You stupid, naïve girl!
When I thought about it now in retrospect, it made perfect sense. Shane knew women. He worked with countless of them and he used his position to get the ones he wanted. And I was sure that a million of them were happy to give him a quick fuck for a cover or a magazine spread.
But he didn’t have to promise me anything…
I was just a starry eyed girl who no one had ever complimented like that before. All he’d had to do was make me feel special and I was his. He’d come onto Janice and that’s why he didn’t want me to tell her. All this time I was thinking that maybe it was because he knew she’d be jealous or something, but of course that wasn’t it. Janice could get any man she wanted, and she had for her entire life.
Why would she ever be jealous of me?
I tried to control my sobs, but was doing a pretty pathetic job of it, when I heard a window above my head open. Not wanting to cause a scene, I did my best to cry silently. And that’s when I heard it. Janice’s voice from her room.
“Rob? Yeah, it’s me. So, I’ve got even more news!”
Rob? Who was Rob? I knew almost all of Janice’s friends, at least the ones she’d be talking to this late at night, and I didn’t recognize the name.
“Yeah, I’m still going through with my story, but we’ve got another one to add on. My roommate!”
Is she…talking about me?
“Yeah, the dumb bitch went over to Shane’s tonight and fucked him! Can you believe that? Yeah. She was all oiled up and had obviously been doing a shoot—the pictures are probably on his computer, I don’t know if the cops can seize them or something—and then he fucked her! She just about broke down when I told her. Poor girl.”
My heart pumped like it was about to explode and my eyes almost bugged out of my skull, and I frantically scrambled for my camera and started recording.
“Yeah, she’ll go to Eleanor with me. I’ll tell Eleanor my bullshit story again about how he tried coming onto me during a shoot, she’ll tell her story about how she did fuck him
after a shoot, and then High Style will fire him and hire you instead! It’s perfect.”
I was dumbfounded. Was I seriously hearing what I thought I was? Was she talking about setting Shane up and who the fuck was Rob? Had all this…been a terrible lie?
“Jealous? Jealous of what? That Jane fucked Shane? Come on, give me a break, Rob! You know I only want to give you this pussy.”
I started piecing things together and quickly checked my phone to make sure it was recording. Rob was another photographer, that much I was pretty sure of. And she was seeing him?
“Yea, I may have come onto him once when I first met him, but I learned fast that you don’t fuck photographers—”
She paused. I tried to make out the voice on the other end of her call, but all I could make out was static noise.
“Yeah, sure he turned me down,” she replied, clearly rolling her eyes. “I turned him down, Rob. Don’t get it twisted!”
Oh my God…
I was fuming. My cheeks were so hot I thought they might burn up.
I understood now.
Janice had tried to fuck Shane and he’d turned her down. He was professional, just like he’d told me. And Janice, who’d probably never been turned down in her entire life, had gone psycho and decided to ruin his life. Now, with the help of this Rob asshole, some other photographer who no doubt wanted Shane’s position in the industry, she was going to do that, and she was using me as part of her plan.
My fist clenched up so tight that I almost raced back inside to bludgeon her to death with it—turn those beautiful model good looks into mashed potatoes.
But that wasn’t me. Besides, with what I had recorded on my phone, I could do something way worse to her.
Chapter Thirteen
Shane
“So, this is really happening, huh?” Nancy remarked as I stepped into the studio as the sun was just breaking above the city. Nancy, as my assistant, was well aware of the smear campaign going on against me. But it seemed as though we had no choice. Without any counterevidence, it was going to be my word against hers—whoever “her” was, and my career would be over.
Even if Nancy spoke out on my behalf, they’d just call her complicit in my tactics, almost equally as guilty as me. And seeing as how I had her present for every shoot, if they discounted her credibility once, they could do it thousands of times and I’d be fucked.