LUCIA

 

I woke to the sunrise—something I hadn’t done in years. Not unless it was stumbling home from some club opening, half-drunk in high heels, waving away paparazzi waiting for me at my doorstep.

No. This was different. As soon as my eyes opened, I sat up, yanked on a sweatshirt and pulled open the front door.

“Paradise,” I breathed, the fog like a blanket over the coast. The air wet on my bare legs—that scent of rain, the threat of thunder. I wanted tea and a good book. A fireplace and flannel. My fingers drummed against the doorway and I wondered where my notebook was.

And then, just as quickly, I grabbed my phone and went to open one of seven social media apps I used regularly.

No Service.

I contemplated chucking the phone right into the ocean.

I had probably lost another hundred followers—followers who were used to me posting sometimes hourly, a glimpse into Lucia Bell’s Glamorous Life. And this—this—was the kind of sunrise I needed to post a picture of.

Now, not an hour later, I was perched on a stool with ten different women touching ten different parts of my body, intent on making me beautiful.

“Bacon me,” I said to Josie, who cheekily fed me a piece. I was getting a simultaneous pedicure and manicure, and the hair stylist, Joanna, was scrunching a thick gel into my hair.

“Latte me,” I said, and Josie held the steaming cup up to my lips.

I must have looked like a stylish invalid, and yet Josie had been my makeup artist (and best friend) for a decade and we’d done this song-and-dance a million times. As a model, the only way you could ensure you got to eat on set was to have your makeup artist feed you. That, and I also usually stuffed my face when they allowed me a rare five minutes to use the restroom.

“Calvin really came through, eh?” Josie said, tilting my head just slightly, her fingertips cool against my cheekbones.

“That he did,” I said, my gaze sliding towards the big desk he was currently hiding behind.

He was reading that Rilke like it held the secrets of the universe, barely glancing my way since our little interaction half an hour ago. I’d caught his eyes snag ever-so-briefly on my bare thighs before composing himself.

His self-control was intriguing—I’d been fawned over by rock stars and celebrities and European diplomats and even other models—younger women who want to worship at my feet.

But Calvin was content to ignore me.

Although it was nice to have someone on set who would finally laugh at my jokes (besides Josie).

“What are you thinking about?” she asked me as I let my eyes flutter closed.

This was my favorite part of modeling—closing your eyes and letting a group of people take total control of your body, their fingertips like tiny hummingbirds landing on your skin, over and over. Hands in my hair, on my cheekbones, on my ankles and wrists.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I was actually thinking about Cal. He’s…interesting.”

She made a sound of assent. “And this book store…I swear I got chills when we came in here. I wonder why all of those writers don’t come anymore, you know?”

“Mmmm,” I said, thinking about my own reaction. Even now, with Ray manhandling every piece of furniture in this gorgeous room, I felt the energy of all the books, the words and worlds waiting to be read. I think Cal had picked up on it, that and my ridiculous overreaction to his Mary Oliver story.

“Lucia,” I heard in my ear. Ray.

“Yeah?” I said.

“I’m estimating nine hours, minimum, today in this location. We’ll work through the first 35 outfits with you and Taylor.”

“Perfect,” I said, waiting for him to walk away and then heaving a giant sigh. Suddenly I was exhausted, and the thought of holding poses for nine hours through 35 outfit changes was the last thing I wanted to do.

Josie laughed a little. “See? This is kind of what I was talking about yesterday,” she said lightly. She knew I was unlikely to take it seriously, at least not while on set.

“I know,” I said. “I don’t think I’m unhappy, though,” I said, hoping Joanna and her assistant were ignoring me. “It’s just not as…I don’t know, thrilling as it used to be. And I’m not sure…” I trailed off, surprised at how quickly I was about to spill a dark thought that had invaded my mind a year ago and wouldn’t let go, spreading like a nasty weed.

“What?” she prompted?

What the fuck else am I supposed to do? I was 26, which was incredibly young in Normal Years but practically ancient in Model Years. I was like a Great Aunt to the new, younger faces, my time in the spotlight nearing the end. Those Instagram followers would find the next It Girl and want a piece of her glamorous life, not mine.

Which is why I needed the Dazzle contract.

“Estoy feliz,” I finally said, wincing as Joanna yanked my scalp. “Lo prometon.”

“I believe you,” she replied. “Estoy preocupada porque te amo.”

“Yo también te amo.”

 I opened my eyes to find Josie grinning kindly at me, holding a mascara wand in her hand. “Look up, chica.”

