“Hello?” his voice warps through the speaker on his building when I buzz his apartment.
“Let me up,” I say simply. There’s a slight pause, then the door buzzes in response. I push it open and head up the stairs. He’s waiting for me when I get there, in a pair of gray sweatpants and a white tank-top, looking sexier than ever, of course. But he does look concerned, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.
“Hey, Ivy,” he says simply as I brush past him into the living room. “Come on in…”
“You had no right!” I shout. “No right whatsoever to submit my photos without telling me!”
“Ivy—”
“Don’t try to calm me down, Mike!” I’m raging right now. That train ride and two Ubers was like the longest buildup ever, and now I’m just exploding. “I was at home with Sara, and all of a sudden I get this e-mail from Ford saying I’ve been accepted. Accepted? How can I have been accepted if I didn’t submit!?”
“Can we just slow down a minute?”
“And then suddenly Sara suggests to me that maybe Mike submitted your photos! And I realize that that’s the only scenario that makes any sense.” I point an accusatory finger right in his gorgeous face. “You submitted those photos.”
Mike raises both his hands up like I’ve got a gun aimed at him. “Guilty as charged.”
“Please tell me you didn’t submit my nudes, Mike,” I plead desperately. I’m enraged with him right now, but I’m still praying that my last bit of trust I still have left with him does not disintegrate right now.
“What?” Mike’s face twists in disbelief. “Come on, Ivy. How can you even think that?”
“How can I think that? Well, I couldn’t even have thought that you would do this to me a few days ago!”
“Remember the conversation we had before? Right after our shoot?” he asks. “About you asking if I’d ever be jealous of you modeling? What did I say?”
I realize where he’s going with this and that he’s sort of got me. I cross my arms over my chest indignantly. “You said…that as long as I wasn’t doing nude shoots and as long as I was only coming home to you, you wouldn’t be jealous.”
“Exactly!” He smiles. “So why would I send nude photos I took of you to Ford for them to see?”
I frown hard back at him. I guess he’s got me there, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he sent the other photos, my headshots, without my permission. It still doesn’t change the fact that I still feel betrayed.
“Fine,” I say, my lips pursed tight. “You didn’t send my nudes, but that doesn’t make what you did right.”
“Maybe not,” Mike replies. “Was it right the way I got you to go out with me? No, but look where we ended up, Ivy.” Mike moves in on me, his eyes intent and filled with that look that always gets me. But right now, I’m not accepting it. Right now, I back up and keep distance between us.
“So what are you saying?” I ask him. “That eventually I’m going to start modeling, realize I love it, and thank you for this?”
“Yes.” He nods, smiling. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Oh, fuck off!”
“I know you never would have submitted your photos on your own, Ivy! So I did it for you. I knew you’d be accepted, and you were!”
“Yeah, because you submitted it,” I scoff. “The big, bad, super-photographer Mike Barrett submits a new girl and, Ford accepts her. Whoopty fucking doo—!”
“I submitted anonymously, Ivy,” Mike replies. “You were accepted on your own merit.”
Suddenly, I feel all my defenses starting to come down. I do everything I can to keep them up, but I simply can’t. It’s like I’ve surrounded myself with stone walls, and an army is laying siege to them.
Yet again, my head is spinning. Such a familiar emotion with Mike. Ever since he first forced me to go out on a date with him, it’s been like we’ve been together on a jet plane with the world going by us at blinding speeds and we just haven’t gotten off.
That feeling when you’re about to cry and your nose and eyes start to burn starts to form in my face, but I do everything I can to push it back down. There’s no way I can let myself do that right now. No way.
“Mike, you still didn’t—”
“And it’s not like you’ve signed a contract, baby,” he says, stepping closer. This time I don’t move back. “You’re not locked into anything you don’t want to do. All that’s happened is they’ve accepted you. It’s the first step. And you should be very, very proud of yourself.”
I can see the pride in his eyes, and the temptation to cry starts to overwhelm me. I can barely resist it. I’m getting all choked up in the back of my throat.