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Okay the tea is she tends to pull straight girls. And then kind of discards them when she’s done. She leaves a trail of bodies. A TRAIL OF BODIES. OMG tell me how the interview went!!!!!!!!

The text made Lola freeze in the middle of the floor. A shopper bumped into her and gave her a dirty look.

She could see how easily it might happen, straight girls falling for Aly. You did not have to be gay to see her appeal.

She couldn’t find the perfume, and an interaction with a sales associate would just be awkward. She knew she’d come on too strong in her current supercharged state. She left Bloomingdale’s empty-handed, mulling over Ryan’s text.

It was a short walk from the department store to her apartment, the perfect amount of time to call her manager and then get off the phone, but she just wasn’t in the mood to talk about business. She wanted to talk about whether it was possible for a perfume to mix with someone’s natural scent.

She shook off the daydream and tried to bring herself back to earth.

She dialed Todd’s number and looked at the clouds while it rang and rang.

Todd had swooped in when Lola was twenty-two and just starting to get real attention. Becausehehad foundher, Lola had never been able to shake the feeling that she owed him her career, though for the past few years, he’d admittedly just been riding her coattails, collectinghis 10 percent. Ryan—who moonlit unofficially as her career coach—sometimes urged Lola to find new representation. After a few years in fashion PR, he knew his way around influencers and their various teams of managers, agents, and lawyers. He thought Lola should have the best of each, and while Lola appreciated this sentiment, she was also a creature of habit. Todd already knew her, and she knew him, and that familiarity counted.

“Lola,” Todd answered finally. “Tell me how it went.”

“Good, I think,” she said. “She doesn’t seem to think the lesbian-chic thing was a big deal at all. She seemed much more interested inme, actually. She asked a lot of personal questions, wanted to know my backstory.”

“Great to hear,” Todd said. “And she just emailed the team to sayThe Cutaccepted the pitch, which is perfect. Hopefully we’ll get a nice juicy profile out of her.”

The Cutmade Lola a little sweaty—those girls could be so, well, cutting. But she trusted Todd. This affected everyone’s livelihood after all.

“When do you think it’ll come out?”

“She’s fast,” Todd said. “And this has a news hook, for better or worse. By the end of this week would be my guess.”

Lola thanked him for setting it up. He promised to let her know if he heard anything else.

After she hung up, she walked by a large, gold-framed mirror that had been brought to the curb and paused, looking at her reflection. Her dress was billowing in the hot breeze, and her hair floated dreamily around her head. Her fingers itched to take a selfie. This outfit was too good not to go on her grid, especially if she could get the angle right in this mirror with the city in the background.

Instead, reluctantly, she kept moving. Her team had told her notto post until everything blew over. She was especially not supposed to post anything that seemed superficial—which, she realized as she tried to think of what might work, was basically everything she ever put on her feed these days, save for the occasional inspirational quote.

She imagined Aly looking at her Instagram and cringed. She didn’t know why she was so desperate for ARC’s approval. She’d been doing just fine without it. But also, she did know why she wanted it. The problem was she didn’t know what todowith it. So she put it in a little box in the back of her mind and closed the lid. There were a few such boxes collecting dust back there, and it had never really been a problem before.

When she got home, it was just after 2:00 p.m. She heard the sounds of Justin in the shower—the running water and his adorable belting. Like always, he’d left the bathroom door ajar. That was how Justin was, all open doors. Nothing to hide. No little boxes tucked away for him. Always—even without words—inviting her in.

It wasn’t a surprise that Justin was home on a Monday afternoon. He had probably just woken up, since he worked night shifts at Mount Sinai, a rite of passage for young doctors going through residency. Lola was a different kind of night owl. After he left to go save lives, kissing her through her LED light therapy mask, she liked to go out, bouncing from party to party in glamorous, gifted couture, making appearances at trendy events around the city. She didn’t mind being out late and sleeping in the next morning; she didn’t have a schedule, and she didn’t really need one. Schedules were for people still trying to make it. She didn’t need alarms anymore.

Justin was only home one or two nights a week, during which she was usually glued to him while they cooked dinner, watched TV, and went to bed.

It was a sweet ritual, but one or two nights a week was the most she could stand to hide away. Any more than that, and she’d go stir-crazy.

She kicked her flats off—Justin hated when she wore her shoes inside—and went into the chaotic cave that served as her office, which felt smaller every day. There were clothing racks loaded with ruffled gowns and long coats, Louis Vuitton Takashi Murakami bags in Perspex display boxes, bedazzled water bottles, Chanel-branded skis, a box of Venus et Fleur forever flowers that spelled outLOLA, and a stack of terribly uncomfortable gifted shoes from Net-A-Porter still in their boxes, unworn. In all likelihood, she’d probably just end up giving them to Ryan for his lucrative side hustle reselling freebies on The RealReal.

Unless of course no one ever sent her anything again after she’d ruined her career.

No, she thought, shaking it away.That’s what the Aly interview is for. Everything will be back to normal in no time.

She stepped farther into the office, wading through the mess.

She had painted three of the walls pink and covered the fourth in floral wallpaper. The space was lit with a vintage crystal chandelier she’d found at a flea market in Paris, a treasure that had cost her more to ship than to buy. She thought the piece deserved to be in the living room, but it was too gaudy for Justin’s taste.

Against one of the walls, a bookcase spilled over with self-help books, likeThe 5 AM ClubandOutliers. She often gotveryinto whatever kinds of ideas were being offered in each new book she tried but, because she could also never manage to finish any, would abandon the dogma after a few weeks and move on to the next.

There wassomeorder to the space. One corner was devoted to the prototypes of her various brand collaborations—the Lola for Rêverrobes and the branded razors with her name on them and, more importantly, a series of gorgeous, gauzy maxi dresses she helped design for Shopbop. The Lola Likes Dresses line was the partnership she was most excited about, and she wished she could have mentioned them to Aly Ray Carter. It was the only thing she’d actually designed, the only work that spoke to her passion. But she was still under an NDA while they ironed out the deals. It would be announced at the end of summer, just in time for New York Fashion Week.

In the center of the room was the pile of barely there DÔEN beach dresses, straw hats, Monday Swimwear bikinis, and strappy sandals she was saving for Capri. She was going for a kind ofWhite Lotusseason two vibe, inspired by the wardrobes of the girls who played the sex workers more than the show’s resort guests.