I had been 15 years old when I landed my first modeling gig, and spent the majority of that first day longing to be with other 9th graders at my high school. It was weird, to be both the center of attention, but also surrounded by adults so much older than you.

Josie was 21 then and newly hired, an assistant makeup artist, and could see right away how brave I was trying to be. How cool I wanted to seem in front of the adults, even as I stood, half-naked and shivering, in the cold studio lights.

“Hablas español?” she’d whispered, holding a tube of scarlet lipstick like a weapon. Josie was fucking cool—nose pierced, lip pierced, a few tattoos already decorating her arms. Josie was born in Mexico but raised in East L.A., the youngest of five (and the only girl).

“No,” I’d said, miserable.

“Ah, no te preocupes, carina. Don’t worry, darling. I’ll teach you. It’ll take your mind off things.” And she had. My memories of my first year of modeling were colored with memories of conjugating Spanish verbs with Josie by my side. It got me out of my head, until at 16, I could walk onto a modeling set and feel like I owned the world.

“I’m really fucking happy about Paris,” I said as Josie coated my lashes with thick mascara, ignoring the tendril of doubt. “And I’ll be even happier when you come visit me.”

“Good,” Josie said, coating my lashes with thick mascara. “That’s the Lucia I know. I like seeing you happy.”

“I like seeing you happy,” I said, flinching at a memory of holding a prone Josie, picture perfect in a crisp white wedding dress, as she sobbed for hours. Even though it’d been two years, and even though she’d sworn, up and down, that she’d moved on—from Clarke, from the wedding, from the heartbreak.

“You don’t have to worry about that, mija,” she said, examining her handiwork. Josie was a goddamn cosmetics genius. “I saw you this morning, watching the sunrise. When was the last time you did that?”

I shrugged. “Never? Maybe…high school?” I held my hands together to stop them from trembling. I’d had a writing teacher once who told us to wake up with the sunrise every morning for seven days straight…to see if it affected our poetry.

It had.

“Hmmm,” she said with fake nonchalance. “That’s an interesting development.”

“Probably just jet-lag,” I said, but she arched an eyebrow at me and I capitulated. “Okay, I wanted to watch the sunrise. Take my L.A. Cool Kids card from me.”

She laughed, holding up eyeliner pencils like Edward Scissorhands, one stuffed between each finger. Josie was a trendy night owl like me, a frequenter of nightclubs and bars that only opened at four in the morning. We’d sworn to dance the night away at the darkened, scarlet-toned nightclubs of the L.A. underground, stopping only to have our picture taken by paparazzi.

Sunrises, we’d always said, were for suckers.

“It’ll probably never happen again,” I said, holding three fingers up, like a Girl Scout. But the look she gave me suggested otherwise.

“You know what would be fucking rad? Snapchat,” Taylor said, pulling up a stool and sitting next to me.

“I’d have to agree,” I said, my hand feeling naked without a phone in it.

Josie layered magenta gloss onto my lips.

“You ready, Tay?” I asked, eyeing his bored look. Earlier, Ray had been giving him some intense instructions and he’d looked stressed as fuck.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, stretching his arms overhead, exposing his perfectly sculpted six-pack. Everyone on the set seemed to stop, sneaking a glance at the hard ridges of his stomach. Sighing collectively.

But I wasn’t impressed. After a decade of sculpted abs everywhere I looked, I was losing interest. Instead, my eyes landed on Calvin, adjusting his glasses and turning the page in his book. Quietly reading. Totally absorbed.

 

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Hour six of this shoot and my neck was killing me. I was wearing my 26th boho outfit of the day—a black crop top, with high-waisted, cut-off jean shorts. A wispy, see-through cover-up on my shoulders, my fingers dripping with turquoise rings. Joanne had given me lioness hair, with tons of tiny braids, daisies woven through to the ends.

And from the moment we started, for reasons I still wasn’t sure of, Taylor and I were just off.

Taylor was sitting down on one of Calvin’s chairs; the set designer had stylized it with flowers and lace. It should have been a simple first shot—Taylor seated, legs spread, looking directly into the camera. As usual, I was some type of human adornment—draping over his arm, straddling his leg, standing behind him. I re-arranged my face to appear both interested, and yet disinterested. Aroused, and yet irritated.

And yet…we couldn’t pull it off. In the first minute, Taylor nearly elbowed me in the face.

“Hey…watch it,” I hissed, pushing his arm back into place.

“Sorry, I just…gah, I’m sorry,” he whispered back, coughing awkwardly. We sounded like two high schoolers fumbling towards losing our virginity.

