Chapter XXXIX. Awakening.
XXXIX.
AWAKENING.
SATURDAY.
On Saturday, the final day of shooting for the di Varenna campaign, the group descended upon Playa Santa Maria, a picturesque inlet fifteen minutes down the coast from the team’s hotel.
As usual, Cecilia and Marc had arrived before the talent to unload their equipment, while Maren’s crew set up base camp in the parking lot and a second staging area closer to the water.
They had a later start time than usual, and the sun was rising by the time Kip and Stu had erected the canopies and a couple of folding tables and chairs just up from the shore.
Cecilia took a moment to drink it all in, their last full day in paradise.
The pink crescent beach nestled between two large rock formations, the water a crystalline blue, the sun mounting in a violet sky.
The detached villas of the Hotel Twin Dolphin dotted the adjacent hills, but the area was otherwise rugged and remote. Perfection.
“Not bad, huh?” Marc commented, smearing zinc oxide across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “Can’t wait to dive in when this day is done.”
“The locations on this shoot have been amazing.”
“Yeah. Someone ought to raise a glass to Maren.” A smile crept slowly across his face, the white streaks spreading like war paint. “Too soon?”
Cecilia held up her bandaged hand, brandishing the waterproof cover she’d fashioned with a plastic bag and gaffer tape. “Too soon.”
In truth, she hadn’t given much thought to her injury, other than navigating in the shower that morning with one arm outside of the stall.
The pain was minor, and the incident paled in comparison to what had occurred afterward in Anouk’s suite.
That, she could not wipe from her mind. Mixed feelings of shame and guilt and pleasure that washed over her intermittently.
Slowly, the team rolled in, one after the other.
Sandro and Emilio moving in slow motion, Pietro appearing hungover, Jean-Luc and Rafaella giggling like teenagers.
And Maren keeping to herself beneath a wide-brimmed hat and Persol sunglasses, paging through her Smythson notebook.
Cecilia wondered if she was actually working or just faking it so she would not have to engage with others after last night’s melee.
She could not imagine the embarrassment.
“All?, les filles, les garcons! Dernier jour,” Didier announced, chirping upon his arrival in the tent. He greeted the team warmly, and on the surface, all seemed well, but Cecilia knew better. The sparkle did not quite reach his eyes. There was tension there.
“How is your hand, Cecilia?”
“Functioning mostly.”
“Bon. We make Marc do the heavy lifting today, yes?” He took a deep breath then, taking in the expanse of the cove, the sun, the sky, the sea. “C’est pas mal, hein? C’est pas mal du tout.”
Cecilia agreed that, all things considered, it wasn’t bad at all.
At some point Anouk, Bas, and Elliot descended from the parking lot with Sarah, Beatriz, Santiago, and Paola in tow. It was a pared-down crew. With Jaya and Katrine wrapped, the other assistants had stayed back at the hotel, packing up and shipping out inventory, prepping for the flight home.
Cecilia had made a conscious effort to avoid base camp and bumping into Anouk while she was going through the works, but the moment the model showed up on the beach—hair long and loose, outfitted in a cutout black maillot, with a terry-cloth robe as a cover-up—Cecilia’s pulse quickened. There was no escaping the intense pull.
“Ahh, si belle. We make magic today, yes?” Didier greeted Anouk with the traditional bise.
“Bien s?r. We make magic today.”
Anouk’s mood was light, happy. Cecilia assumed that she knew in the absence of the supermodels this was her opportunity to shine, that all eyes would be on her.
From beneath the canopy, Cecilia watched Didier, Jean-Luc, and Rafaella look over their notes, discussing what shots they already had in the bag and what they would need to round out the campaign. She was busying herself with prepping Polaroid film when Anouk sought her out.
“?a va?” Her greeting was casual, breezy.
Cecilia could smell her sunscreen and whatever hair product it was Santiago had sprayed on her beachy waves.
