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As she lay in bed scrolling through the damage, even Lola had to laugh at that—it was brilliant marketing—though she was also weeping with embarrassment. It was such a fine line between being popular on the internet and being the main character. And you never, ever wanted to be the main character.

The suit sold out within hours, and the brand announced it would be donating 100 percent of the profits to the Trevor Project.

Her team called an emergency meeting the next day.

“We can fix this,” her manager, Todd, had promised her.

“I’m so sorry,” she’d said for the hundredth time. “I didn’t realize that it was a problematic thing to say.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t,” Todd said. “It’s about perception.”

“Can’t I just match the donation to the Trevor Project?” she asked.

“You should definitely do that,” Todd said. “But that’s just the beginning.”

It was her publicist’s idea to pitch a profile to Aly Ray Carter.

ARC, as her friends and fans called her, was famously stylish, intimidatingly smart, and deeply well-respected. An entire generation hung on her every word. A freelancer, Aly wrote forThe Cut,Vanity Fair,Vogue, even theNew York Times Magazine, where she penned scathing runway critiques and brilliant cultural commentary. She was often coining new phrases that were quickly adopted into the lexicon—things likeSTF, which stood forsecret trust fund, to call out the way some influencers so obviously lived above their means, andBushwick Universityto describe how everyone in a certain part of Brooklyn appeared to be eighteen. Aly’s catchphrases were often printed on T-shirts and sold byThe Cut, though Aly was not big on social media, so it was unclear if she understood her own impact.

She was also a nepo baby but had been so open about it that no one could use it against her. Her parents were both editors, her dad high up the masthead at a tech magazine and her mom an executive in book publishing. If anything, Lola thought, this made Alymorealluring—hailing from a long line of tastemakers.

If ARC could write something generous about Lola, it would turn things around. All Lola had to do was make a good impression, something she’d been trying to do in various capacities her whole life.

Besides, the fact of the matter was that Lola was not homophobic. She’d grown up loving and loved by LGBTQ+ people, had only everlived in places where the queer community was thriving and visible, a regular part of her life. The phraselesbian chicdid not have negative connotations for her.

But according to her audience and subsequently her team, it was not her phrase to use, and a Notes app apology post would not do. Which was how she got here, in an Uber on the first truly hot day of the year, hoping Aly Ray Carter might feel like saving her career.

There was a reckless voice in her head urging her to skip the interview altogether and ride the wave of scandal into obscurity. Maybe she could just start over. If she was honest with herself, that didn’t sound half-bad. But then again, if she wasreallyhonest with herself, if she had been all along, she wouldn’t have said yes to the series of deals that launched her into the stratosphere in the first place. Honesty would mean admitting that the more successful she became, the further away she got from her reasons for wanting to do all this. She had never wanted to take photos ofherselffor a living. But here she was, known for it.

And anyway, the louder part of her was more logical than that. There would be no point in throwing away what she’d built.

“I love you,” Ryan said on the phone. “Good luck. God, it’s such a classic publicist move to get a lesbian journalist to profile you.”

“But also kind of brilliant, right?”

“Oh, absolutely. It’s what I would do too. Tell ARC I say hi.”

“Does she know who you are?”

“I mean, I wish? God, she’s cool. Those Tom Ford sunglasses kill me.”

“Agreed.” Lola smiled, knowing exactly the ones he was talking about. “She’s like, very…” Lola trailed off, searching for the right word. “Hot.”

“Oh, she’s, like, the hottest hot person ever. Total heartbreaker too. The stories I have heard would make your blood run cold.”

“Yeah?” Lola was suddenly and inexplicably curious to know which hearts Aly had broken—and when and why and how.

Just then, the car pulled up to the restaurant.

“Tell me after. Love you.”

“Be careful what you tell her,” he added quickly. “She’s famously a Scorpio.”

***

Aly was waiting for Lola at a table for two tucked into the corner of Evelina, an Italian bistro near Fort Greene Park, which was mostly empty but for a couple nuzzling into each other over coffees and the young, attractive waitstaff folding napkins and slicing citrus at the bar. The first hot day of the year would mean a horribly crowded happy hour, everyone dying for chilled orange wine and Blue Point oysters, and Lola was glad they were meeting in the morning, when they could have some semblance of privacy.

“Lola,” Aly said as Lola approached, standing up.