Exposure (14 page)

When the three of them emerge again,
Britain wipes the water from her eyes and turns to me. “You can get
into makeup. Rylan should be in there.”

Great.

Will it be awkward seeing her? She’s
acting like she’s pissed at me, and I don’t even know
why.

Making my way back to the studio, I
stop in my footsteps. I remember in the showers, when I couldn’t
contain myself anymore. When, after I knew Britain had stopped
shooting, I leaned forward and tasted her.

And she told me how bad she wanted
me.

So she has reason to be
pissed—why didn’t I think of this before? She said it even more
blatantly at the office shoot—
You’re so
lucky you aren’t single right now. I’d
make
you get me off.

Like that makes me lucky.
Now I
don’t
get
to get a beautiful model off, instead receiving the wrath of her
sexual frustration.

Yay for me.

Still, it’s not enough for her to
ignore me, especially after texting her and calling her to see if
she’s okay.

I walk into the dressing room. She’s
dressed in a white bathrobe and hunched over the counter, staring
at herself in the mirror. I can’t tell if it’s the lighting, but
she looks pale. She glares at me for a split second before her eyes
revert to her own face.

“
Great to fucking see you
too.” I say.

Then she does something I’m totally
not expecting. She looks up, and blinks, and blinks. And then her
face scrunches up, and she starts to cry.

“
I’m sorry.” She covers
her mouth with her hands to stifle a sob. “I can’t—I can’t do this
today. I’m s-sorry.”

She runs out of the room, the door
slamming shut. And I’m left in the dressing room feeling like a
dick. I sit on a stool, wondering if I should go after her or if
that will make it worse, when Britain walks in, camera in her hand
and a towel wrapped around her waist.

I stand. “Did you see Ev—”

She holds her hand out. “Take a seat,
hot stuff.”

I listen to her, confused.

She sighs and walks toward the
counter, setting her camera down. “Evan’s kind of having a rough
time. So we’re gonna cancel the shoot today.”

“
Fuck,” I say. “What’d I
do?”

She furrows her eyebrows. “You? Well,
nothing. I don’t think.”

“
Wait… what?”

“
Evan. She can’t shoot
today.”

“
Why?”

“
She didn’t get into
Berkeley.”

I gape at her. “What the fuck did you
just say?”

“
Evan didn’t get into
Berkeley?”

“
That’s
impossible.”

Britain shrugs. “She got the letter
yesterday.”

Yesterday—probably right around the
time I texted her asking if she was okay. She was anything but
okay.

“
Said she could handle the
shoot today,” she continues. “She acted fine last
night.”

Fine. If I’ve learned one thing about
Evan, she can internalize everything if she wants to. Hell, she
internalizes an entire side of her every time she walks on
campus—every time she’s with her mom.

“
So, we’re not shooting
today?” I ask.

“
I don’t think we can,”
Britain says.

“
Great,” I say, and head
for the door. “I have shit to do.”

Chapter Ten

Evan

“
You gotta come out sooner
or later,” Delilah hollers from outside my door. “Come on, Evan. I
want to show you my shoot from today. I’m really proud of
it.”

After my shower, I pulled on sweats
and burrowed myself in my covers. I plan on staying like this for
the next seventy-two hours or so.

“
Try back in three days,”
I tell her.

“
Evan….”

I don’t respond to her whining, and
she doesn’t try again.

My life is over. Four years believing
that I was destined to get into UC Berkeley—four years working my
ass off—for nothing. Without it, I’m nothing more than an
undergraduate degree and a stack of erotic magazines.

If I didn’t get into Berkeley, who’s
to say that I won’t get into anywhere else I applied for? Who’s to
say that I won’t, at the least, make it into East Park’s program?
If I don’t make it into East Park’s program, then I can’t even be
an EPE model.

I’m done for. Everything I’m good
at—I’m done for. I can’t do shit with a Bachelor’s in
Biology.

I might as well get into the porn
industry.

Someone knocks on the door.
Again.

“
Go the fuck
away.”

“
Evan,” Dallas calls.
“Open up.”

What the hell is he doing here?
“Especially you. Go away.”

“
You could make this easy,
or I could climb into your bedroom window.”

“
You couldn’t.”

“
Try me
.”

“
Fuck off,” I say,
shutting my eyes tight. Maybe he’s like a monster under the bed. If
I pretend he isn’t here, he’ll just go away.

I fall asleep. I don’t know for how
long, but when I wake up, it’s dark. My mouth is dry and I really
have to pee. I slide out of bed and trudge across the room, opening
the door.

Dallas sits before me with his back
against the hallway wall. In his lap, he holds a bag of Flaming Hot
Cheetos. “I had to put the beer in the fridge and the ice cream in
the freezer because you were being such a stubborn bitch,” he
says.

I burst into tears.

^^^^

The spoon that Dallas brought from the
kitchen is, I swear to God, the size of my face. Both us sit
cross-legged on top of my bed. I let him use the spoon for the ice
cream because I’m dipping Cheetos into the goodness and chasing it
with beer.

“
That’s the most
disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says.

“
You say that when you’ve
been vegan for five months straight with no cheating,” I
counter.

He laughs, a noise I can’t help but
love. “Touché.”

“
I’m going to need to shit
all of my insides out in about fifteen minutes.” I dip another
Cheeto into the pint of ice cream.

“
Christ, Evan.”

“
What, that statement too
unlady like for you?”

“
No, totally turns me on.
I’m getting a
huge
boner just thinking about it.”

“
I can tell from
that
massive
bulge in your pants.”

