Page 12 of Hotter in the Hamptons

The valet pulled up in a vintage, green Bronco.

“Nice,” Lola said, impressed despite herself. “What is that, an eighty-seven?”

Aly shot her a sideways smile, as though she was surprised Lola knew about cars. “Nineteen eighty-eight. My pride and joy.”

It was raining harder now, and Lola held her bag over her head as she climbed into the passenger seat. Aly slid in next to her, one hand on the wheel as she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road.

They didn’t talk in the car. Lola kept accidentally holding her breath.

She eyed Aly’s right hand, which rested lightly on the gear shift. She thought about holding it.

Aly was a good driver, with absolute control over the vehicle, which Lola always found to be a very hot quality in a person. It was a totally smooth ride. She loved being a passenger princess, even under these very weird circumstances.

Lola’s indignation was petering out now that it was just the two of them in the intimate quiet of the car. There was no one to perform her anger for. Aly already knew how she felt. She didn’t need to keep talking—or screaming—about it.

A few minutes later, they pulled up to Murf’s, an Irish pub.

“How unpretentious,” Lola remarked. “I’m surprised.”

“I love a dive bar,” Aly said. “I don’t know who you think I am or why you’ve decided I’m so bougie.”

Lola rolled her eyes. “Says the girl with a family home out east .”

Aly laughed, looking sheepish. “Shall we go inside?”

It was dark and quiet in Murf’s, with a few sea-weathered locals hunched over tables. Aly and Lola sat at the bar.

“Do you have a chilled red?” Lola asked the leathery bartender, who could have been one hundred or twenty, but Aly interrupted her.

“We’ll just take two Buds, please.” And then to Lola, she whispered, “Trust me on this one.”

Lola rolled her eyes, but being overruled like that made her stomach do a little flip.

There was a crack of thunder, and then the sound of rain dumping down on the roof.

“I think we’re going to be stuck here for a minute,” Aly said.

“Great,” Lola said, and she wasn’t sure she sounded as sarcastic as she meant to.

“Should we just have it out, then?” Aly turned to face her, and Lola did the same, wondering what Aly might do next. “You have to stop yelling at me in public.”

“ I have to stop yelling at you ?” Lola forced a laugh to try to conceal how nervous she was. “Don’t you think your article yelled louder than anything I could say at some stupid event?”

Aly winced. “Look, I’m sorry I wrote something that hurt your feelings. I’m sorry for the fallout. I wish it didn’t have to be such a big fucking deal.”

But Lola wasn’t ready to accept the apology. “The fallout,” she echoed. “Not a big deal? My entire team dropped me. I lost all my brand deals. And my boyfriend walked out on me.” The roar of the rain grew louder, and so did Lola. “And even after all that, you continue to be such a dick . Why were you talking shit about influencers at what was essentially an influencer event?”

“You’ve been a dick too,” Aly retorted. “All those comments about me being a nepo baby?”

Lola started to laugh but stopped when she saw the look on Aly’s face—her mouth in a frown that said she was actually hurt by Lola’s words. “I’m sorry,” Lola said. “That was perhaps a bit too far.”

Aly softened at Lola’s apology. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to talk shit about influencers tonight. I just hate when I’m trying to write a story and no one will give me quotes because they’re too busy making content. It wasn’t about you.”

“Was it not?” Lola didn’t believe her.

“Okay, maybe it was a little about you. What you and I do professionally…it’s not the same, you know? It’s not similar enough to seat us next to each other.”

“Yeah. What you do is so much more important than what I do.”

Aly didn’t have a response to this, perhaps because Lola had hit the nail on the head.

“Why am I the target here?” Lola demanded. “Those journalists at the event were right. I wasn’t your usual beat. Out of the millions of girls in New York City posting on Instagram, why me? I know it’s personal. It has to be personal. What did I ever do to you?”

Instead of answering, Aly crossed and uncrossed her arms. She tucked her hair behind her ear. For a brief moment, she looked like a little kid, unable to sit still.

“Oh my god, stop fidgeting,” Lola said. “Just tell me.”

“It’s dumb,” Aly finally said. She looked embarrassed, an emotion Lola hadn’t realized cool-as-a-cucumber ARC could experience.

“Out with it.”

“Laquan Smith, Fall/Winter 2019?”

Lola tilted her head, confused. “Huh?”

“You really don’t remember?” Aly looked sheepish now.

“I really don’t.”

“You took my front row seat.”

“I what?”

Aly looked like she was trying hard not to laugh at herself. Instead, she said, “Let me paint you a picture. I’m working on my first big Vogue story. I get stuck in traffic on the way there. By the time I fight my way inside, the lights are dimming. I have a ticket on my phone with my seat. A front row seat because, you know, Vogue . I run over to it, and it’s occupied by this…” She trailed off. “This Amazon of a girl.”

