Chapter 26
L ola waited for Chloe in a private booth at the back of a trendy Italian restaurant. Her phone vibrated.
I can’t believe you did this! And a tailor too?
You like it?
It’s perfect. I’m in love.
Lola felt all her blood rush to her head.
I’ll send you a pic as soon as I have it on.
No, don’t! Surprise me at the show.
“Lola?”
She looked up, still grinning, to see Chloe standing before her in baggy jeans and a vintage Chicago Bulls jacket. Almost hidden by the large sleeves, her fists were clenched anxiously. Lola jumped up to give her a reassuring hug.
Though Lola had missed Saint Satin’s set at Corkscrew, that memory of Chloe at the after-party had inspired her to request an early copy of the album.
It was packed with pop songs structured around dynamite hooks and lyrics that were a little clever, a little dirty, and very fun.
Chloe shared writing credits on all of them, and Ackerlund had produced the album.
Saint Satin could be huge—if Chloe worked hard, if the right people liked her, and if she had a gigantic stroke of luck.
Lola remembered her own moment, before it all blew up.
She’d had a fan base and industry experience from You’re Next!
She’d thought she understood what she was getting into.
She hadn’t realized the roller coaster she’d strapped herself into had barely begun to move.
In person, Chloe was much like Lola remembered her: full lips, straight brows, and long, shining black hair, but she didn’t seem to care overmuch about being pretty.
Chloe was a few years older than Lola had been when her first album came out.
Twenty-one was an age where you wanted the whole world to look at you, and Chloe had that it factor that would make the world stare.
If Lola hadn’t noticed how Chloe kept cracking her knuckles, she would have bought the younger woman’s aura of perfect self-assurance.
“Congratulations on your album! It’s good, Chloe. It’s really good.”
“Thank you,” Chloe said earnestly. “I’m trying not to get too invested in praise and all that, but it does mean a lot coming from you. You were a huge influence on me.”
“Really?” Lola said with an encouraging smile. “I don’t think our sounds are very similar.”
“Not anymore!” Chloe laughed. “I’ve worked hard to find my own sound. But my earliest stuff? It was all Lola Gray–coded. But, like, queer.”
Lola’s smile froze on her face.
Chloe continued, “Little Chloe really saw herself in you. Your first album fucking ate and left no crumbs, and you were only seventeen! Knowing you wrote all your own songs and you were killing it meant a lot .”
“And it means a lot to me that I inspired an artist like you,” Lola said. “I know how hard this business can be. The pressure can be overwhelming, and you don’t always have good people to talk to. I want you to know that I’m here for you.”
“See, I always knew you were fucking cool,” Chloe said in a way that forced Lola to think about everyone Chloe might have had to defend her to.
They talked over antipasti and arancini about Chloe’s break.
“A lot of people say I got discovered on TikTok, like that’s easy to do,” Chloe said.
Where other artists might have been cowed by some of the hate Chloe had already received, even at this point in her career, she’d responded to it with a fiery faith in herself.
“I was working my ass off. That song charted in the Hot 100, and I wrote, recorded, and produced it in my bedroom .”
“It’s a huge achievement,” Lola said.
“Especially for a queer woman,” Chloe said proudly.
Lola sipped her water. She’d never thought to frame her own accomplishments that way. “Has your label been supportive of your, um, identifying as queer?”
Chloe puffed out a laugh. “They didn’t have a choice.”
Lola dug her teeth into her cheek. There was something about Chloe’s confidence that made Lola feel insufficient.
Renee had the same self-assurance, and Lola had always envied it.
She wanted so much to be liked—to be loved—that despite all her success, the idea of simply not trying to win others over made her skin crawl.
Maybe it was a queer thing—not to care so much what others thought.
“I meant, when you came out to them, they reacted positively?”
“I didn’t really have to come out. I was never hiding. I can’t create if I can’t be myself, and I’m never going to be that shiny, happy, girly pop star. No offense—we love a high femme queen—but I’m not her.”
“That’s great,” Lola said, trying not to think about why she hadn’t been strong enough to do the same. “I hope it stays that way. Sometimes the label will say one thing, then do another.”
