11 | Know You
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I can barely believe the day is almost over when I glance at my phone. One hour left.
It hasn't felt real. Like I'm not really here in the room, letting people mess with my hair and makeup, passing me outfits, ordering me to stand in certain positions. The flash of cameras have blurred into nothingness, almost familiar now as they continue to echo around me.
I still don't know how I feel about it.
I've looked at myself in the mirror, tracing the dark eyeshadow, the black inked into my waterline, the pink fanning over my cheeks, the lips that move as I open them. I don't see myself, more than my usual alienation, this might as well be a different fucking person.
Maybe it's helped. It was weird at first, the curls, the tight clothes, feeling exposed.
But because it's so out of the realm of anything I usually do I managed to embody a character.
I pretended, for a few hours, that I was a girl who could model, pull the right face, know how to move her body.
When nobody else seemed to notice the nerves crashing their way through my mind or the awkwardness cursing my body with every movement, it sort of melted away, numbed itself.
I just moved without really thinking, let myself fall into the rhythm of the flashes, the voices, the huddle of other, real, models around me.
I'm in my third outfit, a white halter top, fabric wrapping around my neck and tight around my boobs, pushing them up higher.
My skirt is the same as the one I had earlier, short, too short probably.
One of the ones that you're convinced is hiking up and flashing your butt but somehow isn't. I'm weirdly used it now though. No one else seems to find it a problem.
I glance up from the corner of the room I'm perched in, hoping the minutes of my small break will hurry up and move on so I can finally get out of here. Forget today, or not. My brain will have a field day recounting every single moment, every insecurity.
But my tired eyes only catch something else. The other issue that's been following me all day, lingering like a fly buzzing beside my head.
Nolan.
He's engrossed in a conversation with Honey.
I watch as his large arm moves to pull the camera hanging round his neck over himself, arms flashing with faint veins as the muscle subtly flexes.
Honey giggles,hand flying over her mouth as she flutters her lashes up at him.
When he begins to show her something on the screen she places a few of her fingers right over his.
They've been talking all day.
He's flirting with her because he always does, because so much of him hasn't changed. Of course he'd take any opportunity to pounce on the prettiest girl in the room. I'm sure she's his type, though at this point who isn't his type.
My eyebrows furrow and I try not to let any annoyance pass over my face. I shouldn't care, I don't really, but I'm already irritated about the fact he was just...here. I'm not even safe from him outside Riley's controlled bubble.
We haven't even spoken much, he's probably spent more time talking to Honey actually. Maybe he's finally planning on leaving me alone. I doubt that.
Like some sort of sensor his eyes flick away from Honey, just for a second, reaching mine. They're brown blobs from where I am, but they still flash some sort of look. His lips don't reach a smile. We haven't spoken a lot but there's been this, moments of eye contact.
I don't get what he's trying to say, whether he's saying anything at all.
There was a moment I thought I'd figured it out.
Reassurance. When my tumbling nerves crept in it helped steady me a bit.
But that was only because he's familiar, because I can deal with his bullshit. I'm more used to his camera.
Besides, he constantly does the opposite of reassure me.
I'm dragged out of my break eventually and put back in the spotlight, taking a few shots with a couple of the girls. They're all gorgeous too, stunning models that are actually supposed to be here. I keep expecting them to say I'm doing something wrong when I pose beside them, but they don't.
The flashes keep going, lights feeling brighter. My head is starting to ache and my eyelids are heavy, part of me wanting to curl up in a ball and fall asleep. Luckily, as soon as I get too close to zoning out we're done, finally.
This strange experience somewhere between a fever dream and a nightmare is over.
I move without much thought, going to the bathroom to get changed, back in the comfort of my grey sweatpants and the oversized hoodie I brought with me.
I don't even care how much of my makeup is still clinging to my face when I lazily attempt to take it off.
Most of it's gone but there's a dark ring of black around each eye, a lingering pigment of colour on my cheeks.
I'm slotting my phone into my bag when it buzzes in my palm.
Mom: Bad traffic. Might be stuck for a while.
The little excitement that had built up in me dampens, a sigh escaping my mouth out loud.
The care home is a little out of town, towards the city, those traffic jams on the highway can be treacherous, especially on a Saturday.
There must've been some sort of sports game, that always clogs everything up.
There's nothing I can do, though, neither can my mom.
