Constance
I knew Dorian Fisher was bad news for me. Staying away would be the healthy, emotionally mature thing to do.
I knew Dorian was bad for me.
It wasn’t logical.
It didn’t make any sense.
I was—and I guess I still am—terrible at making decisions when it comes to men.
After my ex cheated on me, I became really careful about what I shared with friends about my love life.
Same with my mom, who’d raised me with very old-fashioned views on romance.
Good men made the first move. They paid for dinner.
They swept you off your feet, made you feel like you were the most precious jewel in the world.
After my dad left us, my mother had an impressive turnover of boyfriends.
All were handsome, most had money and good jobs.
None lasted very long. I can’t say why I would take dating advice from someone who could never figure it out for herself, but she had a point.
What was the purpose of being in love, if it didn’t make you feel like you were flying high?
If it sounds like I’m justifying what I did, then, yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
And what I did, after hours of poring over Dorian’s social media, was overanalyze everything.
When he posted the view from his hotel suite, was he trying to let me know where he was staying?
When he shared pictures from his lunch with Carly and wrote, So much to catch up on, did that mean they’d been talking about me?
Everything was designed to make me wonder and scroll more. The spiral had no beginning or end.
Because he knew I was following him now. He could see that I’d watched his content. This was intentional. Though what the intention was, I wasn’t sure.
See, if being let go from my job had thrown me down a bottomless pit of depression, it was losing Dorian Fisher that kept me there for months.
I ate ramen noodles in bed—oily splatters all over my sheets—refused to see or talk to anyone, and felt debilitating nausea every time I saw any news about him.
I realize that I’m making it sound like I “had” Dorian Fisher to begin with. I understand what it looks like now, the towering height of my delusion.
But then things took a turn. Dorian posted a picture of a terrace in a narrow alley, away from the crowds, and I double-tapped the post to like it. I didn’t mean to do it. It was pure instinct, the way you say “You too!” to someone who wishes you a happy birthday.
I stared at my phone, fingers gripped in panic.
I’d spent the last few months pleading with my brain to erase what had happened in that hotel room.
The way Carly found me. The fact that my dream boss in my dream job had fired me for “the worst behavior she’d ever seen. ” For something I definitely did.
But that was then. If I saw Dorian now, I’d do better. I’d be better. I needed a second chance. Didn’t everybody deserve one?
I left my emails unanswered, slipped on my shoes, and rushed down the streets of Cannes until I arrived at the little bistro. Dorian had shared its location. It meant something.
He wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t; he’d probably left a while ago.
I sat at the terrace, maybe even at the same table he’d picked earlier.
I ordered an Aperol spritz and leaned back in the wicker chair, letting the late afternoon sun warm my face.
It felt wrong, but I did it anyway: I posted a selfie.
I even wrote something similar to what Dorian had said in his own photo, about escaping the glitz of Cannes.
I’m not sure how much time passed. I spent most of it convincing myself that I was allowed to have a drink on any terrace in the world. Dorian didn’t own Cannes. He was here for work; I was here for work. I’d recovered from the worst day of my life. And now I was in control again.
My mind kept spinning, boosting my confidence. I ordered a second Aperol spritz. I was halfway through it when a shadow passed over my table. A man stood there, backlit against the fading sun. He could have been a hallucination.
“May I join you?”
I shrugged, like either way it didn’t matter to me.
Dorian sat down and gestured for the server to come over.
He asked for pastis, a popular liquor in the South of France, which tastes of anis and licorice.
It was the cream-colored apéritif grandpas drank in huddles at the counter of local bars, but when Dorian ordered it, it seemed like the height of sophistication.
Dorian Fisher was here. With me. Again.
So what had happened between us? It wasn’t an affair. We hadn’t slept together. Hadn’t even kissed. It was so much worse than that.
Neither of us spoke until the server went and came back with Dorian’s drink. She threw a glance my way, wondering who I was. In that moment I had no idea, either.
Dorian took a sip, then locked eyes with me. “Look at you now.”
It had only been a few months since we’d last seen each other, but Dorian had a way of making any statement sound loaded with sexual tension.
The first time we’d had a drink together was much like this, at the bar of a New York hotel, over a year ago.
We were working on a press tour for his new action flick.
It was my first business trip with Carly, and I’d been ecstatic, learning so much and making strides at work.
Something—a pair of Ferragamo brogues, I think—had been delivered late, and I was sent to bring the package to Dorian’s hotel.
I expected to leave it at reception but, after calling up to his suite, the receptionist asked me to wait. A few minutes later, Dorian came down, wearing jeans and a navy polo shirt.
Do you have anywhere to be? Dorian had asked in his famous husky voice.
Before then, I’d noticed lingering looks, his sparkly eyes drilling a little too deeply into me during styling sessions.
He’d asked personal questions: which neighborhood I lived in—Silver Lake—and for how long—three years.
Did I have roommates—yes. Did I like it—no.
But those moments were fleeting, the questions always brief, innocent.
This one, if I had anywhere to be, felt different.
We sat at the back of the hotel bar. The lighting was dim, the leather seats deep. Still, a lot of people could see us. They could see me, with Dorian Fisher.
