In Too Deep (9 page)

“Not that it made me give up on the other girls right
away
,” his dad went on, clearly lost in his own memories. “She made them seem so different, too . . . different from her. But in the end, of course, you know how it all worked out.” Drew’s dad slapped his knees with the palms of his hands, got up, and headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.

“Don’t feel like you need to rush yourself, Drew—you don’t have to have it all figured out right now. You’re a young guy—play the field and have fun—that’s what youth is for, you know.”

Drew put his bare feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair, his arms behind his head. “And you should know, right? I mean, since you’re so old and everything . . .” he answered back, a half-smile on his lips.

“Proving once again that youth is
definitely
wasted on the young,” his dad retorted with a snort as he closed the door behind him.

Drew turned back to the screen, his dad’s words swimming around in his head, confusing him. What was wrong with being a serial monogamist? It had never felt right to Drew to simply go out with girls just because he could—it was so much more fun to really get to know someone rather than take them out, hook up, and never talk to them again. He didn’t really see the point. And besides, it wasn’t like he really wanted to represent some cliché of what a sixteen-year-old guy should be. Just because he was supposed to be ass-crazy all the time, just because his hormones were in overdrive twenty-three hours out of twenty-four didn’t mean that he had to be a player. If you played, eventually you
got
played, and Drew wasn’t interested in being just another conquest. Most of the girls at Meadowlark expected so damn much from a guy they were dating, and one of the things he loved about Casey is that she didn’t expect
anything
from him—or anyone—and that made her appreciate what she got. For the first time, Drew was starting to see what it could feel like to want to give a girl everything you had—simply because she didn’t demand it.

And it felt good.

strike a pose

Madison stopped before the frosted - glass doors lead
- ing to the offices of Verve Model Management and took a deep breath, pulling out a gold Chantecaille compact, and blotting her nose and cheeks with translucent powder that shimmered slightly against her golden skin. School had been interminable, her head filled with images of striding down the Versace catwalk in Milan, Antonio seated in the front row next to Donatella, his dark eyes flashing more powerfully than the white lights clouding her vision . . .

Except now that she was finally on the threshold of taking the modeling world by storm, Madison was feeling just a smidge more nervous than she would’ve liked to admit—not that there was anything to be nervous
about
really. When she’d called Antonio the day after their encounter on the street, he’d told her to come right in as soon as she could, the excitement in his voice crackling like static electricity. And besides, she was wearing her lucky outfit—a dark-washed pair of Joe’s low-rise skinny jeans, and a black, wool Prada jacket with a black cashmere tank beneath, and Jimmy Choo pumps that were the absolute definition of hotness with shiny silver zippers running up and down the black leather. The entire ensemble screamed supermodel. So what did she have to be nervous about? This was destiny, and as far as Madison was concerned, her destiny was waiting just behind those frosted-glass doors—in the form of a scorchingly hot Italian guy with model good looks, and the connections to match. Madison pushed open the doors, tilting her chin confidently in the air.

The monochromatic gray lobby was filled with the bustle of ringing phones and the sharp sounds of stiletto boots tapping against the bleached wooden floors as assistants walked briskly by, their arms full of papers. A row of scarily gorgeous girls sat on a line of stiff-backed chairs, sleek leather portfolios cradled in their matchstick arms. Madison was no stranger to beauty—after all, she’d grown up with some of the most beautiful girls in Manhattan—but the polished, pampered exteriors of the Upper East Side’s elite couldn’t even begin to touch the otherwordly glossy veneer these girls were genetically blessed with. They were so strangely, hauntingly beautiful that it was almost unsettling to look at them for more than a few moments.
Did they manufacture them at a factory somewhere in Eastern Europe and ship them to New York when they turned fifteen?
Madison wondered nervously as she approached the front desk, clearing her throat softly.

