SHOOT: A Novel (16 page)

“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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“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 what 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.

I looked back at
the picture on my monitor. It practically called my name.

 
I knew I needed to stay late at the office to
get work done. What happened next was out of character for me.

-Okay, I’ll go-

My heart jerked a
little when I made the commitment. It was the first time in a long time I
actually had done something I
wanted
to do and not something I felt
obligated
to do.