Читать книгу Almost 5'4" - Isobella Jade - Страница 18

I had turned nineteen a week earlier. On my birthday Danny had taken me to a shoot in New Jersey. I thought he was warming up to the idea of me being a model, but the shoot only made it worse.

‘Can you hold that reflector still?’ Danny looked nervous, he was already getting yelled at by the photographer and we had been there for less than ten minutes.

We got lost on the way and ended up in a fight. I hated sitting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t drive but I was not a passenger! Danny wore a gray, shaggy, worn and torn sweater that I hated. It embarrassed me. The sweater made a statement about him. It showed he wasn’t responsible, attractive, clean, or interesting. I told him not to wear his glasses either.

He smoked about a pack of Newport cigarettes and the smoke seeped through his clenched teeth. I tried not to gag. I wanted to die right there on the New Jersey Turnpike.

‘Do you want to turn around?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to go back?’ By the time the fight started I had asked about four times.

I focused on my mascara to avoid thinking about his outfit. I discreetly tried to tell him to take it off.

‘It’s going to be kind of warm today. You might want to just wear a tee shirt, because you sweat a lot.’ I ended with a giggle and a smile, but he didn’t look happy. We hit a bump in the road and my mascara brush hit the top of my lid and almost poked me in the eye.

‘Damn, Danny, slow down!’ I gripped the dashboard and checked that my seatbelt was tight. We were so busy fighting I didn’t realize until too late that we were lost. He refused my plea to stop and ask someone at the gas station for help.

Then, in a rage, he said, ‘I can’t believe you go around meeting strangers!’

‘Well, I want to model!’ I sounded like I was five. ‘And I don’t go around meeting strangers! You’re such an asshole sometimes!’

He didn’t like that I’d called him an asshole, so he called me a bitch. I didn’t know what to say because I was a bitch. I couldn’t stop being a bitch either. I worried about his appearance and mine, and where we were going. We were late, which made me jumpy. After what seemed like hours, we arrived at the park to meet the photographer. He wasn’t there.

We sat by the stone wall. While I played with my hair, Danny smoked more cigarettes. I dug in the dirt with my sandal, and then reached for his hand to let him know I wasn’t mad. Fortunately, he took it. We sat there, waiting. The photographer was fifteen minutes late. Great. I had freaked out for nothing.

When he finally arrived he immediately lit into Danny, barking orders, pointing him here and there. Danny thought he would spend the day smoking cigarettes and reading his books for flight school. Instead, he became a photographer’s assistant. A very bad one. He caught the huge camera bag that the photographer threw at him. Then, the photographer asked him for the fifty-millimeter lens, whatever that was. He looked over to me with nervous eyes.

‘I’m trying.’

Danny really was trying, but the reflector kept dropping and bending and creating all the wrong shadows on my ass.

The photographer told me how he had worked with a team of lingerie designers in France, which sounded very cool.

‘So after the shoot I’ll show the designers the photos and they’ll pick a model.’

He mentioned that other girls would be considered as well.

A child with long blond hair ran by with her parents. They looked our way but didn’t stare. Still, I felt like they were staring. We were in a fucking park for Christ’s sake, and my ass was showing for the world to see. He kept shooting me against the stone wall. About 100 meters away, I could see a bunch of sweaty soccer players. A crowd was cheering and the park was becoming more and more active as the hour progressed.

Danny went with the flow and helped to cover me with a towel when I changed into a black thong I had bought on West 4th Street in the city. He had never seen it before and said, ‘That’s cute.’ Finally…something he liked.

I felt as if he shouldn’t be so pissy and that he should be proud that his girlfriend had a great round ass and was a model. After all, he got to fuck me, even though he wasn’t all that good at it. I had more to be angry about than him.

When the shoot ended, Danny seemed to relax for a while. Weeks later, when I got the photos back, I saw a huge zit on my ass. Needless to say, I didn’t get picked.