“ Amazon ?!” Lola cried, loudly enough that the bartender glanced down the bar mid-pour. “What makes me an Amazon?”

“You’re, like, six feet tall, and you’re built like you could kill a man.” Aly smirked. “Just always taking up so much space. So anyway, there you were. And I said, ‘Excuse me, I think you’re in my seat.’ Instead of getting up, you scooted over and said we could share it.”

“I did?” Lola was still coming up empty.

“You did. So then we’re, like, squished into this one seat, and the show is starting. I mean I was basically on your lap, and we couldn’t stop laughing over how ridiculous it was. The PR girls even shushed us. I thought it was so funny and kind of charming while also totally insane that you would rather me sit on you than just get up and give me my seat.”

Lola was stunned. “I feel like I should remember this.”

“I feel like that too,” Aly said, resentment and embarrassment warring in her voice. “I was shocked when you walked into Evelina for your interview and introduced yourself like we’d never met. Because I definitely remembered you.”

They stared at each other for a few beats.

And then they both began to laugh.

Lola threw her head back and roared. Aly’s shoulders shook as tears leaked out of her eyes, a silent hysteria. The more Lola looked at Aly laughing, the funnier it became until they were both hyperventilating.

They were making a scene, but Lola didn’t care. Nothing had ever been more hilarious than Aly holding on to a one-sided grudge over something so minor and stupid.

“Water,” Aly croaked, reaching for her glass.

When the laughter subsided, Lola felt lighter. It had been a release, getting everything out on the table.

She said, “So to get me back for not remembering, you told the world that I look like AI.”

“No.” Aly looked pained, her cheeks still pink from laughing. She briefly put her face in her hands. When she looked up, her brown eyes were wide and unblinking. “Do you want to know why I really wrote that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Aly was quiet for a few seconds too long. She was clearly struggling with what to say.

Lola’s heart started pounding in the silence.

Finally, Aly looked at her. “Because how you look…” She trailed off. “There’s something unreal about it. Not in, like, a fake way. In a way where it’s, like…hard to believe? Like, how do you even exist?”

Lola’s mouth fell open. It occurred to her for the first time that her lust for Aly might not be one-sided. She felt like she was at the edge of a cliff.

Aly kept talking. “And there was no way to write that in the voice that people know me for. I had to add some snark to it so that it would still sound like me. But the truth? The truth is that I thought you were the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen in my life, and the only explanation was that a computer generated you.”

Lola’s blood was rushing like Niagara Falls in her ears.

“And then, when we were talking, there were so many moments when you were so smart and funny and real. And I thought, This girl is cool. But then you’d pull back and come at me with this weird, fake shtick, and honestly, Lola, I found it really annoying that you were trying to be someone you weren’t.”

“Professional Influencer Mode,” Lola whispered. How had Aly clocked it? As far as she knew, no one else ever had.

“Right. And I just wanted you to be you , to stop trying so hard. But you wouldn’t. And that made me really frustrated because I liked you a lot, but it was like you wouldn’t let me see the real you, and after our conversation, I was left with all these crazy mixed feelings. So I think, if I’m being totally honest, it’s possible that I was so hard on you in the article because I was overcompensating for how I felt after we met,” Aly said.

“How did you feel?” Lola could hardly breathe.

“The truth is I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Lola was both in her body and not. She felt the sticky seat beneath her legs and the pulsing between them. She felt the humid air and the warmth still on her skin. But she also felt herself zooming out, understanding that this moment was a major turning point, that when she’d look back on this time, she would remember this conversation at this bar with absolute clarity. There was a before this conversation and an after , and for a few seconds, Lola let herself luxuriate in the in-between moment. Everything was about to change.

Aly put a hand on Lola’s knee. Warmth radiated up her leg.

She was glad she’d worn this dress, the material thin.

Lola wanted to say it back, to tell Aly how she’d dominated Lola’s thoughts every moment since they’d met, but she couldn’t. There was only one thing she could do, and that was slide off her barstool and take a step forward so that she was standing between Aly’s knees.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” she said.

Aly replied solemnly, “I know.”

When their lips met, Lola forgot to be nervous that it was her first kiss with a girl. She forgot to worry if her breath was bad. She forgot that there were people in the bar who could see them. If someone had asked her name, she wouldn’t have been able to say it.

Everything in the universe was Aly’s soft mouth, her hands in Lola’s hair, and the smell of her skin.

When Lola pulled away, Aly’s eyes were soft and unfocused.

“Will you take me home?” Lola asked.

Instead of answering, Aly grabbed her by the hand and nearly sprinted out the door.