Page 31 of Passion

“I don’t really know.”

“How can you not know?” He scoffed, chuckling a moment, then sobered when I glared at him. “I mean, what happened?”

“She moved out. She just found a place and started moving on with her life. Apparently, I wasn’t part of that future, and now she is barely communicative.” I wanted to drink more of my coffee, but my tongue hurt so I just stared at the paper cup.

“She’s been busy?” Henry leaned forward. His posture told me he was about to get pushy with me. “Or she told you she’s called it off?”

“What does it matter if she doesn’t respond to me?” I stood, turning my back to him, and walked to the windows, watching out over the view of the ocean. The beach was covered in bikini-clad women, their towels stretched out next to umbrellas while children played volleyball and threw frisbees near the boardwalk.

“Well, it matters because you care. And you care a lot, by the looks of it. Did she actually tell you she wanted to break up?” Henry came and stood next to me, hands in pockets, watching the scene below play out.

“No, she didn’t. She said she still wanted to date me, but it was going too fast. I don’t know how we can go from her living with me to her not even responding to me and that’s ‘taking it slower’. She accepted my dinner invitation but didn’t even have the decency to tell me that she was not going to show up.”

“Okay, so you’re upset by that, and you’ve taken it out on your employees?” Henry nudged me with his elbows. “Sounds a lot like your dad.”

I gritted my teeth and rolled my eyes. I deserved that, though I fully expected that line to come from my wife one day during a heated argument, not from my business partner.

“I tried to tell you it was all a bit too fast. Besides, women of her generation do things differently.”

“How so?” I turned and picked up my coffee, deciding to brave the hot beverage even with the burn on my tongue.

“Women our age want men to pay for the date, pick them up at their house, open the car door for them. That sort of stuff. You know?” He shrugged. “Women of Vera’s generation only want the man to show up. They pay their half. They drive themselves. They even want to split the rent. It’s weird.”

His words got my wheels turning. He was right. Things had changed in the dating scene, and I had still been expecting it to be like back in the day, when I was in college. An idea started to blossom in my mind. If Vera was acting this way because of the way her generation preferred things, then I would try to do things her way.

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

Henry nodded and walked to the door. “Apologize to Frank. He’s a little butt hurt, and I don’t want to deal with him.” Henry chuckled and left my office, and I sat down to make reservations for Vera and me for dinner. I had to give it another shot. She obviously meant a lot to me, and I wasn’t about to give up until I’d given it my all.

25

VERA

The camera flashes weren’t really necessary. The sun overhead lit the beach perfectly. Mr. Fink had worked with the client to have large tents arranged for a dressing area and makeup. We spent only ten minutes at a time in the direct sunlight. The shoot was a double—Hanah Wright joined me. We were posing for a Coppertone ad, but they didn’t want the greasy glow of suntan lotion on our skin, so we spent more time under the tent’s shade than in front of the cameras.

Hanah stood next to me as we waited for the photographer's team to arrange the setting for the next shot. She was a rail of a woman, tall and lanky, but gorgeous. She carried herself with an air of class that a lot of models didn’t. If I had to guess, she was older than me by more than a few years, but it wasn’t her looks that told me that. She was elegant, mature, and tactful. I appreciated that about her.

We watched the shifting of props and sipped ice-cold water. I was in my mind a lot, worried about how my body would change as time passed. It made me seem scatterbrained, and when Hanah asked me questions, I always had to ask her to repeat them. I saw the way she handled herself, remaining patient with me even when I frustrated her, and I felt bad for frustrating her.

“Is everything okay?” She set her water bottle on the table behind us and pushed her hair out of her face. My personal problems were not about to become public record—not yet, anyway—so I simply shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Well, you don’t seem okay. You’re constantly distracted. And if you frown any more, you’re going to end up with frown lines.”

I inwardly scowled at myself. Most models were ultra-careful about how they held their faces on an almost minute-by-minute basis. We all knew that wrinkles and frown lines happened because of using facial muscles a lot. I was never as careful as others because I knew my body wouldn’t always be my meal ticket. Eventually, my modeling career would be over and I’d have to support myself by other means. However, the way she was staring at me told me I wasn’t getting out of this conversation without an explanation.

“Do you ever wonder what you’ll do when your body no longer pleases the camera? I mean when age hits you and they can’t line up any more jobs for you?” I hugged my arms over my stomach. More than once in the past few weeks, I’d wondered if other models had gotten pregnant and how they had handled the change in their bodies, if the pregnancy had ended their careers.

Hanah stared out across the ocean waves. The barricades set up down the beach were lined with people watching the shoot. They had cameras out as if from that far of a distance they could get a decent image of us. When her gaze turned back toward me, she looked thoughtful.

“I have thought about that time, actually. I don’t think it will be much of a shift for me. I plan to continue building the relationships I have in the modeling world with companies I model for. I only take shoots for companies who are invested in causes I believe in. At the end of the day, I will use my notoriety as a model to continue to build a platform to speak out against social injustices and have a voice to make real change in the world.”

She turned to me. “Why? Are you worried about that?”

I avoided eye contact with her. The changing hormones in my body made me a bit more emotional than I was used to, but unlike some women who cried at the drop of a hat while pregnant, I found I got angry easily—which then turned to tears. My anger was over how dumb I had been to get so drunk that I lost myself and had unprotected sex, all because I was hurt by my ex-boyfriend.

“I’ve just been thinking about my future. I don’t have a plan like yours, so I’m not sure what I’ll do when I can’t do this anymore.” I tamped down the frustration I felt with Daven and forced a smile.

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