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Irrational from unspent desire, Lola wished they could start over. Wished they could have met in some normal way instead of Lola having cut her off on the highway exit on her first day at Dominion. Why hadn’t she just apologized? She’d been so nervous. So out of her depth. Like an imposter on the verge of being found out. And Carmen had been so put together. So effortless in all the ways Lola wasn’t. She’d doubled down and then again and again.
Carmen ran her open palms over her blouse, straightening it. “I guess that’s goodbye then.”
A man’s conversation on speaker bouncing off the cement floors and ceilings provided a strange backdrop to Lola’s regret.
“So a truce? For real?” Lola managed, adrenaline making it near impossible to form coherent thoughts.
“For real,” she replied, like she was suddenly too tired. “I’m too old to play this shit with you anymore.”
Lola narrowed her eyes, remembering that Carmen had doubled down every time, too. It wasn’t Lola’s fault alone that they were here. Carmen was reactive and unhinged and petty as hell.
Instead of reminding her that they were the same age, Lola used her inability to speak to her advantage. She turned on her uncomfortable heels, tight and flooding her feet with pain she hadn’t noticed before, and walked away without a word.
CHAPTER17
Driving home,the dark roads slick from a sudden downpour she hadn’t noticed while it was happening, Lola focused on erasing Carmen from her thoughts. It was good that Carmen was calling an end to her childish bullshit. Lola didn’t have time for it. As long as Carmen left her alone, she’d have no reason to talk to her.
Nope, no reason at all. And that was good. She needed to focus. She’d already wasted too much time on her. Carmen might have the luxury of rich parents and a law firm to inherit, but no one was giving Lola anything. She had to earn every single thing she got.
Lola weaved her BMW through the downtown streets, crowded even at the tail end of nighttime rush hour, and bullied her way onto the lane leading to the highway. Behind her, a car honked, and the driver stuck his middle finger out of the driver’s side window.
Without hesitation, Lola returned the one-fingered salute. “Honk all you want, asshole. You’re still too slow,” she muttered with her attention on her rearview mirror. If she hadn’t cut him off, someone else would have. That was the price he paid for being distracted.
The guy behind her was so close to her car, pretending he was going to rear-end her when they both knew he was bluffing.
Needing to busy her brain and be productive on the ten-mile drive to her South Miami apartment that would easily take an hour, Lola hit the phone icon on her car’s touchscreen.
When her Bluetooth connected, she asked Siri to call Janice at Some Such Productions. It was risky pitching Kiki as a host without traditional experience, but Lola had a good feeling. She could feel in her bones that she’d come up with a hit.
“Lola! Thanks for calling me back,” Janice’s friendly voice came on. “We’re obsessed with thisAll Aboard for Loveidea. Gorgeous singles coupled up on a luxury yacht? And the twist of making them all female-identifying or nonbinary. That finger is on the pulse of what people want!”
Lola grinned, but she couldn’t be confident she had them hooked. She’d learned the hard way that the projects people were most thrilled about never got off the ground. But everyone pretended not to know that. “It’ll be prime for bingeing,” she agreed.
“For sure! We do have some hesitations about your suggested host though—”
Lola jumped in, amping up the charm. “I get it. Kiki’s an influencer, not an established presenter. But that is exactly who we want. A fresh face and with a little coaching, Kiki will be the hype woman meets the voice of reason host we need. She’s already got a bold personality and camera presence. She’s going to be everyone’s best friend. The one that tells it like it is, and says everything we’re all thinking,” she said, needing it to be true.
“The best I can do right now is to talk the team into a screen test.” Janice paused. “We had that pretty public flop with the child star turned—”
“Kiki is not going to flop,” she said with so much confidence, she surprised herself. Amped up by the rush of closing a deal for a client she didn’t even have yet, Lola pushed. “Meet her and I promise you’ll be charmed. I’m telling you, she’s the next Andy Cohen.” She laid it on thick, sensing she almost had the deal sealed. A week and Kiki would be hers.
After finalizing the pitch meeting, Lola allowed herself a celebratory fist pump before cutting off another sucker and merging onto US-1 — the highway that would take her on a slow crawl home.
Doubt fell on her like a fog. Was it stupid to invest so much energy into talent she hadn’t signed yet? Adriana and Natalia would probably think so, but what did they know about being a brand-new agent trying to establish herself? They’d forgotten what it was like not to have a name that opened doors. A name that made people pick up the phone. Lola had to do whatever it took.
By the time Lola pulled into her designated space in front of her old, brown apartment complex, the rain had come back. Returned just in time to drench her depleted body as she raced up a flight of exterior wooden stairs that were rickety at the best of times and a deathtrap when wet.
Picking up her ruined wet hair — now wavy and frizzy — as soon as she got inside, Lola peeled off her wet clothes next. Leaving only her underwear, she crawled past the closed-in galley kitchen and dragged herself to the couch that took up most of the modest living room in her one-bedroom apartment.
When a new property management company took over the place last year, they’d promised to renovate the entire building. To take it out of 1979 and into the present, but they’d only gotten as far as the pool, which looked like any glamorous Brickell rooftop. The units stayed in the past. Lola didn’t really care. She barely spent any time in the place, anyway.
Closing her eyes, Lola let herself drift. In the complete darkness of her quiet apartment, she listened to the rain tap the glass. Let it soothe her. Let it numb the aching unhappiness she needed to beat into its box.
She let herself think of Carmen’s kiss. Let herself pretend it could be more than a contentious battle for the upper hand. The effects of whatever Fortune had given them would probably wear off soon. What was the harm in a little indulgence?
Imagining an alternate universe, she pictured spotting Carmen at a bar. Did she go to bars? In her fantasy, she did. She’d probably be at some happy hour thing at a nice restaurant. Standing around with a martini glass to her lips and listening to her lawyer friends talk.
Carmen wouldn’t be talking. She’d be distracted. Looking at Lola from across the room with interest instead of contempt. With the heady excitement of possibility completely untarnished by facts or reality — they’d look at each other. Be unable to look anywhere else and imagine all the exhilarating ways the night might go.