Uber it is then, I guess.
Me: Don't worry about it, love you.
I wait for her to send an I love you back before pushing open the door and trailing my way through the building. Most people have filtered out already but there's a steady flow of stragglers in front and behind me. I just want to get home as quickly as my feet will take me.
Cold wind washes over me outside, sky almost dark and glowing with various car and street lamps. Voices mix with the swirl of revving engines, a few cars pulling out the lot beside the building. I stand for a moment, taking a second to breathe.
I glance out at the street ahead, down the line of cars. But my eyes stop when I get to the furthest one. It's noticeably red, even in the low light, top down with one door slightly cracked open. It's too far from the streetlights to see a person but there is one, a shadow in the driver's seat.
An arm falling out over the door.
I freeze, mind spinning.
It's the same car.
The same car with the guy who trailed me, said all that creepyshit and made me bolt to my car. I'd partly blocked out the memory but somehow my subconscious saved it. I know, with almost full certainty, that that's definitelythe car.
I barely remember what the actual guy inside looked like, other than vaguely dark features. But that arm, the casual sling, is exactly the same.
I can almost hear the voice again. I like my women quiet. Something prickles up the back of my neck, dancing on my spine. Confusion, fear maybe.
There's no way he's following me, right?
"Birdie," A voice says, interrupting my thoughts.
I turn to see Nolan standing there, Honey at his side with a large smile across her lips.
"Birdie?" She laughs, pulling an amused face, "Well, that's cute."
I'm not sure what to say, words clogged in my brain.
"He let me say a bunch of stuff about you before telling me you know each other... good things of course," She rambles, arm lightly brushing his, "You looked amazing out there, doll."
I let a smile twitch its way onto my face, "Oh, thanks."
"Don't even worry about it," She gushes with a dismissive arm wave, before turning to Nolan, "I'm gonna say bye to my friends not joining us, okay?"
He nods back to her, "All good."
I watch as she bounds away, hand finally not faintly dragging itself over Nolan's arm. I feel bad for getting so irritated at the way she's drooling over Nolan. She does seem like a genuinely nice person, better than the one still stood in front of me.
"Riley picking you up?" He muses after a moment.
I shake my head, "She can't."
"Oh. How are you getting home then?"
I narrow my eyes at him, trying to read his tone, his game.
"Why do you care?" I mumble back, fingers swiping open my phone, "You've got a date to get to, right?"
He almost chuckles, not quite, "It's not a date."
"Of course it isn't," I mutter back, "You don't do dates."
I can tell he's itching to say something just as petty back, I feel the gaze of those hazel eyes on my skin but he pauses, stopping himself when he sees the app flashing up on my phone.
"Uber?" He says, "Really?"
"No, I'm calling my private jet."
This time he does actually chuckle, "You don't need to spend that money. We're fifteen minutes away."
I finally snap my eyes to his, "Do you want me to magically conjure up a car? Or are you offering to pay for my Uber?"
He doesn't say anything, licking his lips slowly in thought. I watch the movement of that metal cupped around his bottom lip. The evening air curls around us both.
"I'll drive you," He eventually states.
What?
My face doesn't move a muscle, trying to see if he's really serious. I don't want to be trapped in his car, allow him to do me favours. I already can't deal with the parts of him that aren't annoying or confusing, that nice, maybe even caring persona buried so deeply.
"No," I reply blankly, "Go on your not-date, I'm getting my Uber."
"It wasn't an offer, Birdie," He chimes back, tilting his head in the way he always does. Like he's staring deeper, searching for something behind my eyes.
"You can't just..." My words of contention trail off when I catch that car behind him in the distance again.
It's got its lights on now, humming to life with a low engine. The figure inside moves and time melts in my brain, the world around me is gone.
The arm raises, slowly, but on purpose. I can't make out much but what I do see is enough. Two fingers, thumb in the air so it resembles a gun. And they're pointed at me, aimed at me. It hovers for a moment, before the person mock shoots, face stills shrouded in darkness.
Everything in me stills.
"What was that?" Nolan taunts, smiling a little.
He doesn't know that he's not the one distracting me, making my words fall off the edge of the earth. Who the fuck is that? Why are they following me? Why are they pretending to shoot me?