We changed poses. We changed outfits. Ray pulled Taylor off to the side and had a special “chat” with him—the kind every model has been given a million times: what’s going on with you? Why isn’t your face working?

Meanwhile, I was killing it and knew it—these were the times when being an Older Model helped—years of experience and endurance. But two hours in, Taylor was yawning again.

“Chin up, Tay,” I murmured, gripping his hair with one hand, my other drifting into his jeans (we’d moved onto the aggressively sexual poses). “We’ve got, like, at least seven more hours of this.”

“Whaaaaaa,” he’d said, creatively, and I’d fought the world’s biggest eye roll. I might have been currently less than enamored with modeling, but it was still a job that I took seriously. Sometimes It Guys like Taylor strolled onto a set, expecting just a bunch of standing around looking pretty.

Which, it was, a little bit. But it was also physical and boring and oddly intense and tedious and you had to contort your body into strange shapes for hours on end.

“On his lap, Lu,” Ray said, setting up the camera a few inches from our faces. “Let’s try some extreme close-ups.”

“My favorite,” I replied sweetly, then proceeded to make a hideous, monstrous face directly into the lens. The camera guy spit his drink out.

“Taylor, you’ve gotta wake up for me, buddy. We need your face as animated—”

“Yet passive,” I chimed in.

“—as possible. Yes, what Lu said. Also, I need you to barely breathe.”

I’d perfected the art of Barely Breathing, but Taylor was struggling. Ray wanted us to do a lot of intense gazing into each other’s eyes and we just couldn’t do it. I’d hear Taylor’s scarcely concealed wheezing and I’d crack up.

We had no connection. Which was an issue.

“Let’s switch it up for a bit and then we’ll take a break. Get a little coffee, re-orient. Sound good?” Ray said, finally.

We both nodded, a flurry of stylists rushing over to primp and fluff me, pulling things up, yanking things down. I looked up and made direct eye contact with Calvin.

For the past few hours, he’d been either reading intently or answering the questions of bemused customers, who weren’t used to wandering into an active photo shoot.

He was more comfortable around them than he was around us—still awkward, but warmer. Funnier. A few times his laugh rang out and I had to work to keep from smiling automatically.  

Now his eyes were boring into mine—probably by accident—so I shrugged, arching my eyebrow. He was going to see me primped and fluffed a lot. I kind of wanted him to walk over again, but he kept his distance.

“Lu, let’s have you face me now,” Ray said. “Taylor, you’re back in the chair but facing the fireplace. Lu, you straddle him. Let’s get a series of shots where you’re being kind of intimate with each other. Aware of the camera—”

“—but not aware at the same time. Got it,” I said, throwing my legs over Taylor and getting into position. Taylor gave me kind of a wolfish grin, probably trying to work his nerves out.

“Be serious,” I chided, tossing my lion-hair and staring directly into the camera.

Which was now directly facing Calvin.

“Taylor, I want your hands kind of…well, kind of everywhere. Let’s do a bit of a peep show, sound good?”

I rolled my eyes and Ray caught it.

Reputation.

“It needs to be fucking sexy, Lu, you know that,” he said, dismissing my eye-roll with his hand. Calvin was definitely only pretending to read now, looking up every other minute as I essentially made love to the back of Taylor’s head. Eye-fucked the camera. Exposed my throat, arched my back. Pulled Taylor’s hair.

“Ouch,” he winced.

“Get used to it,” I said back.

“Can you lick his neck, Lu?” Ray said and I complied, running my tongue up the side of Taylor’s neck.

I looked up at the camera, inadvertently catching Calvin’s gaze again. He didn’t break contact this time, still staring. Taylor’s hands smoothed up the backs of my legs. I nibbled on Taylor’s ear. He grazed his hand on my stomach, pushing up the crop top and exposing the lower swell of my breasts.

I bit my lip, made eye contact with Calvin, expecting him to blush or cough or faint.

Instead, he gave me that look again, the one from last night.

Pure fucking lust.

“Take her top off, Taylor,” Ray said, and Taylor’s fingers glided up my rib cage, the fabric lifting off. I wasn’t completely exposed, but if you used your imagination you could get there.

I was pinned beneath Cal’s gaze, trapped against Taylor’s body, and growing more aroused by the second. Gone was Cal’s nervous demeanor, replaced by something almost savage.

And then a family with six children walked in, breaking the moment.

“Holy—” the teenaged boy said, whipping out his phone. The mom gasped, the dad tried to stay composed, and the youngest children were distracted by the lollipops Cal quickly found for them.

