Chapter 7
A t a table in the corner of a farm-to-table restaurant, Renee scoffed at salad-for-lunch exactly as Lola had expected. Renee attacked a plate of steak and eggs as she perused her slightly crumpled copy of the shooting schedule.
“ Flutter by Lola Gray, perfume scent consultation ,” Renee read, then crammed a forkful into her mouth. Around her food, she said, “ Swimwear collaboration design meeting . What’s with this corporate stuff?”
“They’re other ventures I’m involved with,” Lola explained as she assembled a perfect bite of her macrobiotic salad. “This is a great opportunity for cross-promotion.”
“Perfect. I’ve always wanted to make a film about swimwear design.” Scanning farther down the page, she read, “ Make-A-Wish meeting, schedule TBD .”
“What do you have against Make-A-Wish?” She didn’t expect Renee to love everything the team had planned, but that was how the business worked: Renee had been hired to do a job, not reinvent it.
“I have something against putting kids with cancer on camera for clout.”
“They don’t all have cancer,” Lola said. “I’ve done Make-A-Wish six times.”
“And now they want it in your movie.” Renee dropped the paper on the table and stabbed it with a finger. “I’m already falling asleep watching this thing and we haven’t even shot it yet. We need to say something real here.”
Lola shifted uncomfortably. The point of the documentary was to make people forget she’d stepped into a dimmer part of the spotlight and bridge the gap in income between albums. Saying something real wasn’t necessary.
“Do they always talk around you like that?” Renee crossed her arms. She’d taken off her hoodie, and the tattooed muscles of her arms and shoulders bulged distractingly. Lola forced herself not to look. “At that meeting, it was like you weren’t sitting right there.”
Lola’s grip on her fork tightened. She’d learned years ago that any meeting with more than two people wasn’t a place for her voice to be heard.
She was used to it now—maybe too used to it, because hearing Renee say it like that made her feel seen.
But as the spotlight sometimes did, it also made her feel horribly small.
“It’s business. That’s how it works.”
“Is that how you want this to work? You really want to shoot—” Renee grabbed the paper again and read: “Stylist meeting, Fit to Live . Glam session, Fit to Live . Red carpet premiere, Fit to Live . What even is Fit to Live ?”
Lola blinked at her. Did Renee live under a rock? “ Fit to Live is going to be the biggest movie of the fall. Nash is the star, so I’m committed to the premiere.”
“Right, your boyfriend , Nash Walter.”
“Nash Walker .” Maybe Renee really did live under a rock. She and Nash had been in constant circulation in the tabloids, thanks to their PR teams working overtime. “Do you have a problem with him?”
“It would have been nice to know you had a boyfriend before we—”
Lola silenced Renee with a raised hand. The neighboring tables were empty, but they were still in public.
Renee corrected course. “I mean, before I could have met him at the wedding. But I didn’t even know I should have been looking for a boyfriend.”
“I assumed you knew. We’ve been all over the tabloids for months,” Lola said, conscious of the fluttering in her belly at the thought of Renee being jealous.
It hadn’t occurred to her to mention Nash to Renee, since she didn’t think of him as her actual boyfriend.
“Anyway, the relationship is almost over.”
Renee pulled an exaggerated frown. “No, babe, you can work it out!”
“Check page three.”
“ Break up with Nash Walker ,” Renee read dubiously.
“It’s a PR relationship,” Lola said in a hushed voice.
“Management sets it up. Everyone does it when you get to a certain level. Nash needed a girlfriend for a few press cycles, and I—well, I haven’t dated anyone publicly in a while, but my fans love thinking they know exactly who my albums are about.
Don’t feel bad if you believed it. You’re supposed to think we’re really together. ”
“I didn’t think anything. Someone asked if he was at the wedding, so I googled him, saw he looked like an overgrown sea monkey in gray sweatpants, and forgot all about him.”
“The sea monkey and I are pretty close friends.” Nash and Lola’s platonic chemistry was what made the PR relationship believable. Their fans didn’t need to know that their bond was less young lovers and more human sacrifices commiserating on the altar . “You should interview him.”
