Page 101
Story: Hotter in the Hamptons
Lola ached to hug her. Instead, she stayed put, trying to respect the clear boundaries Aly was projecting.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Aly said. “I know he spent the night. I know you’re here to tell me you’re getting back together with him. Don’t waste your breath.” Aly leaned against the side of the house, as though she were trying to do that signature too-cool thing she liked to do. “I’ve been through this before. I know how it ends.”
“No,” Lola said. “You’re wrong.”
“About which part?”
“He spent the night, but nothing happened. I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m here because of the Stepped Out post.”
Aly folded her arms across her chest and started laughing.
It wasn’t her real laugh, though. It was something meaner, colder. Lola wanted to recoil.
“Lola, who fucking cares about a Stepped Out post?”
Lola was stunned. “What?”
“You and I areknown. We went out in publictogether. What did you expect?”
Lola was pissed off now. “I expected to have my privacy respected. I expected to be able to choose how we were talked about and analyzed, how I wanted to define this.”
“Oh please.” Aly rolled her eyes. “You’re a public person. You gave up the right to privacy when you hit seven figures on Instagram.”
“I…don’t know if I agree with that,” Lola said.
Aly put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe we’re talking about a post from some stupid fucking meme account right now.”
“It’s not just a meme account!” Lola cried. “I can’t believe you don’t care more about this. It’s my career. It’s my life, being dissected by vultures,again.”
“You don’t even want to be an influencer,” Aly shot back. “You hate that life. You haven’t tried at all this summer to get back to it. You don’t miss it at all.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lola said, fury hot in her chest. “The reason I haven’t tried to work this summer is because I’ve been so busy falling foryou.”
“You don’t get to blame me for the fact that your life lacks direction.”
It was like getting slapped across the face. “My life doesn’t lack direction,” Lola protested, though she knew Aly was right—again. “You have no idea what I want.”
“You don’t either,” Aly said.
“Wow,” Lola said, her voice flat with anger. “So that’s what you think.”
“I think that I cared about you,” Aly said simply. “And I care about the fact that I just wasted my whole summer on something that you threw away.”
“I didn’t throw anything away,” Lola protested.
“This is my neighbor?” Aly said, mimicking Lola. “I know you never agreed to be my girlfriend, but I thought I was a little more than the girl next door.”
Lola’s vision blurred with tears. She wiped them away, not wanting Aly to see her fall apart. It was too vulnerable to cry when Aly was being so mean.
“Aly,please. I’m sorry. I don’t know why that came out of my mouth. I just wasn’t ready to tell him that I am in a relationship with the person who he thinks ruined his life. And anyway, if you cared about me, you’d care how much these photos have hurt me. This is the second—no,thirdtime I’ve been majorly called out in one summer. People keep picking me apart in public. Using my life—my real, actual life, complete with my mistakes and my feelings and my relationships—as fodder for fucking clicks. Do you have any idea how bad that feels?”
Aly didn’t seem to have anything to say to this. Instead, she looked at the ground.
Lola wanted Aly to understand how it felt like a slap in the face, how lost she felt, how, despite all the public criticism hurled her way, she was still the same girl with the same problems in the same place. But Aly didn’t seem to hear her. Aly was being defensive, not trying to work through this with Lola.
Here Lola was, coming to Aly with an open heart, and Aly wasn’t listening to a word she said.
She tried to feel empathy for Aly. She put herself in Aly’s shoes: Aly had a history of dating women who left her for men. Because of that, she was expecting the worst. And maybe, because she expected it, she was pushing for it—a self-fulling prophecy, just like when Aly ghosted her after Fire Island. Loladidfeel bad for her when she thought about it like that. But she could feel the ember of anger stoking in her belly. Because Aly was putting her personal history on Lola, a history that had nothing to do with her. It wasn’t fair.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101 (Reading here)
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117