“So sorry,” he said, moving from behind the desk and escorting them back to the front parlor. Taylor laughed, Ray grinned, and I wasn’t entirely sure what the fuck had just happened.

“Let’s take an actual break this time, eh?” Ray said, standing and stretching. Josie handed me my top and I put it back on.

“That’s a great idea,” I said quickly, slipping off the six-inch platform sandals I was wearing. “I’m going to wander for a minute, get some air.”

Josie gave me a questioning look but I shook her off. I walked towards the back half of the store, discovering a few hallways I hadn’t noticed before. One of the hallways was comprised entirely of built-in bookshelves and I ran my hands down the spines, seeing some well-loved titles.

I breathed in the scent of dust and words. My heart was still racing, my body keyed up. I suddenly longed for someone to press me against these shelves, skin-to-skin.

Oddly enough, I wanted that someone to be Calvin.

I shook my head, dismissing the thought entirely and wandering further. I looked up toward the ceiling, seeing the postcards Cal’s grandfather had pinned. I was tall enough to be able to read some of them—they appeared to be older.

Tonight, a group of us listened to Diane di Prima read some new poems in The Big Room. Amiri Baraka was also there, joining in on occasion. Smoked good weed and had the oddest sense that I could feel Diane’s words on my skin. Robert opened the windows and the night air was so clean and cool I cried.

I swallowed against a sudden wave of emotion, feeling the enormity of this place. Of the moments that happened here, of this person, now probably sitting at some desk, filing paperwork or answering emails, but with the memory of hedonistic nights at this bookstore.

“Lucia?”

I spun at my name and fell directly into Calvin’s arms.

“Sorry…ah, fuck, I didn’t mean—” he started to say.

“—oh, no, it’s not your fault,” I mumbled over him, looking up into his face.

At first, he wouldn’t look directly at me, shoving his glasses back onto his nose and trying to slide past me. But the hallway was too narrow and so we stood, locked together for a moment, so close we were practically hugging, the only thing I could focus on his hand, clamped like steel around my wrist.  

He stepped back first. “I’m so sorry, I…um…really didn’t mean to scare you.”

I waved it off, willing my heartrate to slow to normal. “You’re fine. I’m kind of jumpy today.” I smiled at him and he smiled back, tentative.

“I think, um, well I think you might have given that dad a heart attack,” he said.

“Not the first time,” I said, stony-faced, pointed at my barely-covered breasts. “These things are real killers.”

His laugh came from deep in his chest. He was cute when he laughed.

He was cute when he wasn’t laughing.

“I was reading this card,” I pointed up and Cal moved closer again, tilting his head to see. I thought about his gaze back in The Big Room, his hand on my wrist. “I just had the strangest feeling reading it. I was… I don’t know…enthralled.”

My tongue rolled around that word—enthralled. It was a good word.

“That’s beautiful,” he said softly. “You know, there are days where I would give anything to be here during that time. I can’t imagine seeing someone like Diane di Prima reading poems, and at the height of Beat Poetry, no less.”

“Yes,” I breathed. “I went through a heavy Beat phase when I was younger. I loved this one of hers called…” I tipped my head, trying to remember. I’d been in eighth grade, fighting with my parents about modeling and escaping through poetry.

“‘An Exercise in Love’?” Cal said, eyes finding mine. The air became charged, the hallway growing smaller around us. I wanted to hold onto this moment: two near-strangers talking about poems.

“That was it,” I said, a smile practically splitting my face. “I loved that—”

“Lu, you back here?” Josie stumbled into the hallway. When she saw us, she could barely conceal her reaction—a blend of excitement and confusion. We were standing closer together than I realized.

“Hello,” I said, waggling my fingers at her. “Ray need me back?”

“He does. And he sent Taylor back to the cabins for a bit. Told him to get his head on straight.”

Cal glanced at me. “It’s common,” I said, shrugging. “Modeling is hard. Sometimes you’re just not in the right headspace for it.”

“This girl, though—this girl could model balancing on the tip of the Empire State Building,” Josie said, leaning against the bookshelves. I laughed. I wanted to snap a photo of her and Instagram it, some cute caption about best friends. She looked so pretty.

“You’re thinking about Instagram, aren’t you?” she said and I sighed, my hands aching for a phone that wasn’t there.

Cal moved out of the way, letting Josie grab my arm and pull me down the hallway. “I just miss it so much,” I whined.

“It’s only been a day,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”

I turned back towards Calvin, his shoulders broad against the narrow shelves. He gave me a small smile and I winked at him. He blushed and looked away.

I turned back to Josie, feeling confident again.

At least Calvin liked me.

 

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