11. A Little （Un）Friendly Fire

11

A LITTLE (UN)FRIENDLY FIRE

LILA

M y first mistake was thinking that the first photoshoot of the campaign was going to be your average studio-lit backdrop. My second mistake was boarding a boat without bringing some anti-anxiety medication because I’ll be trapped on twenty acres of water with my fake boyfriend.

The stylist’s got me in this micro, royal-blue bikini that barely covers anything, and it would probably slip off if I actually swam in it. Small, triangular pieces of fabric sheathe my nipples, leaving a dangerous amount of boobage spilling out, and my poor, high-waisted thong consists of strings skimpy enough to make a plastic rubber band seem durable. My makeup is lightly applied this time around, giving me a natural look that won’t take away from the rather… showstopping …swimsuit.

Since Kitty’s Catwalk wanted to get stellar lighting and a background unobstructed by tourists or unsightly mountain bends, they decided that having Bristol, me, and the crew spend a night on the water would be the best course of action. And, of course, what was I supposed to say to that? Actually, Ester, I can’t be left to my own devices because I’ll either drown Bristol or fuck him before we make it back to shore tomorrow morning.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is all just an act. It’s just work. None of this means anything—what Bristol said at the launch party didn’t mean anything. And the more I recite those words like a mantra, the more I believe them.

When I make my way to the top deck of the million-dollar yacht I’m on, I wish I was greeted by the picturesque sight of a clear, glistening lake, but my eyes are instead accosted by a heavily oiled Bristol and his unbelievably sculpted set of abs. He’s got on disturbingly small swim trunks—too small to contain the above-average monster between his thighs—and the dude needs to start carrying a gun license around to legally operate that much heat.

Two high-definition cameras are set up on tripods, pointed toward the metallic railing overlooking our private inlet, and they’re accompanied by blindingly white lights. The main photographer, Stephanie, fiddles with the camera settings, a makeup artist stays nearby for touchups, an ambassador from Menoulé picks at a plate of shrimp appetizers, and a hair stylist ruffles their hands through Bristol’s luscious locks. He looks like a cocker spaniel with a shiny-ass coat. I mean, I guess that makes sense.

Bristol Brenner’s a dog through and through.

But despite the hatred still bubbling in my gut, he’s managed to capture my attention and fog up my sensibility. I can’t look away. It’s like he’s got me entranced, prying my eyelids apart and shouting, Hey! Over here! I’m a delicious piece of man candy and you can taste my rainbow any day of the week.

A small, travel-sized bottle of baby oil is shoved into my hand, and I know it’s gonna be hell to get off later.

“Lila! Good, you’re here. Let’s get you oiled up and we can start the shoot,” one of the stylists says .

Assuming they aren’t interested in getting well-acquainted with every inch of my half-naked body, I squirt a sizable dollop into my hand and start slathering it on. A lance of cold nips at my skin, inspiring a shiver to roll down my spine, and the sticky solution begins to web my fingers together. The longer I lather myself up, the longer I allow my nerves to multiply in my stomach, and the weight of this entire photoshoot descends on me like a slow curtain of imminent fog, waiting to pull me into everlasting obscurity.

I haven’t felt nervous until now. I mean, I knew this was a big deal, but the realization had yet to set in. And now I’m getting all clammed up when I’m minutes away from doing this thing for real, with my ex-fling and current fake boyfriend, in front of a small audience who’ll be watching my every move. I can’t panic in front of everyone—I can’t show any weakness for fear Menoulé will take one look at me and immediately ask for a more seasoned model to replace me.

I usually have some kind of pharmaceutical assistance, or I blast out “Beautiful,” but I forgot both of those today. How could I forget such important things? I never do a photoshoot without taking the necessary precautions beforehand. Throwing yourself in front of a camera is scary; it’s even scarier when you know those pictures are gonna circulate the internet for all eternity, publicly (or privately) commented on by critics, trolls, almond moms, and creepy, middle-aged guys alike.

Nobody ever talks about how vulnerable modeling is. It feels like you’re the only art piece in the middle of a museum surrounded by blank canvases. It feels like you’re peeling layers of your skin off for wide-eyed spectators to get a look at the bloody meat underneath. It feels like you’re shedding your former self, contorting your body until it perfectly fits everyone’s expectations. You lose a part of yourself when you model. Your self-worth gradually begins to chip away, but even when it’s all gone, that preliminary crack still splinters through you, creating different versions of you that are all fake, beautifully barefaced imitations of who you once were.

