Chapter 35
L ola lay in bed. The room was dim. She didn’t know what time it was—she’d flung her phone somewhere.
Lola knew Renee wouldn’t contact her, not after that blank look had fallen over her face.
Lola had texted her frantically after she’d left, but then Gloriana called to say that Renee had resigned from the project. After that, it felt pointless.
That was three days ago.
Three days Lola had spent replaying their terrible fight.
Even in her imagination, she couldn’t convince Renee to stay.
Lola had put Renee first, always. Done everything she could to make her happy: encouraged her talent, written her songs, satisfied her in bed.
Done everything she could to make herself easier to love.
But ultimately, Renee had asked for more than Lola could give.
She should have listened to Gloriana.
At least one person would be pleased that Renee was out of Lola’s life, she thought ruefully.
Gloriana never liked Renee and she had been right, as she so often was.
Renee hadn’t approved of the film she’d been hired to make—which Gloriana had known was absurd and entitled—so she’d convinced Lola to expose her secrets on camera instead.
Now Lola was back exactly where she’d been a year ago: heartbroken, betrayed, and with an album full of songs she would never again bear to play.
Her ever-after had been dangled before her, then snatched away, again.
At least she hadn’t shared her new songs with the label yet.
They knew she’d been in the studio, but the songs still lived on the drive she and Ackerlund shared, waiting for their final polish.
Lola would be in deep shit for all the studio time she’d wasted, in addition to the canceled sessions.
But at this point, who cared? It was only a matter of time before they sent her the ghostwritten roster of hits for her next album.
All she’d have to do was record the vocals.
She pulled the blanket over her head and tried to sleep.
L OLA HEARD THE bedroom door open.
“I’m fine, Cassidy,” Lola croaked.
“You’re clearly not.” That wasn’t Cassidy’s voice. Lola poked her head out of the covers and startled. The imposing figure of Tatiana Jones stood in the doorway. Lola pushed herself up in bed, suddenly conscious that she didn’t know how long it had been since she’d washed her hair.
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Tatiana said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Cassidy said you’ve been holed up in here for a week. She’s worried. And so am I.”
“Renee’s gone.” Lola fell back against the crumpled pillow. Her eyes welled with tears again at saying the words out loud.
“I know, babe.” Tatiana kicked off her shoes and lay down beside Lola. “I’m so sorry.”
Lola cried for a while, taking comfort in Tatiana’s presence.
It was nice to have someone there beside her.
Cassidy had been sneaking nervously into the room to set pretzels and Gatorade at her bedside, as if Lola were a sick child, but Cassidy was employed as an assistant, not a therapist. Lola was grateful that Cassidy had reached out to Tatiana.
“Here’s the plan,” Tatiana said when Lola’s tears tapered off. “I have four hours until I have a flight to catch. You’re going to shower and I’m going to order pizza and milkshakes. And then you’re going to tell me what happened. Okay?”
“Okay.”
L OLA FELT A little more like herself for following Tatiana’s instructions.
They sat in the kitchen, and Lola managed to eat two slices of pizza, washed down with a milkshake.
Then she told Tatiana the whole story: how Renee had played her for fame, convincing her to come out, and when Gloriana had asked Lola to walk it back, Renee had left.
“She didn’t seem like a famewhore,” Tatiana said with a shake of her head. “And I’ve seen my share. I’m a pretty good judge.”
“I didn’t think so either,” Lola said. “But Gloriana saw it all along. She told me, and I ignored it.”
Tatiana thought for a second. “If she was after fame, she did a shit job of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were together for months and there’s really only one article about the relationship. Usually people like that will milk their moment for all it’s worth. It’s like she didn’t even have her own publicist.”
“She didn’t.”
“A manager?”
“No. She had a thesis advisor. She’s finishing grad school.”
“Doesn’t really sound like it was about fame.” Tatiana’s mouth puckered to one side. “Tell me again why you had that fight?”
“Gloriana saw those tabloid photos. We talked about issuing a de nial. I convinced her not to, but we decided to put coming out on hold. She asked that Renee and I stick to filming in public, until the rumors blew over. I told Renee that and she lost it.”
“But you think she was upset about the movie ?” Tatiana pressed her hands flat to the counter and blew out a breath.
