Chapter 3 – Pookie #2
He drapes a black necklace with a small pink cowboy hat pendant around my neck and attaches it to a wire that hangs down my back and gets plugged into the mic box.
I glance at myself in the mirror, and it's been years since I've seen myself in this lighting.
In the light. In the brightness. The world I'd been living in was dark, moody, and filled with tension.
I look better in the light, more alive, more free.
I'm slender, but toned and muscular. Nowhere near the physique of a bodybuilder, but big enough to—hopefully—not look like a scrawny stick on TV.
My hair is dark, almost black, which is a far cry from the sun-kissed color my hair used to be back when I practically lived outside on the California shores.
Talon peers over my shoulder, proud of his work. "We've been filming for a month, but the executives aren't happy with the footage. They fired two of the boys and brought you in last minute."
Something in the pit of my stomach tells me I should ask the question that comes next, because it seems kind of important. "Am I at least going to get trained for the job?"
He shakes his head with an amused smirk. "We're going with a fish-out-of-water storyline."
"A what?"
"Fucking hell." He talks into his mic. "Please tell me we didn't hire another guy without a foot in the industry.
" He turns his gaze back to meet mine in the mirror.
"Fish out of water means an outside perspective.
Someone new to the world. We're reshooting the pilot episode tonight, and your first night at Pink Stallion will serve as the lens for the audience.
This is reality television, meaning the ideal footage is authentic. You will be learning by fire."
It's my turn to shake my head, because that's not going to fly with me.
I'm not someone who can just walk into a room and pretend I know what I'm doing.
There has to be some training. Businesses have rules, regulations, and policies.
Before I can further protest, the door flings open and a tall woman with a bob enters.
"I heard the sirens wailing." Her eyes peel sideways to me, and she smirks. "At least he's cute." She grimaces as she directs her attention to Talon. "Maverick and Gunnar are out back fighting again."
"Good," Talon cackles, rubbing his fingers together in the universal sign of make me that money.
"Not good," she scoffs. "They're not mic'd."
Talon's face turns red, steam sizzling out of his ears. "Those two big-cock fuckers are going to send me into an early grave."
"It's okay, Talon," she assures him with a soothing voice. It kind of reminds me of the voice of one of my elementary teachers—soothing. "I'll handle the hot mess express new guy. You go handle the silent cowboys."
They know I'm standing right here, right?
Talon closes his eyes and takes a labored breath. "One more minor inconvenience is going to break me."
"I suppose this is a bad time to tell you Kolter called off tonight?"
His eyes flash open. "Not another word."
And then he's gone, storming out the door to either deal with the guys fighting out back or to end himself. I'm not entirely sure which. Either way, I'm now stuck with another stranger.
"Hi, I'm Jules, the other executive producer." She reaches out and forces me into a too-tight handshake. "The nicer one. The prettier one. The more relaxed one."
Yeah, something tells me that's not an accurate self-assessment.
She drags me by the arm to one of many chairs in front of the brightly lit mirror that stretches the width of the dressing room. "When's the last time you had a haircut?"
I shrug, not able to pinpoint an exact date, but it was before I fled my crazy ex. So... "Maybe a month?"
She shifts the weight of her body against the back of the chair, reaches over my shoulder, and digs a pair of shears out from a narrow drawer. My eyes follow her as she collects the hair at the front of my head between two fingers and begins to snip.
I swallow an agitated sigh but settle on saying nothing.
She chops my bangs, little fibers of hair falling into my lap.
"You're a hairdresser, too?" I ask nervously.
She squints her eyes as she collects another band of hair between her fingers. "I've seen a YouTube video or two. I cut my boyfriend's hair once."
"Yeah?" I tongue the inside of my cheek. "Did he look handsome when you were done?"
She chuckles quietly. "He never let me touch his hair again."
I throw up both hands in front of me in protest. "Okay, please stop."
Snip.
"Sorry, I can't do that. We have about an hour until showtime, and we still have a mountain of paperwork to sign. I need to make you as presentable as possible before strolling you into the lion's den."