You’re nothing but a prop.

I finish dousing a thin layer of oil over my stomach before flailing to cover my back, and maybe it’s the testosterone frying his brain like an egg on an Arizona sidewalk, but Bristol saunters over to me with an outstretched hand.

“Let me help,” he says, shaking me from my daze, assaulting me with his somehow still-tan pecs that rest like two equally hard pillows. Another fucking reason for me to be gawking at him.

I don’t say anything. I don’t make a comment about how close he is or how he looks like a greased-up rotisserie chicken. The bottle remains firmly lodged in my grip, and I’m about as steady as the waves sloshing against the yacht’s keel.

Bristol’s rumbling chuckle buzzes straight through me, filling me with a warmth that the sun itself could only imagine replicating. “You’re drooling.”

He snatches the bottle from my fingers, walks behind me, and starts gently rubbing his oiled hands over my shoulder blades before I can protest.

I gasp and wipe the back of my hand over my mouth. “I was not.”

“Don’t worry, Lils. I only look this good for you.”

Ugh, why does that nickname have such an effect on me?

Bristol makes quick work of the oil, spreading it down the length of my spine, his touch nearly making my eyes roll back in ecstasy. His expert fingers glide over my skin, undercut by the chill now racing through my bloodstream. The last time he touched me this intimately was on the red carpet. It feels so familiar, even with the rockiness of our past. It feels so good.

“You’re shaking,” he observes, and before I can toss out a weak-ass excuse, he presses his thumb to the racing pulse of my wrist. I’m expecting him to make some arrogant comment about me being nervous around him, but he doesn’t. In fact, he couldn’t slough off the worry on his face if he tried.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m…fine,” I stammer, my heart puttering weakly in my chest, a nauseating mix of nerves and false confidence tangling the thoughts in my clearly delirious head. The anxiety’s taking center stage now. It’s all I can think about. I feel like I can’t breathe even when I’m standing out in the fresh air.

Stephanie’s stentorian voice intercedes whatever weird, pseudosexual hand-on-back action we had going on. “Okay, you two. Let’s not waste any more daylight. Bristol, you’re going to lie down on the lounge chair. Lila, you’re going to lie on top of him while you hold up Menoulé’s fragrance.”

I don’t move. I don’t respond to her. I know that she just gave me a direction, but the thought hasn’t informed my muscles yet. Bristol looks at me, then looks to Stephanie with the same worry in his eyes.

“Can you give us a minute please?” he asks.

I don’t hear what Stephanie says, but I pick up on the unimpressed tone in her voice.

Great. Now I have to lie on top of him? I knew we were posing together, but I thought it would be more of a…separate…affair. Oh, God. A Xanax and a sad, self-empowerment song couldn’t have possibly prepared me for this.

When Bristol ushers me toward the far end of the boat, I’m still a quivering mess, feeling my chest start to strain from aborted breaths. This is humiliating. I’m planets away from the self-assured, badass woman I’ve been portraying myself to be.

A paroxysm of concern falls over his face, matched in intensity by the unrelenting grip of his hands on my arms. “Hey, hey. What’s going on? ”

Anxiety weaves through the catacombs of my thoughts, and my heart pinches so tightly that my lungs beg for air. “I…I don’t have my song.”

“What song?”

“My song! I don’t—fuck, I don’t have my song.”

“Breathe, Lils. Talk to me,” he begs, his voice barely audible above the wind shuddering through reeds of cattails.

Calm down, Lila. He can’t help you if you don’t allow him to. Forget all about the hate just for a single moment. Remember what it felt like when you were with him…how easy it was to breathe, how light your heart felt.

“It’s…there’s this song that I always listen to before every photoshoot. It helps me calm down. It’s a song my mother used to sing to me. It…it reminds me that I don’t have to be scared of the cameras,” I explain shakily, keeping my head bowed, and refusing to give him my shame—not after the crushing blow of my weakness.

He doesn’t stop prying, even when he knows there’s every possibility of me lashing out at him. “What song was it?”

I can feel the control slip through my fingers like particles of sand, just as easily as our relationship escaped my desperate grasp a year ago.

I shake my head vehemently. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Never in a million years, angel,” he whispers.