“Look, I know you’re not in the best place to take criticism right now, but you can be so oblivious, Lola.
Of course she got upset—you basically told her you’d decided to hide your relationship indefinitely! ”
“I guess that’s true, but we’d already been hiding it.”
“And she was happy with that?”
“She never complained ,” Lola said lamely. “She thought it was temporary. The plan was for me to come out in the documentary.”
“Wow. Okay. That’s a big step.”
“I know. But it felt like the right time. And Renee was really excited about it.”
“What happened? Gloriana changed your mind?” Tatiana asked.
Lola picked at her pizza crust. She was disappointed in herself that she’d agreed to Gloriana’s suggestion to wait, but in that moment, the feeling of safety had been more powerful. “It was more like Gloriana saw I had some doubts, and she made it okay to lean into them.”
“And you’d told Renee about those doubts?”
Lola thought back through their conversations. All the times she’d told Renee things were good, all the times she’d swept aside her anxieties in favor of bringing that smile to Renee’s face.
“I didn’t want to upset her,” Lola admitted. “The film meant a lot to her.”
“ Lola .” Tatiana’s voice was stern. “I love you, but I’m dead tired of watching you do this. You get into these relationships and you slowly, slowly annihilate everything about yourself. It’s like you’d give up everything to make the other person happy.”
“That’s what you do in a relationship,” Lola said, feeling wretched again. “You’re supposed to give everything, and I do—I did—and it wasn’t enough. Why is it never enough?”
“Have you ever considered that everything might be too much? Maybe Renee didn’t want you to put her first like that. Maybe she wanted you to be partners. That can’t happen when you’re trying to control how she feels.”
“I wasn’t trying to control how she felt,” Lola sputtered.
“You just said you were trying to make sure she was happy all the time. That’s impossible, and it isn’t healthy. You can’t keep putting everyone else first and then blaming them when you don’t get what you want.”
“Was that supposed to be encouraging?”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in, like, hundreds of hours of therapy, it’s that if you don’t own it, you can’t learn from it. I want you to learn from this. You worked so hard to get out of that hole you fell into after Ava. Do you really want to keep going back to that place?”
“No.”
“Then don’t. You’re incredibly strong, Lola. You can do whatever you set your mind to. If that’s lying in bed, fine. But it doesn’t have to be.”
L OLA HUGGED T ATIANA tight, fully expecting to crawl back into bed once her car pulled out. But when she got to the top of the stairs, somehow she didn’t want to.
Lola wandered into her studio, bright with the late-day sun. The light felt good.
Maybe Tatiana had a point. Had she been repeating the same mistake?
As crushed as she was, Lola wasn’t about to rewrite history: more than anyone she’d been with, Renee had been invested in her happi ness, and her comfort, and her pleasure, and she’d wanted Lola to be invested in those things too.
With Kyte, she’d been too immature, and with Ava, too scared to ask for more. Renee had been different.
Had Lola been different?
In some ways, yes. She’d been more at ease with Renee, more open and trusting.
But she’d hidden things from her too: how out of place she’d felt at the Saint Satin show, or the nagging worry that she didn’t qualify as queer.
She hadn’t explained why Gloriana’s arguments against coming out always somehow resonated with her.
Even if Tatiana was right that Lola should have shared her doubts with Renee, that wasn’t the only problem. Renee had gone behind her back to talk to Ava, which Lola should never have needed to forbid.
And Renee had left.
The iPad on the coffee table lit up with a notification. Lola’s heart lurched, then she chided herself. The text was from Ackerlund.
Where you been?
Below his text were several notifications from their shared server. He’d uploaded new versions of four songs.
All her work, wasted, because she made the wrong choices again and again.
In case indulging her pain would lessen it, Lola played “Starcrossed” for herself.
It was like watching a carousel of memories of Renee, each lyric bringing to mind a moment, a touch, a shared glance.
She played it again, just to see if that helped or made things worse, then again.
On the fifth or sixth listen, the lyrics started to lose their meaning, and she focused on the song itself.
It was good—great, even. It had number one potential for sure. Now no one would hear it.
Lola played it again. What if she wanted people to hear it?
Maybe it hurt to listen to it now, but it would only ever hurt unless she turned that pain into something more.
Into something she needed for herself.