CHAPTER FIFTEEN Johanna
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Johanna
“DOWNTOWN” — TEGAN AND SARA
Six Years Ago
I’ve been lying on the guest room bed for an hour after getting home from Target with Brandon, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
I keep replaying the same two things over and over.
First, the way Brandon handled me—the way he forced my hand and saw straight through all my bullshit, the way he has since the moment we met.
Second, the way I let him do it.
I shouldn’t be thinking of any of it, but my brain won’t let it go. I’m spiraling and I know it, but before I have too much time to go down the rabbit hole I’ve insisted on digging, my phone buzzes on the bedside table. The screen lights up with my agent’s contact card.
Incoming Call: Anthony Windham
I answer quickly. “Anthony?”
I’m surprised to hear from him. When I left school in New York for the summer to come out to LA, I’d assumed I wouldn’t hear from anyone about booking until I got back to school in the fall.
“Johanna, darling!” Anthony exclaims over the hum of the commotion around him.
I can hear the clacking of metal stands, the slap of heels on the studio floor, and someone shouting about lighting temperatures—he’s definitely at a shoot, probably waving his hands around dramatically while speaking with me on his Bluetooth headset.
Modeling wasn’t something I planned. It just sort of fell into my lap.
It started when I was in high school, when my friends and I dared each other to go to an open-call audition for a modeling agency in Boston. We didn’t tell our parents, we just got in my friend Hannah’s Toyota and drove the two hours south not thinking anything would come of it.
On the drive home, the agency called me and said they showed my photos to the editor of a small fashion magazine. The editor loved it—loved me—so much, they wanted to book me for a full spread.
My mom was furious that I did this without telling her, but even she couldn’t deny what a great opportunity it was. She took me back to Boston the next day, met Anthony, and we signed my representation contracts that same afternoon.
College is my mom’s attempt to keep me humble.
Agreeing to come out to LA for the summer is—was—my attempt to keep my head on straight.
“What’s going on?” I ask, sitting up.
“I have news,” he practically sings. “Amazing news, my girl. A colleague saw your look book and wants you on the cover for his next national print campaign. Your first cover, Johanna. You’ll be needed on set tomorrow morning at nine.”
I feel myself crashing out as soon as he says the shoot is tomorrow.
“Anthony, I’m in LA,” I remind him. “There’s no way I can be back in New York and ready for a shoot by tomorrow morning.”
“The shoot is in Los Angeles,” Anthony says. “I’m texting you the address, okay? I won’t be there, but their team will have everything you need ready for you when you arrive. Go crush it like I know you can, and I’ll talk to you after.”
He hangs up before I can protest or ask any other questions—namely, how in the hell am I supposed to get there?
I’d mapped the address Anthony sent—a studio in Hollywood. I toss my phone on the pillow beside me and let out a pent up breath. With the insanity that is LA traffic during morning rush hour, it will easily take over an hour to get there from the Palisades.
Perfect.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
My first major shoot—my first cover shoot—and I’ve got no way to get there without spending a small fortune on an Uber or bothering one of the guys to take me.
I suppose I could take Grayson’s car, but I don’t know where he keeps his keys and I’m sure as hell not calling him to ask.
I could ask Tony, but I don’t really want to put up with sleazy jokes and bad flirting all day.
Eric would probably take me, but I don’t exactly think the kind of blow out the hair stylist is looking for is the one that occurs from riding on the back of a motorcycle.
Dragging my hands down my face with a groan, I realize I’m only left with one option since I’d rather use the hundred dollars I’d spend on an Uber for literally anything else.
Brandon.
I don’t want to have to ask him for help—for anything, ever.
Yet, here we are.
I stare at the ceiling, begging for another solution to present itself… but nothing ever comes.
I know what I have to do.
I have to go find Brandon, and ask him for a favor I really, really wish I didn’t need.
Pushing myself off the bed, I exit the safety of the guest room and make my way down the hallway leading to the living room.
He’s sitting on the leather lounge chair with nothing but the lamp on the side table for lighting, deeply immersed in whatever book he’s reading.
The rest of the house is quiet—Eric and Tony must be out for the night.
I’m awkwardly hovering at the end of the hallway, watching him for a beat too long, trying to think of how to start the conversation.
It’s not that I think Brandon will say no—I actually know he won’t.
It’s that I need the help at all.
He’ll be annoyingly eager to drive me, I’m sure. You know, assuming I ever get my words together enough to ask him to.
I take in a slow breath, then another.
Then—
“Are you planning on lurking over there all night,” he asks calmly without ever looking up from his book, “or are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
He knew I was standing there.
Of course he did.
“Oh, I—” I stammer. “I kind of need…”
I trail off, the words dissolving in my throat.
What is it about this guy that makes me lose every ounce of cool I have?
“Johanna,” he says, closing his book and carefully placing it on the side table. “Use your words.”
My mouth goes dry.
His eyes lift to meet mine—slowly, intentionally—and the force of his stare nearly knocks the air right out of me.
“I need a favor,” I blurt before the words leave me again.
It comes out too fast, too desperate, too… me apparently, because my voice practically sucker-punches the quiet room.
Brandon blinks once, slowly, his expression unreadable.
He leans back in the chair, man-spreading like he owns the entire moment, looking entirely too comfortable. It’s as if he’s actually weighing whether or not he’ll grant me the privilege of his help.
“A favor,” he repeats, his voice maddeningly steady—the exact opposite of mine. “Okay, then.”
He’s waiting for me to say something, looking at me expectantly with that quiet, infuriating patience he always seems to have.
I’m just… dying.
“Tell me what you need,” he says gently, the corner of his mouth lifting just a little.
I wish there was a world in which this man didn’t make everything as difficult as humanly possible—where asking for someone’s help didn’t feel like peeling off years of armor that’s been literally welded onto my skin.
I want to tell him to just forget it—maybe the helmet hair that comes with Eric taking me wouldn’t be so bad—but instead, I swallow my pride, take one more deep breath, and force the words out.
“I have a really big modeling opportunity at a studio in Hollywood tomorrow,” I tell him. “I have no way of getting there and I was hoping maybe…” I trail off and look down, gathering the little confidence I have to push through the last part. “I was hoping maybe you could drive me.”
His stupid little smile widens.
“What time should I be ready?”