I would be paid for a few days of modeling—decent money, but not buy-a-house cash—but the real perk was getting equity in the company itself. If things went well, I could stand to get a bunch of money, plus a lifetime supply of underwear, of course. No more wearing the ratty old ginch and saving the pretty lacy ones for special occasions. No, ma’am. Starting in a few months, I’d have Date Panties on every damn day of the week.
Was I nervous about the upcoming photo shoot?
In a word, eep!
My flight to LA, where the company was based, was booked for Saturday morning. On Friday, they called to tell me the “good news.” They’d increased the marketing budget, and were whipping together a national TV commercial, to be shot the next week while I was in LA.
That put a damper on my plans to spend time relaxing in LA with Dalton. He was wrapping the film shoot Sunday, and would meet me down in California a few days after I got there.
I’d be staying in his gorgeous house in the Hollywood Hills, “warming” his bed by sleeping nude in his fancy Egyptian Cotton sheets until he arrived.
We hadn’t discussed what would happen after my vacation days ended, but I imagined it would be more of this, with both of us flying between the two cities as our schedules permitted.
A few days earlier, I’d been sure he was about to dump me, and now I was thinking about The Future. What had changed? The modeling contract.
Becoming a model changed everything.
See, my theory is that people don’t just get confident by acting confident and believing in themselves. You have to accomplish things, reach goals. Once I became the manager of the bookstore and had staff (even if it was just Amy and the occasional part-timer or student getting work experience), I gained the confidence of someone who was a boss. I acted like a boss because I was a boss.
Now I’d had my photo taken for Vanity f**king Fair, and was about to be rocking my curves and wobbles for an underwear line.
And that wasn’t nothing!
I was in a celebratory mood, and Shayla was taking all my good news with more grace every day.
“Good things are happening for us,” she’d say, as if the rising tide that was lifting my boat would also lift hers. And maybe it would.
She was so enthusiastic, in fact, that instead of staying quiet Friday night and getting a good night’s sleep before I took a long bus ride to the nearest city and then flight to LA, I agreed to some drinking Friday night. Not partying, mind you, but specifically drinking. Starting with cucumber gin and tonics at our house.
The house started filling up around eight o’clock, when I was still playing Tetris with my suitcase contents. Did I need to bring a blow dryer, or would Dalton have one at his house? I didn’t want to text and bother him with such a dumb girlie question, since he was working late, and I’d already asked so many questions already.
The music started up downstairs, and Shayla came up to put a cool mason jar full of ice, gin, tonic water, and sliced cucumbers in my hand. The sweating glass felt cool against my skin, and the drink went down like a refreshing waterfall that carries away all your worries—your worries about blow dryers, keys, and setting off the alarm system of a fancy house in the Hollywood Hills.
Mmm. Gin. Time to party.
CHAPTER 25
“Golden is here,” Shayla said. “And she’s got huge, epic news.”
I rolled my eyes. “The last time I saw her, she gave me the epic news that she’d joined a book club. Where ladies discuss a book and drink wine. Honestly, you’d think she’d just invented the printing press the way she went on about it.”
Shayla snickered. “But she’s sweet.”
“Yes. She is sweet. And maybe this time her epic news is actually epic.”
Shayla patted me on the shoulder and winked. “Hey, not everybody gets to be a role model for girls, modeling underpants and dating a hot actor.”
I swirled my ice and cucumbers, wondering where all the gin went. Somebody drank it! I would have to find another one.
“I’m no role model,” I snorted. “Just because I’m fat and somebody hot wants to f**k me doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. I didn’t cure a disease.”
“Please don’t say the f-word, and I don’t mean f**k.”
“Okay. Not fat. We’ll call my ass… too wide for narrow minds.”
“People on the internet are calling you juicy, and real.”
I put down my empty glass so I could cover both ears with my hands and sing, “La la la! I’m not listening! I already have enough voices in my head, la la la, and I don’t need more!”
She got bored of my crap and walked out, going downstairs to join the party. I thought about finishing my packing, but then realized I was also bored of my crap, so I went down to the party.
The first person to accost me was Golden. She’s a tiny little teacup poodle of a girl, with big eyes and a round head on a skinny neck. She was born with a full head of golden hair—hence the name—and her locks were still wavy and radiant, augmented by chunky streaks ranging from pumpkin spice to platinum. You would think people would have teased her and called her Goldilocks, but they rarely did.
“I have something to confess,” Golden said, clutching my arm just above the elbow, her fingertips digging in.
“Do I need to sit down to hear it?” I joked, for no benefit but my own, since my sarcasm was usually lost on her.
“I have a crush.” She blinked at me, her lashes emphatically cute across her doll-like blue eyes.
We stood near the door of my house, and my employee Amy came in with some friends her age. They all had on heavy makeup and ripped fishnet stockings, like they were fifteen going on fifty-year-old-hooker. Amy, with her blue hair and pale blond eyebrows, scurried past me like she was crashing the party and didn’t know whose house it was.
Actually, I didn’t remember inviting her, so maybe she was doing just that. Kids!
Ah, I felt so grown up, about to fly off to LA for my second photo shoot ever.
My living room was full of people talking over the music, and leaving their wet beverages on surfaces without using coasters. The urge I always got when we had a party—the urge to kick everyone out, or hide in my room—returned. The only cure was another cucumber gin and tonic.
Golden was still talking to me about her crush, and about how talking about the crush would jinx it. Because jinxes were real things.
I started making my way through the crowd, stopping only once to ask someone to smoke their joint on the porch and use the Ninja Turtles ashtray.