The Amazonian blond receptionist—who possessed the most hollowed-out, sculpted cheekbones Madison had ever seen in her life—held up an index finger, a headset firmly strapped to one ear, her light gray, almost colorless eyes perfectly complementing the darker gray wall behind her, the shade of storm clouds. Just looking at her, Madison began to worry again—this girl was only the receptionist, yet she looked as if she’d just climbed out of one of the framed magazine covers adorning the gray walls and sat down behind the desk just for kicks. “Shit,” Madison mumbled under her breath as the receptionist turned to her, her eyes sliding up and down Madison’s body from face to feet with cool, practiced ease.

“Yes?” she deadpanned, a flash of amusement enlivening her formerly dead stare.

Madison drew up her shoulders and stared her back down, summoning all the confidence she could muster. “I’m here to see Antonio.”

The blond gave her a half-smile, her eyes turning suddenly frosty.

“I assume you have an appointment?”

“Of
course
,” Madison answered haughtily. All she had to do at moments like these was conjure up her mother, Edie, and it worked every time. It was a good thing, too, because when she’d talked to Antonio yesterday he’d told her to just come on down—she hadn’t even thought to schedule an appointment. And besides, no one ever got anywhere by playing by the rules or making appointments. Rules were for wimps and losers—not glamazons-in-training.

“Madison, darling! You made it!”

Madison turned around to Antonio’s smiling, Armani shades obscured his dark eyes. He walked up to her as if the wooden floors were made of butter, taking her hand in his own and planting a smooth, practiced kiss on her knuckles.

“How long have you been here?” he inquired. Before she could answer, he took both her hands in his own, holding her at arm’s length, taking in the faded jeans that fit her every curve, and the fitted jacket that hugged her torso, squeezing her waist from negligible to nonexistent. “You are a vision,
cara,
an absolute vision!” Antonio wasn’t looking too bad himself in dirty-washed Diesel jeans and a forest green T-shirt peeking out from beneath a chocolate velvet blazer. “Come with me to my office,” Antonio purred, taking her by the arm. “We have much to discuss, no?”

“Definitely,” Madison cooed, allowing Antonio to lead her out of the waiting room and down a long, carpeted hall that reverberated with the shrill sound of ringing phones. But before she exited the waiting room completely, Madison couldn’t resist turning around and shooting the receptionist a satisfied smile, her green eyes flashing triumphantly. The receptionist smirked right back, her dark matte lips turning up at the corners lightly, before being distracted by yet another call ringing through her headset.

Antonio’s office resembled a page out of an IKEA catalog—all sleek, Swedish modern furniture dominated by a white egg-shaped lamp that glowed brightly on his ebony desk—despite the late-afternoon fall sunlight streaming through the venetian blinds, casting horizontal patterns on the gray walls.

“Sit,
cara,
sit!” Antonio gestured at the horrendously uncomfortable-looking steel and Lucite chair directly across from his desk. Madison sat, crossing one leg over the other, her heart beating so loudly she briefly went all Woody Allen—practically convincing herself that she was about to keel over in sudden cardiac arrest. She didn’t know what made her more excited—the prospect of being a supermodel, or her proximity to Antonio. He was so totally yummy that she briefly imagined pushing the paper and portfolios that crowded his desk to the floor and pushing him down on top of the slick wooden surface, pulling his T-shirt up with one hand . . .

“So,” Antonio said, removing his sunglasses with a smile, flashing his blindingly white teeth, “we must talk seriously of your career today. I will have my assistant take some Polaroids, and your measurements,
si
?”

“Si,”
Madison agreed, positively giddy with excitement. God, when her adrenaline rushed like this it was almost better than drugs, and definitely better than sex—or at least the sex she’d had so far, which admittedly had been less than perfect. That horrible night she’d spent with Drew last spring began to miraculously fade from her memory as she watched Antonio pick up the phone, barking orders in a stream of rapid-fire, authoritative Italian before banging the receiver back in the cradle with the ringing of bells.

“And I will, of course, give you our contract to take home with you and look over. It is just a standard contract,” Antonio said with a shrug as a pencil-thin brunette in achingly tight skinny jeans entered the room with a clipboard in one hand, a Polaroid camera in the other. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I’ll have to talk it over with my mom,” Madison said nervously as the brunette motioned for her to stand up.

