There was a knock on the door to pull me out of my deep thoughts. I got up to answer the door only to find Brad standing on the other side. Without a word, he pulled me into the hallway closing the door at the same time. At once, he gave me a consoling kiss and embrace. I buried my head in his chest, seeking comfort as the first tear of the day rolled down my cheek.
It was the sort of comfort unique to him, one I had never known until he came into my life. I inhaled and closed my eyes. No matter what, the loss of being part of Shoot was painful to me.
“I am so sorry,” he muttered into my hair. I nodded weakly. “I’m not sure how she got ahold of them, the only way I can think of was through the printing company I use. Not everyone can or will understand the art we make,” he told me.
I sighed. I knew he was right. It was art. Just because the pictures were erotic didn’t make them any less artistic. Images of the photos we had selected from the shoot with Penny and David flashed in my mind and, to me, there was no way around it—those photographs were beautiful. I felt honored to have been involved in making them.
“Chloe,” Brad said, “I’m ready. I’m ready to quit working for Shoot and give Amorous Productions my full attention and time.” He paused and pulled my head back to look into my eyes. “I’m sorry if this is tactless or I come off as insensitive, I just think it might be the perfect time to ask.”
“What is it?” I wondered aloud, placing my hands on his chest and trying to prepare myself for whatever it was he was about to say.
“Would you consider joining me to strike it out on our own with Amorous Productions?” He looked into my eyes, hopeful.
“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely confused. “I already model for you.”
“I know, I mean… Well, would you consider being a bigger part of it besides the modeling? Your beauty is the key for the photographs, and your natural talents at helping me get the perfect shot, but I want you to be more involved. I think if you worked with me on this, we could really make something of it. With your small business experience running your family’s store back home and your natural talent in everything that you do,” his face lit up with a big smile, “I’m sure we could be successful as a legitimate business venture.”
I blanked. He wanted me to help run the business. If I agreed to this I would no longer just be a model. It was a lot different from selling blueberry pies, but I couldn’t deny it was something that sounded exciting. In fact, I felt even more excited than when I first moved to New York. That was something I wouldn’t have thought possible, at least not in such a short span of time.
“Yes. Yes!” I blurted out, reaching up to pull him down for a kiss.
Brad grinned from ear to ear and pulled me into a tight hug before showering my face with light pecks of his lips before capturing me in a long, slow kiss. It was full of affection and much different from the passionate kisses we usually shared.
“Let’s go inside?” I asked with a cute smile. He gave in and nodded, chuckling at my sudden perkiness. I gave an excited little jump and kissed him on the lips. Before turning to open the door, I moved in and placed my lips against his ear. “Maybe we can celebrate in a bit back at the studio?” Brad made a noise of agreement and held his breath when I kissed his neck, squeezing his bicep before turning to open the door.
Not surprisingly, my roommates were gathered on the couch anxiously waiting for me to come back in. They were all huddled together and did a poor job of hiding the fact that they had probably been staring at the door the entire time I was out in the hallway. They all grinned when he came in behind me.
“We have a celebrity! The HOTEST erotic photographer in New York. Welcome!” Sarah piped up immediately, standing up and rushing over to shake his hand. They all burst into laughter and my face turned red, which I immediately covered with my hands.
“Would you like something to drink, Mr. Hastings?” Caroline asked.
“Brad!” I objected, finding it odd for him to be addressed so formally. When Caroline chuckled, I knew she’d done it on purpose to mess with me. After all, none of the models ever addressed him formally even at work.
“Do you have lemonade?” he asked.
“We don’t, but Caroline would be more than happy to make some,” Nadine answered.
A few minutes later all five of us were crowded in the kitchen, serving lemonade and getting ready to propose a toast.
As we all stood around the kitchen I looked at each of them laughing, smiling, and nudging each other’s arms with playful jokes. The energy was completely different now than when I had first arrived in New York. The way I felt was completely different as well.
Of course I would miss Shoot and I was a bit regretful I wouldn’t have more time to thrive there, but I gained something I would never trade for anything in the world—a true sense of self, a home in the place I always dreamed of, and with the people I would have least expected.
Sometimes life has a funny way of working out.
I know mine did.
The End
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Chapter 1
“I can’t stand that bitch.” I said to myself under my breath.
That bitch I’m speaking of was Jennifer Ryan, the golden child of the office, and just then she was buttering up to the head boss, Mr. Paul.
If I’m being honest, at the time I was probably just jealous. And who wouldn’t be?