Nolan's face pauses then catches the way my eyes are locked on something behind him. But by the time he turns to look too, the car has driven away, leaving an empty patch of concrete and the faint hum of its engine.
"Fine," I spit out, the word almost catching on my tongue, "Drive me... if you have to."
I don't care that Nolan's offering to get me out of here anymore, I just need to get out. I don't know if I'm imaging things, making this all up. It doesn't feel real. Maybe I'm just tired. Either way I need to go home, stop standing out here in the cold.
Nolan looks at me quizzically and, for a second, I'm worried he's going to say something about me zoning out. He doesn't.
"Give me a minute."
He turns and walks over to Honey, explaining something that makes her bright smile fade a little. It only lights itself again when he gets out his phone and they exchange numbers. I don't have to hear much of their muffled words to figure that out.
When he strides back over he gestures for me to follow him to his car.
"I can't believe you took time out of your not-date to drive me home," I say, the words falling out my mouth without much thought. It actually surprises me. Why am I so bitter about this?
"Actually, we rescheduled," He corrects, pulling open his driver seat door.
I get in on the opposite side, frowning at him as my butt hits the seat, "You missed a chance to sleep with a woman? To drive to a house you hate?"
"She was going somewhere further in the opposite direction, it was just bad timing," He mutters as the car begins to reverse, "And technically I don't hate your house."
His words lay flat in the air for a moment. It's hard to think of a way driving me home benefits him. The only thing I can come up with is him trying to be nicer to me for Riley, she'd definitely approve of him doing overly-gentlemanly shit like this.
Or he's just being nice...as hard as it is to believe.
The silence grows thicker and I open my phone to try and ignore it.
I swipe through all the open windows, deleting them as slow as I can so I don't have to look up and remember who's driving this vehicle.
My hands tighten around the phone when I pause on the photo app, one photo that automatically saved from my messages staring back at me.
Me. In black and white. The photo I vaguely remember him saying was his favourite. I remember that and his stupid condom drawer.
"Why did you send me that photo?" My voice is quieter, hushed.
I don't know why I say it. It feels like a thought that should've stayed trapped in my head. But it's already been circling up there for days.
He blinks, "What?" but by the time the word has finished I know he realises what I mean.
I sit up further in the seat, beige leather sliding beneath me.
"You know what I'm talking about."
He exhales, low and quiet, eyes visibly narrowing. I don't know what he's going to say, whether he's going to deny he even sent it at all. We both know he did.
"I was drunk..." He mumbles eventually, eyes so glued to the road you'd think they're permanently stuck like that, "And I wasn't lying, about it being my favourite."
I watch his knuckles tense on the wheel, veins trickling from his lower arm to the base of his wrist. I'm not sure what to think.
His favourite.
He's never sent me any photos of me before.
And he's been drunk a million times before.
What's changed? Does he want to torment me with a version of myself I find it hard to look at?
Something pools in my stomach, an almost warm feeling, like when we had our drunk conversation I barely remember.
"I wanted you to see..." He speaks again, voice almost as low as mine, "See what makes it my favourite. You never see how beautiful you look."
"You don't mean that," I shoot back, too quickly. Defensively.
He shouldn't say things like that. He really shouldn't. I can't decide if I don't like it because it's nice, because I don't want to hear his compliments, or because it's very close to something that would make Riley lose her mind.
My chest tightens, twisted emotions exploding in my head. Beautiful?It's too much.
"I'm honest," He replies, voice breathy almost.
"No you're not," I say and it comes out more exasperated than I mean it to, "Why do you keep saying that? Acting like you've never told a lie in your life?"
"When have I ever lied?"
This is like a game to him. He thinks he can just say whatever he wants, give people emotional whiplash, make you question what version of himself he even is. He's spent his whole life lying.
"You still don't talk about yourpast, whatever the fuck it is you were doing."
The sentence cracks through the air so hard I almost feel it.
We haven't mentioned it, not really. No one has directly even tried asking him to explain himself.
Dancing around our faint memories in his house is the most he'll go.
Anything outside of that, anything about his stupid double life, is like an untouchable vault of secrets. Secrets you don't ask about.
I hadn't even realised I was under his strange, past-erasing spell until now.
I catch his knuckles clench harder on that wheel, his jaw tightening. That small softness in his eyes melts, a hard look cementing itself on his face. My eyes dart between this new expression and one longer curl at the nape of his neck.
