“You just gotta shake it off.” Joe chuckled softly, setting two shot glasses on the bar and pouring two whiskeys. He nudged one over to her and picked up the other, holding it at eye level between them. “To you, Jules. Remember me when you make it big, huh, kid?”
She huffed softly, her anger slowly ebbing away as she picked up the other shot glass and rolled her eyes at Joe. “Yeah, right.”
He knocked back the shot and placed the glass directly in the soapy sink before him, washing it out and rinsing it quickly. “You don’t have enough faith in yourself. You’re a beautiful girl, Jules. Young and smart, too. You’re gonna go all the way.”
Julianne lifted her glass in a short salute, then leaned back and pressed the cool glass to her lips, letting the whiskey burn a trail down her throat before placing the shot glass back on the copper bar gently. “Thanks, Joe.”
“Alrighty now. What can I get you?”
“Two vodka martinis straight up, a Seven and Seven on the rocks, and…” She thought about Christopher Winslow, whom she’d been watching steadily, yet covertly, throughout the evening. “…a Dewar’s. Neat.”
“You got it, kid.”
He shuffled down the bar, grabbing a bottle of Seagram’s, and Julianne turned around, slipping out of her torturous black heels and leaning back against the bar for a few moments. Reaching up, she grabbed her long, straight black hair in her fist and lifted it from her neck, sighing as the cool evening air touched on her damp skin.
She frowned at the pretty barn-like room before her. Overhead rafters were wrapped with white tulle and twinkle lights, which gave the entire space a soft, romantic glow. Over three hundred white chairs in mostly-neat rows sat forgotten as wedding guests ate, drank and danced at the tented reception outdoors.
Joe was wrong. Julianne did have faith in herself.
She wouldn’t have left her home in South Dakota and traveled all the way to Philadelphia if she didn’t faith in herself. She wouldn’t have signed a contract with Reingold if she didn’t have faith in herself. She wouldn’t be working these godawful catering gigs to make ends meet if she didn’t have faith in herself. She absolutely had faith in herself. She just didn’t have much faith in the rest of the world.
“You wanted that Dewar’s neat, right? No ice?”
Julianne let her thick hair fall onto her neck and turned back to Joe, wincing as she slipped her feet into the tight, hot heels, making every blister scream in protest.
“Neat,” she confirmed, thinking about Christopher Winslow sipping the amber liquid with no ice and hoping it was Dewar’s and not something fancier. By now, however, at his fourth or fifth drink, perhaps he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway.
Joe poured two shots into an old-fashioned glass and added it to the tray, then took out two frosted martini glasses from a freezer under the bar and added them to Julianne’s tray.
“Say…how’d that job go? The one in New York?”
Julianne sighed. “Okay. But they didn’t end up using my pictures. They used another girl instead.”
Joe clucked softly, pouring vodka carefully into the glasses. “Your day’s coming, Jules. I know it.”
Her lips twitched. After four months in Philadelphia during which she’d waitressed far more than she’d modeled, her “day” was sure taking it’s time coming.
Frances Watson, from Reingold Talent, had called Julianne several months ago out of the blue, asking if she’d ever considered a modeling career. At first Julianne was sure it was a joke—one of her half-sisters or cousins putting on a posh voice and trying to make a fool of her. She’s said a few choice words to “Frances” and hung up the phone, only to have it ring again a moment later.
“Miss Crow, it’s Frances Watson again. My phone number is 717-555-4895, and our website is www.reingoldtalent.com. Why don’t you look us up and call me back. I saw the promotional video you narrated on the Oglala Lakota College website and I’d like to talk to you about a possible modeling contract.”
Julianne’s mouth had dropped open as she stared down at the dirty kitchen floor in her mother’s double-wide trailer in shocked surprise. None of her family members could have cooked up such an intricate rouse. This had to be for real.
She’d apologized for calling the woman a kaga, which meant “demon” in Julianne’s native Lakota, and listened to what Frances Watson had to say. Apparently, Reingold Talent didn’t feel they had enough minority models in their agency portfolio and they were anxious to sign several girls who had a more unique or exotic look in anticipation of upcoming trends. Julianne had scoffed at this, fingering her lush hips and telling Frances Watson she had the wrong girl.