“An interview with your fake boyfriend is already on the list.” Renee flipped back to the first page of the schedule. “Or should I say, your current fake boyfriend? What about that guy from You’re Next! ? Didn’t you date for like five years?”
Lola bit back her exasperation at Renee’s tone. If Renee was truly curious about Lola’s love life, she would have hung around the morning after instead of bolting during the five minutes Lola spent in the shower.
“Three years, and his name is Kyte,” Lola corrected.
She and Kyte had met as contestants on You’re Next!
Her second album was all about falling in love with him, and her third processed their breakup.
“That was real. He still gets death threats from fans who think he cheated on me. The truth is, we both realized we wanted other things.”
Renee leaned in across the table, eyes narrowing. “You mean you realized you wanted p—”
“ Renee! ” Lola blushed so fast and intensely, it was as if her cheeks had caught fire. She pressed her lips together, deciding, then said cautiously, “Actually, I’d known since high school that I was interested in … what you’re asking about.”
Saying it out loud had her heart racing hard enough to make her a little dizzy. Lola could count on her fingers how many times she’d explicitly come out to someone—certainly never in a public restaurant.
“You did?” Renee said, her eyebrows popping up.
“Yes. Not that it’s relevant, because that’s not going in the film. Gloriana would never in a million years approve it.”
The mention of an authority figure reactivated Renee’s teenage sensibilities. Her expression rumpled. “Why would she need to?”
“Because she’s the executive producer, and my manager.”
As she said it, Lola’s ribs tightened with embarrassment.
She didn’t want to explain how the industry worked to Renee, who had only barely grasped the situation with Nash.
Lola’s life wasn’t like Renee’s. Lola couldn’t just be whoever she wanted—well, be whoever she truly was.
Lola Gray was a business as much as a person.
There were optics to consider, sales, her image, the reaction on social media, the fans, her label, and the impact on the dozens of people who depended on her for their livelihoods.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lola said.
Renee’s eyes were fixed on her. In this light, Lola could see gold threaded in the green. “You do?”
“I have a”—Lola checked the room and hushed her voice further—“fake boyfriend and I’m not, you know, honest about who I am. Don’t try to tell me you like my music, because I know you never have, and you’re already regretting that you’re making a movie about my life when it’s so—so stupid .”
When Lola finished speaking, her napkin was twisted in her hands, below the table where Renee couldn’t see it.
Renee scoffed instead. “Your life’s not stupid, Lo.” She brushed the schedule to the edge of the table. “ That is not your life.”
Lola went still.
“These are setups, and you didn’t come up with them. You’re right that I don’t really want to film you trying on clothes or smelling swimsuits or whatever. Because that’s not who you are .”
Lola’s throat felt thick. She longed to ask who Renee thought she was instead.
“What I want to know is what story you —the real you, Lo Grigorian, not Lola Gray—want to tell,” Renee said.
Lola wanted to laugh. The irony was that fundamentally, she wanted to tell the same story that everyone else on her team did: the writing and recording of Album 5. Unless she started writing songs in the next few weeks, the film crew would be watching her career implode instead.
Gloriana already suspected something was wrong.
A month ago, she’d mentioned there were people she could bring in if Lola needed help.
Everyone used ghostwriters, Gloriana said, and she had someone who could write in the Lola Gray style so seamlessly, Lola would forget she hadn’t written the songs herself.
Then, it had taken all of Lola’s overdeveloped sense of self-control to simply say, No, thank you. I promise things are moving along.
The truth was, she’d rather never perform again than pretend she’d written someone else’s words.
It wasn’t just her integrity. Lola’s music was at her core.
Writing and performing her songs was the only thing that made her feel truly like herself, without any compromises.
Free. Without that, there was no Lola Gray. There was barely a Lo Grigorian.
“I guess I’m not sure what I want,” Lola finally said.
“That’s okay.” Renee set her forearms on the table. “We can find the story together. Right?”
That we seemed to mean something different from when Gloriana said it, and for a moment Lola allowed herself to hope. Even if this ended in disaster, at least she had Renee on her side.
“Right.”