Not Just A Pretty Face

32. Leonel

Most Mondays started the same way these days: with a call to Alex, my new manager. And most Mondays ended the same way: at the bottom of a vodka bottle.

I wasn’t an alcoholic by any means, but a fifth wasn’t that hard to get through by the end of another weekend without any parties to attend, or with only parties surrounded by people whispering about me behind my back. Or to my face.

Fuck, it was a whole month later, and I’d been bitterly, utterly right about the trajectory of my career.

But so had Gideon. Alex hadn’t been able to pull him back from this one. The other guys he’d brought over were all getting work.

But not Gideon.

That meant only one thing: I was shot.

And I was broke. A month wasn’t much time in which to go through my savings, but they were dwindling fast somehow. Between credit card bills from boutique spending sprees -- and I’d be fucked before I’d let them get a penny of interest -- and paying back my own expenses…

Shit, this was an awful, sinking realization.

I’d fucked around and wasted the best opportunity of my life.

It hadn’t taken long before Nora had figured out what was going on, but there was no offer she could make that wasn’t just insulting. Help me get another admin job somewhere? Help her with her sewing business? Anything would be a step down from where I’d been.

And where I was, in some ways. That cologne commercial? It had still gone ahead, possibly as my last big claim to fame.

So my face was plastered on bus stops and rolled across glitzy electronic signs now and then when I looked at them. I hated the sinking, wretched feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I saw myself in one of those damn things.

I’d had a couple jobs, sure, since joining Alex’s agency, which was simply called Alex. Worst name ever.

But nothing could regain the momentum I’d once had.

Alex still called that Friday evening, just to check in. I still didn’t love the guy or anything, but I could kind of see his point about certain things. Gideon hadn’t denied destroying Alex’s career… and Gideon had never told Alex he wanted more. Maybe they both had used each other more than Gideon admitted in public.

“Hey, man.”

“Hello,” I answered Alex. “So…”

“Nothing, man. Sorry. It’s getting pretty tough. But come on, come over to my house. We’ll talk about your next career move.”

He was working day and night as the manager for all the models, plus holding the position of CEO. Hayden was working as the face of the agency and wasn’t around much -- we’d never even met face to face, and the office was a small but clean one on the other side of Central Park from Prestige, thank god.

Less risk of running into Gideon.

That last fuck -- the hottest one I’d ever had in my life, and the one I jerked off to just about every night?

God, I’d kill for that again, but that was just another regret to get drunk over if I let myself.

I wasn’t going to be the broke, angry model who resented the world. At least, I’d try to stave that off.

“Okay. I’ll be over in half an hour,” I told my boss and hung up, then sorted through my closet. I didn’t even feel like wearing any of the shit in there.

It all felt like it belonged to a guy who was a lot more successful than me, and less of a fuck-up. Not the kind of guy who would crash and burn so hard there were memes in modeling circles’ Facebook groups about him.