Marnie beamed. “Is that Liza Blick? WeloveLiza!”
“You know her?”
“Of course. It’s my job to know everyone. You’re in great hands.”
“I guess… When she’s not busy running to another meeting.”
“They’reallso busy,” Marnie said. “She didn’t even make it to the premiere. Everyone’s trying to squeeze in half a year’s worth of meetings while they’re here.”
I frowned. “Shewasat the premiere. We were just talking about the movie. She saw it.”
“Not last night. But you’re right: We held screenings in LA and she came to the first one, six weeks ago, I think? Liza issucha character.”
“That’s impossible. She would never—”
Marnie grimaced and I stopped myself. Liza had always been honest with me. Hadn’t she?
“If it really matters to you…” Marnie started.
I nodded eagerly. Of course it mattered. Liza had let me spend all my money on coming to Cannes. She’d let mehumiliatemyself.
“Here.”
Marnie pulled out her phone and flicked through her photos, then stopped at one and turned her screen to me.
I looked at it, breathless. Liza was with Marshall Wild, Odetta Olson, and a few other people. They were all standing in front of a movie poster with a sign that indicated the date of the screening.
Liza had known that I was cut from the movie forweeks. She had lied to me all along.
Marnie took her phone back.
“So, lunch? I really want to understand what’s going on with Odetta Olson. It feels like we’re missing a piece of the puzzle, and maybe you could help.”
I’d been so sure that this was the role that would crack everything open for me. The sign that I was destined for this life. And now, everything I’d ever wanted was so beyond out of reach I couldn’t even see it anymore. I was going to leave Cannes an absolute failure, and it was all Odetta Olson’s fault. She was the writerandthe director. She was the one who’d cut me out, who’d destroyed my dream. If Marnie wanted stories about her, I could give her some.
I checked the time on my phone.
“I have time for lunch.”
Like I had anywhere else to be anyway.
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.