Talk to me, Dorian had said. I want to know all about you.
I’d let out a nervous laugh. And then I did what he asked.
I told him about my college days in New York City, followed by my early twenties living with five roommates in a Bushwick loft, no peace ever.
My fashion education had led me to the styling team at Ralph Lauren, a job I loved.
I’d been so close to a promotion when my boyfriend of several years had announced he was done with New York.
The weather was bad half the year, the crowds were too much, you could barely afford to breathe.
He wanted to move back to Southern California, where he was from.
He’d gotten a job offer out of the blue. It was a done deal.
Make fun of me if you’d like, because I didn’t see it.
Even when he suggested living in his parents’ basement at the start.
I didn’t get that he wasn’t really asking me to go with him.
We were in love, in a long-term committed relationship.
Of course I would stand by my man. Besides, it sounded like an adventure.
Dorian’s attention never wavered. So where’s the boyfriend tonight?
My whole body had burned up. I’d somehow steered myself toward telling him the most humiliating thing that had happened to me. At that point, anyway.
Back in LA, I’d answered. With the “love of his life.”
I’d made air quotes around the phrase, the sting of it still so raw. Turned out there was a girl in LA who wasn’t quite in his past.
In fact, I’m pretty sure they’d been in touch long before we moved there.
She was the reason for the sudden urge to go back.
I didn’t know that, of course. About a month after we moved in with his parents, he made up a story about randomly bumping into his high school girlfriend.
That’s how he realized he’d never gotten over her.
But hey, the good news was that his parents were generous enough to let me sleep in their basement, while he moved in with her. I’d been trying hard to get myself back to New York when I got the interview with Carly Wolf.
What an idiot, Dorian had said, biting his lower lip. What an absolute fool.
His gaze had made me feel warm everywhere.
I was floating outside of my own body. After my breakup, I swore off men for the longest time.
I focused on my career. I was working for the Carly Wolf!
In some fucked-up way, my asshole ex-boyfriend had led me to the greatest professional opportunity.
I threw myself into it. Carly constantly said how impressed she was with my ideas, my taste, my organizational skills.
I refused to go anywhere near dating apps. I was happy being single.
Until that night in New York with Dorian Fisher.
We finished our drinks and, when he didn’t suggest having another one, I felt crushed beyond reason.
I’d caught the attention of one of the most famous men on earth, but I hadn’t been able to sustain it.
What had I done wrong? How could I change that?
The obsession had begun.
This time, here in Cannes, I held his gaze and forced myself not to fill the silence.
Dorian leaned back, swishing the pale yellow liquid inside his glass. “What brought you to Cannes?”
I allowed myself a casual shrug. “Work. You?”
I felt brazen, drunk on a mirage of my own making.
He laughed. Because it was him, it was a mysterious half laugh that made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
“That too.” He paused, took a sip. “Does Carly know?”
He had this way of asking questions that opened the door to ten more. I placed my glass back down, suddenly aware that I’d drunk too fast. I smoothed the top of my skirt, crossed and uncrossed my legs. Dorian watched my every move.
“That I’m here? I don’t think so.”
A wave of something like nausea hit me, the sick urge to move away from this conversation.
“You have a contract with Tom Ford,” I said now.
Everybody knew that Dorian Fisher had recently signed on to be the new Tom Ford ambassador. It included commercials for the latest fragrance—Dorian’s chiseled chin on billboards all over the world, car crashes in the making—and of course, he was to exclusively wear the label.
“Carly was a little disappointed. You know she likes to experiment.”
“Tom Ford is a perfect match for you.”
He pursed his lips. Could Dorian Fisher ever be unsure of anything?
“It’s best-dressed list material almost guaranteed every time,” I added.
We were in my territory now, a topic I could chew on until the end of days.
Dorian finished his drink, then placed it back on the table. It clinked a little too loudly. He looked around him, like he was about to get up. My heart squeezed in my chest.
But his gaze focused back on me as he tilted his head.
“If you know anyone who’s interested.”
His eyes ran all over me; I felt myself shiver.
“Interested?” The word scratched against the insides of my throat.
“A change could be good for me. If I found the right person. Someone with great talent and a vision.”
“You’re not serious.”
He looked quite serious.
“You’re looking for a new stylist?” I added.
He smiled in response.
“You would leave Carly Wolf?”
“If I found the right person,” he repeated.
He gave a little shrug, like this wasn’t the most important conversation of the rest of my life. Then he pushed his chair back. Stood up.
My heart pumped loudly in my ears.
“I’m interested.”
He tossed cash—enough to cover both our drinks—on the table, and waited.
“Now?” I asked.
“Omar will be in touch.”
With the tip of his chin, he pointed subtly at a tall man on the other side of the street, who I’d only just noticed. But I’d seen him before, pictured with Dorian. His security guard.
Then, looking down at me, Dorian said, “It was a pleasure running into you like this. Small town, isn’t it?”
Then he was gone.
I didn’t move for a long while. My heel tapped the ground over and over again, my knee hitting the table every time.
I could do this, I could do this, I could do this.
Like I said, I knew better now.
I wouldn’t ruin my life again.
Famous last words.