Chapter 30
Lior
“Look here, Lior.” Click. “Chin up.” Click. “Chin down.” Click. “Nice. Lighting?”
I straightened my body out while the lighting was changed, glancing at the clock on the wall as I did. We’d been at it for three hours and I ached deep in my bones. Not from the physicality of holding my body at weird angles for long periods of times, but from the mental and emotional toll.
As soon as I’d arrived I was shoved into a jumpsuit that was about an inch too short in the torso and rode up painfully, practically slicing my clit in two and making me have to hunch my shoulders to accommodate my tender parts.
But hunching wouldn’t show off the clothes.
Thirty minutes later, my nether regions numb from lack of blood flow, I was allowed to change.
“Lior?”
I moved back into a pose.
“She needs powder. And what is happening with her hair?” the photographer asked.
The makeup and hair team moved in and I was powdered and brushed and then left on my own again beneath the hot glare of the lights.
The cameraman dropped the camera down.
“You look thick through the middle. Can you turn and twist more that way?”
That way. As if I knew what “that way” meant. But as I so often did, I tried to read his mind, moving my body accordingly. Thankfully I’d been doing this a long time now and rarely got it wrong.
“Excellent,” he said.
Several dozen more clicks of the camera and I was off to change into my next outfit.
“You have gained weight?” the woman helping me slip into a pair of pants asked in a thick French accent.
I gave her a tight smile. “I have not.”
“Oh. We get your measurements beforehand but… it is tight.”
I knew for a fact, from having worn this designer’s clothes before, that they often arrived slightly smaller than what my measurements were.
I also knew I was not big by anyone’s standards and this was just what they did to us females.
They tried to make us feel as though it was us, because surely it couldn’t be the one who sewed the garments.
“You can measure me again,” I said, careful to keep my voice from taking on a tone that would be taken as rude. “Do you have a scale to weigh me on?”
Her smile was quick as she backed away to grab the blouse I’d be wearing for these next shots.
“Ah. No,” she said. “I’m sure it is just a mistake.”
I buttoned the pants, holding in my breath a little as I did and then donned the blouse she held out.
Standing still, I let her fuss about me, tucking and pulling until everything looked just right, and then I was under the lights again, feeling the scrutiny of the photographer from behind the lens.
Click, click, click. Turn, pose, hold, hunch, arch, hold, tilt head this way, that way, look there, now there… hold.
“Bring in the male model,” the photographer said, and a young man I recognized as the new face of Chanel’s fragrance for men stepped into the light.
He was handsome, of course, in a brooding way, his pale skin in contrast to his dark hair, his eyes a piercing pale gray. He smiled and I smiled back and reached out a hand.
“Lior,” I said.
“Jean-Michel,” he said, sliding his hand slowly into mine. I resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose. “And I know who you are,” he said in a thick French accent. “You are a legend. An industry great. Though your time of course is nearing its next phase.”
I’d have bristled at basically being called old, but this wasn’t the first time it had happened.
As soon as I hit twenty-nine the whispers had started.
Younger women were coming up. I didn’t mind it.
This is how the business worked. And there was only so long I could take the sort of scrutiny I’d received for the past decade.
I’d nearly reached the end of my rope. The feelings I had tamped down time and time again were starting to rise uncontrollably.
Staying “up here” like my mother had taught me, wasn’t working so well anymore.
The tight-fitting lid that sat snug on my box of emotions was starting to tear at the corners.
Kind of like my nether-regions in this new pair of pants.
We were called to action and set our poses.
Stare into each other’s eyes, hold. Look over your shoulder at him, hold.
Lips nearly touching. My back to his front.
My lips touching the skin of his neck. His hand low on my stomach, fingers spread.
Hold. Hold. Hold. I felt him growing hard against my ass and anger rose inside me.
Click.
I threw his hand off me and marched to the changing area.
“One more for—” the photographer started.
“No,” I said, and disappeared behind the curtain.
When the stylist slipped in behind me, I was already calling my agent, not paying the slightest attention to what time it was in New York.
“If I get one more boner pressed against my ass, I’m suing,” I said to her voice mail. I disconnected and turned to the stylist. “What’s next?”
She stared at me for a long moment as if wanting to say something, and then turned to the rack of clothes. A long, diaphanous green dress was held out to me.
“Do you want… I can leave,” she said, her voice quiet.
Tears welled in my eyes and I threw my head back. I would not ruin my makeup over that twat of a man. I sniffed, dabbed at my eyes, and gave her my most famous smile.
“I would love your help, Marceline. Thank you.”
She nodded, giving me a sad smile, and then helped me out of one outfit and into the other. As she laced up the back of the dress I heard her whisper, “I’m sorry” and then she disappeared out the curtained door.
Two days later I was on a flight home, exhausted mentally and emotionally, moments from my three-day shoot wreaking havoc with the walls I’d firmly put in place years ago.
I was angry. Violated. And sad. I was so sick of people thinking I was a thing to be used, dealt with, and thought to be problematic when I stood up for myself.
I was tired of men like Jean-Michel, who treated me like a prop they could handle any way they wanted – including pressing the erection they couldn’t control up against my ass as if I had been standing there waiting for it and should feel honored.
“Fucking men,” I muttered under my breath, ignoring the curious look of the woman beside me.
I was done. I wanted nothing more than to get to the safety of my home, crawl into my bed, and sleep for the next several days.
I wondered if lobotomies were still in fashion.
When the cab pulled up to my house and I saw Graham sitting on the front steps, I wasn’t sure which emotion to pick from the many threatening to burst from my skin.
