“That’s what I told her.” He grinned for a moment and then sobered. “You doing okay?”
I shrugged. “As well as can be expected. I’ll be back by the coffee shop soon.”
“Good. Bring Lior. I like her.” He tipped an imaginary hat then and shuffled down the front steps, leaving me to stand there, his parting words doing laps around my brain.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Unfortunately, I think I do too.”
I stepped inside and closed the door, taking my treats from Joe to the kitchen table. I opened my laptop again and perused a local news site while I ate. On the front page was a video of Lior walking through the airport last night, her head down, dark hair flowing out from beneath a knit hat, people standing and pointing and taking pictures as they shouted her name in an attempt to get her to look up.
I closed my eyes, my heart heavy as I came to the decision that I needed to take a step back from our friendship. Because if we were both being honest, it was more than that. And more than that would lead to heartbreak. Possibly for her. But definitely for me.
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.
