CHAPTER ONE
LOLA
Song- Click Clack Symphony,RAYE ft Hans Zimmer
The coffee shop is called Dusty’s, and it has no right being this good. Better than anything I ever had in New York. Perhaps because it’s made with love, not tears of the miserable barista struggling to survive.
I’m tucked into a booth by the window, iced latte sweating onto the table, my phone propped against the sugar caddy.
My best friend, Violet, is across from me, elbows on the table, dark hair piled on top of her head in the kind of effortless knot that takes her approximately four seconds, and would take me forty minutes to replicate.
She’s watching me edit a selfie. And she’s losing patience.
“Explain it to me again,” she says, stirring her coffee without looking at it. “You moved to Arizona. You drove two thousand miles across the country with me. You gave up your apartment, your stylist, your standing brunch reservation at The Mark. Andyou’re sitting in a coffee shop in a town that has more horses than cars, editing a selfie for a brand deal that pays you to pretend you still live in New York.”
I look up. “It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple.” She points at my phone. “You are airbrushing your jawline for a skincare company that thinks you’re in Manhattan, Lola. While sitting in a town where the pharmacist is also the mayor.”
“He’s not the mayor.”
“He might as well be. Everyone here has three jobs.” She leans back. “My point is, why are you still doing this?”
I set my phone down and run my thumb around the rim of my glass. Because the honest answer is complicated. And embarrassing. And involves the words,because my parents will disown me if I stop.
“The brand deals keep my parents happy,” I say. “As long as I’m posting, they can tell their friends at the country club that their daughter is still the face of something. That I’m still on track to become their CEO. Still performing like the heiress of a billion-dollar fashion empire.”
God, just saying that steals my breath. But it also hurts.
“You’re twenty-seven,” she says flatly, her bright blue eyes burning into mine.
“I know.”
“You’re a grown woman.”
“I know, V.”
“So why are you still performing for people who didn’t even offer to help you pack?”
That one lands right in the sternum. Because she’s right. My parents didn’t come to the airport. Didn’t call to make sure I’d settled in okay. My mother sent a text that saidI hope this gets it out of your system,and my father sent nothing at all.
Violet watches my face, and her expression softens. She reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. “I’m not trying to be a bitch.”
“Yes, you are. But I love you for it,” I tease.
She grins. “I just think you’re hiding behind the selfies, because you’re scared to post what you actually want to post.”
I pick up my phone and swipe to the other folder. The one nobody sees. The one I’ve been filling since the day I arrived in New Falls two months ago.
Landscapes. Golden hour over the mountains. A weathered fence post with a hawk perched on top. The main street at dusk. A wild horse standing alone in a field, silhouetted against a sky so wide it doesn’t look real.
Every photo taken from the other side of the camera. Where I’ve always secretly wanted to be.
That’s why I’m here. Not because Violet needed company, although she did, and I’d follow that woman anywhere. But because I picked up a camera two years ago at a fashion shoot in Milan, and for the first time in my life, I felt something click. Not the shutter. Something inside me.
I was standing behind the photographer, watching him work, and I realized I wanted to see the world like that—not have the world seeme.
And then I went back to New York, and posted another bikini photo because that’s what the algorithm wanted, and my parents needed, and what the brands were paying for.