She’s got gorgeous long brown hair that’s always curled to perfection, she’s a little taller than most women, and she always wears formfitting dresses to accentuate her flawless body. And right then, she was talking to the one man that could give me the promotion I had been working toward for two years.
I watched as Jennifer leaned in a little closer to Mr. Paul, placing her hand gently on his chest with a flashing smile. She was such a flirt and it made me sick to my stomach.
There I was actually trying to do my job and make it to the vice president position using my work ethic and experience; not using my round ass and flashing my cleavage to the boss in tight dresses like she was.
She must suck his cock when everyone’s gone home for the day. I thought to myself and laughed out loud as I finished up my copies. Jackie was at the copy machine next to me and gave me a courteous smile when she heard me laugh under my breath.
For the most part I kept to myself at my job. I was a hard worker, always went above and beyond, and never failed to impress Mr. Paul. In all honesty I was pretty important to the small advertising firm. In fact, Jennifer, myself, and Mr. Paul were the only people in the office that had their own private office. Not counting the currently empty vice president office of course.
That used to belong to Mr. Fountain, a portly man who always had a new joke every day. I actually liked him, he always treated the employees right. But he ended up leaving for a better job in St. Louis. I couldn’t blame him. Everyone in the office was stale, overly professional, and they were always fighting to get their way to the top. I know because I used to be just like them. And just like Mr. Fountain, I tossed around the idea of leaving also. But when the vice president position came available I stayed.
“You did such a remarkable job on the Carlson account, bravo Jennifer, bravo.” I practically sneered when I heard Mr. Paul praise Jennifer for her ‘job well done.’
It made me sick to my stomach. I had been working at OP Advertising Firm twice as long as Jennifer, but she came in
fresh out of college and ‘worked’ her way up the corporate ladder to be my number one contender for the vice president position.
I put ‘worked’ in quotations because that’s what she would tell everybody. That’s probably what Mr. Paul would tell everybody as well. But I knew better, I figured the rumors were true and she just fucked her way to the top.
I headed back to my office with my copies in hand, trailing behind Jennifer and Mr. Paul and listening to all the wonderful complements she was getting along the way.
“Good job Jennifer.” Jonathan said as she walked past him.
Jonathan was a coworker of ours that my office friend Samantha pressured me to go on a date with that Thursday. He was young, clean-cut, and handsome. The only problem—he’s was also incredibly boring, dry, and barely had any character. Still, I couldn’t figure out if he actually didn’t have a personality or if he was just trying to be the cookie-cutter professional type and didn’t want to offend anybody.
Chirp Chirp.
That’s the bird chime on my phone for text messages. I rolled my eyes before I even looked at it, it had to be my mother. I grabbed my phone and looked. Sure enough, it was one of my mother’s ‘daily motivational messages’. She can be extremely overbearing sometimes; actually most of the time. I don’t remember when it started, but she had gotten into the habit of sending me text messages every day to ‘motivate me towards a better life’. Sometimes I wondered if a better life would be to not have her barking down my neck all the time.
I clicked open the message as I walked into my office and closed the door behind me.
-You have to fight through the bad days in order to earn the best days.-
What the hell did that even mean if every day seemed to be a bad day. I would be lying if I said I was happy. I had been working my ass off for the O.P. Advertising Firm and for what? Happiness? If it was for happiness I hadn’t found it yet. Maybe the vice president position would give me happiness, but deep down inside I knew it wouldn’t.
So much of my life up until then had been pleasing my mom. She was a single mother, and a very successful doctor. She had paved her own way her entire life and she expected her daughter to do the same. But sometimes I really questioned if what I wanted was success in the classical sense of the word.
Maybe instead I wanted to settle for the less than the more. So many things in life seem to be like that don’t they? Everything is a give-and-take. If you work more you have less free time, but maybe you make more money. And without money you can’t do the fun things you wanted to do in the first place. So I’m just caught up in some ridiculous rat race with an overbearing mother breathing down my neck literally every day.
I don’t even know why I still bothered reading her messages. Probably because she’s my mom and that was what I was supposed to do.
The truth was I was miserable. I wasn’t happy and the vice president position wasn’t going to make me happy either. I couldn’t help but feel that my constant strive for success was to please my mother and not please me.
I stared at the background picture of my monitor. It was a picture of the giant redwood trees in California. I had always wanted to see those but never found the time to actually get away and travel. That was a huge dream of mine—to travel outside the city, buy some beat up car, and go on a road trip across the country and see all the sites. I had lived in New York city my whole life and rarely got out in the countryside; let alone the Grand Canyon, the big redwood trees, or Yellowstone.