Was I happy to see him? Yes. Was I annoyed by his “You are very sweet” text? Also yes. I understood he was hurting, but seeing as there had been something between us, a little more than “You are very sweet” felt warranted.
Shoving down the tears I desperately wanted to cry, I pasted on a smile instead as I got out of the cab.
“How did you know when I’d be home?” I asked, hauling the lone backpack I’d taken on my trip over my shoulder and noticing the coffee and bag from Mornin’ Joe’s in his hands, despite the fact that it was four in the afternoon.
“That’s my secret and I will not tell.”
I peered at him. His voice was light but there was something in his eyes. Something not right.
“Well,” I said, my voice bordering on business-like. “I’m happy to see you.” Could he sense that wasn’t exactly true?
And then, horror of horrors, I burst into tears without warning.
“Holy shit.” He got to his feet and started towards me. “Lior?”
I shook my head and hurried past him to unlock my door and get inside before someone saw me. He followed, locking the door behind us and tailed me to the kitchen where I was wiping at my face with a hand towel covered in a spider motif.
“Did something happen?” he asked. “I mean, obviously, but… Are you okay?”
I put the towel down and leaned my elbows on the kitchen island, covering my face with my hands.
“I think I’ve finally had enough,” I said, my voice muffled.
“Tell me what happened.”
His face went from concerned to furious as I told him about Jean-Michel and the comments made by the photographer and the stylist about my body.
He listened as I recounted the shoot that happened the following day.
The makeup artist, different from the one the day before, used a cream on my face that made me break out in hives, and everyone seemed to be annoyed with me as if I’d somehow caused it.
When the rash finally calmed (after I downed some Benadryl and was covered in cold packs someone had run out to get) the hair stylist burned me with the curling iron so bad I had a blister that the makeup artist then tried to cover up – which was so painful I cried, messing up the intricate eyeliner job she’d already done.
By the time I was ready for the shoot, I was shaking from nerves and lack of food because no one had thought to feed me in all that time and the only snack I’d brought I’d eaten two hours before.
My agent was out of town and had terrible WiFi, so she didn’t get my messages until I was on the plane home. She apologized profusely and promised to rip them all a new one.
“We’ll never book with them again,” she swore.
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to book with anyone again. Ever.
“I think I’m done,” I said to Graham.
“I think I want to meet this Jean-Michel dickhead,” he said, reaching across the island and squeezing my hand. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” I said, sliding my hand from his and standing up straight. “I’m fine.”
“Lior. You’ve taken care of me like no one ever has. Let me do something for you. Please.”
I pointed to the bag and coffee cup from Joe’s sitting off to the side and he grinned and slid them to me.
“What else,” he asked. “Do we call for takeout or make something here. Is there anything in your cupboards besides donut holes?” He got up from the stool he’d been sitting on and started opening cupboards.
“Do we need to make it a movie night? What have you got going on tomorrow? We could do a movie marathon. Is it finally time to watch all five Sharknado movies?”
Despite myself, I started to laugh. “It will never be time to watch any Sharknado movie.”
“You are a snob, Lior Flynn. Let it be known.”
Again, despite the lightness in his voice, there was something off about him.
Was I noticing it because I felt off too?
He was obviously still sad about Bronte, as he should be, but I didn’t think that was it.
There was something about the way he wouldn’t hold my gaze and was constantly looking away from me or around me, instead of really at me like he usually did.
Before I could think about it further though, he had raided the drawer filled with takeout menus and was waving them in my face.
“Pick your poison, Flynn.”
“My choice?” I asked, eyebrows raised. What I really wanted was to just crawl into bed fully clothed and pull the covers over my head. Maybe forever.
“Your choice.”
Fuck it. Graham was here and he was trying to cheer me up. I’d deal with my emotions and his inability to take me as I was tomorrow. I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about what I wanted.
“Um. You’re not doing this right,” he said.
“I totally am,” I said and opened my eyes. “I want dumplings and steamed veggies from BK’s, panang curry from Chantanee, fries from Five Guys, and a milkshake from Shake Shack.”
His eyes were wide. He slowly started to nod, a smile stretching across his face.
“Impressive,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
It took over an hour for everything to arrive. We set it all on the coffee table family style and turned on a new series both of us had been wanting to watch, leaving a couple of feet between us on the couch.
When the first episode was over, he turned to me.
“Do you really think you’re done with modeling?” he asked.
I stared at him for a moment, noticing a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.
“I don’t know if I can put myself through it anymore,” I said, my voice flat.
“The whole plane ride home I recounted so many moments of feeling like shit over the years. Of being at the mercy of these people all in the name of making it big. And now I am a name and I’m still dealing with it.
Assholes that think they can press their dicks against me or whisper innuendos or expect me to go out with them just because they’re good looking or famous. As if I don’t have a mind of my own.”
“What would you do if you quit? Would you take that job for your friend in Seattle? Have you been looking at houses still?”
I hadn’t been. To be honest, there had been a glimmer of hope after we’d had sex that first time that maybe we could figure this thing out between us.
Maybe we could actually trust one another.
Maybe he wasn’t someone who would ever try and make me be what he wanted and use my fame to gain something for himself.
And maybe he’d learn that there were upsides to my fame as well as the chaotic downsides.
It wasn’t all bad. And if I’d learned to live with it, he could too.
But the way he looked now, I had a feeling for him there was only one answer.
If we were ever going to make a go at something more than friends, I’d have to step away from the limelight.
And while I was pissed over what had happened at this most recent shoot, was I really ready to give it all up?