“
Having a battle of
sarcasm with someone as stubborn as me is the most fun I’ve had
in
years
.”

I can’t help it—I crack a
smile.

Then his face grows serious, and not
the sarcastic kind of serious either. “This isn’t the end of the
world, you know.”

I shake my head. “You don’t get
it.”

“
I do get it,” he says.
“East Park wasn’t my first choice, you know. I mean, it’s not a bad
school. And I still have my PhD. What I’m trying to say is—you have
options, Evan. Tons of them.”

“
If posing for
Hot Skanks R Us
is what
you call options.”

He narrows his eyes. “How many schools
have you heard back from?”

“
Berkeley. It’s
enough.”

“
What about
Harvard?”

“
HA. HA,” I say
obnoxiously.

“
You applied, right?” he
asks. “You’d be an idiot if you didn’t. It has the best biochem
program in the nation.”

I take a huge gulp of my IPA. Somehow,
Dallas knew my favorite brand. I haven’t had beer in ages, and it’s
the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

I snap back to attention. “Of course I
applied to Harvard. As a joke. I’m not even counting that as a real
application.”

“
Well you should, Evan.”
He twirls a Cheeto between his fingers. “I’ve graded enough of your
work to know you’re destined for grad school. So what, you didn’t
get into Berkeley. You’re brilliant and beautiful and healthy. You
can’t have a perfect life, Evan. That wouldn’t be fair for the rest
of us.”

I grin. “Well thanks for making me
feel like a dick.”

“
You’re welcome. And to
put you down even more, all of that crying has given you sad
raccoon eyes.”

Damn mascara. Won’t come off with a
shower, but so-help-me-God, if I cry a little….

“
Raccoon eyes are totally
in fashion,” I say. “I’m going to sport them for the next
shoot.”

“
Yeah, sure,” he says,
reaching forward. His knuckles brush against the side of my face,
and my heart flutters in my chest. He opens his hand to rest the
palm against my cheek, and I willingly lean into it. The pad of his
thumb brushes beneath my eye, and it starts to burn.

“
Fuck, Dallas.” I squint.
“Cheeto dust.”

“
Oh,
shit
.” He hops off the bed. “Fuck.
Shit, fuck. Are you okay? Wait here.”

Before I can argue, he’s bolted out of
the room. All I have to do is blink a few times and rub at my eye
with my clean hand and the burning stops, but by that time, Dallas
has already returned carrying a wet hand towel. He hops on the bed
again and scoots close, cupping the back of my neck and gently
pressing the towel to my eye.

I giggle. “Stop it. I’m fine, I
swear.”

“
Shut up and let me play
Prince Charming, okay?”

He dabs the towel to my eye a few more
times and puts it down. When my vision focuses, I notice how close
he is. Close enough for me to study every curve of his
beautifully-sculpted lips. I bite my own, waiting for him to pull
away. But he doesn’t. He just waits stoically, his breath against
my skin, icy eyes penetrating mine.

Britain clears her throat.

I jump back from Dallas and turn
toward where she stands, in the doorway with her arms crossed, an
eyebrow raised. “So I take it your ready for tomorrow, then?” she
asks me. “Not going to hide in your dark cave for the rest of the
week?”

I open my mouth, but not before Dallas
responds, “She’s ready.” I glance at him and he winks at
me.

“
Good, because you guys
aren’t shooting tomorrow.” She breaks out into a full-blown, toothy
smile.

I cock my head. “Not
following.”

“
I just got off the phone
with A.J. Harrison—CEO of Amora Acquisitions. He wants to take us
out to dinner tomorrow night.

My mouth drops. Amora Acquisitions….
“Holy shit.”

“
I’m lost,” Dallas
says.

“
Amora Acquisitions is a
small branch of a media conglomerate that has been buying up
school-run erotica magazines across the country,” I explain. “If
they’re interested in us…”

“
It means we’d go
national,” Britain continues for me. “It means that your modeling
careers would be set in stone, and you’d have more money than you
knew what to do with.”

Dallas

A half-hour before the big dinner, I’m
on the phone with Tricia. I just broke the news to her.

“
Oh, babe, that
sounds
amazing
!”
she squeals. “This could be huge for us. We could put a down
payment on a house!”

I smile. Settling down is what both of
us have always wanted. We’d be stable. Happy.

Happy. Tricia and I would be together
and happy. And that’s really all I need from life,
right?

I straighten my tie in the mirror,
hearing a voice of a man in the background.

“
Listen, Dallas, I’m about
to start a meeting with my client. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?
Love yah.”

“
Love you,
Trish.”

She hangs up.

I put down the phone and inhale
deeply, staring at myself in the mirror. My stomach clenches. It
isn’t the dinner that’s making me nervous—I’ve done good-impression
shit like this before. It’s Britain’s text I received an hour
ago.

Listen, I know you have a
gf, but DJ’s gonna want to see chemistry btwn you and Evan. So act
like you’re together. That cool?

Not a
problem
, I texted back, because at that
moment, I thought playing it up for A.J. would be the same as
playing it up for the camera. A charade.

But the more I think about it, the
more I realize how fluid tonight’s charade will have to be. I’m not
worried because I can’t do it.

Because I can do it too well. Because
I want to.

I brush the thought away when there’s
a knock on the door. I throw my jacket over my shoulder and head
out into the living room, coming face to face with Evan. My eyes
start at the ground—her stiletto heels—and slowly rise up her bare
legs, to the black lace dress that begins right below her ass and
hugs every curve of her. Her hair is twisted up, eyes made up dark
and dangerously enticing like the rest of her.