Her gaze darted toward the ceiling like she was cataloging her past interactions. “Where am I going? Or what do I need? When I’ll be visiting? But not my plans.” Another pause where she seemed to be assessing herself. “I’m thinking about getting a dog. The apartment is very big now without Gus. He was my husband. It’s been three years and still feels like yesterday. Maybe I should move to Florida like Barbara.” A wistfulness entered her voice.
Why’d I have to go and open my big mouth? Stick to the small talk. I was worried about my roommate problem, and Millie had been through a monumental change and was now all on her own. “She and Grandma Georgina are having a ball down there.”
“Oh, I know. I’m in the group chat.”
“They’ve got you in a group chat too?”
“I don’t know how their fingers haven’t fallen off with all the messages flying back and forth.”
At least I wasn’t the only one subjected to the glowing red notification of doom with numbers climbing like we were on an express elevator ready to launch us into space.
The doors opened, letting us both out into the lobby. Millie went outside, and I went in search of my potential new sheet model.
“You want me to help you make the bed?” Ian held the sheets in his hands with his head cocked to the side. “And record it?” He’d been getting off his shift, which was perfect timing. Already changed out of his uniform, he wore mesh shorts and an Iron Man t-shirt. He’d followed me up to the apartment as if he expected camera crews to pop out of any alcove and tell him he’d been punked.
“Yes. Well, I want you to make it.”
“For your job?” His eyebrows dipped, gaze darting between the ironed sheet set, unmade bed, and me.
“Yes!”
“Seriously? You want to video me and take pictures of me with the sheets?” Skepticism was etched all over his face.
Maybe I could figure out another option. But it would be more of the same. I wouldn’t stand out in what had to be at least twenty other people who’d gotten a shot to submit their work. I could try stop-motion. My wrist ached at the idea of all the time at the computer to attempt that. I also didn’t want to weird out Ian. He was my only friend in the whole building other than Millie. “If you’re not up for it…” I reached for the sheets.
He tugged them back. “No, I can do it. I just never thought of sheets as being someone’s kink.”
My neck and cheeks were match strike hot with embarrassment. “Not like that! Product photography. You know, those pictures on a website that show off different parts of a product. That’s what I do. Before I moved, I scored a chance for a big campaign. I made it to the next round and I want to wow them with my final pitch. If they like them, then I get the year-long campaign and it’ll be enough to live off for a year at least.”
I went to my page and clicked on the first video.
Ian stood beside me watching one of my last jobs for toilet bowl cleaner. Not exactly glamorous, but it had paid some of the bills. But I’d put all my eggs into the sheet basket and hadn’t won another job since.
In another, I’d tried my hand at being my own model.
On the screen, I was like a different person. Happy, confident, unbothered by anything. She was a hell of a lot more put together than me. It helped that no one could see me from the elbows down. They’d liked my videos and photos but preferred the ones without me in them. Go figure.
“Wow, you seem different.”
“From my forearms.” I laughed. “Yes, I can do a hand flourish with the best of them and seem prim and proper and not the least bit like a sweatpant mess.”
“I didn’t mean—I only meant it felt bright and light in the video.”
“It’s called acting.” I bowed with a flourish, hoping my cheeks weren’t fluorescent at this point. “It won’t take long. I can pay you too. It wouldn’t be much until I know if I’ve won the whole campaign.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I can help you out.”
Relief rushed through me. “I’ll pay you back, I swear. And I’ve never used a model before, so bear with me.”
He held the sheets to his chest and widened his eyes. “I’ll be your first?”
I grabbed a pillow and whacked him. “That’s one way to put it.”
Ian took a seat at my desk off camera, and I set everything up, checking the angles and lighting.
“I’m ready and remember, we can do this a hundred times, if we need to. Just relax and be natural.” My smile of reassurance didn’t do much to wash the steel, rigid tightness from his body. Maybe this wasn’t a great idea. I’d never been a director before. But he was here and so that was it. It was the best I could do right now. The novelty factor might be enough to cover over the fact that I’d assembled a humanlike man robot to assist me today.
I shot the same motions over and over from different angles, wanting to get every single image and video clip I might need for the final submission. Working on a movie set or a full-fledged commercial needed a thousand times the attention to detail that photography did, and that was part of the reason I hadn’t gone that way after graduating. Plus, I couldn’t work as an unpaid intern just to get my foot in the door.
Textile design was a hell of a lot less stressful. Going in to fix an issue with my stylus was a piece of cake compared to dealing with all the moving pieces of this work.
I grabbed the camera for a slow pan of the perfectly made bed. With it set back on the tripod, Ian and I high-fived and flopped onto the bed after the final shot.
He turned to me, sitting up. “That’s it?”
“Yes, it should be enough. Thank you. I can’t tell you how much you helped me out today.” I slid off the bed. “If you’ll help me pull all this off, I can get it packed away.”
He stripped the bed, and I adjusted my wrist brace.
“No problem. The whole way up here, I was worried you were trying to proposition me.”
I jerked, my brace nearly flying out of my hand, and the Velcro rip sliced through the silence. “What?” Whirling around, I stared at Ian, who squeezed the back of his neck. “You thought I was asking you up here for sex?”
“Come on!” He threw his hands up in the air. “You wouldn’t be the first tenant to ask for a little extra help in the bedroom.”
“Are you serious? What’s the dirt? Is it Millie? Saucy minx.” I growled.
“No, not Millie! They don’t live here anymore, but it was…awkward to say the least.”
“Did they have you make the bed afterward?”
“I didn’t do it,” he hissed with incredulous wide eyes.
“Sure, Ian,” I teased. “Don’t worry about me propositioning you. It’s not my style.” Abject humiliation? I liked to keep it to a minimum. Asking a guy for sex and having him turn me down wasn’t my idea of a great time. Seth had been one of the first guys to ever make a move on me. Maybe that should’ve been my first clue that something was up. “I’m not exactly a wolf-whistle kind of girl. Let me load everything onto my computer.”
Not that I was interested in Ian. He was cute and sweet, but I’d certainly gotten the friend vibe more than anything else.