The job, the constant clawing to get to the top only to be stopped by Ms. Perfect, the daily commute, the boring men in the corporate world…it was all beginning to be too much for me.
I wanted to be free of it all and go out to be wild and crazy for once. I followed the rules my whole life, from high school all the way through college and then into my professional life. I never got to do what I wanted to do. It was all about making my mother happy and building a future life that I wasn’t even sure I wanted.
I wanted to do something crazy. Something unmistakably different than my life in an office. Maybe I could go skydiving, or bungee jumping. Maybe I would actually quit my job, buy that beat up old car, and travel the country. Maybe I’d meet a stranger in a bar, go to his hotel room, and fuck him without even knowing his name.
I rolled my eyes at the thought of something so silly. I wasn’t that wild and crazy. Although, a part of me really wanted to be.
There was a knock at my door. It was Samantha, the closest person I could call a friend in the office. She was the one that set me up on a date with Jonathan. I say ‘set me up’ but it was more like constantly nagging me until I gave in only to shut her up. She was a good person and usually wasn’t annoying. She just wanted the best for me.
I waved her in.
“Hey Kayla, there’s a few files that need to be looked over on the Carlson account that Jennifer just finished up on.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Of course.” I said as I reluctantly held out my hand.
Chirp Chirp.
“Damnit, shit…” It was probably my mother again.
Samantha looked at me with a shocked face and quickly looked out the door to see if someone had heard what I said. Samantha was timid, shy, and always worried about stepping on somebody’s toes. She was a sweet, professional girl that had no desire to work herself up the corporate food chain. She was content on staying a secretary. I envied that about her.
“No one heard, let me see the files. I’ll get them done and have them on your desk for Jennifer in an hour.”
Samantha handed me the files and headed back towards the door. Before she closed it she peeked back in.
“I hope it’s nothing bad.” She gave a worried face with clenched teeth.
“What?”
“The message?”
“Oh, no. It’s just,” I gave a heavy sigh, “my mother.”
Samantha gave a questioning look and an awkward nod before walking out and closing the door behind her. I quickly glanced at the message to see what it was this time.
To my surprise it wasn’t my mother, it was my best friend Vivian.
-Hey chick. Wanna go out tonight?-
Vivian was a bit of the wild child type. The complete and total opposite of Samantha. And, for the most part, the total opposite of myself. I had been friends with Vivian since junior high. She had taken a different path than me. While I suffered my way through college she was in and out of hairdresser school in no time. She didn’t make as much as me, but her job allowed her to have a lot of free time. Vivian had always chosen fun over success. But never so much fun to neglect her life, she had a great life that didn’t require her to work 24/7.
In many ways my best friend was everything I wanted to be. Well, let me explain. I didn’t want to actually BE her and I didn’t necessarily want her job or anything. But she lived a life of fun and excitement. She wasn’t afraid to go out and meet strangers at a bar and occasionally have a one-night stand.
Every once in a while she would ask me if I wanted to go out with her and I would. I would always have a blast, but in the morning I couldn’t help but feel a little more depressed than I did before. It was as if going out with her made me realize what I was missing. What if I didn’t work towards the super professional career? What if I chose my time over money? What if I did what I wanted and said to hell with everything else.
But to be honest, at the time, everything seemed a little less clear. I wasn’t totally sure if I wanted to be the wild child like Vivian. As much as my professional career brought me unhappiness, it was familiar. And there’s a certain sense of comfort in familiarity.
-I’m not sure. I’ve got some things I need to wrap up if I want to get this promotion.-
I texted back with a reluctant sigh.
-Oh, come on. Live a little girl.-
My teeth sink into my lower lip as I contemplated what I should do. While I was thinking of what I should do I should’ve been thinking of w
hat I needed to do.
The background on my computer changed to the Grand Canyon. It was my favorite background picture. My eyes traced over the golden sunset and the miles upon miles of red rocks and deep valleys. My gaze fell back onto the Carlson files that Samantha had laid on my desk. My thoughts were interrupted by laughter just outside my office window.
I glanced up to see Jennifer in her stunning red dress chatting up a group of coworkers. They all stared at her like she was some kind of entertainer on stage. Everywhere she went she was the center of attention.
“I can’t stand that bitch.” I whispered to myself under my breath. I knew it wasn’t a good attitude to have, but sometimes it feels good to vent.
SHOOT: A Novel Page 13