“Yes, yes,” Antonio said with a wave as the phone began to ring again. “Have her call me if you like.”

“Okay,” Madison said as she stood up, the brunette wrapping a length of cloth measuring tape around her waist, smiling happily as she recorded the results on her clipboard, “I definitely will.”

“We will set up your test shoot for sometime next week.” Antonio picked up the phone, holding one hand over the receiver. “I will call you with the information.”

“Test shoot?” Madison said breathlessly, as the tape—which was now around her breasts—was threatening to cut off her circulation entirely.

“With a photographer,” the brunette clarified, her blue eyes as round as marbles in her pointy face. “To see how you photograph.”

“I thought that’s what
those
were for.” Madison pointed at the Polaroid camera the assistant had placed on her vacated chair.

“The Polaroids are just for us,” the brunette said briskly while picking up the camera. “To make sure you’re not a total disaster on film before we spend money on test shots. Now, stand up against the wall and look straight ahead.”

Before Madison had time to pose, the flash went off like a gunshot, colored spots spinning in front of her eyes, the photograph popping out of the bottom of the camera with a slick, grinding noise. The assistant waved the photo in the air, fanning herself, a bored expression on her fine-boned face.

“Why aren’t you a model?” Madison asked while they waited for her likeness to appear on the empty surface. “You’re pretty enough.”

The assistant rolled her blue eyes, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Yeah, right,” she scoffed as she brutally slapped the nonexistent excess flesh of her legs. “With these thighs?”

Madison shrugged, but inside she shivered a little. This girl was just about flawless with legs like stilts, and she thought she was too fat? Madison frowned as the assistant fanned the photograph in the air again with one hand—the other still hovering obsessively around her thighs. Just what was she getting herself into here—a life of dieting and insecurity?
But that’s pretty much the life I’m living right now anyway—without the added benefit of being famous
, she reasoned as the assistant stopped her manic fanning and stared down at the now-developed image.

“Wow—the camera loves you!” she exclaimed, shoving the Polaroid under Madison’s nose.

Madison stared down at the photograph, transfixed, unable to believe that it was her own face looking back at her, the face she’d seen a million times in the mirror. Madison had always known she was pretty—there was no point in denying it or even in acting humble—but who was this girl with the razor-sharp bones in her face, those green eyes that gazed back at her like the embers of softly-glowing emeralds? So lost in her thoughts was she that she barely noticed when Antonio walked up behind her, staring at the photograph over her shoulder.

“Belissima,”
he purred, grabbing the photo from the assistant’s bony fingers. “I think,
cara,
that you are going to be a big, big star—and I am hardly ever wrong,” he added, a flirtatious gleam enlivening his dark eyes.

Madison smiled back, her stilettos barely touching the ground. She felt like she was floating somewhere over the Empire State Building, her stomach a mass of turning, jumping excitement tempered with a sense of calm that she couldn’t quite explain. This was it—her destiny had come to her as she always knew it would. She smiled as she pictured both Drew’s and Casey’s faces when she broke the news.

Of course, being a supermodel was definitely going to be fabulous—that went without saying. But Madison had the sneaking suspicion that making Drew and Casey suffer was going to be even better . . .

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Dear Sophie,

I was overjoyed to receive your e-mail among the endless spam clogging my inbox! I’ve been hoping to hear from you for some time now—I’d even thought of contacting you myself, but I didn’t want to intrude in your life in any way that might be unwelcome.

In response to your question, I’d love for us to meet. I’m shooting a film in Los Angeles with Paul Thomas Anderson right now, but it should wrap in time for your sixteenth birthday! Of course, I’d love to come to your party. I can’t wait to get out of L.A.—if I see one more starlet carrying a tiny, sweater-clad dog, I just may lose what’s left of my tiny mind ☺.

Can’t wait to meet you—I know we’ll have loads to talk about. Please give my love to Phyllis.

xoxo
MVN