The woman opened the door halfway, stepping aside to let me pass.
“Thank you,” I said. I wanted to say, “Aren’t you coming in with me?”
She gave a little curtsy then closed the door the moment I’d cleared the threshold. I felt like I was being trapped. Or herded.
The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the man looming behind the desk. Like his voice, everything about him exuded the kind of confidence that demanded to be acknowledged. He hadn’t said a word since I’d stepped in—he hadn’t even looked my way yet—but I already knew this was a person who didn’t often hear the word “no.”
Ellis Lawson must have been in his forties, but he didn’t look it. He’d clearly been a model before starting the agency. He had the chiseled sort of face that screamed couture, and he filled out a suit the way designers envisioned when creating their designs.
All this, and he had yet to lift his gaze from his sleek gunmetal laptop.
“Miss Hayes.” Finally, he rose from his chair and moved toward me. “Nice to finally meet you. I apologize for my absence early in the week.”
“It happens. Nice to meet you too.”
I held out my hand as he approached and was totally taken by surprise when he leaned in for the hug. My arm kind of got lodged in between us, my other one hesitantly moving around him to pat his back.
Awkward.
It was one of those longer hugs too, tight squeeze and all.
Super awkward.
Rubbing my back one last time, he finally stepped back. I’d been so distracted by the hug, I hadn’t noticed how tall he was. Like, the kind of tall that almost had me feeling short. In my heels and all.
“How has the city been treating you so far?” he asked, his eyes roving up and down me.
“It’s been good. I like it.” I took a few steps back because again, he didn’t seem to get the personal space concept. Being as big as he was, with as much confidence as poured off of him, he really should have been respectful of people’s bubbles.
“Homesick?” He backed up to his desk and leaned into the edge of it.
“I miss my family. I don’t miss Nebraska.”
His smile suggested he knew how I felt. He had a nice smile, one that had probably cost tens of thousands to perfect. He even had nice lips, which was just strange to think about a guy. But Ellis Lawson did. He had nice everything. Even the silver that was starting to streak through his dark hair was nice.
“That’s good to hear, because your family you can move. A Midwest state, not so easily transported.” Mr. Lawson rolled his fingers along the edge of his desk, fighting a smile, though I wasn’t sure why. It was like he was in on a secret. “I’ve heard back from almost all of the clients you had go-sees with the past couple of days.”
My stomach hiccupped. I wasn’t sure if I’d booked a single client; that was how much any of them had indicated their like or dislike of me. Fashion designers could have been the world’s best poker players, I swear.
“Would you like to know who you booked?” Mr. Lawson prompted as my silence continued.
“I booked someone?!” My voice went higher.
He gave me an amused look, still rolling his fingers along the lip of his desk. “You booked them all,” he said, a dark eyebrow lifting. “Well, all except for Zelda Zhou, but I don’t think ‘Her Highness’ has ever once booked a model who didn’t look like an emaciated little boy.”
My mind was struggling to catch up to what he’d just said. “I booked them all?” I echoed, my feet starting to bounce. “Except for Zelda Zhou, I booked them all?”
When I looked at him, needing the confirmation, he pointed at me. “You did.”
“Holy crap,” I whispered, feeling light-headed and heavy-headed at the same time.
“I hope you’re a hard worker, because I’m going to be asking a lot of you over the next few months. I’ve seen a dozen supermodel’s careers go from nothing to everything, and this, right here, is how it starts.” His finger moved to point at the floor between us. “If you already have this many designers seeing something in you when you’re a nobody, every major designer in the world will want you for their campaign next year. You’re going to be an icon. The kind of model the whole nation knows by name.”
My head was definitely moving more into the light-headed territory, so I slid to the side to fall into the chair in front of the desk.
“I’ll have Jennifer print out your schedule for the next couple of weeks so you know where you need to be when, and I’m going to give you my private number so you can get a hold of me whenever you need to, day or night.” Grabbing a business card on his desk, he flipped it over and scribbled down a number. “Text me later so I have your number on my personal phone as well.”
Taking the card, I shifted in the chair. “Actually, I don’t have a cell phone. Yet,” I added when he gave me a look that suggested I’d just confessed to not being able to read.
“Why not?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “You’re a professional model now. You need a cell phone. You need a way for people to get a hold of you.”
“I promise, it will be the first thing I purchase once I cash my first check.” After paying this upcoming month’s rent, utilities, and stocking up on ramen. And a winter coat.
“Your first check will take weeks before it’s issued.”
Heart-stopping moment number two of the meeting. Though this one wasn’t brought on by the warm happies.
“Weeks? But I thought you just said I booked all of those clients. They’re going to pay me, right?” I didn’t mean to sound so stressed, but I couldn’t hide it. Rent was due in ten days, and there was no way I could ask Soren for another favor, especially not one as big as covering my rent next month. Provided he even could, which was assuming a lot of a college kid working a part-time job.
“Yes, they’ll pay you, but first, you have to do the job. Then they have to write the check. To us. Then we take our cut, draw up a new check, and that’s when you get paid. These things take time. It’s not like you’re working at Burger King and getting regular checks every two weeks.”
Thankfully, I was sitting down. I’d just gone from feeling like my dreams were falling out of the sky into my lap, to having them stolen away a moment later.
It was quiet in the office for a minute. I felt Mr. Lawson watching me, trying to figure out if I was in as tight of a spot as I was making it seem.
“Tell you what? I’ll pay an advance on your first check.” He pulled a money clip from inside his jacket. I didn’t realize people carried that much cash on them at one time. I’d felt like a baller the one time I had fifty-three dollars in my wallet after I’d worked all day in a cornfield last summer. “Would a thousand be enough to get you by for a while?”