“Thank you,” I said. “I’m Marnie, by the way.”
“Constance,” she responded.
It was my turn to be alarmed. Her face had looked familiar when I first walked through the door, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d met her before. Turned out, Ihadn’tmet her, but I knew that face. Because I’d googled her.
“You’re Tyler Charles’s stylist,” I said, breathless.
Her expression was unreadable. “I’m not.”
But this had to be the woman who had sent those videos to Dorian Fisher. The sex maniac who now worked with Tyler Charles. The one whose story I’d heard from some personal assistant then shared withDis-Moi Tout, because I was trying to do my job and protect Odetta Olson from all the vultures.
“Didn’t you work for Carly Wolf?”
Her jaw clenched, her black eyes piercing through me. She got up in a huff.
“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
She turned around and sighed. “IwasTyler Charles’s stylist. But I had to quit, for Dorian Fisher.”
She eyed our surroundings, the fire escape, the harsh fluorescent light, the door out to the hallway, to a world with suites and world-famous celebrities.
“Working with big stars can be challenging,” she added drily.
She sat back down with effort, like she was so tired her body was caving in. I could relate.
“No shit,” I said with a pained exhale.
I felt a little lighter already. So much time spent trying to keep it together. Topretend. Chin up, smile on. It was exhausting.
“I hate Cannes,” I said. “Fucking red carpet and spotlights and all those palm trees, like,please. Foroneperson who enjoys being here, there are twenty of us who dream of punching a few too many people in the face.”
“Accurate,” Constance said. “Whose face?”
I frowned. “What?”
“If we’re going to punch someone in the face, can I get a name?”
“Ben,” I said with a grimace, like that was an insult. “My boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend, also known as the worst person in the entire world.”
“What’d he do?” she asked, after a comfortable silence had settled in.
It took me a while to find the appropriate answer. “He stole something from me.”
She made a curious face. “So are we punching him in the face or trying to get whatever he stole back?”
“I don’t know how to get it back,” I admitted.
“Maybe you need to try harder,” she said with an uptight air. “Isn’t that what people always say? We just need to try harder, to do better, tobebetter. And then,maybewe’ll get what we want.Maybewe can pull ourheads out of the freaking water and actually breathe without feeling like our lungs are being crushed with their bare hands.”
She had a point, but still, one thing kept nagging at me.
“What if it’s my own fault?” I asked. “What if I made some bad decisions?”
Carmen had given me those producer contacts for Ben and I’d kept them for myself. You might even say I’d stolen them from Ben before he took the screenplay fromme. And I should never have spread all those rumors without running them past my boss first. I had screwed this up all by myself.
“I can’t talk about bad decisions. Trust me when I say you don’t want any advice fromme.”
Was she talking about the sex videos? But looking at her now, I couldn’t believe she’d done something like that. There had to be more to the story. Though it was a little late to realize that. I’d already shared it, without even fact-checking it.Iwas the one who should be punched in the face.