"See?" I sigh, "You've gone all serious and secretive."
He runs his tongue over his top row of teeth before making a sharp click noise.
"There's nothing to talk about, Birdie."
Even the nickname is different, no edge of amusement, no softness. It's hollow, like he added it to the end of the sentence just because he always does.
"I beg to differ," I contest, "Unless all those black eyes all came from nowhere? Or that cut on your knuckles? Or the busted lips?"
I don't even know why I'm still speaking, pushing him. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it...but when does he ever? When will he if everyone in his life ignores the huge fucking elephant in the room?
"Why do you care?" He says, sharply. Those eyes are still away from mine.
"I don't. I just don't like you acting like a fucking saint."
"Me saying something nice to you is me being a saint?" He questions with a breathy voice, "I can't give you a car ride? Do you a favour?"
My mind is blaring, there's suddenly too much noise.
"You can't say I look beautiful!" I shoot back, words ringingloud in my ears.
Nolan is silent. His jaw is still clenched, breath low and hazy in the quiet. I can't read his face, what he's thinking. It's even more impossible than normal.
I'd like to think he knows I'm right, that he can't just keep saying whatever he wants, blurring the lines between how he used to be and the complicated person he is now.
But I don't trust him to have any sane thoughts.
"I'm not evil," He mutters eventually, "I'm capable of not being a piece of shit."
His words hang in the air, the tone different. It's like some layer has been peeled back, only partially, but it's noticeable. His usual hint of sarcasm is flat, buried by his concentrated words.
"What I said about you... you asked. You wanted to know," He murmurs, "That was just my drunk reasoning. It doesn't mean anything."
Obviously it doesn't mean anything. What would it even mean? It just feels wrong, like he's not supposed to be saying those things to me.
I go to speak, "But that's not-"
"That's not the point, I know," He cuts off my sentence, "I won't say shit like that if you don't want me to, I get it. I shouldn't."
Then, just as the car pulls into a road not too far away from home hefinally looks at me.
Weak shadows dance over his face, green flecks muddied in the brown.
His lips are pulled tight, expression still hardened.
He can't stare for too long, not with the road ahead, but the weight with which he does makes it feel like an eternity.
"I'll leave you alone, as much as I can," He sighs, "But I'm not going to stop trying to be a decent person because it's different from the person you remember."
The words drift over me before they sink in. I'll leave you alone. I suddenly feel even more out of place than I did in the photo studio, like I'm a ghost hovering outside of my human body.
"I won't know you, Ava, not anymore. I get that's what you want."
My name on his tongue sounds weirder than when he first said it at the market. It's quieter, more purposeful. Like he's declaring it as some sort of claim, a promise. A promise to not know me. Something in me shifts, my brain replaying each syllable as it fell from his mouth.
The last few minutes of the car ride are silent. Not awkward, but not exactly comfortable either, somewhere twisted and messy in-between. My head is spinning and I can't make it stop. I cup my palm to my chin and rest my knuckles against my mouth, watching the blurring outside the window.
He's going to leave me alone. It's what I wanted, what I've been wanting since he came back.
Like he's finally fulfilling the mature version of him I thought he was in the first few minutes I saw him again.
I should be happy but I'm too hit by the weight of the conversation to feel much.
No more stupid teasing comments or that look of satisfaction he gives me when he makes my lips draw closed in silence. No more slithering his way under my skin with comments made just to rattle me.
A small part of me doubts he's even being honest but, for once, I actually believe him.
There was something truthful about his words, his lower tone, the way he echoed my name.
I've never seen him look so serious, like he wasn't just leaving me alone because I want him to but because he needs to, for himself.
I feel like shutting down, turning off every part of me working to make sense of this.
When the car stills he turns to me again and searches my eyes,harder, like he's really looking for something. Or like he's trying to stop time, keep us trapped in this weird space forever. I break the gaze, filtering my pupils towards his soft tufts of hair interlocked with curls.
Ordinarily, he would make some stupid comment, I can almost hear it. Aren't you going to say thankyou? Something like that.
But he doesn't.
"Bye."
"Bye," I mirror as I unfasten my seatbelt, "Thank you, for the ride."
He nods in approval, watching carefully as I push open the door and pull myself out.
I turn back to shut it, his face masked by the window, before finally walking away from him.
What the hell just happened?
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