I don’t know why I’m so hesitant to accept his help, but the silence is airborne for an excruciating minute before I reluctantly give in, unofficially re-signing my heart over to the man who I still can’t seem to let go of, even after all the damage he’s done.

“‘Beautiful’ by Christina Aguilera.”

With no cameras and no audience, he wraps his arms around me, stroking the back of my head with his hand while abstaining from messing up my hair. And then, Bristol does something that I never expected him to do—he starts humming the melody of the song to me under his breath. He holds me tight—as if he’s the one with everything to lose—and each syrupy rumble transports me back to late nights with my mother when she’d wash dishes and sing over the running water, filling our tiny apartment with a chorus crafted from love.

“You’re okay. Just breathe,” he whispers.

I block out the maelstrom of noises all competing for my attention, dialing my focus in on the steady beat of his heart, on the way his throat vibrates against my head with each soothing, rhythmic suspension. His voice doesn’t sound anything like my mother’s…but it’s not a bad thing. This version is raw and gravelly, a thick-chested lullaby that nobody could ever replicate—like the bare bones of an acoustic cover. Nothing else exists except for him. I’m safe. I’m at peace. I’m… loved .

But as always, that L-word has a way of complicating things, and a little voice in my head questions if love was ever on the table in the first place.

I wrench myself away from him, stamp down the spiraling panic, and grit out a “Thank you.”

Shit. I can’t believe I just let my guard down with him. When Bristol and I were seeing each other, I never told him that I’d sometimes get panic attacks before high-stress situations. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, I just…I didn’t want him to see how weak I was. And, I mean, telling him the truth about my father was already enough of a vulnerability overshare—which he clearly didn’t reciprocate.

Bristol blinks a few times, dumbfounded by my sudden change in mood, then slowly retracts his hands since I practically teleported away from him. “Yeah, of course.”

We both walk back over to the hub of things—thankfully spared from interrogation—and resume with the photoshoot as planned. Bristol has no trouble getting himself situated on the lounge chair, his half-sitting position making his stone-cut abs pop. I shuffle slowly over, walking a fine, death-defying line between pleasure and pain as the contents of my stomach rush into my throat.

Under the watchful eyes of the crew, I climb on top of Bristol, being hypervigilant not to brush my cunt over the bulge in his swim trunks. I hover over him—definitely not taking the photographer’s advice like I’m supposed to—and my arm shakes while I accept the amber-colored perfume. Even from my suspended pose, I can still feel the dizzying heat rolling off his body, inviting me to come closer, inviting me to take a hearty drink from the poisoned chalice.

“Uh…a little closer,” Stephanie advises.

I lower myself an inch.

“Closer.”

Another inch.

“Body to body,” she reiterates exasperatedly.

Shit, shit, shit! I should’ve never agreed to this. The attraction’s still there. The feelings are still there. I’m not going to survive this. My dignity isn’t going to survive this.

Finally, I relent and give Bristol my full weight, close enough to hear the tiniest of noises rasp out of him, and I can tell he’s just as apprehensive as I am because he doesn’t know where to place his hands. The oil concoction on both of our bodies smears disgustingly together. I can feel every bulging hill and valley of muscle underneath me, can feel the twitch of his belly and how it expands with an uncertain breath.

I adhere the fakest smile to my face, rest my head on Bristol’s chest, and hold the fragrance in the hand closest to the cameras. There’s a barrage of shutter clicks and small snapshots of light that smother me like a seismic mudslide. Between the heat trampling me and the overworked nerves waiting in the wings to completely floor me, I’m seriously overestimating how long I’m going to last before croaking on the spot. I need to focus on looking sexy while simultaneously trying not to look too sexy that I raise Bristol’s flagpole.

I need to maintain control. And the only thing I can think of doing is getting lost in the chemistry still in (unfortunately) perfect service between us. Since my ear’s directly over Bristol’s heart, I listen to the surprisingly unsteady way it pounds and cries for help, which surely has to be some first-time modeling jitters.

Right?

“Nervous?” I tease in a whisper, aware of the irony and grateful that we’ve switched figurative positions.

“Yeah,” he breathes, his chest jolting with an unrestrained vibration of laughter. “You’re on top of me.”

I freeze, and I hope the camera can’t pick up on the bright red blush hightailing it over my cheeks. “You’re in breach of rule number two.”

“You’ll have to jog my memory.”

“No lovey-dovey words of affection like that.”

