very clear what he thought of her and Julianna’s meathead brother seemed intent on putting her in her place.
How many times could she apologize?
She glanced at the small envelope she’d snatched out of the bouquet—at least he’d never read her heartfelt apology or the line she’d almost not written: Maybe one day we’ll actually become friends and this will be a funny memory that makes us laugh. Julianna would get a kick out of that, don’t you think?
How desperate was she to make friends that she extended such a vulnerable olive branch to someone who’d just snapped it in half?
Idiot!
From now on, she’d concentrate only on the people who were nice to her. Like Lucy and her friends from the diner, who’d somehow taken her in as if she’d been a part of their group all along. Charlotte had expected to feel like an outsider, but somehow, that morning, she’d found herself enjoying conversation and an egg white omelet at the diner.
This was Julianna’s everyday life, filled with friends and brunches and people who loved her. Charlotte thought she could get used to it, even if a part of her did feel like she was pretending. Even if she’d spent the last two days dodging calls from her irate mother.
These simple moments brought her so much peace.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Lucy’s friend Haley had asked with a glance at Charlotte’s plate. “Fruit and an egg white omelet? Do you know how good the cinnamon rolls here are?”
Charlotte’s eyes meandered to Haley’s plate, where one giant, frosted cinnamon roll waited to be eaten. She could smell it from across the table.
But that was not breakfast. Breakfast was about fuel. Eggs were fuel. Cinnamon rolls were not.
“So you and Julianna were pen pals?” Quinn Collins asked. Quinn’s Forget-Me-Not flower shop was just a few doors down from the diner. Jules sometimes wrote about her too. Apparently, Quinn had a hunky Olympian husband, and Julianna had shared all the details of that saga with Charlotte last year.
It was sort of surreal sitting here at the same table with people she’d imagined through Jules’s letters.
“Julianna and I met at a summer dance intensive when we were kids,” Charlotte said. “We were roommates. I remember being so annoyed they stuck me with this girl who was obviously not serious about ballet. She was there to make friends.”
The others laughed.
“Sounds like Jules,” Lucy said.
“I think Julianna enrolled in the intensive thinking it would be like a sleepaway camp. Not intense training for up-and-coming prima ballerinas.” Charlotte smiled at the memory. While thirteen-year-old Charlotte was passing up the dinner rolls, Julianna was sneaking Twix bars after lights-out.
“I didn’t know everything was going to be so intense,” Jules had said on their third day there.
“Then why did you come?” Charlotte had asked.
Jules swallowed her bite of chocolate and caramel with a shrug. “I came to have fun. To make friends. To do something different for a change. And, honestly, to get out of my house. My parents fight all the time.”
“So you don’t even want to be a professional dancer?” Charlotte asked, thinking that it was best if she didn’t—the less competition, the better. And while Julianna may not be serious about it—she was good. Really good.
“I love dancing,” Jules said. “But not with people hollering at me all day. Takes all the fun out of it.”
Charlotte rolled over in her bed, annoyed that she’d been paired with someone who so obviously didn’t belong there. But in the end, it had been the biggest blessing of her life.
And also in the end, Julianna’s mindset changed. While Charlotte was driven by regimen and order, Julianna was driven by passion. And the passion ended up taking her pretty far. She became a beautiful, accomplished dancer.
There really was no telling how far Jules would’ve gone if she’d chosen to pursue ballet instead of the life she ended up with. If fate—or Charlotte—hadn’t intervened.
“Charlotte is the youngest principal dancer in the Chicago City Ballet,” Lucy said.
Oohs and aahs circled the table.
“Well, I was,” Charlotte said, her laugh nervous and awkward. “I quit.”
“You quit and moved to Harbor Pointe?” Haley said in disbelief. “You had the life girls everywhere dream of and you gave it up to move here?”
A tickle of concern scurried down Charlotte’s back, kicking up that familiar self-doubt she’d been trying to ignore. Leaving the ballet hadn’t been a completely rash decision. She’d taken a good four weeks of entertaining the idea before handing in her notice.
The