When Luisa saw Amy she grinned and came over, giving Amy a big hug. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “You look stunning… if we weren’t already seeing each other I’d be asking to buy you a drink tonight.” She stepped back to look admiringly. “Those legs…”
Smiling, Amy replied, “Same to you! I love your dress and what you’ve done with your make-up.” Close up Amy could see that Luisa had gone for a smoky sort of look, particularly around her eyes. It worked very well on her.
“Shall we?” Luisa asked, nodding towards the door of the bar.
“Yes, lead the way. Just… uhhh… can I check what I’m here as?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, am I your friend for tonight, or your date, or what? I don’t mind, but I don’t want to accidentally out you in front of people.”
Luisa smiled. “I guess only my closest friend Maria knows about you, but it’s not like it’s something that I want or need to keep secret with others that I sometimes like women. So why don’t we call you my date if anyone asks, and just act how we’d normally act? It’s not like we need to announce anything to anyone.”
“Ok, that sounds good,” Amy replied with some relief. She’d have accommodated whatever Luisa wanted to portray to her friends gladly, but inside Amy would have been not worried but maybe a touch perturbed if Luisa had wanted to conceal what they had between them. She made the conscious decision to be discrete, though, and let Luisa take the lead… she wouldn’t tell anyone herself, because she didn’t know all of the subtle and complex interactions there might be at play between everyone there.
She followed Luisa up the steps into the bar, and they soon found themselves in the throng of the party, at least fifty people there with half of the bar cordoned off for them. It was a bigger party than Amy had expected but she was glad as it meant a less intense evening… something more intimate risked ending up getting grilled by one of Luisa’s friends, whereas there were plenty of people to talk to here.
Straight away Luisa bumped into a couple that she seemed to know well judging by the hugs and kisses on the cheek they gave each other, and turning to Amy she said, “Amy, let me introduce you…”
With her friendliest smile on her face, Amy got herself set for a long night of meeting new people.
***
Around an hour later, Amy was having a great time despite her earlier nerves. She’d had a couple of drinks which had helped, and had already been introduced to more people than she could possibly remember.
At that precise moment she was talking to Katie, an American model friend of Luisa’s that, she realised with a smile to herself, she was flirting a little with. Not much, certainly not enough to make Luisa jealous, but Amy was finding it impossible not to because the model also happened to be one of the most beautiful women that Amy had ever met.
“This whole modelling world is new to me,” Amy said. “Luisa’s told me a bit about it and she seems to love it, do you like doing it?”
Katie thought for a moment, then replied, “Yes, on the whole. I mean, I get paid to make sure that I eat well and keep in shape, a lot of people would love to do that. So yeah, I think so.”
“You must get people hitting on you loads though. I mean, look at you…”
Laughing, Katie replied, “That almost sounds like you are…”
Amy blushed and stammered out, “No… sorry… I didn’t mean it like that.” She looked away over to where Luisa was stood on theother side of the room talking to a couple of men that she knew, and when she looked back she could see that Katie was smiling.
“Don’t worry, I was joking. But yeah, you deal with it though. Honestly, a lot of men assume that because you’re a model you’re easy and a lot of men want the bragging rights of sleeping with a model, but you learn how to brush them off and how to avoid situations. The worse is being alone with a more predatory photographer or agent, but the key there is not getting into those situations in the first place.”
Amy took a sip of her drink and scanned the room, then asked Katie, “Do you know a lot of people here?”
“Most, it’s a nice group. What brings you to LA though? How do you know Luisa?”
“Oh, I’m here with work for a couple of weeks. I met Luisa last time I was over and we enjoyed hanging out, so she invited me along tonight. It was either that or sit in my hotel room watching TV.” Amy hoped that that was a sufficiently vague but true answer as she didn’t know how well Katie and Luisa really knew each other.
“Luisa’s really good fun,” Katie replied, glancing towards Luisa as she said it. Amy looked her way too and just at that moment Luisa glanced over at Amy, flashing her a smile as she did so, the sort of look that somehow managed to convey a kind of shy and intensely private desire, and to make everyone in the room momentarily disappear. Amy smiled back and felt herself blush a little.
Katie started laughing. “Oh… met like that! I see…”
“What do you mean?”
“All I’ll say is that I hope one day someone smiles at me like Luisa just smiled at you.” Katie smiled. “Luisa is lovely, I didn’t realise she was like that but…”
At that moment Luisa came over. Amy felt Luisa take her hand and give it a little squeeze, subtle, not overt, but a display of affection nonetheless. “Katie, sorry to interrupt but I need to introduce Amy to some more people.”
“No problem, nice meeting you Amy.”
As they walked off Amy said as quietly as she could to Luisa over the music, “She could one hundred percent tell that we’re involved…”
