Tessa
“You know what?” I said half an hour later as I sat on Andrew’s couch, eating a sandwich. “I liked sitting down in the shower. It’s relaxing and civilized.”
Andrew bit into his own sandwich—which, in the end, I’d made him. Turkey, mayo, and fancy mustard, just as he ordered. “I’m glad you find my shitty life interesting,” he said.
I lowered my sandwich. “Am I being offensive?”
He paused, too. “Are you going to ask me every thirty seconds if you’re being offensive?”
We stared at each other for a second. “Okay,” I said, “let’s make a deal. If I’m being offensive, just tell me off.”
“I do that anyway,” Andrew said.
“Yes, but that might just be because of your everyday crabbiness. The point is, I don’t actually know when I’m being offensive.”
Andrew shrugged and put the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “Do you want a code word or something?” he asked. “If I say it, you’ll know you’re being an ass.”
I blinked. “You mean like a safe word?”
“Something like that. How about this? If you’re being offensive, I’ll say ‘Bea Arthur.’ Then you’ll know.”
“Bea Arthur? Are you for real?”
“It’s as good a safe word as any.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure why I like you.”
“Me neither. Probably because I have air conditioning. How do you become a bra model, anyway?”
I swallowed my bite of sandwich and took a drink of water. I was showered and dressed in a navy blue sundress, and I felt like a new woman. A new, hungry woman. “Well, you start by traveling the country with your hippie parents, who don’t supervise you as much as they should. Then you develop boobs and catch the eye of sketchy older men who say they want to take pictures of you.”
Andrew froze mid-bite. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, I am.” I shrugged. “I was never actually assaulted, but I chalk that up to pure luck and survival instinct. I’d been in some dangerous situations by the time I was fourteen.” Those experiences had led me to crash and burn, but I didn’t want to talk about that. “Anyway, looking pretty was what I knew how to do, so when I was sixteen I signed up with a reputable modeling agency and tried to get work. That was in Denver. My first gig was modeling a nursing bra, if you can believe it.” I put down my drink and mimed. “I had to pose demonstrating the clasp, you know? The one here that opens the nipple flap. I was seventeen. I made a hundred and fifty dollars.”
Andrew leaned back in his chair. “That is deeply weird. And not a little disturbing.”
“There’s a whole world of modeling out there,” I said. “Not everyone goes on a runway, wearing Victoria’s Secret. Bras have been sold in catalogs for decades, and someone has to model them. Hand modeling is a big thing, too, though my hands aren’t quite nice enough. There’s watch modeling. I knew one woman in L.A. whose specialty was shampoo and hair spray ads. She stood with her back to the camera and did this.” I shook my hair, brushing it back from my shoulders, though of course my hair was too short to demonstrate properly. “Before I cut my hair I did some calls, but my hair wasn’t quite right. I also did some leg auditions—for razor and legging ads. Legs are hard, though. They have to be perfect, and you can’t fake it. My calves are too thin.”
Andrew was watching me, his sandwich in his hand. “Your legs are nice,” he said.
That gave me that giddy feeling again, the one you get when a great-looking guy notices that your legs are nice. “Thanks,” I said. “Nice doesn’t cut it in the modeling world, though.”
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. He took a bite of sandwich and swallowed. “It sounds like your whole career is about being told your body parts are subpar.”
“It sounds that way, but I’m used to it. It’s better than being a nurse, I guess. Less schooling, and not as much work.”
“You wanted to be a nurse?”
Of all the topics we’d talked about, that one made my cheeks burn. I didn’t know why I’d said that; I never talked about wanting to be a nurse with anyone. “I know, it sounds dumb. A bra model wanting to be a nurse. I don’t have the brains, and I definitely don’t have the money.”
Andrew frowned, thinking. “You would if you sold your grandmother’s house.”
“But then I’d have nowhere to live.”
He was watching me closely with that gaze that missed nothing. “Still, you’ve thought about it,” he said like a psychic. “It’s one of the reasons you left L.A.”
No. There was no way that Tessa Hartigan, daughter of hippies and semi-failed model, was going to be a nurse. So I did what I always did when I wanted to distract a man: I changed the topic to sex.
“I left L.A. because, as you say, none of my body parts were quite good enough. Except for these.” I straightened my spine and gestured at my boobs, now demurely covered by the navy blue dress. “These, I’ll have you know, are flawless. Every casting director says so. In fact, you might be looking at the world’s most perfect breasts, right here.”
He narrowed his eyes as if he saw through my ruse, and then he corrected me. “I’m not looking at them.”
It was true. His eyes were carefully aimed at my face. I suddenly wished he would look lower, which was the opposite of how I felt with every other man. I wanted Andrew to see. “Do you know what makes the world’s most perfect breasts?” I asked him, pushing him harder.
“Tessa, really.”
That shiver again when he said my name. I loved this—getting a reaction from him, seeing if I could make it the reaction I wanted. “It isn’t just size,” I explained. “The shape matters. Like a teardrop. They can’t sit too high or hang too low. Fake boobs don’t work for the really good casting agents—the boobs don’t look quite right, and sometimes they’re uneven or the scars show. Mine are real, of course.”
It was working. He was definitely distracted now. “Of course,” he said.
“They also have to be proportioned correctly with my torso.” I gestured to the sides of my ribcage. “It has to be pleasing to the eye. It’s mathematical. My body is x wide, so my breasts are—”
“Okay.” Andrew’s voice sounded a little choked. “I get the idea.”
“Oh, please. I thought you watched porn all day. You don’t want to talk about breasts?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “It isn’t my usual topic of conversation, no. But please continue.”
I watched his expression. Was he turned on? Why did I hope the answer was yes? I spent most of my time fighting men off. Why did I want Andrew to get closer?
And still, I hadn’t pushed far enough. I could never leave well enough alone. “Do you want to see them?” I asked him. I put a hand to the strap of my dress, as if to pull it down.
Andrew put his sandwich plate down next to him. “No, Tessa, I do not.”
I tugged the strap half an inch. “They’re really impressive. I have a bra on.”
“I’m sure they are, but no. Keep your dress on, please.”
I dropped my hand and sighed in disappointment. “You’re the first man who’s ever said that to me.”
Andrew was silent. For a second his gaze was dark and intense, looking at my face, my throat, and yes, my breasts through the navy blue dress.
I was playing with fire. And I liked it. My blood was hot in my veins, my ears buzzing. I had the urge to touch him. A hand on his arm, anything. I bet he would be warm, his skin firm. I had always liked the way men felt, the way they smelled. I’d just always ended up touching the wrong men.
“Is that what you do at these casting calls?” Andrew asked, his voice low and serious. “Just show up and take off your shirt?”
“That’s the idea.”
“You don’t even know these guys.”
He was concerned, I realized. It only made me want to touch him more. “It’s professional,” I told him. “I realize it doesn’t sound like it, but this is business. There are other models there, plus photographers, marketing people, assistants. It isn’t a creepy audition in a back room.”
“Still, text me when you get there,” he said. “And while you’re there. And when you’re leaving.”
I swallowed, touched. Everyone in L.A. was so hungry, so busy striving for the same selfish version of success, that they never looked out for each other. I wasn’t used to it. I could handle myself; I’d handled myself at dozens of auditions. And still, I said, “Okay, I will.”
“And you know what? Text me from the bartending interview, too. Guys who run bars can be fucking creeps, even if you keep your dress on.”
“Okay,” I said again. “I’ll be careful, Andrew. I always am.”
He was quiet for another moment. Then he looked away as if something had hurt him, his face hard.
“Good,” he said. “Now finish your sandwich and get going. You don’t want to be late.”