These people need essential oils in their life. Where is the calm? Where is the comfort? Taking their words at face value, I don't think I would be considered crazy for believing I'm about to be sacrificed. "Are you always this—"
"This high-strung?" She tosses the shears onto the counter. "Only when everything is falling apart, which lately is every fucking day."
"No offense, but y'all are making me hungry for a Xanax."
She dips her head sideways and paws into her purse. "Oh, I can help you with that. I'm on a steady regimen."
I can't help but stare at her, absolutely confused how this is the version of her that's sedated. "I don't actually want your drugs."
"Suit yourself." She pops a tablet into her mouth and swallows it dry before reaching over me and grabbing a makeup brush and whatever kind of makeup is packaged in a folding device.
She kneads the brush over a powdery substance and dusts my face.
"We're going for a natural look. We don't yet know how you're going to look on camera, so we might need to go heavier next time.
Or we might not even need makeup at all.
" She leans in close enough that I swear I can feel the heat of her eyeballs on my cheeks.
"You have gorgeous skin, by the way. I don't see a blemish in sight. "
I mean to thank her for the compliment, but I'm distracted by the boisterous sound of what appears to be a stampede of buffalo. A moment later, the door swings open and a lineup of stunning men saunter in.
Chit-chatting. Laughing. Arguing.
And I can't hear a word they say as they make their way to the chairs with their names on them.
Boone sits down first, his jeans high on his waist. He's the only one with visible body hair, rugged on his pecs with a perfectly trimmed happy trail traveling to the hem of his jeans.
His voice is a raw and gruff, low-pitched tremor that you'd expect to hear from the lips of a daddy-type.
He carries a Southern drawl with well-groomed stubble that's no longer than a day or two's worth of growth.
Gunnar adjusts himself as soon as he sits down, making a scene of the way his junk moves beneath his jeans.
He ribs Boone beside him. It sounds like an inside joke, but only Gunnar is laughing.
First impressions matter, and that tattoo-painted man is a loose cannon.
Born wild, forever wild. The kind of man who tells you flat out he'll ruin your life, and you let him do it anyway.
A bad boy who'll have you crying into a pillow a few months down the line, wondering how the fuck you got there.
Dixon slumps into his chair with a yawn. He seems completely out of place compared to the rest of them: reserved, quiet, and slimmer than the rest.
And then there's Maverick, who takes a seat with a smile on his face.
A smile that only widens when he catches his own reflection in the mirror.
He appears antsy, unable to sit still. He stands back up and struts around the dressing room with his unzipped jeans slung low on his hips, the strings of a pink thong angled on his waist. He's tall, dark, handsome, and probably full of enough shit to clog the entire city's plumbing system.
He possesses a magnetic charisma worn on his sharply defined jawline.
He's hot shit. He knows it. I'd let him ruin me.
Destroy every bit of the life I have left. I'm all too easy a mark.
And then there's Braxton, or who I can reasonably suspect to be Braxton, based on the fact that he's the only one who hasn't claimed his chair other than the absent guy named Kolter.
Braxton, what can I say? He possesses total fuckboy energy with wavy brown hair peeking beneath a backwards pink cap.
His hair is stroked with natural blonde highlights and shadows.
Piercing blue eyes like the seas back home in Laguna Beach.
He wears a smile—forced and feigned—all too well.
He doesn't sit down. Instead, he comes up right behind me, meeting me in the mirror before he places a hand on each of my shoulders. Firm, but not too firm. He lowers himself just enough so that his head is right beside mine as he smiles into the mirror. "Hi, new guy."
I'm speechless, not lost for words exactly. Rather, lost for thoughts. All I can mutter is a trembling, "Hi."
He inhales a quiet huff, his smile widening.
And then he takes a seat beside me, digs his phone out of his pocket, and starts swiping through a dating app. Girls. He's swiping through girls, matching with every single one that appears on his screen.
Total fucking fuckboy.