“I’m not worried about that. My label’s like, The market’s ripe for an edgy sapphic pop star. ” Chloe popped a piece of soppressata into her mouth, chewed, then said, “I have a rule that anyone I work with has to hold space for me to be authentically myself. If they can’t, they’re out.”
Sudden sympathy washed out Lola’s envy. Chloe was so young, so green.
The idea that anyone in the public eye could be their authentic selves was painfully naive.
Celebrity flattened everything. It made you into a product with a target market and a sales pitch.
When Chloe heard her label call her an edgy sapphic pop star , she saw an opportunity to be herself.
She didn’t yet realize that she’d been assigned a role, an image, a narrative.
“You’re not concerned about being pigeonholed?” she asked.
“Oh, I definitely don’t want that,” Chloe said, as if some artists did want to be pigeonholed.
She slung an arm across the banquette. “I’m not going to fit into their little box.
If they think I’m too much, fuck them. I want to be too much, because for too long we’ve been forced to be too little.
I want to be the first woman to have a number one hit about sucking clit. ”
Lola sucked in a sharp breath at Chloe’s crassness. The truth was, Lola had already achieved that milestone with the post– Wild Heart single, “Just Between Us,” though she’d chosen more oblique language. She didn’t mention that to Chloe. She’d never mentioned it to anyone.
“Queer women have always been here, but we’ve been marginalized for so long. I have a duty to be the role model I didn’t have when I was younger,” Chloe went on, impassioned.
“You really think that still matters, now?” Lola asked. “There are so many queer people in the public eye.”
Chloe’s expression puckered with outrage.
“ Yes , representation still matters. It would have meant the world to me to see someone like me, a Korean lesbian, making music. If I didn’t get to have that, I want to make sure every other little Korean girl does.
Queer people in the public eye have that responsibility. ”
“That sounds sort of political,” Lola said. She sounded so timid.
“Being queer is political.”
Queer was a term Lola had never tried to apply to herself. It described the kind of person you chose to be, not just who you lusted after. What Chloe was talking about was more than simply coming out. It was obligation to community beyond oneself.
Tentatively, in her head, Lola tried the label on. I’m queer . But before she could sit with it, she was envisioning Gloriana’s reaction. The closest Lola Gray got to politics was events like last night’s gala against childhood hunger, which was about as uncontroversial as an issue could get.
Lola’s bodyguard interrupted them. A woman claiming to be Chloe’s girlfriend wanted to be let back. Chloe jumped out of her seat and introduced her. Vivy—the woman Lola had thought of as Butterfly Clips—wore a big, fannish smile.
“It’s lovely to see you again,” Lola said.
Vivy’s eyes went wide, but she turned them on Chloe. “Babe, did you hear that? Lola Gray remembered me. ”
“Course she did, pretty girl,” Chloe said, her voice full of affection.
Right there, in view of the whole restaurant, Chloe pulled her girlfriend in for a kiss.
L ATER , L OLA SIPPED a vodka soda alone on the VIP mezzanine at Irving Plaza.
Her drink was half-gone but it hadn’t quieted the nagging guilt that she’d put off talking to Gloriana.
She could practically hear Gloriana asking why now, if bisexuality was an important addition to Lola’s public image or more of a private concern, what would happen when things fell apart with Renee and Lola moved on with a man.
Lola had promised Renee that she would stand her ground, but already she felt like a little kid, begging to be listened to.
Coming out was already overwhelming, and she hadn’t even officially started it yet.
Lola’s gaze drifted over the crowd below.
They hadn’t spotted her yet, but with hundreds of people on the floor, it was only a matter of time.
The venue was packed with young women and non-binary people buzzing with excitement.
It was obvious that these fans were obsessed with not just Saint Satin, but each other.
They were checking each other out, taking selfies, stealing kisses from strangers who might be lovers by the night’s end.
Lola wondered what it would feel like to be down there—to lose herself in the hot press of bodies.
There was a unique pain in witnessing someone else’s euphoria: rib-scraping loneliness and jealousy of watching the specific kind of joy that you longed for, and being unable to join in.
It was the same feeling Lola had had watching Chloe at the Corkscrew after-party, like sparklers had been set off in her heart, but all they’d done was reveal how huge and lonesome the darkness there truly was.
