Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls, #3)(117)

“Isn’t it time for your break?” Adele asked.

Brighton sighed, pressed her fingers into her eyes. “Yeah.”

“Then by all means, please.” Adele waved her hand toward the back room, but her expression was soft. Adele knew all about the Katies and Brighton, knew the whole affair was still an open wound. Knew Brighton hadn’t touched her guitar or sung a single note since Alice and Emily’s betrayal nine months ago.

Adele reached over and squeezed Brighton’s hand, then gave her shoulder a little shove. “Go. Jake’s got this.”

Brighton obeyed, nodding to Jake, the other evening bartender, before pouring herself a large glass of water. She disappeared into the back, passing through the bustling kitchen making fries and Monte Cristos to get to Adele’s office space, the song still trailing after her like a ghost.

    I can’t, I can’t forget the taste

Your cherry lips, your swaying hips . . .



She kept moving, passing by Adele’s desk and big leather couch to the back door. She burst outside into the cold December air, breathing it into her lungs like a new form of oxygen. She leaned against the building’s red brick and closed her eyes, which were starting to feel annoyingly tight and watery. On Demonbreun Street, she could hear the bustle of the Saturday night crowd—laughter, even more live music, all the sounds she used to love.

The sounds she used to be a part of.

Because she clearly loved being miserable, she took out her phone and opened up the Katies’ Instagram page. One hundred and ninety thousand followers. And counting, no doubt. Emily’s dark curls haloed around her lovely face, falling nearly to her shoulders. She favored crop tops and plaid pants, and Brighton even spotted the pink-and-green pair Brighton herself had found at that thrift store in the Gulch last winter. Alice was brooding, as always. A tiny dark-haired pixie with huge butch energy.

Brighton and Emily met first at the Sunset Grill, where Brighton had gotten a job as a server when she first moved to Nashville six years ago. They bonded quickly over music, melancholy queers like Phoebe Bridgers and Brandi Carlile. They started playing together on their days off, messing around on Brighton’s guitar and Emily’s keyboard in Emily’s tiny East Nashville apartment that she shared with three roommates, but they soon started writing. Writing turned into whole songs, which turned into small gigs at coffee shops, just to try it out.

That’s how they met Alice.

They’d just finished playing a late afternoon set at JJ’s Market, a quirky coffee shop slash convenience store on Broadway that also hosted live music, and Alice walked up to them afterward, declaring they needed a drummer.

“And you’re just such a drummer?” Emily had asked.

Alice grinned. “I sure as hell am.”

And she was—brilliant and passionate and driven. Soon, the three of them were sharing an apartment in Germantown, and when they discovered they all shared the same middle name, same spelling and everything—Katherine—the Katies were born.

That was four years ago. Four years of struggle, gigs that paid nothing, tiny regional tours to audiences of ten or less. Still, it was the best time in Brighton’s life, the reason she’d blown up everything she ever thought her life would look like. It had been worth it . . . at least she thought so at the time, dreams still possible. Still alive.

Now Brighton couldn’t help but smile at a photo of Alice smirking at a topless Emily, Emily’s bare back to the viewer. They always had chemistry, though they’d never officially gotten together. She wondered if they were now, this silly photo evidence that they might have taken the leap.

Then she read the post’s caption—a shoot for NME Magazine.

And on Emily’s other side, there she was.

Sylvia.

Even her name sounded musical. Red hair like a Siren, feathery bangs like a rock star. Emily and Alice had discovered her in some bar in East Nashville nearly a year ago while Brighton had been home for Christmas. Emily wanted to bring her into the group as another singer and songwriter, a suggestion Brighton did not take very well. The three of them had been clashing lately, Emily and Alice wanting to go more King Princess–style pop, while Brighton clung to Phoebe Bridgers and Lizzy McAlpine as her inspirations.

Sylvia, of course, was pop all the way, funky and fresh and sexy as hell. Even Brighton could admit that. Then, this past March, it all came to a head when Emily invited Sylvia to a Katies practice without even running it by Brighton first. Sylvia played a new song on her guitar—“Cherry Lipstick”—and Brighton hated it. Said as much, which Sylvia took with an annoying amount of grace.

“This is the direction we’re going, Brighton,” Emily had said. “If you don’t like it, maybe this isn’t the best fit for you anymore.”

Brighton had left before she really started crying, then went home to Michigan for a week, figuring everyone would calm down with some time off. But the day before she flew back, Emily called her, told her she was out.

And that was it.

Nearly four years of friendship and struggle and creative work, all finished in a single phone call, and for a redhead with a talent for writing bops.

Brighton knew she should swipe out of Instagram—her own account was currently set to private, with all of four followers, so there were no notifications for her to check. For Brighton, social media was now nothing more than a catalog of her failures, everything she was missing out on. Still, she couldn’t help but type another name into the search bar, another account she didn’t dare follow, but couldn’t seem to leave alone either.