Bristol rests his hand on my lower back, just barely above my waistline. One unadvisable inch lower and his fingers would be fraternizing with my bikini bottom. Fuck. I want him to grab my ass and spank it so hard that he brands it with his handprint.

All I can think about is the tip of his dick flirting with the crack of my ass, and the weight of his ball sack hanging heavy against the backs of my thighs. He’d spit on his cock, lube it up with those nimble, dexterous fingers of his, then slowly slide it in my asshole, making sure to encourage me with soft praises while he fucks me raw and senseless. I’d be a shaking mess on my hands and knees as tears convened in my eyes, every nerve stimulated with each unforgiving stroke. The squelch of our bodies would be enough to fling me over the precipice, and then he’d whisper with possessive pride how well I was doing, how good of a girl I was, how?—

“Just stating the facts, Lils. Nothing romantic about it,” he says, taking creative liberty to trace his forefinger along the length of my jawline, goading me to fall into those endless, caramel-brown eyes. They twinkle underneath the golden-tinted sky, shifting to reflect a deep honey shade that highlights the little lightning bolts of green surrounding his pupils.

I never noticed he had green in his eyes.

I don’t even think I realize I’ve been staring at him like a complete idiot until Stephanie shouts from the background, “Yes! Perfect! Keep looking into each other’s eyes like that! I can feel the love from here!”

I sever my gaze despite our photographer’s wishes, nearly choking on the L-word that flies unresistingly from her lips. I feel sweat begin to seep from every pore, my barely there swimsuit useless in cooling me off. If I wasn’t body to body with Bristol, my arms would be quivering like there’s a fault line cracking open beneath us.

I snort a little too loudly. “We’ve been in this position before.”

His tongue sweeps over his bottom lip, eyes shadowed by something unidentifiable, and his fingers dig the slightest bit into my skin—enough for a half-bitten gasp to stick to the sides of my throat.

“I’m well aware. Except it ended a lot differently,” he murmurs, and the undercurrent of disappointment in his tone aggravates the butterflies taking flight in my gut.

The last thing I needed was a reminder of the mind-blowing sex we used to have. I don’t have a witty response for this harmless back-and-forth. The only response circulating in my sex-deprived head right now is “ God, Bristol! Just apology-fuck me already! ” and I think that veers into desperation territory .

Hey, I’ll take a hate-fuck.

No. Bad, Lila!

Come on. Don’t you remember how good he felt inside you?

I’m not dignifying that thought with an internal response. Oh my God. I’ve officially lost it. I’m arguing with myself.

“Stop that,” I hiss.

“Stop what, pretty girl?”

“Stop being all charismatic. And I told you not to call me that.”

“You told me not to call you ‘angel.’ This is different.”

“Hardly. Same intention.”

Bristol’s grown a fucking pair since I last saw him, because he doesn’t pack up his dignity and skedaddle for the hills. No, he runs his fingers up the bumps of my spine, teasing me with a touch made from sin, and I doubt it would take him any effort at all to flip me onto my back if we had enough room and less of an audience.

He leans into my neck so that his lips are one brush away from cataclysm, the heat of his breath hitting the stretch of skin just below my jaw, and a responding shiver fires through my body.

“Then maybe you should make me shut up.”

Stephanie squeals and claps her hands together. “Let’s do one of you two kissing!”

Thanks a lot, Bristol.

I stare Bristol down like he’s the final boss keeping me from my well-deserved win, and I pray that my nipples don’t get trigger-happy and poke through my bikini top. “Just so you know, I won’t enjoy any of this.”

He grins, exuding pussy-wetting arrogance that makes my bikini bottom suddenly feel two sizes too small.

“Why are you smiling?” I ask irately, this close to slapping a goddamn chastity belt on myself because none of my other Bristol-proof efforts seem to be working.

“Your nose crinkles when you lie,” he answers with far too much happiness.

Gasp! That…that…asshole!

“It does not,” I defend while happening to feel my nose, indeed, crinkle.

Bristol doesn’t entertain any more pointless arguments. His lips collide with mine in an instant—silencing my indignant noises of protest—and I feel every muscle liquefy like I’ve been submerged in a warm, relaxing bubble bath. I know it’s cheesy, but I swear I see stars cropping up behind my eyelids, red-hot flares of light bursting across a chasm of darkness. Time stops. The racing thoughts stop. My heart stops. He’s the closest thing I have to heaven right now.

And instead of ripping myself away, I pull myself closer than ever.