“I mean, you basically confessed your undying love to me last night, Sera.”
“What?” I half spat my coffee out and then started coughing.
“Too hot to handle?” He gave a tiny chuckle, before striding back off to the table. I quickly glanced behind me and realized that Angie had been watching us. I turned away quickly with a plummeting feeling in my stomach.
34. Collarbone Assaulter . . .
The shoot that day was hot and relentless. The scenery was amazing, though, and the shots looked great—even if the photographer kept screaming at the model and saying how “disgusting” everything looked. The photographer, Giovanni was his name, also happened to be Mr. Blue Eyes from breakfast.
As the story went, he was some kind of famous, savant-esque photographer from Milano who was apparently a bit mad, but the best money could buy. The mad thing everyone could vouch for, because no one watching him work would say he was a sane man. He screamed and cursed and gesticulated wildly. He threw himself on the floor, took photos while doing a headstand and was now topless, his shirt tied around his head like the Rambo of the photography world. I caught Ben’s attention a few times and rolled my eyes in solidarity as I could see he was fighting the urge not to scream at the guy himself.
Our first location was on the Soussvlie, a dry, barren desert-like land. I’d never seen such a strange, alien landscape before. The ground was made up entirely of dry white mud that had cracked in a million different places giving it an uneven surface. The white landscape was punctuated with the remnants of dead trees. They stood out of the ground like lonely black carcasses. In the distance, the bright red sand dunes rose up. And in the middle of it all, a baby-blue sports car that looked so out of place there it was breathtaking.
What also looked really out of place was Cindy, climbing out of the car wearing a short, tight, gold evening dress. Her legs went on for ten miles, and her thimble-like waist attached itself to two of the perkiest, well-proportioned breasts I’d ever seen. I knew this, because she also had no shame when it came to changing in and out of clothes. I tried hard not to gag as she pouted and jutted out her collarbones while climbing out of the car in her eight-inch heels.
“What the hell is this?” Giovanni screamed and everyone came to a dead halt. We all looked around to see what he was screaming about in a kind of panicked state. The best thing to do was to keep this guy happy.
“You!” He pointed at Cindy. “Have you lost your car keys? Have you forgotten how to drive? Or worse, have you forgotten the name your mother gave you when she gave birth to you?” he yelled at her and jaws dropped to the floor.
“Sorry?” Cindy blinked at him like a confused little deer.
“Stop looking so confused. And stop looking like you’re dehydrated and stop posing.”
“Huh?” Cindy looked extra-confused now.
“Like that.” He pointed at his face. “You models are all the same. The same, the same the fucking same! Cheekbones, lips, cheekbones, posing, ‘where am I, who am I, am I lost?’”
Horror washed over everyone’s faces as we looked from Giovanni to Cindy and back again. He growled, ripped the shirt off his head and threw it onto the sand.
“I need to meditate.” He walked off set in a dramatic huff leaving everyone to stare after him, except the producer, whose job it was to placate the beast. She ran off after him as if someone had lit a firecracker in her pants.
“I guess, everyone take a break,” Ben called out, before walking over to a shell-shocked-looking Cindy.
Everyone started dispersing, except me. I stood and watched Ben lay a compassionate hand on Cindy’s shoulder. She looked coy and placed her hand over his as he squeezed her shoulder in a commiserative fashion. Or was it a different fashion entirely? A “meet me in my room later and fuck me” fashion? I moved away quickly before anyone could see the death stare I could now feel involuntarily shooting from my eyeballs.
The day was sweltering hot, and it wasn’t very relaxing. I ducked into the craft tent to get some much-needed shade and a cool drink. I grabbed a cold Coke and just before I’d had a chance to open it, something caught my eye.
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t realize you were, uh . . .”doing what exactly?Giovanni was perched in the corner of the tent on a chair, legs crossed, still shirtless and hands posed in some sort of meditative position. He really hadn’t been kidding about that.
He looked up at me and smiled. “Peaceful.”
I nodded and pretended that I knew the first thing about this spiritual stuff. “Mmm. Good for you.”
Giovanni climbed off the chair and his eyes swept over me. “Hot.” He said it more like a statement than an actual question.
“Very.” I opened the can and raised it to my lips. I must have downed the thing in a few sips.
“Thirsty,” he said. He didn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the drawer, but he certainly made up for it in looks. Besides, I doubted very much that the women who spent time with him were doing it for the scintillating conversation.
“Sweaty.” He stepped towards me and glanced at my neck. And then it happened. Without warning, the man was wielding a block of ice and running it over my collarbones and up and down my neck. The coolness of the ice made my hot skin tingle. But I couldn’t move. I was in shock. I couldn’t work out if this was the worst, most inappropriate thing that anyone had ever done to me, or if I was actually vaguely turned on by this strange move.No. This was definitely revolting.
“Hot,” he repeated again, this time adding a little lip bite.
“True. So very true,” I said wiggling away from the melting cube and his intense stare. “Well, I feel much better now. Cooler. Thanks.” I started exiting the tent and in my haste, almost ran right into Ben’s chest. Not awkward. At all.
“Ben! Hello, Ben.” I tried to wipe all the water off my neck and collarbones as if it were some kind of scarlet letter that had been branded into me. “Hot. Isn’t it?” I smiled at him and quickly ran off.Was this really happening to me?Did I really have two men coming on to me? Nothing like this had ever happened before.
We wrapped a few hours after my collarbones had been sexually assaulted with an ice cube and moved on to the second location. It was only a short way away, but the landscape looked completely different. The ground was bright red, as were the massive sand dunes that rose up in all directions. There were no trees this time, just endless red dustiness that stretched out all the way to the horizon. If I’d thought the previous place looked like it was on another planet, this one looked like it would be in another galaxy.
