Mathew Louis

Six months of imposed celibacy didn't make Mathew a better person. It made him more creative. Half a year of paparazzi vigils, social media opinion pieces, and the slow reputation-repair machine had finally done its job. His publicists, an exhausted team of three whose dark circles turned purple and dark every time they sat across from him in Sturm's LA offices, executed the playbook perfectly: silence, charity appearances, a carefully crafted apology in the Notes app, and time. The public had the memory of a goldfish addicted to contentment, and Derrick counted on it.

Still, the drought was miserable. He couldn't be seen in his usual haunts, couldn't invite his usual rotation of girls to the Hills, couldn't do anything that made the machine of his life tolerable. He was reduced to rewatching his own recordings on his cell phone in the dark like a desperate teenager, or calling a high-class escort now and then. He found them boring. Too professional. Too transactional. Half the pleasure for Derrick had always been the moment, that specific instant when a girl realizes she's being allowed into his world, the gratitude, the wonder, and the understanding that slowly dawns on her that the access was temporary. The escorts didn't give him that. They gave him a service. He wanted a reaction.

Now he relaxed beside the infinity pool of his Hollywood Hills estate, the chlorine-blue water catching the late August sun, wearing an open Hawaiian shirt and stylish swim trunks. The house loomed behind him like a glass monument to hard-won entitlement: every angle sharp and floor-to-ceiling windows, each line of sight calculated to impress when you finally step through the doors to talk about the MTV interview.