Sara frowns at me, and I know she’s giving me that look she always has when she’s about to give me one of her famous Sara speeches.
“Let me tell you something, Ivy. You know my sister, Susie? Well, she went out with her manager when she was working at the movie theater last year. They both swore it would be fine, that they could handle it, that things wouldn’t get weird, but guess what?”
“Things got weird?” I guess.
“Bingo,” Sara replies. “And you know who ended up getting fired? It wasn’t her manager, it was her. That’s what always happens in cases like this. The guy gets what he wants, and the girl gets screwed over.”
I sigh and lean my head down on the counter. She’s right. Sara’s always right. She may be my best friend, but she’s also like a second mom in many cases, which is handy considering how my mom is never home.
“He probably just wants to smash-and-dash anyway,” she adds. “What are the chances he wants a real relationship with you when he’s surrounded by all those women?”
I sigh, “Yeah. You’re right.”
Smash-and-dash. The thought of Mike being that kind of guy had never really crossed my mind before, but now that Sara has planted the seed, it’s not going anywhere.
I wonder how many models he’s done that to…
“When do you work next?” Sara asks.
“Not until Wednesday,” I reply. “I’ve got a few days off.”
“Well, unlike you, I have to go serve this table. So I’ll be right back.” She passes, leaving me alone at the counter, my mind filled with thoughts of my day at the studio –
Christine, Zack, Mike, and the mistake that started everything.
I’ve never seen Mike mess up like that before. He’s always so professional. Something has to be on his mind, but when I asked him about it, he said everything was fine. And then all of a sudden he asks me out to dinner completely out of the blue? Something’s going on, and I really wish I knew what.
My phone vibrates against the counter, causing my head to vibrate too in that really weird, uncomfortable way. I sit up quickly and glance at the caller ID.
It’s Mike. I answer immediately.
“Hello, Mr. Barrett.”
“Mike,” he replies. “Just call me Mike.”
“Okay…Mike,” I say, feeling a little nervous. “Is everything all right? Something you need me to do for you tonight?”
“No, no. Everything is fine. I just wanted to let you know that I picked up a semi-spontaneous shoot for Monday evening, and I’m going to need you to come into the city for it, okay?”
“An evening shoot?” I ask. That’s quite out of the ordinary for us. I don’t think we’ve ever done an evening shoot before, as Mike is a studio photographer, and we’re always shooting inside in his studio.
“That’s right,” he replies. “They want some outdoor shots of the New York City skyline as the sun is going down. You know, some of that cliché crap. Don’t ask me, it’s not my concept.”
I laugh. “Right. What time should I meet you?”
“Six o’clock at my studio would work,” he says. “That should give us enough time to prep.”
“Six o’clock it is,” I reply. “I’ll see you then.”
“See you then.”
I hang up just as Sara is coming back from her table. “Who was that?” she asks.
“That was Mike,” I reply with a sigh. “As he wants me to call him from now on, informing me of a last-minute shoot on Monday evening that I need to go into the city for.”
“So I’ll be here serving coffee and lasagna to rude men who call me honey and sweet cheeks while you’re working a late-night fashion shoot in New York City,” Sara replies, rolling her eyes, clearly mocking my sigh. “What a difficult life you have. Now maybe if you were an actual model…”
I scoff. “Yeah, that will be the day!”
It’s a few minutes before six when I’m arriving at the studio. I always like to be a little bit early just to save myself from being potentially late—you never can tell with New York City traffic. I punch the code for the door to Mike’s building and take the stairs up to the studio, but when I get there, I find the space completely empty.
“Hello?” I call out, but there’s no answer. This is odd. Even if I am a bit early, Mike should be here, and hair and makeup.
Maybe there’s a chance that people are outside or up on the roof already, seeing as how this is an outdoor shoot. So I go grab Mike’s camera case as well as the case holding his lenses and make my way back to the door leading to the stairwell, but that’s when the door opens and Mike enters, dressed like he just finished a date.
I guess Sara and I were right; he was just looking for a smash-and-dash, and when I turned him down, he went and found himself a model looking for a leg up in the fashion industry who wouldn’t say no.