Starlight (Peaches Monroe #2)(24)
Author: Mimi Strong

I kept wondering where Keith was, and how he was feeling. I hoped he was still getting paid, and that he wouldn’t be mad at me.

We worked straight through lunch, with me eating a spicy tuna salad sandwich between bra changes. As I munched away on the pickle that came with the takeout, I marveled at how quickly I’d gotten used to the whole modeling scene.

The scene. Granted, it was just letting two women stick their hands inside my bra cups to rearrange my peaches, not going off to fight a war, but I felt proud of how much I was able to endure.

The long day and all the scrutiny did eventually get to me, though.

We’d just wrapped up the shoot, and I was in the dressing room when Mitchell walked in and found me with my face in my hands, feeling vulnerable.

He sat his immaculately-styled skinny butt down next to mine on the bench and gave me a sideways hug. “Don’t be sad! You were even better today. Are you sad because Keith’s off the campaign?”

“Yes,” I whimpered from within my hands, because that was a big part of it. How could we still be friends if he felt humiliated about getting fired?

“He just wasn’t a big enough presence,” Mitchell said with a sigh. “Keith is a good-looking man, but we needed someone more masculine, to accentuate your femininity.”

I took a breath and tried to pull myself together. It had all happened so quickly, this mood slump. I’d gotten a text message from home, and then I felt like I’d fallen off a diving board, at the deep end of the pool. The message was still on the screen on the phone in my hand, and I couldn’t deal with those emotions, plus talking about the model change.

“At least the photo shoot’s over,” I said. “Just the commercial, but that’s days away.”

“The change to use Sven was nothing personal.”

“I understand. They wanted someone bigger to make me look less big.”

“I respect you too much to lie to you. You’re not wrong. But don’t worry. These things happen all the time.”

I looked down at my phone again, my breath catching in my throat.

“What’s this?” He tilted his head down, and I showed him the phone.

He read the message out: “Kyle says he misses you and wants you to come home. Your father and I wish you would check in with us more. Why have that fancy phone if you’re not going to use it? Love, Mom. P.S. What’s the shower like at Dalton’s house? Is it one of those deals with the seven sprayers?”

Hearing the message in Mitchell’s voice gave me some perspective. It was just them checking in on me, not trying to break my heart.

“I guess I’m homesick,” I said. “I haven’t seen Kyle very much these past two weeks, and it just hit me. I’m a terrible person.”

“I have a little black cat,” Mitchell said. “His name is Pretzel, and he lives with my parents in a little town called Squirrel Mountain Valley. Don’t laugh; it’s a real place. Now, when I moved to LA, the apartment wouldn’t allow pets, and I figured I’d eventually get settled and send for him, but I haven’t. Every day, I miss his little whiskers and the shiny spot on his chin below his lips.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better? You’re bringing me down, Mitchell. Way down, like a sad country ballad.”

“The point of my story is that Pretzel is just fine, because he is a cat, and as long as there’s food in his dish, he’s good. Parents, however, will use any dirty trick in the book to make you feel guilty about running down your dreams.”

“My parents are supportive.”

“Sure, they want you to do as well as they did in life, but they don’t want you to do better than them. They don’t want you to get above yer raisin.’”

I chuckled. “Do you want to go get that sushi now and tell me all about it?”

“Aren’t you sick of me after working with me all day?”

“You’re the nicest person I’ve met in LA, except for Keith.”

Mitchell winced. “He really sucked you in, didn’t he?”

I grinned. “Nobody sucked anything. We’re just friends.” (This was, at the time, somewhat true. We’d had sex once, and nobody had sucked anything, though I was looking forward to trying, if he didn’t hate me for the photo shoot disaster.)

“Just friends?”

“Totally,” I lied.

“Honestly, I don’t know Keith at all. But I do know male models, and I can tell you that, without a shadow of a doubt, every single one of them is a narcissistic, lying, using, son-of-a-whore.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Because I keep dating male models. It’s terrible, I know. I can’t stop, and there’s no self-help group. It’s like when you open a tube of Pringles to put out on set, and you think you’ll just have one or two, but pretty soon you’re cramming them into your mouth by the dozen, and you can’t get enough, even though they’re shallow and bad for you.”

“By the dozen?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, just one at a time, but a guy can dream.”

With that, we got to our feet, I grabbed my bag, and we went out to the parking lot, to Mitchell’s little blue Miada.

Was going for sushi the right choice?

I took out my phone and mulled over my options. Keith had programmed his address into my phone that morning, because we figured I would have to stay longer at the shoot and take a taxi to his house. We’d been rushing around, arguing over how much parsley he was putting in the fruit shakes, and I’d neglected to get his phone number. The proper thing to do would have been head straight to his place and find out how he was doing, but I’d forgotten about him just long enough to get myself into dinner with Mitchell. That made me feel twice as bad, but I was already on an I’m-a-terrible-person kick anyway.

Mitchell kept driving, and I crossed my fingers that Keith wouldn’t be too upset if I popped out for a quick dinner.

“Mitchell, do you think someone can tell if they’re a narcissist?”

“Nope. But it’s like alcoholism. If one person tells you, ignore them. If two people tell you, it’s true.”

“So, am I a narcissist? Do you have to be one to feel okay about taking your clothes off in front of the camera?”

“Oh, girl models are nice. It’s just the guys.”

“But you don’t date the girls.”

“They mostly have Daddy issues, and eating disorders.”