didn’t have to choose like she did. She had choices, she had fears, she had songs that scared her, and she tried her best. She was a million paradoxes, and she wanted the music despite it all. She searched for a way to have it all instead of just accepting she couldn’t. And she showed me I could too.
Even with her gone, I’m right here with her, right where she was in these pages. These pages.
They’re up here for a reason—everything’s been for a reason. They have to be attached to this spotlight with a purpose to that location, that has to be a clue of its own, one just beneath my fingertips. I turn the spotlight on, and a glow of brilliant scarlet lands center stage where Britt and I stood minutes before, in the perfect shape of a rose.
“Britt.”
“Mia . . .”
This is the sign I’ve been waiting for.
My mother’s light, shaped in her stardom and her name, becomes a beacon.
Britt and I descend the ladder, and I take the first step. I stand under my mother’s spotlight and my skin is aglow with roses and full of her promises. Britt’s studying me under the same light, and I step toward her. Her eyebrows rise again, but I link our fingers together. She feels right. This feels right. This is it.
“What if this wasn’t our encore?” The words release, and my heart hammers, and something within me soars.
Her brows furrow, her lips tip up into a smile. “Meaning?”
“I want to come with you.”
Her smile turns to a grin. “You actually said it.”
“You were right.”
“I know.” She brushes a hand over my cheek.
“It doesn’t have to be as part of Lost Girls,” I continue in a rush. “But I want to get out of here. I want more.”
“Nah, you’re a Lost Girl.” She pulls me closer, taking my other hand in hers. There’s no longer a chasm between us, just the music. Forever, the music. “Amy owes me twenty dollars.”
“You bet on me?” I laugh.
“Always.” She kisses me beneath the red spotlight, on the empty stage, and I sink into her. I let myself.
This is it.
Britt and I only stop to turn the spotlight off, and I whisper a silent thank you to my mother somewhere in the celestial sphere. Then, I lace my fingers through Britt’s once more, and we run out of the theater, past the quiet man at the front, and through the door. As it falls behind us, the once-heart of Sunset Cove beats again.
We wind up in the cove where we first kissed, swaying in the cold water, half-clothed and giggling.
“This is it,” I say aloud this time.
Britt smirks. Under the pull of the salty breeze and dreams, we move toward each other until . . . she splashes me.
Another laugh escapes, and she winks and dives under the sea. She’s paddling away, and I’m chasing her, and we’re lost in the moment. It might be hours, days, weeks of us here, under the sun with three more days until we leave. We splash each other and laugh some more, and it’s not so sharp and painful anymore because it’s not a goodbye. On that stage, in this ocean, we cross another line, and this is the last one we drew in the sand between us.
When we return to the outcropping of the cove and the alcove it makes, we’re shivering head to toe. Fingers wrinkled, hugging ourselves to keep warm, we end up closer to each other. Britt tugs me nearer this time, lifting me, and my legs wrap around her waist as we remain above the shallow waves, her arms slipping under me.
“You’re actually coming?” She’s breathless, and I don’t know if that’s from racing around the water or something else.
I nod, arching down to kiss her again.
And finally, finally, finally, we don’t have to say goodbye.