Lola bit her lip. She would talk to Gloriana. She’d do it soon. She could text her right now, to schedule a meeting.
But even when Lola did come out, she’d never have what these Saint Satin fans did.
She’d never get lost in a crowd or kiss a stranger.
This moment, tonight, was the closest Lola had come—might ever come—to going to a gay bar.
These same people might hate her for having dated too many men or having stayed closeted too long or simply because she was bisexual.
She’d happily lose any homophobic fans, but she wasn’t under the illusion the queer community would simply embrace her.
Everyone would have an expectation for how she was supposed to be.
She’d inevitably disappoint some of them.
And that felt perilously close to failure.
Would it all be worth it?
Renee’s arrival interrupted her thoughts.
Relief bled through Lola as Renee came forward, her churning thoughts already quieting.
Renee looked insanely hot in the suit. It walked the scintillating line between feminine and masculine, as Renee often did, which always sent a rush of heat through Lola’s body.
Lola wanted to pull Renee close and kiss her, because she looked incredible, because Lola was proud of her for braving the reception, because Renee’s touch would ground her—but also because kissing Renee would prove that she belonged in this room full of queer people.
But she couldn’t kiss Renee—not yet. After an awkward hesitation, they hugged, though Lola dared to slip her hands inside the jacket to cup Renee’s hips.
“That suit,” Lola said, pulling back to better rake her eyes up Renee’s body. “If it weren’t for all these people …”
Renee flashed her a crooked grin. “Won’t matter soon.”
She’d been thinking almost the same thing, but hearing it from Renee, she felt a pinch of anxiety. Renee’s gaze was drifting over the crowd below, but she wasn’t looking at them like Lola had. Being here was nothing special for Renee, who had been out for half her life. She knew she fit in already.
“How was the party?” Lola asked.
“It was weird. Well, no, it was good, but that was weird. Dragan wasn’t kidding about showing me off.” She pulled a handful of business cards from her pocket. “Agents, producers, I don’t even remember who else.”
“That’s incredible!”
“It is, isn’t it? I even talked to two people from my cohort and I felt myself starting to spiral, but I was like, no. They’re going to be eating their words eventually. Or I hope they will.”
“They will ,” Lola said. Renee’s words were optimistic, but she was gripping the mezzanine railing so tight that the velvet was pulling at her shoulders. “Then what’s wrong?”
“I’m just thinking about how badly I need this film to be good . Everything’s riding on this. I’m not going to get a second chance. I didn’t deserve this chance—”
“Renee—”
“It’s a fact, Lo: I got this job because you were desperate, and I was there.
That’s not going to happen again.” Renee closed her eyes and took a big breath.
As she blew it out, she straightened up and pulled her shoulders back.
“But you know what? That’s okay. We have an amazing story to tell.
It’s going to make a phenomenal film. I have nothing to worry about. Right?”
“Right,” Lola assured her. Her heart raced to see Renee like this—sure of herself. Hopeful.
Renee slipped her arm around Lola’s waist, drawing them together. Renee’s green eyes looked dark gray in the low light, solemn and searching. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
What Lola wanted most of all right then was to feel Renee against her.
“This is what I want,” Lola said.
“It’s okay if you’re not ready. I can figure something else out for the film. But I need to know.”
Lola looked up at her and pressed her hips forward. “I’m ready.”
“And that’s the truth, not what you think I want to hear?”
Lola laughed. “I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m not changing my mind.”
But her words sounded more certain than she felt.
A relieved smile crossed Renee’s face, but rapidly melted into something darker and wanting. Her hand skimmed from Lola’s waist to her ass, sending an electric shiver in its wake. Her fingers tightened against Lola’s flesh, as she leaned into Lola’s ear. “That’s my girl,” Renee whispered.
Lola gasped, as heat gathered between her legs.
Lola’s body bent reflexively into Renee’s, her face upturned to beg for a kiss.
But just as quickly, Renee let her go and jutted her chin toward the stage.
The crowd cheered as Saint Satin’s band grabbed their instruments.
Lola’s body went to ice. There were a thousand people down there.
“No one saw that, right?” she said.
“Relax, Lo. They’re not looking at us,” Renee said, as Saint Satin took the stage.
Lola wanted to believe her, although it sounded too good to be true.