Something like watermelon, like sugar. She knew that if she looked her in the eye, there’d be no concealing every emotion she had been feeling since she left Anouk’s hotel room.
And she knew that anyone around them would be able to detect it as well.
“?a va,” she said, avoiding her gaze.
“It’s okay, your hand?”
“It’s okay. Yes. Thank you, again. That was very kind of you.”
Anouk was quiet for a moment, gauging Cecilia’s ambivalence, her avoidance.
“Yes. Well, good. I’m glad it’s okay,” she said eventually, before backing out of the tent and heading toward Beatriz.
Cecilia waited a long moment before glancing in the model’s direction.
Beatriz was adjusting her straps, positioning the cutouts just so, and Anouk was smiling, her head tilted up to the sun, unbothered.
As if she had not a care in the world. As if she had not had her fingers between Cecilia’s thighs a few short hours prior.
As if a reckless dalliance on the job was nothing out of the ordinary.
Cecilia wished she could be that detached, but she was built differently.
The first few setups of the day went off without a hitch.
The three models lying in the sand, bodies entwined, limbs entangled.
Rafaella and Jean-Luc were more than satisfied.
But later, after lunch, Didier decided he wanted to try something new, something slightly more “provocant.” Cecilia wasn’t certain if he was inspired by Anouk’s wardrobe change—a bronze string bikini, the hue electric against her skin—or if he’d been harboring the idea all along, but he led Anouk and Bas farther down the shoreline near the southern rock formation, and omitted Elliot from the shot.
Anouk was positioned prostrate on a beach blanket, her face resting on her arms, in the foreground, with Bas angled beside her, applying sunscreen to the backs of her legs.
Didier had crouched in the sand in his white cotton twill pants, and was shooting them head-on, while Marc moved alongside him with a reflector.
Apart from Beatriz, Santiago, and Sarah, who were huddled off to the side on their collapsible stools with their respective magazines and crossword puzzles, the others were all back up beneath the tent, sheltering from the sun.
Cecilia was standing just out of the way, attempting to load the second camera, when it started. Or at least that’s when she thought it started.
Didier had lowered his Nikon to readjust the bandana on his head.
“I need you to forget everything we shoot before this. Everything we did with the others. Because all those were sexy, but playful, yes? But this now needs to be full of passion. You two, you are madly in love. But it’s new.
Like in the beginning when you can’t take your hands off each other.
Don’t think so much about what the bodies are doing, I need to see this in the eyes.
I need to feel the electricity between the two of you. D’accord?”
Bas, who was typically game for anything, paused for a millisecond, gauging Anouk. “Yeah. D’accord. Anouk?”
She nodded her head. “D’accord.”
Cecilia watched as the models absorbed Didier’s notes, adjusting their poses. The moment mutating into something more intimate, charged. Bas’s hands higher on Anouk’s thighs. Just below her ass. Anouk lowering her eyelids, parting her lips.
Didier shot off several frames before once again directing. “This. Yes. But even sexier. Don’t be afraid to touch her ass. It’s okay if he touch the ass, Anouk?”
Cecilia didn’t hear Anouk respond one way or another. She might have nodded.
Beatriz materialized then, unlooped the strings of Anouk’s bikini suggestively, and then slipped out of frame. They reconvened, Didier and Marc on their knees in the sand. Bas palming the outside of Anouk’s thigh, grazing her hip.
“Bas. This is sexy lite. I don’t believe for one moment you’re fucking this girl.”
“I just don’t want…” Bas trailed off, and then lowered his face to the side of Anouk’s, whispering something in her ear.
She nodded. And Cecilia watched as his hand slipped up to the curve of Anouk’s ass, sliding in between her thighs, slow.
She felt it as if it were happening to her and immediately turned her head away, eyeing the others up at the tent. Oblivious.
She did not see the expression on Anouk’s face, but she heard Didier say, “Yes, this. Yes,” and his shutter clicking in rapid-fire succession. And she knew that he was getting the shot he wanted.