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Sunlight streamed through the white linen curtains. She felt good—much better than yesterday. She stretched her arms over her head, shaking free of the blankets that were now a tangled mess around her ankles. Three orgasms plus ten hours of sleep had done the trick. Her hangover was gone. She grabbed a cotton waffle robe from the dresser, wrapping herself in it.

Ryan was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the news on his phone.

He looked up at the sound of her footsteps and then grinned as he assessed her. “I’m sorry, I’m looking for my friend Lola? I don’t know if you’ve seen her.”

“Lola?” she murmured, floating to the coffee maker. “Hmm,sounds familiar, but no, I don’t think so. I am Lola, lady of the vacation home.” The coffee steamed thickly as she poured it into a mug and then drowned it with half-and-half.

“Yes, bitch,” Ryan squealed. “You are so back. What happened? You look refreshed andamazing.”

“I had a really nice night with myself.” She smiled into her mug. It wasn’t just the orgasms; it was the anger she’d unleashed on Aly. It had felt really good to yell at her. Cathartic. Suddenly she wasn’t carrying around all the dead weight of resentment. She was, for the moment, liberated. She should really yell at people more often. “Oh, and I have something to tell you.”

“Spill.”

“I wasright.”

He put his phone down and arched a waxed brow at her. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Our neighbor.”

He thought for a second, then gasped. “No!”

“Yes. Aly Ray fucking Carter, next door to us for the whole summer.”

She was savoring this. Her run-in with Aly might not have been a delight, but letting Aly have it—and getting to gossip with Ryan about it now—absolutely was. At the very least, she was vindicated.

“How do you know?” His voice came out frantic, somewhere between panic and laughter.

“I went over there to introduce myself. With a bottle of wine. That I then dropped on my foot.” She held her bandaged foot out for him, and he recoiled. “It was a whole thing. Anyway, that’s my story! What happened toyoulast night?”

“No, no, no,” he said, as she knew he would. “Sit your ass down and tell me exactly what happened, start to finish, and sparenothing.”

She laughed and did exactly that.

Well, notexactlythat. Her story for Ryan ended when she left Aly’s house, not when she retreated into the depths of a hot hate-fuck fantasy in the guest bedroom.

“Girl,” he said. “Aly living next door and tending to your wound iscrazy.”

“Crazy,” she confirmed.

“And what kind of journalist can afford a house out here?”

“Well, it’s her parents’ house,” Lola said. But then, not wanting to seem suspicious, she added, “But, yeah, I know. Nepo babies, right?”

“Isn’t her whole thing being, like, an antiestablishment socialist or whatever? Like, does Diet Prada know the creator of #SecretTrustFund has a secret trust fund? I feel like they should know!”

Lola laughed. “I don’t think they’d care, but I love you.”

“I’m so proud of you for laying into her,” he said. “That fucking bitch.”

And then Ryan’s face did the thing it did when he wanted to be real with Lola but was afraid of hurting her feelings—a passing frown, a pulse of the vein in his forehead.

“What?”

“Lola, listen,” he said. “Does Aly staying next door mean we’re about to spend the whole summer talking about her? Because I would die for you, but that sounds really boring to me.”

That stung a little. “Mean.”

“I’m not trying to bemean. I just really want to relax, and I don’t know if I can relax if you’re freaking out, and if she’s always twenty feet away, how are you going to not be freaking out?”