Page 48 of Hotter in the Hamptons

“I really don’t.”

“You took my front row seat.”

“Iwhat?”

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 bigVoguestory. 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 shushedus. 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 beyou, 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.”

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